By ALAN SNEL
LVSportsBiz.com
So, Clark County sold a bunch of bonds recently for a local public stadium board. And the money raised by the bonds will help give the Raiders football team a $750 million subsidy so that the NFL club can build a $1.8 billion public stadium that will be run by the private team.
It’s a process couched with lots of technical financial terms that the public — and truth be told, a lot of the media, too — is rather clueless about. I emailed questions to Clark County’s PR guy Dan Kulin and the stadium board’s consultant, Jeremy Aguero, but I never heard back. (Aguero did talk with LVSportsBiz.com in June 2017 to explain a lot of the funding process.)
But that’s OK.
The Raiders are coming!
That’s what the billboards say anyway.
And Chucky is back, too.
And the Raiders are coming!
Oops, sorry, I already said that. My apologies. That’s what happens when you mix sports fever with public policy.
The new extra tax on hotel rooms in Clark County has been producing anywhere from $2.9 million to $5 million a month for the past year and it’s going into a big pot of money that will be used to help pay off a debt for the bonds that will be more than $1 billion over 30 years. (What, you don’t know about mortgages and debt?) After a full 12-month cycle, nearly $48.6 million in room tax revenues have been collected (about $4 million a month on average).
The room tax revenues were down 14 percent ($528,072) from a budgeted number for February, but the 12-month total from March 2017 to February 2018 was the $48.6 million number, $2.1 million over the stadium authority’s budgeted level of $46.5 million.
You can debate the morality of giving public money to a private team that’s a member of the most powerful and richest professional sports league in North America. That debate has been going on in markets around the country for, oh, 25 years now.
But at this point, it’s moot here in Las Vegas. In fact, it’s been moot since the day Gov. Brian Sandoval signed Senate Bill 1 — the cool inside people call it SB1 — Oct. 17, 2016. In fact, there are so many cranes at the stadium’s 62-acre site and so much work excavation and prep work being done that you wonder what exactly public boards are voting on regarding the 65,000-seat, domed stadium.
The Raiders have set up shop in Las Vegas to sell personal seat licenses for literally hundreds of thousands of dollars and premium seating is also being sold.
Team president Marc Badain is now relaxed at stadium board meetings, where he has become accustomed to cracking quips and revealing an amusing sense of humor not so evident when the stadium panel sessions began about a year ago.
Badain has big fish to fry now — a dumb cliche that is kind of a pun because he has to hire a food and drink concessionaire for the stadium. I’m thinking that he’s talking with two stadium food vendor powers — Legends Hospitality (started by the Yankees and Cowboys) with contracts at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Yankee Stadium and the Rose Bowl and Levy Restaurants, known for upscale food at stadiums and arenas around the country including two-year-old T-Mobile Arena here in Las Vegas.
LVSportsBiz.com is also expecting another big name in the concessions business, Centerplate, which has the contract at the Las Vegas Convention Center and Cashman Field, to vie for the food vendor job at the Raiders stadium.
And a fourth big name in the stadium concessions industry, Aramark, might even throw its hat into the food contract competition at the Raiders stadium.
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LVSportsBiz.com is thinking that Legends Hospitality would be the favorite because Cowboys owner Jerry Jones owns a share of Legends and Jones was an instrumental player in championing the Raiders move to Las Vegas.
But Chicago-based Levy Restaurants is a formidable food vendor/competitor, especially with its work at T-Mobile Arena. Levy is at Wrigley Field, Dodger Stadium and NFL stadiums in Atlanta, Detroit and Kansas City.
Then, there’s the lucrative naming rights deal for the stadium — a massive revenue gusher for the Raiders.
LVSportsBiz.com estimates the Raiders stadium could fetch $15 million a year to $20 million a year for 20 or 25 years. The Rams stadium being built in Los Angeles could attract a slightly more financially lucrative deal. Both the Raiders and Rams stadiums are scheduled to open in 2020.
The Raiders are coming and their stadium naming rights deal will help them pay for their share of the costs. Photo credit: Daniel Clark/LVSportsBiz.com
Badain confirmed for LVSportsBiz.com after a recent stadium board meeting that he is already talking with naming rights suitors, though he declined to name the industry category.
LVSportsBiz.com offers two companies that could find value in a naming rights deal.
Southwest Airlines could be a possibility with a nice perk of posting the airlines’ brand mark on the roof for Southwest passengers to see as they come to and go from Las Vegas and McCarran International Airport.
A dark horse candidate for a naming rights deal would be the company vying for the food vendor job — Legends, the stadium hospitality/concessionaire powerhouse that can craft a deal and integrate it into the venue along with his concessions deal. Never underestimate Jerry Jones and the Yankees, the main players behind Legends.
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