Latest On Sheldon Adelson’s Withdrawal From Raiders’ Vegas Plan

We learned yesterday that the Raiders were still optimistic about a potential move to Las Vegas, a move that recently encountered several major hurdles when casino magnate Sheldon Adelson withdrew his $650MM pledge for a potential $1.9B, 65,000-seat stadium in Sin City, and investment firm Goldman Sachs declared that it would not help the Raiders finance a stadium without Adelson’s involvement.

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But while the Raiders still believe they can make a relocation work, it appears that the bridge with Adelson has been burned for good. Last night, Richard N. Velotta of the Las Vegas Review-Journal passed along a series of comments from Andy Abboud, vice president of government relations and community affairs for casino operator Las Vegas Sands Corp. and a spokesman for the Adelson family. Abboud’s statements are the first from either party regarding stadium development negotiations.

The entire piece is worth a read, but Abboud said Raiders executives changed their minds about certain issues in mid-negotiation, which precipitated Adelson’s decision. Per Abboud, the last straw was the Raiders’ decision to take a proposed stadium lease agreement to the Las Vegas Stadium Authority without telling or involving the Adelsons. Adelson withdrew his support four days after the agreement was presented to the Stadium Authority.

Abboud said of the lease, “The concern that we had and the concern that everybody has in hindsight is the 117-page proposed lease agreement that did not reflect the commitments that the Adelson family made to the Raiders and that the Raiders had made to the Adelson family. It did not reflect the commitments that were made to UNLV. It did not make the commitments that were promised to the community, and it was in no way reflective of the months of [Southern Nevada Tourism Infrastructure Committee] meetings and reflective of what it took to get the members of the Legislature to vote for the funding.”

Abboud added that the two sides negotiated over such issues as stadium naming rights, sponsorships, revenue from stadium contractors, parking, signage, and use by UNLV, but whenever Adelson’s team believed they had struck an accord, the Raiders would change their minds again.

Abboud said the team was demanding more and more as the negotiations wore on, and that Adelson “was willing to share revenues and make it financially mutually beneficial, but [the Raiders] were picking his pocket. I think that they felt they were asking to be entitled to revenue streams and things that simply made the deal unworkable. It was never about the financial return for the Adelsons, but the Adelson family wasn’t going to have their pocket picked, by the Raiders or by the NFL or anybody.”

Needless to say, this report presents just one side of the story, as Raiders President Marc Badain told Velotta several days ago that the team would not comment on the negotiations. Further, the Las Vegas Review-Journal is owned by Adelson’s family, so all of this should be taken with a grain of salt. Nonetheless, it does provide an interesting glimpse into the negotiations that once seemed destined to bring the NFL to Las Vegas but that now appear to be completely dead.

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