Las Vegas Stadium Board Meetings Are More Quiet These Days As Public Panel Roots For Raiders
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By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
On Thursday afternoon, a mere twelve people found their way to the board room of the Las Vegas Convention Center. This sedate, gray room is normally where Las Vegas’ local titans of tourism unveil their ad campaigns and PR strategies to show the public how the LVCVA public tourism agency will sell Las Vegas to the World.
But no Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority board today. Oh no. Instead, the Las Vegas Stadium Authority board was in session. These are the folks who sit on a public panel that oversees the domed NFL stadium built, used and managed by one of Las Vegas’ more popular new residents — the Raiders.
Back in the good, ol’ pre-pandemic days when the Raiders stadium was under construction, these stadium meetings were spirited gatherings of bustling civic activity.
Five years ago, the Raiders and their political friends like Steve Sisiolak told Las Vegas that the stadium would be practically a geyser of cash for all. And as a result, a merry band of enterprising business people looking for said cash and union construction workers chomping at the bit to move some dirt filled the stadium board meetings. I even recall the day when Sisolak tossed nerf footballs to the union guys before one stadium meeting to juice up the fellas.
Today’s stadium board meeting didn’t quite have the flair of Sisolak firing up the crowd like a talk show producer stoking an audience for the Jerry Springer Show. Steve Hill, the LVCVA’s top boss who also moonlights as the stadium board chairman, called the stadium meeting to order at 1 PM.
By 1:59 PM, the party was over.
If you parachuted into today’s stadium meeting from let’s say, Winnemucca or Elko and knew nothing about the stadium board, you’d think this public panel acted as a PR arm of the Raiders. Hill, a friendly sort who went from the concrete business to the state economic development agency to the LVCVA’s top post, mentioned how pleased he was that the Raiders named Sandra Douglass Morgan as the team’s new president five weeks ago.
Hill even half-joked (or maybe 10 percent joked, it was hard to tell) that he said the most gracious things about Morgan to a local newspaper reporter but — wait for it — those pleasantries didn’t quite make it into the story’s final edit.
Oh, the horror!
Hill also told the dozen folks in the audience that, “It will be a great season” for the Raiders. But you always have to cover your bases these days, so Hill also noted the “Raiders play in a difficult division.”
The meeting was pretty much a summary of how great things were going at the stadium.
Adam Feldman, a Raiders staffer in a dark suit on this 100-degree humid day, recited the number of events at the stadium.
True, there were Raiders and UNLV football games, concerts and an NFL Pro Bowl, a county music awards show and Sisolak’s state-of-the-state speech in the first quarter of 2022.
But it’s obvious from this list that the vast majority of events are “private events” that could have easily been held at any nice hotel on the Strip.
The Raiders are hiring women and minorities at the stadium at a rate that’s higher than the goals specified in what is known as the stadium’s “community benefits plan.” Under the 2016 state law that created the stadium for the Raiders, these are not required hiring quotas. Instead, they’re goals and the Raiders are exceeding these workforce diversity levels.
Feldman also outlined the team’s community work like providing back-to-school haircuts, honoring teachers, donating $100,000 to prevent suicide in the LGBTQ community, holding a social justice roundtable, doing a supplier diversity event at the stadium and showing police around the stadium. Indeed, the community work reflects the values of Raiders owner Mark Davis, one of the NFL’s most socially-conscious and down-to-earth owners.
But all these admirable things need to be placed in the public policy context of a market that contributed $750 million in public dollars toward the construction of a revenue-generating stadium that has also enriched Davis and improved his franchise’s value by hundreds of millions of dollars. Technically speaking, Southern Nevada will have to raise more than $1 billion over a 30-year debt repayment period to finance the $750 million stadium construction subsidy.
In the interest of full disclosure, LVSportsBiz.com participated in the meeting’s public comment period by asking the stadium board to work with the Raiders to install more bike racks at the stadium. At Sunday’s Vikings-Raiders preseason game at Allegiant Stadium, the bike rack at the southwest entrance was full three hours before the game.
After the meeting, Chris Sotiropulos, the Raiders VP for stadium operations, told LVSportsBiz.com that a plan is in place to add more bike racks for the 2022 NFL season.
Now, will have the Raiders have more wins than new bike racks at the stadium?
Stay tuned. As Hill told the meeting audience of 12 hearty folks today, “It will be a great season.”
