Las Vegas Raiders: NFL Owners Overwhelmingly Approve The Move

Members of Raider Nation started Monday devoted to a football team based in Oakland but will soon be rooting — or not — for one that will be based in Las Vegas. On Monday, the first day of the league's annual meeting, NFL team owners overwhelmingly approved the move.

The vote was 31-1. The Miami Dolphins were the only team to oppose the move.

The Raiders had been pushing a move to Vegas after a joint proposal with the then-San Diego Charges to move together to Los Angeles was rejected and the Chargers struck their own deal to start playing in LA this coming season. (Click here for more on this story and all the latest news in Las Vegas by subscribing to our free Las Vegas Patch newsletter and breaking news alerts.)

"My father always said, ‘the greatness of the Raiders is in its future,’ and the opportunity to build a world-class stadium in the entertainment capital of the world is a significant step toward achieving that greatness," Raiders Owner Mark Davis said in a statement. "I would like to thank Commissioner Goodell, the National Football League and my 31 partners. I would also like to thank Governor Brian Sandoval and the Nevada Legislature for their commitment.

"Finally, I would like to thank Sheldon Adelson for his vision and leadership, without which this project never would have become a reality."

The Raiders will continue to play in the rickety Oakland Coliseum one more season, and likely two, with the reaction from the team's fans, some of the league's most rabid, anybody's guess.

The team will leave them behind to play the 2019 season in an interim stadium — possibly at the University of Nevada — while construction of their new 65,000-seat stadium in Las Vegas is completed.

Rep. Barbara Lee, who represents the East Bay, tweeted: "Disappointed by decision today on the @Raiders. For the last 22 years, #Oakland has been a proud & welcoming home to #RaiderNation."

Davis said that he knows that fans in Oakland are not happy with the move.

"The Raiders were born in Oakland and Oakland will always be part of our DNA," he said. "We know that some fans will be disappointed and even angry, but we hope that they do not direct that frustration to the players, coaches and staff.

"We would love nothing more than to bring a championship back to the Bay Area."

The Raiders became the third team to announce a move in less than two years. In addition to the move the Chargers are making to Los Angeles, the Rams returned to Los Angeles from St. Louis last season. They became the first teams to move since the mid-1990s, when the Browns moved to Baltimore, the Rams to St. Louis and the Oilers to Tennessee.

This is the third time that the Raiders have moved — first in 1982 to Los Angeles and then back to Oakland in 1995.

The new stadium in Las Vegas is expected to cost $1.9 billion, the most expensive ever built for an NFL team other than a new stadium under construction in Los Angeles. Nevada taxpayers last year approved a plan to contribute $750 million and the team secured a $600 million loan from Bank of America to go with lesser contributions from the team, the league and other sources.

The involvement of Bank America saved the proposal, which seemed on the verge of falling apart earlier this year when casino-owning billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who had pledged $650 million, withdrew his involvement.

Oakland made a last-ditch effort to keep the team, sending the league a proposal for a $1.3 billion mixed-use stadium that would replace the Oakland Coliseum.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell sent a letter to Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf on Friday saying the proposal by Oakland did not go far enough in spelling out details.

"There remains no clear proposal regarding the site," Goodell wrote, according to a report on NFL.com. The proposal "confirms that key issues that we have identified as threshold considerations are simply not resolvable in the short term.

"In that respect, the information sent today does not present a proposal that is clear and specific, actionable in a reasonable timeframe, and free of major contingencies."

The mayor responded with a request for owners to delay their vote on whether to allow the team's move while she gathered information to address Modell's concerns.

The owners went ahead with their vote.

One issue that still needs to be resolved for team owners is what the relocation fee the Raiders will have to pay to the league

While the Rams and Chargers are both expected to pay in the neighborhood of $500 million, Las Vegas is a substantially smaller market than Los Angeles and the Raiders could end up paying half as much.

The move is a huge boost to Vegas.

While gambling has driven the Vegas economy, it has also long been an obstacle to sports leagues moving to the city. The NFL once even refused running Super Bowl ads from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.

That wall was torn down last year when the National Hockey League approved giving the city an expansion team.

The Las Vegas Golden Knights begin play next season.

Photo of Raiders Owner Mark Davis: Thomas B. Shea/Stringer/Getty Images Sport/Getty Images