By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
Las Vegas Aces President Nikki Fargas was thrilled when she heard that Sandra Douglass Morgan was hired as the new team president of the Las Vegas Raiders.
“This was a great hire for so many reasons,” said Fargas, hired by Raiders/Aces owner Mark Davis in May 2021 as the Aces president.
“She is through and through Las Vegas,” Fargas said of Douglass Morgan. “It says a lot about who Mark Davis is as an owner and as a person.”
It’s been 16 days since Davis introduced Douglass Morgan as the new team team president after Marc Badain left under a cloud of mystery a year ago (it turned out Badain left because of “financial irregularities” at the team.) Davis appointed former team lawyer Dan Ventrelle as interim president, but that ended badly when Davis fired Ventrelle in May.
To be blunt, the Raiders front office was in upheaval. LVSportsBiz.com and other media reported about the Raiders unsettled work environment, a harrassment case and high turnover, including the departure of the team’s human resources director.
Amid this unstable front office setting walked in Douglass Morgan, a 44-year-old Black-Korean and attorney who grew up in Las Vegas and forged a varied work background with a polished and articulate public persona. The mother of two is married to Don Morgan, a former NFL player.
Fargas, also married to a former NFL player, Justin Fargas, thought Douglass Morgan’s demeanor was a good fit to lend stability to a National Football League team that was mired in high-profile controversies and staff turnover both on the field and off this past year.
After the Raiders hired her, Douglass Morgan drew a lot of media attention for being the first Black woman to serve as a team president in the NFL. She has other firsts in Las Vegas such as the first Black city attorney in Nevada when she served in the city of North Las Vegas. She was also the first person of color to chair one of Nevada’s most powerful regulatory boards, the Nevada Gaming Control Board.
After Douglass Morgan took the Raiders job, she appeared on network news programs like NBC Nightly News, ABC’s Good Morning America and CBS’ The Talk.
Douglass Morgan told NBC News that she will not tolerate bigotry — a comment that comes less than a year after former Raiders coach Jon Gruden quit after news reports outlined his racially-offensive, sexist and homophobic emails from years ago when he worked as a TV football broadcaster.
LVsportsBiz.com asked Douglass Morgan when she was introduced as Raiders president July 7 what her biggest challenge was.
“Look, it’s really no secret that there’s been some reports about turnover. My number one goal is to meet with each and every employee, which I had an opportunity to meet the employees, many of them, this morning and making sure that our Raider family is strong,” she said.
Generating revenues is a big part of a team president’s job description. But Davis has money in the bank thanks to a revenue-generating domed stadium that was built thanks to the work of Douglass Morgan’s predecessors, Badain and former interim president Ventrelle.
Davis banked nearly $550 million in personal seat license revenues. And he generated hundreds of millions of dollars from more than a dozen stadium founding partnerships. Each stadium corporate partnership had a value of $30 million, according to the Southern Nevada Water Authority, which considered the sponsorship before declining.
Douglass Morgan is a board director of two major Raiders sponsors, Summerlin-based Allegiant Air and Caesars Entertainment. LVSportsBiz.com also asked about this at the Raiders announcement about Douglass Morgan July 7:
Ventrelle said in May Davis fired him for reporting allegations to the NFL that Davis created a hostile work environment and was dismissive of workplace problems. It should be noted that Davis has hired two Black women as presidents of both the Aces and Raiders 14 months apart and has invested in hiring women to help Fargas in the WNBA Aces front office.
For the record, Davis told LVSportsBiz.com a month ago that he didn’t mind hearing about front office issues in the media because that way workplace problems can be addressed and dealt with.
LVSportsBiz.com also asked the team’s quarterback, Derek Carr, about whether the stability that Douglass Morgan can potentially engrain in the franchise will affect the product on the field.
“I don’t know. I mean, we all hope so, right,?” Carr answered.
“We got our new president. I talked to her as soon as she got the job. I was in Tahoe. I talked to her on the phone and texted her and had a great conversation. And she talked to the team and got to meet her that way,” Carr said during a media session Friday.
“It’s been awesome and you can definitely tell that Mr. Davis, he’s doing everything he can to just push us in the right direction,” Carr said. “And it’s been cool because he’s just trying to make it all football and it’s our job as players and as coaches to limit distractions.”
LVSportsBiz.com requested a chance to talk one-on-one with Douglass Morgan. Raiders PR said there have been 55 requests so we will wait on line for our chance.
But we might just chat with her at an Aces game. Fargas pointed out that Douglass Morgan attended Aces games as a fan before she got her new Raiders job this month.
But now this Aces fan has new high-profile employment with a new boss. Only four days ago at an Aces-Atlanta game at Michelob Ultra Arena in Mandalay Bay, Douglass Morgan sat courtside a mere seat away from Davis.