Sin City or Bust

How Oakland’s Mark Davis—with a little luck, his own brand of genius and an assist from Jerry Jones—outflanked power brokers to put the Raiders in Las Vegas.

- Don Van Natta JR

Dan Tana’s Italian restaurant in West Hollywood, July 2014: Oakland Raiders owner Mark Davis and team president Marc Badain sit in a back booth with NFL executive vice president Eric Grubman. The dinner topic, over chicken Parm, is a familiar one, an arduous task that bedeviled Davis’ legendary father for decades and now bedevils him: trying to find a real prospect for a new stadium. There have been many stops and starts, in Oakland and in Los Angeles, with no end in sight.

Grubman, the league’s longtime point man on stadium financing, says, “Mark, we gotta come up with a plan for you.” 

“I’m going to Vegas, baby!” Davis says. Grubman laughs. Davis doesn’t. 

“You’re nuts,” Grubman says. 

“No, it’s a good market,” Davis says. 

“Mark,” Grubman says, “you’ll never get approved to Las Vegas.” 

“Why?” 

“They’ll oppose it on principle,” Grubman says, like a parent explaining the real world to a child. “It’s not gonna happen.”