Davis believes the NFL has time to come up with a better alternative than displacing thousands of fansGETTY IMAGES
Raiders Owner Mark Davis was the lone dissenting voice in Thursday’s vote requiring NFL teams to tarp off the first eight rows of stadiums and allowing teams to sell advertising on them, and he “forcefully expressed his misgivings” during the Zoom meeting, according to Vincent Bonsignore of the LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL. Davis said, “I can’t imagine telling one fan they cannot attend the opening game of our inaugural season in Las Vegas at the most magnificent stadium that they helped to build. Let alone tell 3,500 fans that their seats are gone for the entire season.” The NFL season is still more than two months from kicking off, and Davis indicated that he believes the league “still has time to come up with a better alternative than displacing thousands of fans and using their seats to sell advertising.” Bonsignore notes the eight-row zone is a “particularly tricky issue for the Raiders, who are sold out for this season and can’t accommodate displaced fans by giving them other seats.” Davis also has “other misgivings with how the NFL is going about trying to forge ahead with the season.” While all offseason league actions to date have been “conducted under a leaguewide edict in which everyone operated under the same rules to preserve competitive equity,” the league now plans to “abruptly change course by leaving fan participation up to each team” (LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL, 6/29).
