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All 32 National Football League team owners could meet as early as Monday to vote on a proposed move by the Oakland Raiders to Las Vegas.
Jason La Canfora of CBS Sports tweeted last week that a vote on the proposed relocation of the NFL team is scheduled for Monday at the annual league meeting at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix, according to CBS SF Bay Area news. The vote, according to La Canfora, would “be by the full ownership and likely contingent on Raiders meeting certain future objectives (via lease/development, etc).”
On January 19, the NFL franchise filed paperwork to move from its current home at the Oakland Coliseum to Las Vegas. A three-fourths majority vote is required from the NFL’s 32 league owners to approve the relocation.
Last month, in what appeared to be a devastating setback, Las Vegas Sands Corp. Chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson and global investment banking firm Goldman Sachs, both of which were heavily involved with the project’s financing, withdrew from the stadium deal. However, earlier this month, the Raiders revealed that Bank of America had reportedly stepped in and was prepared to bankroll the $1.9 billion facility in Las Vegas.
The original plan would have seen Adelson contribute $650 million, with the Raiders organization kicking in $500 million. The state of Nevada would have been responsible for the remaining $750 million, which would come from revenue raised from a Clark County hotel tax.
The city of Oakland wants to keep the team, which has been based in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area since 1960. The Raider’s only departure from Oakland was in 1982 when the team relocated to Los Angeles, and then in 1995 returned to Oakland. According to a Los Angeles Times report, on Friday, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaff shared a detailed letter to the league, which included detailed renderings of a new football stadium at the current Coliseum site. The $1.3-billion stadium plan would reportedly involve a $600-million contribution from New York hedge fund, Fortress Management Group. The news agency reports that while the NFL is reviewing the proposal, up to this point is has not been keen on the idea of a stadium plan, a model which repeatedly failed in LA, being promoted by a third-party developer instead of a team.
Even if the required 24 of 32 NFL league owners vote to approve the move, the stadium is reportedly not expected to be constructed before 2020.
Earlier this month, the Las Vegas Stadium Authority Board met in an attempt to clear up structure concerns of the original draft of a proposed lease agreement submitted by the Raiders in January for the billion-dollar domed stadium project.
