Oakland Reportedly Working On New Stadium Deal To Keep Raiders

Jason Cole of B/R reports that the Oakland city council is hoping to vote a proposed land deal to build a new stadium.

Cole says that this land deal could possibly pave the way for a new stadium to be built on the Oakland Coliseum property and prevent the team from relocating to Las Vegas.

The committee is reportedly hoping to make a presentation at the next NFL owners meeting and stem the progress made by the team in Las Vegas.

Earlier in the week, Peter King of TheMMQB.com reported that the NFL office “desperately wants to do something to prevent what looks like a near-fait accompli—the Raiders moving to Vegas and the Chargers moving to be the second team in Los Angeles.

According to King, the NFL is concerned about the Raiders leaving northern California for a few reasons including: 1) The Raiders won’t come close to duplicating the fervor of Oakland in transient Vegas, 2) The NFL knows how valuable their market is and they want to keep a second team in the Bay Area.

King added that the NFL probably can’t keep the Raiders in their current market unless Mark Davis is willing to take on a partner, which he’s shown no signs of wanting to do.

While there has been a lot of progress made towards a stadium deal in Las Vegas, it’s buy no means a done deal.

Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk previously reports that the NFL believes that casino owner Sheldon Adelson wants to acquire a path to a controlling interest in the Raiders as part of the agreement to relocate the team to Las Vegas.

Florio mentions that the fact that Adelson owns a casino creates a big issue that could make it more difficult for the Raiders to secure approval from NFL owners to relocate the team.

 

Adelson previously mentioned that he is prepared to walk away from the stadium deal to build a new facility for the Raiders in Las Vegas unless the terms of the improve.

“I negotiated to bring in the Oakland Raiders, an NFL football team from Oakland, because they don’t have a stadium there, that I would build a stadium and rent it out to the Oakland Raiders,” Adelson said on Wednesday, via Ari Rabinovitch of Reuters.

Adelson added that the Raiders are asking for too much right now and even though he helped gain approval for the project last week, it sounds like he’s prepared to move on.

“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 gonna go down. If they don’t want it, bye-bye.”

Adelson has committed $650 million to the Las Vegas stadium project, but NFL bylaws prevent him from owning a piece of a franchise. Albert Breer previously mentioned that Adelson could still get revenue from non-NFL events, but there’s also question whether this would be a worthwhile investment for him.

The Raiders would need 24 votes to relocate the team to Las Vegas and Davis is expected to file for relocation in January.

We’ll have more regarding the Raiders and Las Vegas as the news is available.