By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
At the Las Vegas Raiders re-naming pep rally Wednesday, Raiders owner Mark Davis invoked his name and thanked him.
At Raiders stadium sponsorship deal announcements in Las Vegas, Raiders President Marc Badain usually thanks this man, too.
And at PR promotion events when the stadium is mentioned, LVCVA tourism agency head Steve Hill also includes his name.
Funny thing, neither this person nor a surrogate/company representative shows up at Raiders stadium events even though he had more to do with the realization of this $1.97 billion private-public stadium project west of the Strip than anyone else.
His name: Sheldon Adelson.
It was the Las Vegas casino tycoon and billionaire who was the Strip’s driving force behind the idea in 2016 of luring the Raiders from Oakland to Las Vegas. It was Adelson, 86, who supplied the lobbyists behind the state legislature approving the $750 million public subsidy for the stadium, which brought the Raiders to Las Vegas. The public subsidy is a record amount for an NFL stadium.
Adelson bankrolled the political muscle that convinced state lawmakers to create the hotel room tax increase to pay for the public’s share of the stadium funding.
The room tax is generating money being collected over 30 years for the debt service on bonds sold to pay for the public contribution for the stadium construction. Former Gov. Brian Sandoval, who called the special legislative session for the Raiders stadium deal, signed the stadium bill in 2016.
“This stadium was the missing link,” Sandoval told LVSportsBiz.com after an MGM Resorts-Raiders gaming partnership announcement Thursday. “And Sheldon was a great leader in all of this.”
Sandoval believes the $750 million public subsidy to the Raiders to build the stadium was a good investment. Subsidy opponents think otherwise, maintaining a team that plays in a league generating $15 billion a year in revenue doesn’t need public money to build its home stadium.
Sandoval was succeeded by Gov. Steve Sisolak, who is a big Raiders fan and even donned a Derek Carr jersey to announce a Raiders draft pick on the Strip a few years ago.
But neither Sandoval nor Sisolak made the Raiders stadium happen as much as Adelson did. True, Sandoval signed the stadium bill into law after he called the special session. But it was Adelson who politically paved the way for the stadium bill to be approved by state lawmakers in the first place.
“We wouldn’t be here without Sheldon,” Badain told LVSportsBiz.com after the Raiders-MGM Resorts sponsorship announcement Thursday.
At one time, Adelson, chairman of Las Vegas-based Las Vegas Sands Corp., had committed $650 million to the Raiders stadium project.
But this month marks the three-year anniversary of Adelson withdrawing his involvement from the stadium. The Adelson statement in January 2017 said, “It’s clear the Raiders have decided their path for moving to Las Vegas does not include the Adelson family. So, regrettably, we will no longer be involved in any facet of the stadium discussion.”
Adelson has not talked publicly about the Raiders stadium since. Last March, multiple business publications and news reports said Adelson was having health issues.
Don’t feel too bad for the Raiders after Adelson took his $650 million off the table for the stadium. The Raiders filled the stadium financing gap left by Adelson’s departure with a Bank of America loan.
The NFL team also scored a stunning $478.3 million in personal seat license revenues in selling out the stadium. That’s not even counting the tens of millions of dollars the Raiders made from ticket sales for the 2020 season. Badain noted 60 percent of the personal seat license holders were Nevadans, while 40 percent were out-of-state. Plus the Raiders will generate hundreds of millions of dollars in stadium founding partnerships and multi-year sponsorships. The value of the Raiders will soar thanks to the new stadium made possible by Adelson.
It’s unusual for the person who supplied the political muscle and money to make a publicly-subsidized stadium happen to not show any public joy in the actualization of the stadium.
LVSportsBiz.com reached out to Sands Corp.’s top PR man, Ron Reese, by email and phone this week in hopes of finding out what Adelson or Sands thinks about the Raiders stadium coming to life. We did not hear back.
The 65,000-seat stadium, being built with a translucent roof, is scheduled to be completed July 31. The Raiders insist the stadium will be ready on time.
As for Adelson, the Raiders always make sure they thank the man during public stadium PR events.
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