The new Las Vegas home stadium of NFL American football team the Oakland Raiders may cost more than its initial $1.9bn (€1.6bn/£1.5bn) price tag, should a proposed tax bill come into law.
Introduced last week by the Republicans in the House of Representatives, the bill is seeking to push through, among other measures, a ban on tax-exempt bonds for stadiums in professional sports.
According to USA Today, the ban would apply to bonds issued after November 2 this year. The bill is now with Congress and if it were to pass, it would impact the current funding agreement in place at the Las Vegas Stadium, the working name for the Raiders’ new home in Nevada city.
However, Jeremy Aguero, an analyst at the Las Vegas Stadium Authority, which will own and oversee the stadium once complete, is unsure as how much the new measures will affect financing of the project.
“I am not sure,” Aguero said. “We are evaluating the potential impact if the bonds were converted from tax-exempt municipal bonds to taxable municipal bonds.” Aguero did confirm that none of the tax-exempt bonds planned for the stadium have been issued.
The Raiders and the Las Vegas Stadium Authority have already agreed on a deal for $750m in public funds to be used to finance the stadium project. This will be collected through a hike in local hotel taxes in Las Vegas, the gambling haven of the US.
However, Aguero was unable to quantify how much of the stadium cost would be reliant on tax-exempt bonds.
He said: “That will be a function of the amount of pay-go funds generated in advance of the bond issuance and whether there is a single or multiple issuances.”
Representatives from the Oakland Raiders are due attend the annual TheStadiumBusiness Design & Development Summit taking place in Barcelona on 28-29 November, to represent the project.
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