By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
Young Mason is a five-year-old tyke or so standing in front of the “Raider Nation” RTC bus Saturday and posed for a photo with not a Raiders player but with someone who will now be the public business face of the NFL franchise in Las Vegas.
Mason’s mom snapped the photo and maybe when they got home she explained to her son that the man in the photo was the Raiders’ new interim president, Dan Ventrelle.
Ventrelle, who ascended to the team’s top business post after former team president Marc Badain abruptly resigned July 19, is no stranger to attending public meetings. He was often a common sight at Las Vegas stadium board sessions, sitting next to Badain in the Clark County commission chambers. There’s Ventrelle in a stadium meeting pic, on the left, with Badain in the center and Raiders stadium point man Don Webb on the right.
At the time, Ventrelle served as the Raiders executive vice president and general counsel. He has worked at the Raiders for 17 years.
But now Ventrelle will be making the public speaking appearances as the team’s interim president, like he did today at a local public transportation announcement about expanded bus service around the valley, including five new Raiders game-day express routes from points around the area for only $4 roundtrip.
Ventrelle is a Chicago guy who went to Notre Dame as an undergrad and then Michigan for law school when Tom Brady was slinging the football for the Wolverines. He always loved the Raiders, even wearing a Raiders jacket to school as a kid, a law magazine wrote of Ventrelle.
Now, he’s a Las Vegas guy, responsible for working on myriad stadium and team issues like getting people to and from Allegiant Stadium. Badain walked away after 30 years with the Raiders — less than a month before the Raiders hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony at their palatial 65,000-seat stadium before the Aug. 14 Raiders-Seahawks preseason game.
After two sold out stadium events, a Garth Brooks concert July 10 and a Gold Cup international soccer match Aug. 1, locals got a strong taste of what it was like to get to and leave the Raiders’ new elegant domed stadium. It wasn’t been pretty. While tourists walked from the Strip to the stadium, many locals have complained about the traffic issues on the streets around the stadium, the long lines and the inconveniences of parking if you don’t have one of the 2,400 or so parking spaces on the stadium property footprint.
That’s where the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada, or just RTC, stepped in with the five game-day express routes that start in a week when the Raiders host the Seattle Seahawks in a postseason game Aug. 14. There are also RTC’s double-deck “Deuce” buses that run up and down the Strip that fans can take to Hacienda Avenue and then walk to the stadium.
RTC last week unveiled those five express routes for Raiders homes games. The RTC direct express buses from suburban locations to VGK games brought more than 1,000 Knights fans to T-Mobile Arena for games, Frevola said.
He noted it was a good relationship, where fans appreciated the direct bus rides to the arena and the team promoted the RTC service in digital announcements inside the arena.
Fresh off his weekend appearances on the Strip to urge Nevada residents to get vaccinated, Gov. Steve Sisolak stopped by the RTC media event at Las Vegas Ballpark, home of the Triple-A Las Vegas Aviators.
Sisolak urged people to get vaccinated, praised RTC for expanding its bus routes and then was interviewed by LVSportsBiz.com about his thoughts about so many fans at the USA-Mexico Gold Cup game not wearing masks at Allegiant Stadium.
Joining Sisolak were congressional members Susie Lee and Dina Titus, Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman and Clark County Commissioner Justin Jones. The Golden Knights’ mascot, Chance, was making his acquaintances to the Raiders cheerleaders today.
Sisolak and Raiders.