NFL American football franchise the Oakland Raiders have offered to commit additional funds to the construction of its proposed new home in Las Vegas after a key investor pulled out of the project.
Sheldon Adelson, chairman and chief executive of Las Vegas Sands Corp,, had initially agreed to invest $650m (€607.9m/£520.6m) into the initiative, under which a 65,000-capacity domed football stadium will be built in the gambling haven at a cost of $1.9bn.
Should the project go ahead, the venue would serve as the new home of the NFL team, which has already notified the league of its intention to relocate to Las Vegas in time for the 2020 season.
However, following a proposal from the Raiders to pay a lease of just $1 per year for the stadium, Adelson said he will pull his funding, saying in a statement yesterday that the lease agreement “sent shock waves through the community”.
“It was certainly shocking to the Adelson family,” the statement said, according to the Las Vegas Review Journal. “We were not only excluded from the proposed agreement; we weren’t even aware of its existence.
“It’s clear the Raiders have decided their path for moving to Las Vegas does not include the Adelson family. So, regrettably, we will no longer be involved in any facet of the stadium discussion.”
Although the team has offered to cover the additional costs, it is not yet known how other investor partners in the project will react to Adelson’s decision to pull out of the initiative.
Clark County Commission chairman Steve Sisolak, who has been heavily involved in the project, said Adelson’s departure was “a significant setback…unless Goldman Sachs has someone lined up to step into Adelson’s place.”
Sisolak added: “I do not know how the other owners are going to react to this.”
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