On Monday, NFL owners voted in overwhelming favor of relocating the Raiders to Las Vegas. The Bears were said to be among the few teams with concerns about the proposal, but Dolphins owner Stephen Ross turned out to be the only nay vote in the room. 
“My position today was that we as owners and as a League owe it to fans to do everything we can to stay in the communities that have supported us until all options have been exhausted,” Ross said in a statement (Twitter link via Adam Beasley of the Miami Herald). “I want to wish Mark Davis the Raiders organization the best in Las Vegas.”
Here’s the latest fallout from today’s historic news:
- Owner Mark Davis says the Raiders might ask for a third one-year lease option in Oakland, allowing them to stay through the 2019 season, as Mark Maske of The Washington Post tweets. Currently, the Raiders are contracted to remain in place through the 2018 campaign.
- Davis says he’ll refund season ticket deposits to fans who will no longer want to go to games since the Raiders are moving (Twitter link via Mike Jurecki of FOX Sports 710).
- Davis said he lost faith in local officials when they came up with nothing new on the eve of the team’s Los Angeles bid and then raised their rent (Twitter link via Vic Tafur of The San Francisco Chronicle).
- Oakland will be discussed as a new “open” market for a possible relocation, Tim Kawakami of The Mercury News hears (on Twitter), but so will the idea of another team sharing Levi’s Stadium with the 49ers in Santa Clara, California.
- In a statement, Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf said she is “disappointed that the Raiders and the NFL chose Las Vegas over Oakland when we had a fully-financed, shovel-ready stadium project.” Ultimately, the league did not view Oakland’s proposal as viable and today’s last-minute effort from Schaaf to delay the NFL’s vote was likely just for show.
- “The Raiders were born in Oakland and Oakland will always be part of our DNA,” Davis said as part of a press release statement. He also thanked casino magnate Sheldon Adelson for his “vision and leadership” and said the project would not have “become a reality” without him. The gratitude shown towards Adelson is notable since there has been some concern in NFL circles that the powerful businessman could stand in the way of the franchise after their business deal went south.
- Adelson responded with a supportive statement of his own (Twitter link via NFL.com’s Ian Rapoport). “We remain optimistic about the significant economic and tourism benefits the stadium development would provide Southern Nevada,” he said.
Schaaf and Davis are like 2 little kids arguing over a popsicle. The Team does not benefit from playing in Vegas and the only people hurt are the Raider fans, the citizens of Oakland and the many businesses that had contracts with the team and coliseum. Yeah Mark Davis. I want my money back for the 2017 season tickets I paid for. I’ll be a TV fan from now on.
Actually it opens up the market for all the SoCal Raider fans, so it doesn’t exactly hurt them.
Highly doubt you had season tickets…..
The team isn’t benefitting from staying in Oakland under their current agreement and in that stadium either. I feel for the Raiders fans that were against the move because I know they’re some of the most passionate fans in sports, but any rational person could see that the Raiders needed a new stadium. I mean Davis didn’t seem like he wanted to keep the Raiders in Oakland, but it seemed like city officials (i.e. Schaaf) were trying to call Davis’ bluff and only tried to make a serious deal when they realized they were going to lose.
Oakland’s just not viable for a major sports franchise anymore. I don’t how they kept the A’s, Raiders and Warriors there this long.
NFL is rooting out cities that can not give them what they want, Jacksonville, Buffalo, and maybe Tennessee are next on the list.
Well bye bye O.Co
Las Vegas better hope that the economy is strong, for a city that is on the hook for 950 million city dollars. If the country has the bottom of the economy drop out like it did in 2008, Las Vegas took a beating with home foreclosures, unemployment, convention cancellations. Oakland is still paying on the deal Al Davis got from the city of Oakland to get the Raiders to return to Oakland from LA. City of Oakland still owe 85million from that deal. San Diego is still trying to pay off the bill from the second SBowl investment on that stadium, Las Vegas beware, sounds good now, but the Raiders could pick up and leave after that first lease expires. NFL is rich in taking cities for a ride and then dumping them.
Hora love all the anti-business, anti-league sentiment. Oakland is not a viable market for any sports team. Even if people are willing to drive into Oakland, nobody is going anywhere else in Oakland before or after the games. Oakland is a crappy city, and it has been for some time. People want to pretend the rich owners are just screwing fans, and that’s fine, but you have to realize that’s not the reality. Oakland never put a viable option forth. There latest plan just acts like the A’s don’t exist.
Someone wrote an editorial in Bleacher Report saying “The NFL sold it’s soul” in the Raider’s deal. Actually, you have to have a soul before you can sell it.