Days after Las Vegas was awarded the 31st NHL franchise, the focus has now shifted over to the NFL’s dance with Sin City, particularly its quest for a suitable pro football stadium. Billionaire Sheldon Adelson, the chief exec of Las Vegas Sands Corp., has come together with Majestic Realty Co. to design and propose a 65,000 seat domed stadium, which is now being reviewed.
The key detail from this plan is how the funding for the stadium would be attained. With a new tax on hotel stays, the group hopes to fund $750 million of this plan. It would be the largest public, taxpayer payout for any stadium anywhere in the country. (Taxpayers subsidized $620 million for Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.)
This proposal would see $750 million of municipal bonds sold off, and would be paid for by a 0.9% tax on hotel rooms, or about $1.08 per night. In this proposal, the Raiders would contribute $500 million to the project and casinos/private investors will contribute $540 million.
“The NFL is sending a signal that it wants more support from the cities,” sports economist Andrew Zimbalist, a passionate advocate against taxpayer funded stadiums, said to Bloomberg. “Owners want to signal that they’re not going to keep sitting around for 15 or 20 years while cities twiddle their thumbs.”
There is a rival plan in the works from the Nevada Governor’s top economic adviser Steve Hill, whose plan scales back public funding to $500 million of the $1.4 billion for the entire project. Not quite a drop in the bucket, but better. Hill’s proposal could come to a vote on July 11 before the Southern Nevada Tourism Infrastructure board.
Adelson compiled a $23.6 billion fortune building and operating casinos in Las Vegas, and just recently bought the Las Vegas Review-Journal, one of the city’s few remaining newspapers. A March editorial declared that a new stadium is “one piece of tourism infrastructure” missing from the Strip.
The Raiders and the city of Oakland are trying to work out a deal for a new stadium there, but current signs point to that being unlikely.
As public backlash to taxpayer funding sports stadiums continues to grow larger and larger, could there really be a new stadium coming funded by the most taxpayer money ever? What happens in Vegas…
