A recent story in the San Francisco Chronicle about the Oakland Raiders relocation to Las Vegas, comparing it with the NHL’s first-year Vegas Golden Knights, makes some fair points but also misses on key points and doesn’t tell the complete story.
Just a few years ago, when the NHL had announced it was considering Las Vegas as an expansion market, the rest of the country protesting complaining hockey didn’t belong in the desert. They said professional sports shouldn’t mix with legalized gaming in a city where most outsiders think residents live in sparkly hotels and casinos.
Fast forward to last night as those same expansion Golden Knights, playing in the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs, won a thriller in overtime to take a 2-1 series lead over the San Jose Sharks. It seems hockey did work in the desert and, by the gate receipts and revenue rankings putting the team in the middle of the pack, thrived beyond anyone’s expectations.
Using the Golden Knights overwhelming success, coupled with its strong connections to the community after the horrific events of October 1, 2017, Chronicle reporter Ann Killion set out to see if the interest in hockey is also being reflected in excitement for the Raiders arrival in 2020. Killion, an excellent sports columnist and accomplished journalist, had a valid angle and I agreed to speak with her and help her find some Raiders fan groups in Las Vegas so she could see how things were ramping up. I also gave her my views of the current mood around the Raiders moving to Las Vegas.
The column was fair overall, but did make some false assumptions and did not frame accurately where the Raiders are at in their long process of moving to Las Vegas. It also didn’t give a fair representation of fans and resident’s views of the team’s move and construction of a new stadium here.
It paints a picture of disinterest by using the setting of the Golden Knights playoff game and gathering at Toshiba Plaza outside T-Mobile Arena as a gauge. To be fair, Killion told me she didn’t have time to venture out to the suburbs where there would be a better sense of interest in the NFL Draft and particularly the Raiders. And, despite rising ratings for those watching the draft, draft gatherings and parties are not a big draw to begin with. A regular season Raiders game draws hundreds at several locations throughout the Valley. The draft, not so much.
Still, Killion ventured out of the hotel and talked to fans there for hockey. She found a Golden Knights fan getting a tattoo (yes, there was a mobile tattoo palor there for the hockey game) who said he didn’t care about the Raiders. Again, one hockey fan who was there to get a tattoo. I’d say that it’s not really a good pulse of the community on that one.
She talked of not seeing a Raiders jersey in the overwhelmingly hockey-starved crowd there celebrating pregame with beer and other libations.
Now that she mentions it, I don’t see many hockey jerseys at an NFL games either.
She did visit the Raiders Preview Center here in Las Vegas where it was packed. And those are people paying (or at least thinking of paying) big money to buy Personal Seat Licenses and season tickets. It’s a good indication of the interest in the team to be certain. Folks willing to throw down that much cash certainly are excited about the team, yet we didn’t hear from them. Apparently they were too interested to comment on their excitement about the team moving here.
The rest of the column is filled with anecdotal evidence based on the writer’s premise Las Vegas is disinterested in the Raiders. It uses the success of the Golden Knights as a hammer saying the Raiders will “be hard-pressed to match the experience and enthusiasm the Knights have created.”
In fact, the success of the Knights should only bolster the point not only can Las Vegas support a major sports franchise, it can do it just as well as any other part of the country.
Killion goes on to make all the points Bay Area insiders, and some disgruntled fans, have made since whispers of the team coming to Las Vegas picked up steam: local fans won’t support it, the tickets will cost too much, there’s no parking at the stadium site, et al. The same team she applauds in the column once had the same criticisms leveled at them. We’ve seen how that’s all worked out.
The portion of our conversation Ms. Killion did use in the story was a quote about my view it’s still too early to gauge the mood of the Raiders coming to Las Vegas. The team still has two years yet to play in Oakland. As I stated, 18 months from now would be a better time to take the pulse of Las Vegas residents.
The fact is the Raiders are already in our community doing work just like the Golden Knights. Men and women are going back to work building the Raiders new $1.8 Billion stadium. There is excitement but you can’t compare it to a team already playing here.
Ask the Clark County School District about the Raiders and they’ll tell you how active they’ve been since 2017. The Raiders already have 30 full-time employees in the valley, but there’s no high profile games or a stadium yet. Those are all things the Golden Knights already have. They are weaving themselves into the community on a slower time frame because they have no choice.
And while the hockey team will always have a special place in our community, so too will the Raiders.
You can’t judge a community’s excitement about the future looking for things like T-shirts in the present.