LAS VEGAS — Mark Davis moved to Las Vegas and got the stadium of his dreams.
He even helped secure Super Bowl LVIII, which was awarded to the city in December of 2021. Wouldn’t you know it? The two teams playing in Allegiant Stadium Sunday are the Raiders’ sworn enemy in the Kansas City Chiefs and their former geographical rival in the 49ers.
“I guess there’s bad and there’s good,” Davis said late Tuesday night. “The bad is one of these teams is going to win the Super Bowl in our stadium. The good is one of them isn’t.”
The Chiefs are training at the Raiders’ state-of-the-art facility in nearby Henderson (all Raiders logos are covered) and it’s getting rave reviews.
“It’s really fantastic,” Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker said. “And it’s going to be nice to see a red end zone with `Chiefs’ on it.”
Davis is kidding when it comes to the 49ers and Chiefs playing in his stadium. It’s a small price to pay for the exposure his franchise will get.
Allegiant Stadium, financed with the help of $750 million of public money from a hotel tax, is one of the NFL’s most stunning venues and a fixture on the Las Vegas strip. The value of the franchise has skyrocketed to $6.2 million according to Forbes, the sixth-highest in the NFL.
Davis is living large in a city the Raiders have called home since 2020 in a way he never did in the Bay Area. Unable to secure a stadium deal, Davis was looked at as more of an oddity after taking over in 2011 following the death of his Hall of Fame father Al Davis.
In January of 2021, Davis purchased the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces from MGM Resorts International and the team has won the last two league championships.
Las Vegas hosted the NFL Draft in 2022 and concerns about legal gambling at an NFL venue are now embraced instead of shunned. He began lobbying for a Super Bowl not long after groundbreaking began on Allegiant Stadium in 2017.
Unlike his late father, Davis is even on good terms with the commissioner who called Las Vegas “Sports Town USA” at a Super Bowl event in December.
“He believed this would be a great Super Bowl location, so when he got the relocation approval that was one of the first things he was talking about, ‘When are we going to get a Super Bowl?’” Commissioner Roger Goodell said Monday at his state-of-the-NFL press conference. “I said ‘Mark, we’ve got to play a regular season game here first.”
All that’s left is to build a winner with the Raiders. It’s been a challenge since Davis took control.
He’s had four head coaches in four seasons in Las Vegas — Jon Gruden, Rich Bisaccia, Josh McDaniels and Antonio Pierce. Gruden resigned in an email scandal. Interim coach Bisaccia was bypassed despite leading the Raiders into the playoffs. McDaniels was a disaster from the outset and fired in November. Pierce was recently named head coach after rebuilding the team’s psyche when McDaniels was let go.
The Raiders will be recognized at the Super Bowl with the lighting of the Al Davis torch that takes place every game. It will be lit by the three Raiders Super Bowl Most Valuable Players — wide receiver Fred Biletnikoff (XI), quarterback Jim Plunkett (XV) and running back Marcus Allen (XVII).
I sought out Davis to get his thoughts on the Super Bowl, the Raiders’ relocation and the state of his teams including the Aces. Here is what he said in an exclusive interview:
Thoughts on a 49ers-Chiefs Super Bowl
“When you look at it, these two teams deserve to be here in this game, and I truly believe it, and when you look at, this is a hell of a matchup. Both organizations are class organizations in what they do and we have to suck it up for a week and see a lot of red.”
Las Vegas as a Super Bowl venue
“There is no question Las Vegas is the best city for infrastructure for a Super Bowl. The people here really know what to do, how to put one-off events like they did with Formula I a month and a half ago. It’s quite an undertaking, but it’s not just the local community that does the lifting. The NFL comes in with an army for Super Bowls. There’s a lot of things the host team does, but the majority is the Las Vegas Convention Bureau and the NFL putting the actual nuts and bolts together.”
Commissioning Bo Bernhard of UNLV and the international gaming institute for a study in 2016
“I told him he might be the most important person in this whole thing to determine why Las Vegas is a safer place for gambling than any place else in the country . . . Las Vegas watches everything in gambling, any kind of aberration. It’s been such a whirlwind the last six years. When the Supreme Court in 2018 allowed states to make their own determinations about sports betting, that had a big part in the gambling aspect as well.”
Owning the Aces
“I had a vision when I purchased the team from MGM. I was a fan and I was continually telling them that they had to play the players more money and the told me if you want to pay them more money then you pay them. So I did. The goal was to build a championship organization, But there was so much more to it than that. it was also about building an infrastructure for women so they can eventeually economically participate on a greater scale.
A WNBA team in San Francisco
“Joe Lacob and Peter Guber are going to be competing with us. People should be excited because those guys know how to build teams. I’m not as excited because they know how to win. All of a sudden there’s competition for players in this league. I’m so proud of these women it’s ridiculous and I enjoy the heck out of it.”
Hiring Pierce as head coach of the Raiders
“He brought the culture back. He grew up in Compton when the Raiders were in Los Angeles. He was near the L.A. coliseum. He knew NWA and all that. He knew who the Raider greats were. He knew what the culture of being a Raider was. That came across strong to me when I was interviewing him for the interim role. I felt, `wow, this guy could be something.’ ”
The theory that Pierce was a makeup for not hiring Bisaccia in 2022
“That’s never been the case and I’ve never said that. He did a phenomenal job for the Raiders as the interim hea coach, but after the interview process he was not the person I was going to hire. I respect him for what he did for us and I’ll be forever grateful. But he was not going to be head coach of the Raiders.
The way the week is going and chances of another Super Bowl in Las Vegas
“What I’ve been saying is you only get one shot at a first impression, so let’s knock it out of the park. I think they’ll be begging us to come back.”
The possibility of the A’s joining the Raiders with a new stadium on the Las Vegas strip
“I think I’ll stand by what I said in November. I have no idea if they’ll get a stadium built.”
Note: On Nov. 15, Davis told the Las Vegas Review-Journal the A’s ruined their prospects of a Bay Area stadium by squatting on their lease for 10 years and making it impossible. He also mocked the A’s “Rooted in Oakland” campaign when attempting to get their own stadium.
“The slogans they’ve been using have been a slap in the face to the Raiders, and they were trying to win over that type of mentality in the Bay Area. Well, all they did was (expletive) the Bay Area.”
Source: www.mercurynews.com