By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
At the Raiders event in January when the NFL team was officially dubbed the Las Vegas Raiders, Mark Davis showed up in a suit and tie.
It’s true, Davis does owns suits and ties. But if you spend any time chatting with the Raiders owner, you get the sense he’s more comfortable in jeans and a collar-free shirt.
At that January Las Vegas Raiders event, Davis signed workers’ helmets and promised to feed them at a celebratory meal at the stadium after it opens. The 65,000-seat domed stadium is scheduled to be completed July 31. The $1.97 billion stadium project includes a $750 million public subsidy.
His chatter with workers and fans alike appears authentic. Davis enjoyed posing with fans for selfies at NHL Vegas Golden Knights and WNBA Las Vegas Aces games.
And after promising in March to offer steak dinners to some 12,000 Raiders’ Allegiant Stadium workers, he donated $25,000 this week to the Mondays Dark telethon that raised more than $122,000 for Las Vegas entertainers who are out of work because of the COVID-19 pandemic that has shut down Las Vegas’ vaunted entertainment industry.
Davis is a regular at the Aces games last season. In the photo below, he’s sitting next to Bill Hornbuckle, currently serving as CEO of MGM Resorts International, which has a gaming partnership with the NFL team. It’s unknown what the WNBA will do about its 2020 season in light of the coronavirus health crisis. MGM Resorts also owns the Aces.
Davis also was a regular at Golden Knights games, sitting behind one of the goals and sometimes hanging with Raiders coach Jon Gruden and former players like Marcus Allen.
Davis is very different from most of the other NFL owners, many of whom come from the corporate world. The Raiders’ culture is also different from other teams’ styles. The Raiders are known for more of a family-style, mom-and-pop approach — taking the lead from Davis and team president Marc Badain, who has worked for the NFL franchise his entire adult life since being an intern with the Raiders.
Davis is also less formal than Golden Knights owner Bill Foley, who appears more comfortable than Davis in a more traditional corporate setting.
Davis seems more like the Maloof brothers, Joe, Gavin, George and Phil — the minority owners of the Vegas Golden Knights. The Maloofs used to own the NBA Houston Rockets and Sacramento Kings. Joe and Gavin were known to schmooze with Kings fans in Sacramento back in the day before they worked on promoting the Golden Knights’ season ticket deposit campaign in 2015. Here’s Joe Maloof at T-Mobile Arena in 2018.
Davis looks at home at the stadium construction site, where he has been known to share a few lunches with the hundreds of workers.
Even at a ceremony at the stadium to announce Allegiant Air as the venue’s naming rights holder, Davis was not much for wearing a tie. Wearing jeans and a collar-free shirt plus blazer, Davis is sitting next to Congresswoman Dina Titus here:
The Raiders’ stadium is scheduled to be completed by July 31. Will fans be allowed to attend events there like a Garth Brooks concert scheduled for Aug. 22 or a UNLV vs Cal college football game scheduled for Aug. 29? That’s a story for another time.
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The city of Oakland’s antitrust lawsuit against the Raiders for leaving the city for Las Vegas was dismissed. Here’s a post on the legal matter:
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