Las Vegas Sands Chair & CEO Sheldon Adelson said that he is "prepared to walk away from a deal to build a stadium that would help relocate" the Raiders to Las Vegas if terms offered by the team "do not improve," according to Ari Rabinovitch of REUTERS. Adelson yesterday said, "I negotiated to bring in the Oakland Raiders, an NFL football team from Oakland, because they don't have a stadium there, that I would build a stadium and rent it out to the Oakland Raiders." Adelson succeeded this month in "getting legislation passed to enable the construction of the stadium." He said that his problems now "involve negotiations with the Raiders." Adelson: "They want so much. So I told my people, 'Tell them I could live with the deal, I could live without the deal. Here's the way it's gonna go down. If they don't want it, bye-bye.'" Adelson's comments "signal potential for discord between the billionaire and the team at a time when momentum to build the stadium has been growing" (REUTERS, 10/27). In Las Vegas, Ray Brewer writes there is "no telling what the disagreement" between Adelson and the Raiders stems from. That "leads to one consistent concern: Many locals still doubt the move will transpire because the Raiders' history of jumping cities." Brewer: "The question now is: Are the Raiders holding up their end of the bargain?" (LAS VEGAS SUN, 10/27).
FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE: In Oakland, David DeBolt in a front-page piece writes with the Raiders having "one foot out the door, Oakland and Alameda County officials are reviewing an 11th-hour pitch from" Fortress Investment Group, a money-management firm with "deep pockets and ties to a group" led by Pro Football HOFer Ronnie Lott and former NFLer Rodney Peete to keep the Raiders in Oakland. Despite the "renewed hope that a deal in Oakland remains possible," Alameda County Supervisor Nate Miley yesterday "tempered that optimism ... by saying 'too much would be asked of the taxpayers' under the closely guarded plan." Even if such a deal could be "pulled together under a tight deadline before NFL owners meet" in January to vote on the Raiders' move to Las Vegas, it could be "too little too late for a city that has a history of failed stadium attempts at the Coliseum." Miley said that the latest attempt came last week when Fortress Investment "sent a term sheet to city and county officials, hoping to agree on a plan in time to present before NFL owners" (EAST BAY TIMES, 10/27). Oakland-based KGO-ABC cited sources as saying that the term sheet "contains multiple options involving the land on the coliseum site, funding and infrastructure." Sources said that the work "still needs to be done, but they believe the details of the term sheet can be finalized before Thanksgiving." NFL relocation rules "state if a viable stadium option can be submitted by a local market, the league will not accept an application for relocation" which in this case would mean "blocking any potential effort by the Raiders" and Owner Mark Davis to move to Las Vegas (ABC7NEWS.com, 10/26).
