A decade ago, the National Football League was turning up its nose at Las Vegas’ money, fearful of the taint of gambling. Now it’s bringing one of its most storied franchises to the city in a move that could signal a turning of the tide for the legalization of sports betting in America.
It’s not certain when the Oakland Raiders will host their first kick-off in the casino mecca, or where, but last Monday’s landslide 31-1 vote by the league’s owners approving the move clearly indicates that betting is no longer perceived as a danger to professional sports.
And it’s certainly a major coup for Las Vegas, where the Raiders will join the NHL’s expansion Golden Knights as the city’s second major league franchise.
“Our football dreams have come true,” said Clark County Commission Chairman Steve Sisolak. “It’s a great day for Las Vegas and Clark County.”
As Steve Wynn put it: “You can talk about all the acts that come to Las Vegas and all the concerts, but they don’t get televised to tens of millions of people.”
Speaking to reporters after the vote, which was held at the owners’ winter meeting in Phoenix, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said that while legalized betting remains a touchy subject for most owners, “Society in general has a little bit of a change with respect to gambling.”
“I think we have to make sure that we continue to stay focused on making sure that everyone has full confidence that what you see on the field is not influenced by any outside factors. That’s our No. 1 concern,” he said. “That goes to what I consider the integrity of the game, and we will not relent on that.”
But, he added pointedly, “I also believe Las Vegas is not the same city it was 10 years ago or 20 years ago. It’s a much more diverse city. It has become an entertainment mecca. It is the fastest-growing city in the country. So I think when you look at what Las Vegas is today and what it was a decade or two ago, I think it’s a much different city.”
The American Gaming Association, the casino industry’s federal lobbying arm and a vocal proponent of the legalization of sports betting, applauded the owners’ decision.
“The second announcement of a major sports franchise to locate a team in Las Vegas in just the last 12 months demonstrates how far gaming has come, from a niche industry to a $240 billion economic engine that supports 1.7 million jobs in 40 states,” said President and CEO Geoff Freeman. “The gaming industry currently partners with professional teams around the country and we look forward to soon doing the same in Nevada.”
Raiders owner Mark Davis said plans are to remain at Oakland’s Alameda County Stadium through the 2019 season while a 65,000-seat domed stadium, pegged currently at nearly $2 billion, is constructed for the team somewhere just off the Las Vegas Strip, most likely at a site west of Interstate-15 at the south end of the Strip near Mandalay Bay.
Or they could be in town sooner if miffed Alameda County politicians follow through on a reported plan to break a pair of one-year lease agreements with the team and force them from the city. If that happens the Raiders could wind up in temporary digs at Las Vegas’ Sam Boyd Stadium as early as 2018. The move would require at least $15 million in improvements at the UNLV stadium, including better locker rooms and the addition of several thousand more seats.
The new domed stadium, which also will host the University of Nevada, Las Vegas’ football team, was the brainchild of casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson, chairman and CEO of Las Vegas Sands Corp. It was his pull that got the state of Nevada to approve an increase in the Clark County hotel room tax to defray $750 million of the stadium’s cost through a public bond issue. The Adelson family and their partners had committed another $650 million, and the Raiders agreed to pick up the remaining $500 million.
However, the whole thing looked to be on the verge of collapse earlier this year when Adelson and the Raiders failed to come to terms and Adelson withdrew his support. But then last month, during NFL meetings in Florida, it was announced that Bank of America would be riding to the rescue with loans to cover Adelson’s share.
Still, several owners were skeptical about swapping the Bay Area’s much larger TV market for Las Vegas’ much smaller one, and reportedly it took Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, arguably the league’s most powerful figure, to sway his colleagues by convincing them of the economic viability of Las Vegas as a growing metro area with a global profile.
It’s a far cry from the days when the NFL refused to air a tourism commercial the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority wanted to buy during the 2003 Super Bowl. The ad showed no casino scenes, but the league, insisting the “Las Vegas” meant “gambling,” and citing a clause in its television contracts prohibiting gambling-related ads, quashed the spot.
Two decades ago, U.S. Sen. John McCain wondered if Nevada’s sports books should allow gambling on college sports. The 2007 NBA All-Star Game in Las Vegas was staged with a ban on wagering in the state’s books. As recently as 2013, NFL officials refused to entertain the idea of hosting any games in Las Vegas.
“It was only two years ago that they prohibited a Tony Romo fantasy football camp here,” noted Westgate sports book director Jay Kornegay.
“What did Pink Floyd say? We were just another brick in the wall,” said veteran odds maker Jimmy Vaccaro, director of the South Point’s sports book.
But clearly the stigma is fading. William Hill CEO Joe Asher said the Raiders move, combined with the birth of the NHL’s expansion Golden Knights, is “further evidence of the myth that legalized sports betting somehow hurts the game.”
As it stands, the NFL is already in bed with daily fantasy sports, which many agree is unequivocally gambling. Twenty-eight of the league’s 32 teams and the NFL Players Association have multimillion-dollar sponsorship and partnership deals with DFS companies. And the speed with which they accepted the money lead many to argue the league has little moral high ground to speak from and that playing games in the shadow of the Strip’s resorts isn’t putting the NFL any closer to corruption than it’s already been for years.
In the meantime, a lot has to happen before the Raiders step out onto their new desert turf.
The board of the newly created Las Vegas Stadium Authority has to sign off on a stadium development agreement with a qualified partner. The Raiders drive that process, but the board must verify that the developers have the financial wherewithal and expertise to build the stadium.
The board also must approve a lease agreement with a stadium events company. That also could be the Raiders, but it also might be a third party that has expertise in managing stadiums and arenas, like Anschutz Entertainment Group’s AEG Live, the joint venture partner with MGM Resorts International on the T-Mobile Arena, the future home of the Golden Knights.
Then once a development agreement is struck, more details about the specifics of the stadium will need to be clarified and approved both locally and at the state level.
“It’s the end of the beginning,” said Jeremy Aguero, a principal with Las Vegas-based research firm Applied Analysis, which serves as staff to the Stadium Authority. “There’s still a ton of work to do.”
For bettors, though, the action is already heating up.
The Raiders, coming off a playoff season, hit the city’s future-book boards last week at 6/1 odds to win the AFC and 12/1 to win the Super Bowl, and bookmakers say they’re looking for local interest to make the Silver and Black as popular an NFL bet at the New England Patriots, Pittsburgh Steelers, Green Bay Packers and the Cowboys.
“We did see Raider Nation in full force this past year. They were so good. We do expect that extra spike with the Raiders now that they’re our team. A lot of people around here are very excited,” said Kornegay.
“The handle will continue to grow,” said Jay Rood, the race and sports book director of the 10 MGM Resorts properties on The Strip. “Everyone loves betting on America’s sport.”
Yet, the NFL could shut down the celebration by requesting that the Raiders not be available for betting. Goodell has indicated the league is not moving in that direction, but the league would have up to 30 days prior to the team’s first Las Vegas game to seek a ban. If the Nevada Gaming Control Board passed such a rule, no games involving the Raiders?home or away?would be posted on any betting board in the state.
The casinos would surely object, of course, but many in the industry don’t believe it will come to that.
“I certainly hope league and team officials understand the sports-gaming industry in Nevada before they even consider going down that road (of limiting betting) again,” Kornegay said. “If they need to find out any more about how highly regulated we operate, it would give them great comfort.”
In Phoenix last week, there was no indication of the owners supporting any such injunction. Raiders President Marc Badain said the gambling issue has been “addressed.”
“That’s something we’ve been working on for the last eight or nine months. We’ve had conversations with the league, we’ve had conversations with Bo Bernhard at the (UNLV) Gaming Institute. He’s provided some materials that were very helpful in answering some questions from the ownership.”
One positive sign is that the NHL hasn’t attempted to implement any sort of ban ahead of the Golden Knights beginning play in October. So the NFL could find it similarly unnecessary.
“People have started to see that’s way behind the times,” Vaccaro said. “You can feel the energy changing.”
