Sorry to ruin the suspense, but the Raiders will wind up playing at Levi’s Stadium. Within two years, is my guess.
Sources? I don’t need no sources. I can add two plus two, using my solar-powered abacus.
Do the math along with me:
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--Raiders’ owner Mark Davis is getting Las Vegas’d. He thought he had a deal for a new stadium, but now his project partner, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, doesn’t like the deal Davis proposes and has proposed one of his own.
Adelson said, "So I told my people, 'Tell (the Raiders) I could live with the deal (Adelson is proposing), I could live without the deal. Here's the way it's gonna go down.’ If they don't want it, bye-bye."
The dreaded Neon Bye-Bye!
Initially Adelson wanted a piece of the Raiders in return for his own $650 million stadium kick-in and his work arm-twisting Nevada to cough up $750 million.
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But Davis is loath to sell any piece of his team. Now Adelson has countered with other demands. I get the feeling Mr. Mogul believes Davis thought Adelson was swinging all his weight and wallet out of the kindness of his heart.
Casino moguls don’t do that.
--If the Vegas deal falls through, how about Oakland? Mayor Libby Schaaf won’t buy the Raiders a new stadium. Her stance is backed by fiscal sanity and a recent poll in which Oakland voters said that keeping the Raiders is far down their list of priorities, below even keeping the A’s--a team run by profiteers and stocked with vagabonds.
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That poll was a gut punch to Davis, who believes that everyone on the planet loves his Raiders.
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--If Oakland falls through as a stadium site, the best option is Levi’s. The 49ers will be motivated to rent to the Raiders, since the 49ers’ master plan--decades of sold-out games--is springing major leaks.
The NFL will be motivated to encourage and broker a stadium-share deal. The League is sick of the Raiders’ mess, on and off the field, and is facing the reality that it’s getting harder to extort free stadiums from football-desperate cities run by lap-dog politicians.
Sing it with me, Raider Nation: “Levi’s Stad-ium, open your golden gates, Raiders will be your mates, we’ll all have fun!”
Scott Ostler is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: sostler@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @scottostler
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