Raiders Owner Mark Davis gave the "clearest indication yet that Allegiant Stadium’s 65,000 seats will sit empty on game days this season," according to Adam Hill of the LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL. Davis yesterday said, "If you asked me right now, I would say we will go with no fans in the stands." The Raiders have sold out for the season, and Davis "reiterated his stance that either all of the fans who have purchased tickets will be allowed to attend games or none of them will." He said on playing before a full Allegiant Stadium crowd, "The only way I believe that can happen is if they delayed the start of the season." Davis said that he "won’t attend games" either if fans "aren’t allowed to." Hill notes the NFL has "offered no specific guidance on attendance, leaving it to individual teams and local governments." Davis "expressed frustration with the lack of a cohesive policy" (LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL, 7/20). Davis said that with "no fans, it will be a 'soft opening'" for the $1.9B venue, with an "eye on going bigger in 2021." ESPN.com's Paul Gutierrez notes Davis was the "lone dissenting vote on the league owners' recent decision to tarp off the first eight rows of seats ... and cover them with advertisements." Also, Davis indicated that the Raiders' idea of "leaving the seats for fans and erecting hockey-style plexiglass around the bottom of the stadium to separate fans from players on the sidelines was 'shot down' before the vote" (ESPN.com, 7/20).
WHERE'S THE UNIFORMITY? THE ATHLETIC's Vic Tafur wrote the fan issue is "one that Davis thinks the league did not handle well." Davis said, "Everything else in this offseason has been equity. That if California wasn’t going to allow teams to go to their own facility ... if only one team couldn’t go to their own facility, all 32 couldn’t go. The worst-case scenario state went for everybody." He continued, "The draft -- since you couldn’t bring players into one state, you couldn’t bring them into anywhere, so we went virtual. And then, you get into attendance at the stadium and all of a sudden it’s the wild, wild west. ‘You all make your own decisions, don’t look at us. It’s not up to us.’ It’s like, whoa!” It "bothered Davis that the NFL made it seem like it wasn’t a competitive advantage." He said, "Unless they figure out financially how to share the gate money, based on some states saying maybe no people in and some saying 100 percent in ... someone is getting more money" (THEATHLETIC.com, 7/19).
