The casino magnate who has been instrumental in pledging funds necessary for construction of a proposed NFL stadium in Las Vegas said he might drop his support of the project if terms offered by the Oakland Raiders do not improve.
Billionaire Sheldon Adelson hinted at possible discord with the Raiders over their potential plans in regard to the stadium project aimed at luring the team to the city, according to Reuters.
"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 said Wednesday while in Tel Aviv to attend a technology conference.
"(The Raiders) want so much," Adelson continued. "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.'"
A representative for Adelson downplayed the comments Thursday, saying Adelson "is not even close" to potentially walking away from the proposed project.
"It's a non-story," Andy Abboud told KSNV-TV in Las Vegas. "Everything is moving along very well."
Adelson's comments come 10 days after Nevada governor Brian Sandoval signed a bill that approved public financing for the $1.9 billion, 65,000-seat domed stadium project. Adelson, chief executive of Las Vegas Sands Corp., has pledged $650 million toward the building of the stadium. The rest of the financing would come from a public hotel tax, the Raiders and the NFL.
Last week, Raiders owner Mark Davis made a presentation about the project to NFL owners at the Fall League Meeting. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said the league still is looking into the project.
"There's still a great deal of information that we need to gather with respect to the circumstances we see in Las Vegas, the opportunities and also the challenges. Those are the things we'll look at through the committee, and report back to them maybe as early as December, but more likely later than that."
Three-fourths of team owners would have to approve a team's relocation bid to authorize a move.
