Las Vegas Raiders Make Las Vegas History With Entertaining 34-30 Win Over Carolina Panthers Sunday
By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
In these bizarre and heartbreaking times of racial injustice protests, 200,000 dead Americans from a worldwide virus and fan-free NFL stadiums, there it was on TV — two letters on an NFL broadcast where the game score is kept.
“LV”
A little bit surreal, seeing the “LV” on the CBS broadcast of the “Las Vegas” Raiders vs Carolina Panthers on KLAS-TV, Channel 8.
Sure, the glassy, black-veneer $2 billion stadium off the Strip is tangible proof there’s an NFL team in Las Vegas.
But it took the first game ever played by the “Las Vegas Raiders” to offer the proof that an NFL team left Oakland (again) and planted new roots in a market 557 miles away in the desert thanks to a $750 million stadium construction subsidy.
In its first ever game as the Las Vegas Raiders, the old AFL team played old-time AFL football in a see-saw, back-and-forth 34-30 win over the Carolina Panthers in Charlotte, North Carolina Sunday.
There were seven lead changes, Raiders running back Josh Jacobs scored three touchdowns and the defense on this very young football team made a clutch fourth down stop on a Carolina runner not named Christian McCaffrey.
“It’s a historic win for me. It’s a historic win for our all players and our entire organization,” Raiders coach Jon Gruden said after the win.
I’m going to see if I can get hundreds of game balls to pass out to some of our season ticket holders — Jon Gruden
“Everybody got game balls, and I’m going to see if I can get hundreds of game balls to pass out to some of our season ticket holders. We’d love to be going back to our stadium and debuting Monday Night with everyone, but it means a lot. We’re all emotional about it. We wanted to get a win for them and like I said when I started, hopefully our fans back home saw something they liked,” he said.
Check out Gruden’s victory speech.
Interesting that the Las Vegas Raiders game was not a big ratings draw here in Las Vegas. John Ourand of the Sports Business Journal wrote, “I was most surprised by the Las Vegas overnight for its game against the Panthers, which was lackluster at best. The game’s 11.5 rating for the market is comparable to the 10.3 rating that Vegas averaged last year for neutral games.”
The Raiders’ next game is here in Las Vegas, which is finding a way to come up with more than $1 billion during a 30-year debt repayment period for the $750 million that Southern Nevada is contributing to the construction of 65,000-seat domed Allegiant Stadium. No fans will be allowed to attend the Raiders’ eight regular-season home games because of a novel coronavirus pandemic that has face masks mandatory inside the new building.
When the Raiders’ builders — the Mortenson/McCarthy construction team — finished the stadium and there was a county certificate of occupancy in hand at the end of July, there was no fanfare. No celebrations. No ribbon-cuttings. No final luncheons by owner Mark Davis with the few thousands of workers who brought hard hats and lunch boxes to the 62.5-acre site on the west side of Interstate 15 across from MGM Resorts’ Mandalay Bay hotel-casino.
Construction of the $1.976 billion stadium project includes $1.4 billion for the actual construction. The balance of the costs is paying for design services, land acquisitions, stadium equipment etc.
Media has watched two the Raiders conduct two practices at the palatial new football palace. The first time was August 21 when players dug their cleats into the retractable natural turf that slides in and out of the stadium on a mechanical tray.
Raiders fans are a faithful bunch. The team has piled up the second-worse won-loss record in the NFL since the league expanded to 32 teams and set up the eight-division, four-teams-per-division re-alignment in 2002.
But no matter how many games the team loses, it has a brand loyalty that is as strong as just about any NFL team brand. The Raiders generated an astounding $549.2 million in personal seat license money, the most revenue ever for a new stadium.
The Raiders’ first-ever win as a Las Vegas-based franchise came less than 24 hours after the NHL Vegas Golden Knights lost, 2-1, to the Dallas Stars in the NHL’s Western Conference Finals. It also came an hour before the WNBA Las Vegas Aces capped a successful pandemic bubble season in Bradenton, Florida with an 86-84 win over the Seattle Storm to finish the season 18-4 and earn the top playoff seed in the 12-team WNBA.
These are historic times for the Las Vegas sports industry, which now has NFL, NHL and WNBA teams based in the market with the NBA Summer League holding court every July at UNLV’s Thomas & Mack Center and the Triple A Las Vegas Aviators leading Minor League Baseball in attendance in 2019 before the minor league season was wiped out in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Driving the Raiders and the sports industry is the new sports venues. T-Mobile Arena’s opening in 2016 drove the NHL to awards a franchise to Las Vegas, which saw the Golden Knights debut in 2017. The new $150 million baseball park in Summerlin was a windfall for Howard Hughes Corporation, Summerlin’s master developer and the owner of the Triple A Aviators, an Oakland Athletics affiliate.
And the Raiders are here because of a record public subsidy to help build an NFL stadium.
It was a costly investment for Southern Nevada to allow the NFL franchise to place “Las Vegas” in front of Raiders.
In eight days, the Raiders play in Las Vegas. More history.
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