The Las Vegas Raiders Move Enabled by Largest Ever Public Subsidy

"As expected, NFL owners gave Las Vegas its blessing to host one of the league’s most storied franchises on Monday," reports Elliot Almond for The Mercury News, with proximity to the fan base that got the bad news on Monday.

Reporting for the Las Vegas Sun, Adam Candee made this pronouncement: "The Las Vegas Raiders are official."

Paul Gutierrez writes for ESPN about how the deal got made, with a 31-1 vote by NFL owners. The Miami Dolphins were the only team to vote against the move. Will Brinson and Tim Kawakami both report that Dallas Cowboy owner Jerry Jones was the not-so-invisible political and financial force behind the move.

The stadium deal that enables the move seemed dead in the water as recently as January 2017, when casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and Goldman Sachs backed out of the deal. Now, however, with a $1.9 billion stadium construction plan in place, Las Vegas is "poised to claim the mantle of World’s Most Expensive Stadium from East Rutherford, New Jersey, where the Jets and Giants play in the $1.6 billion MetLife Stadium," writes Henry Grabar for Slate. Here's the record breaking rub:

Clark County taxpayers will contribute $750 million to the new arena, a record for a sports facility—about $354 per resident, taken from an increased tax on hotel rooms. That tax currently pays for schools and transportation, in addition to tourism-related expenditures.

Back in October, Stanford economist Roger Noll went on the record in an article by Aaron Stanley calling the stadium deal "the worst deal for a city I have ever seen."