Op-Ed: Taxpayers won’t benefit from Vegas stadium naming rights

Construction continues on the taxpayer-financed stadium being built in Las Vegas for the NFL’s Raiders.
Photo by Johnny Kampis

(Johnny Kampis) – Although taxpayers are footing $750 million of the $1.9 billion cost for Las Vegas’ new stadium for the NFL’s Raiders in the form of a lodging tax, they won’t see a dime of the naming-rights revenue.

The Raiders recently announced that Las Vegas Stadium will be known as Allegiant Stadium after the Raiders reached a deal for the naming rights for their new Nevada home.

While the deal’s financial terms were not revealed, experts told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that Allegiant Travel Co., parent company of local airline Allegiant Air, will probably pay an annual fee of $20 million to $25 million for the rights.

“We’re thrilled that our future home will be known as Allegiant Stadium,” Raiders President Marc Badain said. “As the hometown airline, Allegiant is the perfect partner to showcase the incredible support we continue to receive from the Southern Nevada community. We are grateful to all involved who worked diligently to make Allegiant Stadium a reality.”

Badain told the Review-Journal he had hoped to attract a company with ties to Las Vegas, and the Raiders had talks with a variety of companies, including local casino-resorts.

“Allegiant stepped up a while ago and expressed interest,” Badain said. “We were really excited about them being a partner. We’ve been at it for eight or nine months trying to put a deal together.”

The 65,000-seat stadium is on pace to be complete next summer in time for the 2020 NFL season. It will host home games for both the Raiders and the University of Nevada-Las Vegas football team as well as the annual Las Vegas Bowl college football game.

Recently, construction crews placed a final steel beam to connect a ring of 26 roof trusses, which marked completion of the highest point of the stadium. Now many of the 1,600 workers on-site are beginning to build the stadium’s translucent roof.

Don Webb, chief operating officer of the stadium construction subsidiary of the Raiders, told the Review-Journal that construction is about 60 percent complete.

Governor says no to taxpayer support of monorail expansion

In a rare instance of a Nevada politician saying no to a stadium-related project, Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak recently declined to sign a certificate that would have allowed the Las Vegas Monorail Co. to get as much as $200 million in tax-exempt bonds. The money was intended to help extend the monorail south, near Mandalay Bay, so the final stop would be closer to the stadium.

The governor’s office declined to comment on why that decision was made.

By

Johnny Kampis | The Center Square

Johnny Kampis is an investigative reporter for the Taxpayers Protection Alliance Foundation, and has been published in The New York Times, Time.com, FoxNews.com and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.