Raiders Invite Season Ticket Holders To Watch First Practice At Allegiant Stadium Via A Live Look-In Friday

By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com

Las Vegas Raiders have contacted their season ticket holders to give them a chance to watch the team’s players practice for the first time at new Allegiant Stadium via a live-look-in from their laptops and devices Friday.

The NFL team is not allowing fans, including season ticket holders, to attend its home games this year at the new 65,000-seat domed stadium on the west side of Interstate 15 across from from Mandalay Bay hotel-casino. It’s about a 15-minute walk from the Strip via Hacienda Avenue, which spans the interstate.

This is what the Raiders told season ticket holders Thursday in an email:

The Raiders left Oakland for Las Vegas because Southern Nevada contributed $750 million in public dollars to build the stadium, which cost $1.4 billion to construct. The debt service on the $750 million public subsidy is more than $1 billion over 30 years.  The overall stadium project budget is $1.976 billion, which includes costs like the land acquisition and design expenses above the stadium construction costs. The $1.976 billion — or $2 billion – is what you typically hear in the media.

 

The team has been practicing early mornings at the Raiders’ new training center and headquarters in Henderson, about 10 miles or so south and east of the new stadium in Las Vegas.

Las Vegas Raiders quarterback Marcus Mariota (8) gathers with players during an NFL football training camp practice Thursday, Aug. 20, 2020, in Henderson, Nev. (AP Photo/John Locher, Pool)

 

Las Vegas Raiders players warm up during an NFL football training camp practice Thursday, Aug. 20, 2020, in Henderson, Nev. (AP Photo/John Locher, Pool)

The media Thursday asked defensive coordinator Paul Guenther about the benefits of holding practice at Allegiant Stadium.

Guenther responded: “I think it’s important. Me personally, I haven’t been in the stadium. A lot of the players haven’t been there yet. See the locker room and go through the routine and see your locker, see what it looks like, what the walk is coming out. It’s good for the stadium people to get ready for a game-like atmosphere. So, we’re going to treat this like a game, coming out of the locker room, stretching, doing all those things and then we are going to get into practice and do some different things. So, it’s a good routine to see where we are going to be playing our home games at because a lot of our guys haven’t seen it yet.”

 

 

It’s good for the stadium people to get ready for a game-like atmosphere. So, we’re going to treat this like a game, coming out of the locker room, stretching, doing all those things and then we are going to get into practice and do some different things.

 

It’s unknown when fans will be allowed to go in the stadium in person for an event. No fans will be allowed in the new stadium for Raiders home games. And the Mountain West Conference has cancelled all fall sports, so the UNLV football team will not play in the new stadium either.

And the Pac-12 conference has cancelled its football season because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has claimed the lives of more than 170,000 Americans. That means no Pac-12 title game in Allegiant Stadium this year.

A sold-out Garth Brooks concert was rescheduled from August to February. But will fans be allowed in the domed stadium by then?


Interesting news and take from the Sports Business Daily:

About 40% of NFL season-ticket holders who pushed their packages to 2021 requested a refund, according to league sources, a figure insiders consider a victory. Most teams tried to encourage fans to leave money on their accounts through incentives such as priority access to playoff tickets and food-and-beverage discounts. One league source said the refund rate is lower when you consider how many fans didn’t do anything with their season tickets, instead agreeing to take their chances with partial packages or single-game seats in 2020 as circumstances allow. “If you project this out across the entire season-ticket member base, we estimate that only approximately 30% … requested their money back,” this person said. “Or looked at the other way, 70% chose to leave money on account for either a ticket purchase this year or for season tickets next year (2021). We see that as very positive.” Among the 20 teams that gave fans a choice of rolling with the unpredictability of 2020 or bailing altogether, 55% opted out, according to league research (12 other teams canceled all season tickets, in effect making that choice for them). “That sounds higher than I would have expected,” said Tony Knopp, CEO of TicketManager, which handles corporate ticketing for major clients. But he suspects the numbers vary widely by market — the Packers, for instance, said last week that 80% opted out.

Dolphins stadium open this summer:

 


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Alan Snel

Alan Snel brings decades of sports-business reporting experience to LVSportsBiz.com. Snel covered the business side of sports for the South Florida (Fort Lauderdale) Sun-Sentinel, the Tampa Tribune and Las Vegas Review-Journal. As a city hall beat reporter, Snel also covered stadium deals in Denver and Seattle. In 2000, Snel launched a sport-business website for FoxSports.com called FoxSportsBiz.com. After reporting sports-business for the RJ, Snel wrote hard-hitting stories on the Raiders stadium for the Desert Companion magazine in Las Vegas and The Nevada Independent. Snel is also one of the top bicycle advocates in the country.