There was some news out of Oakland regarding two of the city’s three major league sports franchises. There is a report that Raiders ownership led by Mark Davis has applied to trademark the name Las Vegas Raiders with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. There are now some artist drawings of what the proposed Raiders Las Vegas stadium would look like.
Architectural renderings don’t mean all that much as when Davis and the Spanos family were putting together a proposal for a Carson, California stadium for Davis’s Oakland Raiders and the Spanos family’s San Diego Chargers, there were drawings of the plan. There is still a long way to go before Davis orders moving vans into the Raiders Oakland area headquarters and tells them to clean house and head to Las Vegas. No one has come up with a public funding plan to help pay for the $750 million public portion of the stadium’s price tag.
Meanwhile, A’s ownership and Oakland politicians are once again looking around the city for a place for a baseball park and a waterfront parcel of land near Jack London Square has been identified as spot for a ballpark. A’s ownership has wanted to build a stadium-village where the present Oakland Coliseum is, has looked at Freemont, California just outside of San Jose and has been barred from trying to build a stadium in San Jose because the San Jose area is San Francisco Giants territory even though the Giants franchise twice lost baseball stadium referendums in a quest to build a Giants stadium in the area.
A court has ruled the Giants ownership has territorial rights to San Jose which is odd because both San Francisco and Oakland share the Bay Area. The Oakland stadium saga has gone on for a decade and a half and it seems there are no solutions available in the market for Davis and his football team and A’s ownership.
I’m Evan Weiner For The Politics Of Sports Business.
This article was republished with permission from the original publisher, Evan Weiner.