Fired Raiders President Dan Ventrelle Says Owner Mark Davis Terminated Him Because He Reported ‘Hostile Work Environment’ Issues To NFL
By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
Las Vegas Raiders owner Mark Davis said team president Dan Ventrelle is no longer with the NFL franchise, making Ventrelle the Raiders’ second team president to depart in ten months.
In an R-J social media post Friday evening, Ventrelle said he was fired because he informed the NFL of Davis’ “unacceptable response” to “multiple written complaints from employees that Mark created a hostile work environment and engaged in other potential misconduct (that) caused me grave concern.” Ventrelle said he has retained counsel.
The NFL will look into Ventrelle’s allegations, NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said.
“We recently became aware of these allegations and take them very seriously,” McCarthy said. “We will promptly look into the matter.”
Ventrelle took over the team president’s job in July 2021 after former president Marc Badain left under a cloud of mystery. Davis later told media outlets that Badain, a former 30-year Raiders employee who guided the Raiders stadium project to fruition, left because of accounting irregularities tied to overpaid taxes.
The Raiders’ non-football, business side of the franchise appears in shambles with two team presidents leaving in less than a year, a vice president for human resources recently gone, an operations/analytics executive resigning and financial staffers leaving last year.
LVSportsBiz.com has asked the Raiders to talk with Davis about the instability of the team’s business operations and if we hear back from Davis we will add his comments to this story. Davis is also the owner of the WNBA Las Vegas Aces, where nearly all the front office and coaching staff are women, including new Aces coach Becky Hammon, team president Nikki Fargas and general manager Natalie Williams.
LVSportsBiz.com Thursday broke news that Vice President of Human Resources Jaime Stratton is no longer with the Raiders organization. A source also informed LVSportsBiz.com that there was a federal employment discrimination complaint filed against the Raiders.
Additionally, in an apparent unrelated departure, Raiders Chief Operations & Analytics Officer Jeremy Aguero also left. Aguero joined the Raiders in 2021 after he worked as a private sector consultant for the Las Vegas stadium board, helping guide the public stadium panel through the process of working with the Raiders to build the $2 billion Raiders stadium project.
Ventrelle was the team’s legal counsel while the Raiders built the domed, 62,000-seat stadium and worked closely with Badain, his predecessor, on the project.
Ventrelle also worked with Aguero on the state stadium financing legislation that was approved by the Nevada Legislature and signed into law by former Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval in 2016. Nobody knows more about the legal issues involved with the Raiders’ stadium than Ventrelle.
LVSportsBiz.com interviewed Ventrelle at the NFL Draft only eight days ago. Ventrelle appeared upbeat, discussing the Raiders and the Draft, which brought 300,000 plus to Las Vegas for three days last week.
In August, Ventrelle made his first public appearance as Raiders interim president when when he was among speakers touting RTC bus service to Raiders games at Allegiant Stadium.
Ventrelle worked for the Raiders for 17 years before becoming interim president last year. He’s 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.
Former Raiders President Dan Ventrelle meets the media about the Raiders-branded Allegiant aircraft last year. Photo credit: LVSportsBiz.comVentrelle’s departure is part of a broader trend of Raiders business personnel leaving the team either on their own or being forced to leave.
The latest departure also shines a light on the Raiders’ work culture, which has been cited by some privately as a thorny issue at the franchise that moved from Oakland to Las Vegas because of the publicly-subsidized stadium just west of the Strip.
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