Davis hints that he won’t attend games if fans can’t be inside new Las Vegas stadium
Frustrated Raiders owner Mark Davis said he’ll likely decide to play games without any fans this season at their new $1.9 billion Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas.
And, if fans can’t be there, neither will Davis.
Because of the pandemic, Davis isn’t sure anybody should be there — other than people essential to the production of the game. He doesn’t count himself among that group.
“The only thing I’m essential for is after the game, yelling at Jon (Gruden),” Davis wisecracked to ESPN. “I can do that over the phone.”
The NFL’s latest plan to is to allow each team, in consultation with local health and government officials, to make its own decision on how many fans can safely attend games.
“If you asked me right now, I would say we will go with no fans in the stands,” Davis told the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Sunday.
Davis added that the decision was practically made for him by other NFL owners.
They recently voted to place tarps, adorned with advertising, over the first eight rows of seats in every stadium. Davis’ was the lone dissenting vote.
The Raiders, unlike most other teams, say they’ve already sold every ticket for every home game this season. They can’t move any displaced fans to other areas of their 65,000seat stadium. Worst of all, Da
vis said, the league-mandated tarps will keep out the team’s biggest fans.
“That’s the black hole,” Davis told ESPN. “It’s the people that want to be in the front row. Boisterous fans … now I’ve got to tell 8,000 people that helped build this thing that they can’t come to a game? I don’t have 8,000 seats to move them to. We’re sold out.
“The optics are terrible: Advertising on top of seats belonging to people you’re telling can’t come to the game. I’d rather have everybody pissed at me than just one person. I’ve got to make it up to them, and I will. This is all about safety and equity.”
The rising cases of COVID-19 in Clark County (Nevada), where the Raiders’ stadium is located, only heightens the question of fan safety in Las Vegas. As of Monday morning, Clark County has had 30,432 overall cases of the virus with 527 deaths attributed to coronavirus. Those number dwarf the positive tests and deaths due to the virus in the Raiders’ old home in Alameda County, which has had 9,258 cases and 162 deaths.
While the Raiders and other teams wrestle with the question of how many fans, if any, can attend their home games, the New England Patriots have announced they’ll operate Gillette Stadium at 20 percent capacity. The Patriots stadium, like the Raiders, seats 65,000. That means 13,000 fans will attend New England games.
Count former Raiders great Charles Woodson among those who feel deciding which fans can — or can’t — come to games is probably a losing proposition.
“Because it comes down to who do you pick?” Woodson recently told this news organization. “You start picking certain fans over other fans. I know I’ve heard that Mark Davis is not a fan of that, picking and choosing who comes to the games. And I get that. How do you do that? Maybe you change that 20 percent every week, incorporate it that way, but that’s a tough pill to swallow for the fans who are so eager to get into the stadium and support their team and to know you got picked over for whatever reason.”