In a bid to relocate the Oakland Raiders , Sheldon Adelson and the team’s owner Mark Davis are betting on the largest taxpayer subsidy ever for an NFL stadium

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Las Vegas wants to attract more tourists, yet it also wishes to be known as more than a flamboyant gambling town. So it is considering a breathtaking $750m bet on a football stadium.

Mark Davis, owner of the NFL’s Oakland Raiders, has promised to relocate his team to southern Nevada if the state covers at least one-third of the potential $2.1bn construction costs for a top-of-the-line sports dome. It would be the largest taxpayer subsidy ever provided for an NFL stadium. And among the facility’s owners, and a beneficiary of the public subsidy, would be one of the wealthiest men in the world.

Sheldon Adelson – the casino mogul worth an estimated $25.1bn – has partnered with Davis and Majestic Reality on the proposed development, though they say it cannot move forward without $750m in public financing. A Las Vegas infrastructure committee is reviewing the plan now and should offer a recommendation to the governor by 30 September.

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This comes at a time when Adelson reportedly intends to donate $100m to help elect Donald Trump and is making new campaign contributions to Nevada legislators. As CEO and majority shareholder of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, Adelson is a longstanding powerbroker in Nevada. The billionaire recently purchased the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the state’s largest newspaper, which declared in January that the 65,000-seat stadium was “a must-do”.

“This stadium is the missing piece of tourism infrastructure in Las Vegas, more important than any other proposal,” stated an editorial titled “No place like dome”, which also included Sands’ estimates that the building would prompt up to $800m in new economic activity each year.

Neil deMause, author of the book Field of Schemes, said those projections are wildly optimistic. “No economists who have looked at stadium construction in any city anywhere have ever found significant economic activity,” he said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Oakland Raiders owner, Mark Davis, and former soccer player David Beckham attend a southern Nevada tourism infrastructure committee meeting in Las Vegas. Photograph: Ethan Miller/Getty Images

The stadium’s backers point out that an increased hotel room tax would cover the public financing, placing the burden on tourists rather than locals. But Adelson and Davis have also requested a “tax increment” district be set up around the facility to reimburse their investments through area property taxes.

In a state with the lowest-ranking public school system in the country, no income tax, no corporate tax, and a rising crime rate due in part to an officer shortage, any allocation of tax dollars in the hundreds of millions will raise eyebrows.

Las Vegas’s Mayor Carolyn Goodman, however, told the Guardian she’s “very big” on the stadium proposal because it could exponentially boost tourism. “I’m not very big: I’m enormous on it,” she added. “And it better not be some little schlocky stadium. This is Las Vegas, and we love to do high-end stuff.”

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The Raiders’ current home is the 50-year-old Oakland Coliseum, which Davis has lobbied the city to replace for years to no avail.

The largest subsidy ever provided for an NFL stadium was the $620m Indiana taxpayers committed to a new Colts field in 2008, a cost that eventually ballooned to $715m.

Just as historic, though, was the commitment St Louis made in 1995, when it agreed to pay 100% of construction and maintenance costs for a sports dome that lured the Rams from Los Angeles to Missouri. In January, the Rams announced they will move back to LA, leaving St Louis $144m in debt for a stadium that has no current tenant.

Adding insult to injury, the Rams’ owner is building a new California stadium without taxpayer support.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sheldon Adelson has partnered with Davis and Majestic Reality on the proposed development. Photograph: Patrick Frilet / Rex Features

Seeking greener, more lucrative pastures, Davis’ Raiders left the Bay Area once before, in 1982, for a 12-year stint in Los Angeles, and by aggressively pursuing a third relocation he has attracted jokes that the Raiders are appropriately named.

A revised proposal lowering the public contribution to $550m and raising the private fund from $650m to $900m was submitted in June by committee chair Steve Hill. But according to the Adelson-owned Review-Journal, that suggestion got a “tepid” response from Hill’s colleagues and the private investors “also seemed wary of the revised plan”.

The panel may offer its recommendation by 30 September, at which point Nevada’s governor, Brian Sandoval, could call for a special session of the state legislature to vote on the plan.

And it will probably receive more positive coverage in the meantime.

A former Review-Journal editor told media outlets in June that Adelson’s deputies manipulate newsroom reporting and that negative remarks about the stadium have been deleted from articles, including analysis from Field of Schemes author Neil deMause.



That writer told the Guardian: “There’s overwhelming evidence that it’s better to spend money on schools than it is on sports.”

“The economist Allen Sanderson said there might be some small impact from building a stadium, but you could get a better economic impact by taking the same amount of money up in a helicopter and throwing it out the window over your city.”

•This article was amended to include new stadium costs and deadlines announced at the 11 July meeting of the southern Nevada tourism infrastructure committee