RAIDING SIN CITY
NFL is suddenly open to Vegas relocation
In what would be a stunning about-face, the NFL appears ready to roll the dice on Las Vegas.
League insiders and observers alike describe themselves as blindsided by how suddenly and rapidly a move by the Raiders to Sin City by owner Mark Davis is picking up steam among Davis’ counterparts.
Plenty of significant obstacles remain, but the idea of the Las Vegas Raiders is a lot more realistic today than it was just two months ago.
That’s the equivalent of warp speed for a league that needed 21 mind-numbing years to return a franchise to Los Angeles, the second-largest city in the country.
“It’s more of a possibility now than ever before,” said veteran stadium consultant Marc Ganis, who helped the Rams move to St. Louis in 1995. “Las Vegas has always been a slammed door for the NFL. But that slammed door is not slammed any longer.”
Putting a team in Las Vegas long has been a non-starter for the NFL for numerous reasons, but the biggest obstacle was the reason for the city’s existence in the first place — casinos.
Employees of the league office are banned from casinos, and the NFL as recently as last year got itself sued for nixing a fantasy football convention headlined by Tony Romo because it was being held at a Las Vegas casino.
While other leagues slowly warm up to the legalization of sport betting (most notably the NBA led by commissioner Adam Silver), the NFL and commissioner Roger Goodell continue to wage a tenacious fight against it in New Jersey and other states.
But with NFL teams now allowed to accept casino sponsorships, and Jerry Jones of the Cowboys and Robert Kraft of the Patriots investing in daily fantasy companies, the opposition to gambling appears to be thawing in some ownership circles.
Enter Davis, who is desperate to find a new location for the Raiders after being left in the dust of the NFL’s return to L.A. in January and with Oakland steadfastly refusing to build him a replacement for decrepit O.co Coliseum.
Led by casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, Las Vegas stepped in quickly with an ambitious stadium package that got Davis’ attention.
Adelson pledged $150 million toward the cost of a $1 .4 bill on stadium that would open in 2019 or 2020, with Davis and t he NFL committing a combined $500 million. The rest — $750 million — would come from a hotel tax that could be approved by the Nevada state legislature as soon as this summer.
“I’ve given my commitment to Las Vegas, and if they can come through with what they’re talking about doing, then we’ll go to Las Vegas,” Davis told reporters at the league’s annual May meetings last week in Charlotte, N.C.
Even so, don’t buy your Las Vegas Raiders gear just yet.
Giants co-owner John Mara told The Post at the owners meetings in March that Las Vegas would be a “non-starter” for him as a location for a franchise because of the city’s casinos and their bustling sports books.
“They would be a big part of [the owners’ objections],” Mara said.
Mara, who is old enough to remember the gambling scandals of the 1960s that threatened the NFL’s existence, wouldn’t need much help in blocking a move. Davis would need the approval of at least 24 owners to move, so just nine “no” votes would be enough to kill it.
Davis could follow the lead of his late father, Al Davis, who famously sued the league to move the Raiders to L.A. in 1982, but observers don’t think the younger Davis would do that (in large part because he would forfeit $200 million in stadium financing from the NFL).
Casinos are also just one aspect of Las Vegas that would be a dealkiller for several owners.
The metro Las Vegas area has just 2.1 million people and is the 42nd-largest TV market, which would be the fourth-smallest in the league and mark a serious step down from the Bay Area’s No. 6 national TV ranking.
Las Vegas also has one of the most highly transient populations of any city in the country. Just 24 percent of Las Vegas residents are natives, according to a 2011 local study, so the Raiders would be trying to win over fans of other teams or rely on some of the city’s 42 million annual visitors to help fill their stadium.
And unless that stadium is connected to one of Adelson’s casinos, the involvement of the casinos is a major question mark. That’s because casinos have a vested interest in keeping their customers on the premises.
“There are a host of hurdles, but it does have a chance,” Ganis told The Post. “Considering the NFL’s history, the fact that you can realistically say that about Las Vegas now is remarkable.”
bhubbuch@nypost.com