Raiders abandon plan to play in Oakland in 2019
The Raiders withdrew Wednesday from a tentative deal to stay in Oakland for the 2019 season, a day after the city sued the team over its impending departure to Las Vegas.
The move appeared to fulfill the team’s threat to find somewhere else to play next year if the city filed suit, though officials said a new deal could be reached. And it put even more urgency on the question hovering over the team and the NFL: Where will the Raiders play in 2019?
The team’s options include sharing Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara with the 49ers, playing in a city such as San Diego that lacks an NFL team, and moving to Nevada ahead of schedule to a
university facility. Each option carries complications and downsides.
A tentative lease agreement between the team and the Oakland Alameda County Coliseum Authority for next season and possibly 2020 fell through Wednesday, said authority executive director Scott McKibben.
A team executive Wednesday afternoon called McKibben and “formally and officially pulled their proposal off the table,” he said.
“There’s no longer a lease extension in play, lawsuit or no lawsuit,” he said, although a new agreement theoretically still could be negotiated.
The Raiders’ domed $1.8 billion Las Vegas stadium is not scheduled to open until 2020.
Under the tentative deal with Oakland, the Raiders would have paid $7.5 million in 2019 and $9.5 million in 2020 in the event the Las Vegas stadium was not ready in time. The team pays $3.5 million per season under its current lease.
Oakland didn’t hold back in its complaint, accusing the team and NFL of acting as an illegal cartel and violating their own bylaws. Oakland alleged the league is illegally boycotting the city for refusing public financing demands for a new stadium.
“This is not a fair process in a competitive marketplace: It is a NFL-rigged process that, contrary to the policies, promotes relocations in order to further line the pockets of NFL club owners with millions of dollars paid by their billionaire competitors to the sole detriment of the host cities that are unwilling or unable to pay,” the suit said.
Raiders owner Mark Davis on Tuesday described the lawsuit as “meritless and malicious” in an interview with ESPN.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said Wednesday the league needs to know where the Raiders will play by February to make the 2019 schedule, according to NFL Network.
The team’s lease with the Coliseum Authority will expire in mid-February, 45 days after their last regular-season game. The team’s $3.5 million annual rent goes toward game-day expenses such as facility staff and police overtime.
Agreeing on terms with East Bay officials usually happens much earlier in the year, McKibben said.
“The last time we did the extension, it was done in early spring” of the prior year, he said. “We’re taking this up to the very end.”
Team leaders had been trying to get language into a lease extension that would have prevented the city from suing the Raiders and NFL, according to McKibben and Oakland City Council President Larry Reid.
Reid said the City Council would not have approved the agreement under those conditions.
“If the Raiders want to stay, certainly they can stay,” Reid said Wednesday, adding that it would not be a “big loss” if the team played its final pre-Las Vegas season somewhere other than Oakland.
A spokesman for Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, who said Tuesday “the NFL shakedown has got to stop,” echoed that sentiment.
“It’s a decision for Mark Davis to make,” said Justin Berton. “If he keeps the Raiders here, the mayor’s happy our local die-hard fans will enjoy a final season. If he wants to leave Oakland now, that’s his choice.”
Head coach Jon Gruden and players were unsure Wednesday where they would be playing next year. Gruden said he would like them to remain in Oakland.
Quarterback Derek Carr likened the situation to the uncertainty of leaving college.
“You don’t know where you’re going to be,” Carr said. “The good thing is you have experience, you know what team you’re going to be on, you know who your coach is going to be, you know the system already. But where you’re going to play your home games — that’s just weird. It’s nothing anyone wants to go through.”
Receiver Jordy Nelson, meanwhile, said he thought it was likely the team would continue training in Alameda, even if home games are not played at the Coliseum.
Santa Clara might be the most logical plan. When the 49ers were planning and designing Levi’s Stadium, there was “significant discussion” about the possibility of the Raiders becoming a subtenant, said Andy Dolich, an executive of the 49ers from 2007 to 2010. But the late Al Davis, who died in 2011, made it clear that the Raiders would never play in the 49ers’ home stadium as long as he owned the franchise, Dolich said.
“The way the stadium was built, there were enough locker rooms that the Raiders could have had a presence more so than what an opposing team could normally have,” Dolich said. “The league understood that this could work and so much of the Raiders DNA could stay in the marketplace.”
Dolich said the Coliseum still makes the most sense “in the ongoing saga of ‘Raiders of the Lost Park,’ ” despite the “finger pointing that will only get more aggressive.”
Levi’s Stadium would not be particularly conducive to Raider Nation, Dolich said.
“There’s no doubt whose home it is with the advertising, look, signage, colors and fans,” he said.
Yet the lease agreement between the 49ers and Santa Clara Stadium Authority spells out the exact scenario and conditions under which a second NFL team could play at the facility. The contract details how seat licenses, public safety costs and additional rent payments would work with another franchise in Santa Clara.
“Our position has always been that if the league wants to have exploratory conversations about this topic, we are happy to have those conversations,” said 49ers spokesman Bob Lange. He declined to comment further.
Deanna Santana, Santa Clara’s city manager and executive director of the Stadium Authority, has not been approached by either the Raiders or the 49ers to discuss the option of a second NFL team using the facility, according to Lenka Wright, spokeswoman for Santa Clara.