Las Vegas Raiders Slots
I made a comic about the Raiders going to Vegas already, so go read that blog post. I made that when it was a sure thing. Then it became a not sure thing again, and then recently became an official sure thing. It’s sad how quickly Mark Davis went from “Quirky weirdo” to “Evil bastard” on the owner scale. He’s up there with the rest of the evil ones now, which is a bummer, I liked quirky weirdo Mark Davis; the bizarre man child of legend. He was a unique guy. Bad haircut, would probably end up at a strip club just because he likes the food.
Bummer for Oakland fans for sure. I still don’t know if it will hurt Oakland fans as much as the Rams hurt St. Louis or the Chargers hurt SD. The Raiders are a strange fanbase thanks to multiple moves in their history and a general outsider vibe. The Raiders have always been a unique group. There will probably be more LA Raiders fans during LA Chargers home games this year. The Chargers should have moved to Vegas if they had to move, LA is still a Raiders hub.
I can’t decide if the Raiders winning a Super Bowl in the next two years would suck or rule for Oakland. They would go out with a bang, getting one championship to celebrate before it is all ripped away and watching Vegas enjoy the hot new team hype train. I’m looking forward to seeing how the NFL tries to justify no official sports betting with a team in Vegas, and what sort of crazy stories we get about visiting players (or hometowners) getting the “Vegas” treatment. Maybe Kahlil Mack will wake up one morning and found out he drunk married Amari Cooper the previous night. We are in for some fun.
St. Louis just filed a lawsuit against the NFL about the Rams move, so maybe something notable will come from that too.
I hope the raiders can win a Super Bowl before they leave for vegas and the St Louis can win a large settlement (like billions) so no one can do this shit again. Expansion>>>>>>Reocation.
Off topic, but Dave, how long does it take to draw each comic (on average)?
I think anyone who isn’t an NFL employee should want St. Louis to win big. Big enough that greedy Kroenke won’t make any profit from the move for years.
Comics take around 4ish hours on average to produce once I have the idea.
I hate the fact that the Raiders are moving, even as a Steelers fan. You know damn well that OAKLAND Raiders won’t show up to the games this year, even if they run the tables in the division and go to the AFC Championship Game.
Also, we need a new statistics for The Draw Play like this one http://www.thedrawplay.com/comic/the-draw-play-advanced-statistics/
I’d like to see those stats revisited.
This depresses me
When are we getting a “Brock the Brown” Comic?
When the trade happened it was reported the Browns were going to drop him immediately, so I held off to see what happened. I’m still holding off to see if they keep him or drop him.
Spanos and Davis are the poorest owners by far. I’m not saying they’re blameless in this whole thing, but building a stadium with their own money would have put them in a precarious situation and I can understand them being reticent to do so. San Diego and especially Oakland didn’t really try to keep the teams. St. Louis is different. Kroenke had the means to keep the team in St. Louis, even if the city had not been bending backwards doing everything they could to try to keep them there. He just decided that there was more money to be had in LA and went scorched earth until he got what he wanted and of course everyone justified it by “well they were originally LA’s team and St. Louis stole them and didn’t even go to the games hurr durr” like that made it okay.
Oh boo hoo! You’ll be waiting a hell of a long time before I shed a tear for the least richest Billionaire owner in the NFL.
Well, actually, his worth is only 500 million…
Nope. The team alone is worth way more than that.
1.5B as of 2015
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/columnists/sdut-chargers-value-nfl-profit-soars-stadium-2015sep14-htmlstory.html
over 2B 2016
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sports/sd-sp-acee-20160914-story.html
With a highly valuable property as an NFL franchise, he could have easily gotten the necessary financing to build whatever kind of stadium he would have wanted. But who needs to spend their own money when cities, idiotically, keep fronting public money to subsidize private sport franchise profits.
That’s nice and all, but that’s not his worth or entirely just his assets (he doesn’t even own a true majority share of the Raiders at this point).
BartyMae Ok then, by your logic it doesn’t matter in the end. The “Team” is worth 2 Billion so the “Team” where if he doesn’t own the team outright should be organized as a Partnership since you say it’s not a Sole Proprietorship, would mean that the “Team” should have its own Tax ID number and thus be able to negotiate deals on it’s own.
Remember kids, Corporations are people too…..as our politicians like to remind us.
In either case, the “Team” holds enough assets where it could pay for the new stadium itself through cash on hand, backing from the NFL ‘corporate’, negotiated future deals, negotiated reduction in costs from future contracts, and even seek financing backed by the valuation of the team itself.
I’m still not convinced. The team is worth enough where they can afford to pay for the stadium themselves.
San Diego offered a free spot to build a new stadium… where the old stadium is. But that was unacceptable to Spanos because he insisted the new stadium had to be downtown.
Oakland’s Lott Group offer is dependent on Davis selling a big stake in the team, which basically means giving up ownership/control. That was never on the table.
I think San Diego should have gone to San Antonio. Coming from Texas, Houston really is secluded in a cultural bubble all by itself. Looking at the following map, one can see why Las Vegas was chosen…and why another Texas team would make sense.
http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/18d0rbvtdaj21png.png
(Yes, I know the map is a few seasons old and made previous to themoves…but one can’t say the Rams made the hugest splash)
Cowboys fandom along with Steelers fandom is sadly a ‘default fandom’ where you will find their numbers all over the country. The area around Las Vegas and San Antonio are Cowboys country…and I will tell you that despite being in the same state…San Antonio is a very different city culturally than the DFW Metroplex. It could certainly support a team because Houston does not pull fans in large amounts from farther west into the state.
Las Vegas is not a far drive from Los Angeles for former Raiders fans. Las Vegas is fun to travel to and has plenty of hotels. The regions are still vaguely connected too. Also they also have a possible group of former Chargers fans to pick up. San Diego already screwed their fans and are a lot less popular around the country than the Raiders…moving far should have been their goal. Course stadium money, stadium money comes first. Fuck stadium money.
I cannot imagine being a diehard Raiders fan with season tickets living in Oakland, loyally suffering through 13 seasons of suckitude including the abomination named JaMarcus Russell, then watching the team move right as they finally become good again. The Raiders did Oakland dirty.
The memorabilia scandal just came up again, I wonder what is your take on that?
saw that, still not a lot of clear info on this thing yet, probably wait to see if it grows
Yeah I know, not to mention some big deal was made few years ago prior to the SB where the Broncos got trashed before it died down until just now. I wonder what was really going on anyway.
Anybody can sue anyone about anything. I don’t see what grounds the city has to win a lawsuit. Hurt feelings is not enough.
They need to prove that the NFL and the Rams did not act in good faith in trying to keep the Rams in St. Louis and that the move cost the city of St. Louis financially. It’s a long shot but the league has taken some legal black eyes where they weren’t expected to lately.
Eli just can’t let Brady do anything, can he? First he beats him in Superbowls, now he has the more compelling game-worn jersey controversy. What’s next, marrying a better-looking supermodel?
I bet in a decade or so from now, who has the better location for their HOF busts? That or appearing in better commercials.
Eli’s going to personally fund Brady’s bust, but have it made by the same guy who made Cristiano Ronaldo’s bust.
Nah it’ll be the lady that did Brady’s courtroom sketch.
If the bust ends up looking like a slightly deformed Gronk, just imagine the media shit storm.
The Raiders won the Superbowl the season before they first moved to LA, so it wouldn’t even be the first time.
Calling Davis evil in this situation is just ignorant of the whole thing. Davis only has $500 in assets. I’d estimate he would have only a few million in liquid capital. He owns the Raiders, and thats it. So he cannot build a stadium with his own money. The city of Oakland has, for years, done next to nothing to provide Davis anything other promises and the odd deal that hinged on a wish and Davis giving up majority control. Think what you want, but I don’t blame him for giving up the most important thing in his life to some investment firm or Stan Kronke who would not be guranteed to stay in Oakland anyway. The other issue was lew Wolffe and the A’s, who had a 10 year lease on the site, and were not willing to give up any control to allow Davis to build. Davis has said all he wanted Oakland to invest in the team was land, and he couldn’t even get that. So along comes Vegas, with a great site, a great plan, and $750 million of tourist tax money to build it, and partners willing to finish. Davis then trys to get into LA, which fails, and is followed by Oakland trippiling his lease. So Davis agrees to move to Vegas if the city can get the project approved and from then on Oakland had no chance to retain the team.
Think what you want, but understand the fact that Davis did not pull a Kronke here and just move because he wanted to improve his team’s value. He tried to get something done, and Oakland was not willing to give him the minimum he needed. Vegas wanted the Raiders, Oakland didn’t.
“Maybe Kahlil Mack will wake up one morning and found out he drunk married Amari Cooper the previous night.”
Well, about that part…