Raiders Welcome Season Ticket Holders To Practice In Allegiant Stadium Sunday; Most Fans Wearing Masks
Story by Alan Snel Photos by Daniel Clark
For the first time, Raiders season ticket holders are soaking up the training camp practice scenes of quarterback Derek Carr and others inside Allegiant Stadium Sunday.
And they’re wearing masks after Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak expressed his dismay over soccer fans not wearing COVID pandemic masks a week ago for the Mexico vs USA Gold Cup soccer match in this stadium.
Sisiolak wants Nevadans to get vaccinated. And he wants them to wear masks inside buildings. The Raiders stadium is domed with 65,000 seats. Season ticket holders are allowed to attend camp under the dome today. The team was expecting as many as 19,000 season ticket holders, but a guestimate of the number of fans is 14,000 or so.
LVSportsBiz.com was told security politely told fans not with face coverings to mask up.
“Raider Nation, Raider fans are special,” Raiders coach Jon Gruden said after the scrimmage.
LVSportsBiz.com noticed most fans were complying with the Clark County indoor mask mandate.
Just yesterday, Sisolak said new Raiders interim president Dan Ventrelle, who took over for Marc Badain, who stepped down unexpectedly July 19. Sisolak and Ventrelle were at an RTC bus announcement event at the Las Vegas Ballpark in Summerlin Saturday. The topics of stadium traffic/parking and fans wearing masks inside the stadium may have popped up in their conversations.
It was also a run-through for the stadium operators to test music, scoreboard and video operations. There was loud, fake crowd noise pumped in during some parts of the Raiders scrimmage when the offensive team practiced running plays close to the goal line behind them.
On Saturday, this building will be filled with 65,000 strong as the Raiders host the Seattle Seahawks in a 6 PM preseason game.
That’s when traffic and parking issues will be stressed again as the Raiders work with Clark County officials and Las Vegas Metro officers to accommodate the car traffic that flows off Interstate 15 at Russell Road for the stadium. An RTC transportation official told LVSportsBiz that a bus that left Mandalay Bay across the interstate took an hour to reach the stadium via Russell Road for a previous stadium event in July.
So, the Raiders and the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada hope fans hop on game-day express buses from five different ,locations through the valley for home games.
Fans today worked on logistics as a test run for when the games begin.
