By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
This morning’s visit to the NFL Raiders stadium — officially called Allegiant Stadium under a naming rights deal released in August — showed lots of progress from a concrete sidewalk installed and trees planted on the stadium’s eastern side to lots of exterior work. Let’s take a look with pictures Saturday, with some more numerical updates.
— The Raiders generated a stunning $478. 3 million in personal seat license revenue and are sold out in PSLs, which are fees that fans pay before they pay for the actual tickets .
— The stadium construction budget is $1.4 billion. Naturally, that’s the biggest single chunk in the overall stadium budget of $1.97 billion.
— Southern Nevada is giving the Raiders $750 million to help build the stadium — more than half of the actual $1.4 billion construction budget. Southern Nevada will raise more than $1 billion over 30 years for the debt service on the $750 million subsidy to the Raiders. That’s the biggest public contribution to an NFL stadium.
— Much has been discussed about the Raiders agreement with UNLV to allow the Rebels to play their home football games there. Here’s the deal under the agreement: the Raiders are not required to allow UNLV to play non-conference games in year one at Allegiant Stadium. Starting in the second season at Allegiant Stadium, the UNLV football team can play up to two non-conference games at the stadium under the Raiders-UNLV joint-use agreement. For this year, the UNLV home-opener vs Cal for August 29 is a go at Allegiant Stadium. But scheduled home games against Louisiana Tech on Sept. 5 and Arizona State on Sept. 12 are being negotiated between UNLV and the Raiders because the NFL team might have schedule issues for possible events. Those two UNLV September games may have to be played at Sam Boyd Stadium. But both sides are talking and nothing has been decided yet. The UNLV Mountain West Conference home games are set for Allegiant Stadium.
Raiders point man Don Webb said the stadium will have bike racks. And Webb insists the stadium will be ready July 31, 2020.
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