Report: Sheldon Adelson not happy with Raiders, could live without stadium deal

By Ray Brewer (contact)

Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2016 | 10:17 p.m.

Sheldon Adelson reportedly isn’t happy with the Oakland Raiders.

The multibillionaire casino owner is so displeased that he’s threatening to pull his support of the NFL team’s quest to leave the Bay Area for Southern Nevada.

He told Reuters today that he was prepared to walk away from a deal to build a Las Vegas stadium to help the Raiders relocate here if terms offered by the team don’t improve.

“They want so much,” Adelson told the news service on Wednesday. “So I told my people, ‘Tell them I could live with the deal, I could live without the deal. Here’s the way it’s gonna go down. If they don’t want it, bye-bye.’”

Last week, Gov. Brian Sandoval signed into law a tourism tax increase to fund the public’s $750 million portion of the $1.9 billion project. Adelson pledged $650 million for the 65,000-seat stadium, where UNLV would also play, with the Raiders/NFL expected to contribute $500 million.

Adelson’s representatives didn’t elaborate on specifics when contacted by Reuters, so there’s no telling what the disagreement stems from.

That leads to one consistent concern: Many locals still doubt the move will transpire because the Raiders’ history of jumping cities. They went from Oakland to Los Angeles and back to Oakland again. But with the Oakland Coliseum inadequate to host the NFL and no alternatives in the Bay Area, all signs to a Las Vegas deal indicated a perfect match. Just last week at a NFL owners’ meeting, Oakland owner Mark Davis was firm on bringing his team here.

“Oakland was in the driver’s seat if they could’ve put together anything,” Davis said. “They came up with nothing. Las Vegas has already done what it is supposed to do.”

The question now is: Are the Raiders holding up their end of the bargain? According to Adelson’s interview, maybe not. And with nearly 40 percent public money to fund the stadium, a deal many locals were adamantly against, maybe Adelson has a point.

“I negotiated to bring in the Oakland Raiders, an NFL football team from Oakland, because they don’t have a stadium there, that I would build a stadium and rent it out to the Oakland Raiders,” he told Reuters.

Here’s the complete interview from Reuters:

Ray Brewer can be reached at 702-990-2662 or [email protected]. Follow Ray on Twitter at twitter.com/raybrewer21