Raiders' move from Oakland to Las Vegas the result of 14 months of work
The Oakland Raiders' dalliance with Las Vegas began publicly some 14 months ago and culminated with Monday’s vote allowing the team to move from the Bay Area to Nevada. The Raiders have called Oakland (1960-1981), Los Angeles (1982-1994) and Oakland again (1995-present) home since their inception as an original AFL team and will relocate to Las Vegas by 2020. What follows here is a look at how the Raiders got the vote and the roadblocks they had to overcome to move to Las Vegas.
Jan. 12, 2016: The Raiders finish third in a three-team race for relocation to Los Angeles, despite their joint stadium proposal in nearby Carson, California, with the Chargers earning the recommendation of an NFL owners committee. The Rams win the right to move from St. Louis, and the Chargers are given a year to decide whether they want to join the Rams in Inglewood. If the Chargers choose to stay in San Diego, the Raiders could then join the Rams. "Well, this is not a win for the Raiders today," Raiders owner Mark Davis said at the time. "But we’ll see where the Raider Nation ends up here. We’ll be working really hard to find us a home."
Jan. 27, 2016: A leaked memo from UNLV president Len Jessup tells faculty that Davis will be in Las Vegas to tour the city and potential stadium sites. He plans to meet with casino magnate Sheldon Adelson to check on southern Nevada as a potential home for the Raiders.
Feb. 5, 2016: Davis says moving to Santa Clara and playing at the San Francisco 49ers’ Levi’s Stadium is not an option. "There’s three words that mean something to me in a stadium, in a location, and that’s ingress, egress and parking,” Davis said. "The Raiders on game day, if you’re around our stadium, if you see our parking lot before the game, it’s probably the biggest nondenominational gathering on a Sunday morning that you’ll ever find. And I’m not going to give that up. I’m not going to do that. That’s just part of the Raider game-day experience, and I just can’t give that up. I just don’t believe that they have that in Santa Clara."
Feb. 11, 2016: The Raiders agree to a three-year lease to play at the Oakland Coliseum, with the final two seasons being team options. Davis reiterates his desire to stay in Oakland with new stadiums for the Raiders and Oakland A’s on the current Coliseum site, challenging the baseball team to get on board. “I do not mind if we build two stadiums on that site. The A’s stadium would take about 12 acres; the Raiders stadium would take about 15 to 17 acres. If in fact the A’s do want to stay in the Oakland Coliseum site, they need to commit ASAP so that we can go ahead and design and take down the Coliseum, provide all the infrastructure that’s necessary to build two brand new stadiums in Oakland, and two teams would then come back in and play in two brand-new stadiums. What I do not want to do is build a football stadium in the corner of a parking lot while the Oakland Coliseum is still standing and then, once we have a brand-new [football] stadium, we begin to tear down [the Coliseum] or build a new baseball stadium and then tear down the Oakland Coliseum, disrupting the ingress, egress and parking and tailgating experience for the Raider fans on game day."
March 21, 2016: At the NFL owners meetings, Davis shoots down the idea of recently abandoned St. Louis as a new home for the Raiders. “The Raider brand is a different brand, I believe,” Davis said, “and I just don’t believe St. Louis would maximize it.” Then what about Las Vegas maximizing the Raiders brand, he is asked. “The Raiders would maximize Las Vegas,” Davis said with a laugh. Davis shares a photo of himself with Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval. Davis again says the city of Oakland and the A’s are stunting the possibility of staying in the East Bay. “The A’s are in the stadium; they’ve got a 10-year lease [and] the city doesn’t seem to want to make anything happen in that respect,” Davis said. “I asked the A’s basically through a press conference. 'Help us make a decision.' Just try and do something, but they haven’t done it.”
March 23, 2016: In his closing remarks at the NFL owners meetings, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell confirms Davis is “appropriately looking at all his alternatives” in terms of a new home for the team.
March 25, 2016: The Bay Area News Group reports the Raiders' rent at the Oakland Coliseum more than tripled, from $925,000 a year to $3.5 million. Sources tell ESPN.com this came after the lease was agreed to in principle and revenue from the naming rights to the Coliseum -- which made the rent a wash -- was lost.
April 24, 2016: Davis tells ESPN.com that the Raiders are close to selling out their season tickets for the first time in franchise history. “We’re excited as hell,” Davis said. “Again, we’ve got the greatest fans in the world. The Raider Nation is strong.”
April 28, 2016: Davis attends a meeting of the Southern Nevada Tourism Infrastructure Committee at UNLV and pledges $500 million toward the construction of a proposed 65,000-seat, $1.4 billion (the price estimate would later go up to $1.9 billion) domed stadium to be shared with the UNLV football team. “If Las Vegas can come through with what we’ve been talking about, and we can do a deal here, then we’re going to be the Las Vegas Raiders,” Davis said at the meeting. (The deal would later include $650 million from Adelson and $750 million in a hotel tax. And in a conversation with ESPN.com on the private jet trip back to Oakland, Davis called it “a very positive step in finding the Raiders a home” as well as turning the “Silver State into the Silver and Black State.” This is when Davis turned his full attention toward Las Vegas, after saying he had spent eight years trying to make a deal in Oakland. “We’ve already said we’d put $500 million toward a stadium in Oakland,” Davis said. “But there is a substantial funding gap, and there’s no way to make it up.” Also on the flight, Davis said Larry MacNeil, hired to front the Raiders’ Oakland stadium search three months earlier, could not get a meeting with Oakland officials, after having a term sheet that was “80 percent done” for a new stadium on the Coliseum grounds in June 2014, which included 169 acres of “free land” promised by then-Oakland mayor Jean Quan (an offer later rescinded by sitting mayor Libby Schaaf). “Individually, they’re great people,” Davis said on the flight of Oakland city, Alameda County and Joint Powers Authority legislators. “But you get two or more of them in a room, total dysfunction.”
July 11, 2016: The Southern Nevada Tourism Infrastructure Committee holds a special meeting to discuss nine potential sites for a 65,000-seat stadium, and while Davis tells ESPN.com he's "site agnostic," the Raiders will eventually focus on a 62-acre plot of empty land west and across Interstate 15 from the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino on Russell Road, with the top portion of the Bali Hai Golf Club, just south of the Mandalay Bay, perhaps to be used as the fan experience staging area. The committee, convened by Gov. Sandoval and originally set to disband by the end of July, asks Sandoval for two more months before issuing an official recommendation on the stadium project, with a $750 million tax that has to pass the state legislature.
Sept. 15, 2016: The 11-member Southern Nevada Tourism Infrastructure Committee votes unanimously to recommend $750 million in public funding for a $1.9 billion stadium. “Everybody at that table should be very proud of themselves,” Raiders president Marc Badain said after the vote. “You heard Mark say he wants to make an offer the league can’t refuse. You took a big step toward that today.” Sandoval has to decide whether to call a special session of the Nevada state legislature to vote on the financing plan, spearheaded by Adelson, because the vote was believed to have a better shot of passing before the Nov. 8 elections. And with the Raiders having toured Reno as a potential site for training camp, that might curry favor with northern Nevada legislators on the fence about whether to vote for the tax package for southern Nevada.
Sept. 20, 2016: An investment group led by Pro Football Hall of Famer Ronnie Lott, who played two seasons with the Los Angeles Raiders, makes it known it wants to purchase the Oakland Coliseum and the surrounding land in hopes of keeping the Raiders in Oakland. The Lott Group and Fortress Investment Group’s plan, though, is rejected by the NFL, which says its finances were too similar to previously rejected plans.
Oct. 14, 2016: The Nevada state legislature approves the $750 million tax plan for the stadium.
Oct. 15, 2016: The next day, Davis reaffirms to ESPN.com he wants to stay in Oakland for the next two years, even if he gets league approval to move to Las Vegas, as a new stadium there would not be ready until 2020. Plus, UNLV’s current home, 35,500-seat Sam Boyd Stadium on the far southeastern edge of the city, has antiquated locker rooms and no true security border around the facility required for NFL stadiums. Davis says he wants to win a Super Bowl for the Bay Area before leaving for Las Vegas.
Oct. 17, 2016: Sandoval signs into law the $750 million tax bill for the construction of the 65,000-seat, $1.9 billion domed stadium to be shared by the Raiders and UNLV.
Oct. 26, 2016: Adelson, at a conference in Tel Aviv, Israel, gives the first inkling there's trouble brewing between himself and the Raiders, telling reporters he would be fine walking away from the deal. “They want so much,” Adelson said. “So I told my people, ‘Tell them I could live with the deal; I could live without the deal. Here's the way it's going to go down. If they don't want it, bye-bye.’”
Jan. 19, 2017: The Raiders file their formal relocation paperwork with the NFL and remain steadfast they will be called the “Oakland” Raiders, even if they were lame ducks, and no rebranding would occur with a move to Las Vegas. The Raiders could play one preseason game a year in 2017 and 2018 at Sam Boyd Stadium.
Jan. 30, 2017: Adelson withdraws his $650 million pledge from the project, saying the Raiders excluded him from talks before sending a lease proposal to the Las Vegas stadium board that would own the stadium. Adelson’s name was also left off the Raiders’ relocation application to the NFL. The lease proposal called for $1 a year in rent from the Raiders. Many observers saw Adelson as wanting a piece of the team, or a path to ownership, with rumors of him being able to take over the Raiders if Davis defaulted on the $650 million Adelson pledged.
Jan. 31, 2017: Goldman Sachs, which has a long business relationship with Adelson and which the Raiders saw as stepping in for Adelson, also pulls out, saying it would be involved only if Adelson was involved. A curious case given that the Raiders would not have needed Goldman Sachs’ money if Adelson was involved.
Feb. 1, 2017: Goodell gives the Raiders the green light to continue pursuing relocation without Adelson, saying at his state of the league address, “I don’t see an ownership position in a team from a casino. That is not something that is consistent with our policies. not likely a stadium, either.”
March 6, 2017: The Raiders inform the NFL's finance and stadium committees that Bank of America has stepped in to fill the void created by Adelson’s $650 million departure and will help finance the stadium project. NFL owners seemingly let out a sigh of relief, what with $750 million in public money on the table and a growing feeling that they were not entirely comfortable with a casino operator being so closely linked to a team.
March 24, 2017: The city of Oakland and its partners submit a revised financing plan for a $1.3 billion mixed-use stadium project on the Coliseum site. That same day, Goodell writes a letter to Schaaf, telling her he believes the city has yet to find a “viable solution” to keeping the Raiders in the East Bay.
March 27, 2017: NFL owners vote 31-1 for the Raiders to relocate to Las Vegas. Twenty-four votes were needed. The Miami Dolphins were the only team to vote against the move.