Raiders Announce Plans to Move to Vegas
This week's post again focuses on the relocation plans of an NFL franchise, albeit one that, in my opinion, makes much more sense than the Chargers moving to Los Angeles. Earlier this week, Raiders owner Mark Davis officially filed the relocation paperwork with league officials. Although the league requires a 3/4 majority vote of all teams in order to approve the relocation of a franchise and the vote will not be until March, it should be no problem for the Raiders plans. This move makes sense and seems it would benefit substantially more people than it would hurt.
Although the Raider fan base in Oakland is one of the strongest and most faithful in the league, simply put, it's just time for the Raiders to get out of Oakland. For one, the Raiders still do not have their own stadium. Even after calling Oakland home for a total of 43 years, they still currently share occupancy of the coliseum with the Oakland Athletics. This creates both financial problems as well as logistical ones since the two seasons overlap. This means that money must be spent in order to convert the playing surface from a baseball field to a football field or vice versa in a very limited amount of time. It also causes a lot of headache in order to coordinate schedules between the two organizations so they don't both end up having a home game on the same day.
On another note, Vegas is a betting and sports city that doesn't have any major sports franchises, but they are eager to have one. This is a key difference in the two locations, Oakland couldn't care less if they lost one of their teams. If you look at the setup and locations of the venues of the major sports teams in Oakland (Warriors, Athletics, Raiders), all three are located within 50 feet of each other (seriously, there's only 45.9 feet separating Oracle arena from the Oakland Coliseum). Las Vegas is going to provide $1.4 billion worth of public funds to contribute to their proposed $1.9 billion, 65,000 seat, domed stadium for the Raiders. This is important because the league loves the fact that Vegas already has so much of the funds in-hand and ready to go.
When all encompassed, a new city, a new arena, a new source of funding, and the same faithful fan base will prove to be very beneficial to the Raiders franchise.
