It’s Official: The Raiders Are Now in Las Vegas
Now that football season for Saints fans is over, (even though we have the Super Bowl to look forward to for a last blow-out party), it's interesting to see all the non Super Bowl football news still making headlines. Eli Manning, who has Louisiana roots, is retiring, and the Oakland Raiders are now officially the Las Vegas Raiders, as of yesterday. National Football League owners voted 31-1 to approve the team's application to relocate to Las Vegas during their annual meeting in 2017.
Raiders team owner Mark Davis and Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak held a short press conference Wednesday, January 22 in front of the still under construction Allegiant Stadium to announce the official name change. I was in Las Vegas over the holidays, and let me tell you, that stadium is massive. Really massive. It will hold 65,000, and reportedly cost $1.9 billion dollars. And hopefully it will be finished by the time the 2020 regular season begins.
But I was surprised in December to see no 'Las Vegas Raiders' merchandise anywhere, especially in a city that basically has a souvenir shop on every corner. There's a reason for that, of course. The team is not legally able to sell merchandise with their new logo/name on it until March 2020. According to the Las Vegas Sun 'The team has been free to use the Las Vegas Raiders moniker whenever they wanted, but the 2020-2021 NFL season doesn’t start until March 18, so technically there’s still time before it’s fully set into place.' And owner Davis says they will probably wait until after the NFL Draft, which will be held in Vegas on April 23-25.
Congrats to the Las Vegas Raiders on your new home! Check out a photo of the gigantic stadium below.