The Oakland Raiders relocation to Las Vegas was a successful effort by the owner of the Oakland Raiders (Mark Davis) to relocate the American football team from its long-time home of Oakland, California, to Paradise, Nevada, after the 2019 National Football League (NFL) season. The team began play as the Las Vegas Raiders in the 2020 NFL season.
Davis gained league approval to move the team after years of failed efforts to renovate or replace the Oakland Coliseum, which had been consistently rated as one of the worst stadiums in the NFL. NFL team owners approved the move, 31–1, at their annual league meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, on March 27, 2017.
The Raiders became the third NFL franchise in the 2010s to announce a move, following the Rams' 2016 return to Los Angeles, California, from St. Louis, Missouri, and the Chargers' 2017 move from San Diego to Los Angeles. The Raiders also became the second professional sports franchise to represent Las Vegas after the National Hockey League's Vegas Golden Knights.
Background
The Oakland Raiders were founded as a charter member of the American Football League (AFL) in 1960. The team joined the NFL as a result of the merger in 1970. From 1966 until 1981, it played home games at the Oakland Coliseum, which it shared with Major League Baseball's Oakland Athletics after that team moved to Oakland from Kansas City, Missouri in 1968. In 1980 Al Davis, dissatisfied with the stadium situation in Oakland and seeing luxury suites as the future of the NFL, came to an agreement with the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission to move the Raiders to Los Angeles. The NFL had refused to let the team move, but a court overruled the league, clearing the way for the Raiders to move to Los Angeles and become the Los Angeles Raiders in 1982. The Raiders played home games at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum from 1982 to 1994. In 1995, the Raiders returned to Oakland after the city and Alameda County agreed to build the luxury and club seats on to the Oakland Coliseum with a structure that would become known as Mount Davis. Davis chose to return the Raiders to Oakland after the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission failed to deliver on promised renovations to build luxury suites (the Coliseum would not have luxury suites until a 2019 renovation), and after he was unable to secure a new stadium in the Los Angeles area that met his conditions (plans to build new stadiums in Irwindale and in Inglewood at the future site of SoFi Stadium in the late 1980s and early 1990s respectively collapsed). At one point a proposed move to Sacramento that involved Davis taking ownership of the Sacramento Kings, looked possible but that deal fell apart.
Las Vegas had been home to a number of other professional football franchises between 1994 and the Raiders' arrival, none of which were particularly successful. The Las Vegas Posse, part of the Canadian Football League's effort to enter the U.S. market, lasted one season in 1994 and suffered from a poor on-field product and low attendance. The XFL included the Las Vegas Outlaws in its lone 2001 season. Attendance and on-field performance were respectable, and the team embraced the city's culture, but the Outlaws' modest success was overshadowed by the failure of the XFL. The Las Vegas Locomotives of the United Football League were a major on-field success and were one of the UFL's best teams; it nonetheless suffered from poor attendance that continued to decline throughout the league's existence to the point that its last home game drew only 600 fans. The Arena Football League included three teams in Las Vegas over the course of its history: the Las Vegas Sting (1994 and 1995), Las Vegas Gladiators (2003 to 2007, who moved to Cleveland and became the Cleveland Gladiators before folding), and another Las Vegas Outlaws (2015). The Las Vegas Sin of the Lingerie Football League (now the Legends Football League) played in the city from 2011 to 2014.
The hunt for a home
Recent efforts to either renovate the Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum or replace it with a new football stadium in Oakland or elsewhere began on November 18, 2009. In 2011, Al Davis died; control of the team was assumed by his son Mark Davis who made the three-decade stadium problem a top priority. The Raiders were free to move after the 2013 NFL season, when its lease at the Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum expired. While exploring possible solutions in the Bay Area and elsewhere, the Raiders signed one-year extensions of its lease on the Coliseum.