For those wagering in Vegas that the NFL Oakland Raiders are on their way to Sin City anytime soon, they might want to hedge their bets.
According to a KTNV-TV 13 Action News/Rasmussen poll, 55% of Clark County, Nevada, voters oppose coughing up $500 million in public funds to pay for a new stadium to entice the Silver and Black to relocate. The ultimate price tag may well eclipse that half-billion figure.
Las Vegas Sands Corp and Majestic Reality contend that developing a $1.4 billion, 65,000 seat, stadium will lure the bad-boy Raiders.
Spearheading the move to bring the Raiders to Nevada are a consortium of 11 elected officials and casino industry representatives, known as the Southern Nevada Tourism Infrastructure Committee. They plan on presenting their proposal to Gov. Brian Sandoval before the end of September.
The committee remains far from ironing out all the details. Still to be determined is how to pay for everything. Some backers of the stadium call for increases in hotel room taxes and applying local sales tax revenue toward the stadium construction costs.
Las Vegas Sands executive Andy Abboud suggested that those who participated in the poll didn’t know the stadium funding details. If they did the poll results would be different. “The survey question leaves out critical information,” he argued in an email statement. ”Specifically, the public funding would come from an increase in the hotel tax, which is predominantly paid by those visiting Clark County, not its residents.”
Ron Reese, a senior vice president at the Las Vegas Sands Corp., told USA Today in June that “Mark Davis has been to Las Vegas half-dozen times the last six or eight weeks” and described the Raiders as “serious” about making the move.
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