Oakland Raiders Owner Meeting With Vegas Group About Relocating Team
The ongoing drama with the Oakland Raiders and where they decide to play in the upcoming years continues on. As of right now the Raiders will play the upcoming season in the O.co stadium but beyond that is fuzzy.
According to UNLV insider Joe Arrigo, Raiders majority owner Mark Davis is scheduled to meet Thursday with the Sands Group. Davis hopes to partner with the hotel and casino company in order to build a new stadium that the Raiders would share with the UNLV football team. All of this could begin by the start of the 2017 or 2018 season if everything goes well. In the meantime the Raiders would play at UNLV's current football stadium, Sam Boyd Stadium.
It is believed by Arrigo that if the meeting goes well and an agreement can be reached then Davis will want to move the team to Vegas. Now, just because Davis wants to move the team, that doesn't mean that it'll happen overnight. If a proposal to relocate the team is issued, the other owners have to approve the move by a two-thirds vote.
A few other caveats arise with this. First, there's still confusion involving the San Diego Chargers and where they'll play. They'll play in San Diego this upcoming season but nothing is guaranteed beyond that. On Thursday the 21st, the Chargers released renderings of what the new stadium would look like.
Also, recently, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell talked about how he'd love to see the Chargers stay in San Diego.
"I said it. I mean it. The Chargers belong in San Diego," Goodell said.
Goodell also talked about the possibility of giving Super Bowls to the city if the team gets the new stadium.
The other potential danger in the Raiders moving to Vegas is, you know, that whole gambling and sports thing.
Now, don't get it twisted when it comes to the NFL and gambling. The NFL doesn't care if you or I gamble on sports. In fact, they encourage it and want you to do it all the time. The partnership with companies like FanDuel and DraftKings shows that.
However, moving a team to the center of the betting world is something completely different. NFL teams throw out the word "character issues" all the time. Imagine what it would be like if someone was caught on camera of the ARIA Resort and Casino at 2:00 AM the night before a game at a sports book. The internet would lose its mind.
Then again, this could be a ploy for the Raiders to get the city of Oakland to pay for a new stadium. This could be Davis' way of getting public financing from the city if it wants to keep the team in Oakland. The real threat of a team moving may be the thing that makes the city of Oakland help build the stadium.
Either way, nothing will be known until at least Thursday and even then nobody will know anything for sure until probably weeks after that.