By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
Six days before he quit his job as president of the Las Vegas Raiders, Marc Badain walked into a plush Allegiant Stadium club with a bar in the middle and took in a Raiders event that involved the NFL team giving an award to a small business in Las Vegas.
Then two days later on July 15, he spoke to the public agency that oversees the Raiders’ 65,000-seat domed stadium and told them the Raiders would work on improving traffic flow on local stadium streets in the wake of traffic and parking complaints from people attending the Garth Brooks 100-percent capacity concert of 65,000 at the venue July 10.
Badain delivered his usual professional talk to the Las Vegas Stadium Authority Board — direct, crisp and short. No razzle-dazzle. Just the facts, as the Raiders saw them. He’s done it dozens of times at local stadium board meetings.
Then four days later on July 19 — a mere week ago — a bombshell dropped into the late-afternoon email files of reporters who cover the Raiders and the stadium.
Badain resigned.
Who saw that coming just weeks before the Raiders’ first season with fans allowed in the stadium, a luxurious venue that Badain spent years working to build?
Nobody did.
That’s why Badain’s resignation timing came across as unexpected, abrupt, odd and even shocking as training camp starts this week.
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Badain had spent 30 years working for one employer — the Raiders, which meant former owner Al Davis and his son, Mark.
He climbed the ladder from intern to chief financial officer to president charged with moving an NFL team to Las Vegas and a glamorous new stadium that received the biggest public construction subsidy in major league sports history.
Badain attended hundreds of meetings after former Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval signed the bill in 2016 that earmarked $750 million in public dollars for construction of an NFL stadium that would be run by the Raiders and also after the NFL owners approved the Raiders’ move from Oakland to Las Vegas. The Raiders covered the balance of the $2 billion stadium project.
Badain and the Raiders had powerful allies in Southern Nevada. Besides Sandoval backing the $750 million stadium subsidy, current Gov. Steve Sisolak is a big stadium booster and Raiders fan and enjoyed collecting the shovel used for the Nov. 13, 2017 Raiders stadium groundbreaking to add to his prolific collection that rivals the shovel department at Home Depot. When he was the former Clark County Commission chairman, Sisolak was on the county’s governing panel when Clark County commissioners approved the Raiders stadium parking plan that offered only 2,500 parking spaces on the site.
Badain also coped with the stadium financing issue of the late Sheldon Adelson pulling his $650 million stadium investment commitment off the table in Jan. 2017. Adelson financed the lobbyists and the political muscle to get the state legislature to approve the $750 million stadium bill five years ago. No Adelson, no stadium bill. Adelson died in January. A loan and a windfall of personal seat license and stadium sponsorship revenues helped the Raiders cover the $650 million.
After so many meetings and so much time invested in building a stadium through a COVID-19 pandemic, you’d think Badain would have wanted to stick around as team president to join the tens of thousands of NFL fans who are primed to enter the Raiders stadium for the first time for a Raiders game on Aug. 14 when the Raiders host the Seattle Seahawks in a preseason dress rehearsal. Not a single fan was allowed to attend a game during the Raiders’ inaugural season in Las Vegas in 2020. Raiders owner Mark Davis said nearly a year ago if all fans could not attend Raiders home games at Allegiant Stadium because of the pandemic, then none would.
For workers at both the Raiders and the stadium, Badain’s abrupt, rumor-free departure literally came out of nowhere. People who liked Badain for his down-to-earth personality and non-phony ways were shocked when the resignation news broke a week ago. The timing of Badain’s resignation came off as strange.
Raiders owner Mark Davis was quoted in the July 19 Raiders press release, which featured Davis capitalizing the first letter of every word. Take a look for yourself as Dan Ventrelle, the Raiders executive VP and general counsel, assumed the team president’s role on an interim basis:
But why quit now, just days ahead of training camp that starts Tuesday when players report and only weeks ahead of Raiders fans finally attending a game in the stadium that he spent such a long time to build?
Nobody has an answer, publicly anyway. It was so sudden that you wonder if it was voluntary. Right before the resignation, the stadium opened for large groups of fans for the first time. On July 10, the stadium hosted the Garth Brooks concert and there were traffic issues on the local roads outside the venue. On July 3, the stadium hosted an Illenium electronic music concert with 30,000 attendees. After the concert, a Las Vegas Metro officer working security was shot handling an unruly fan in an elevator while taking him to a security office. It was not life-threatening. Perhaps these situations were not great PR to open the stadium with all these fans, but it’s hard to imagine that Badain would have to resign over these two stadium events.
When stepping down, Badain offered this as a statement a week ago: “Now that the project is complete it is time for me to focus on my family and look ahead to new pursuits. I am forever grateful to MD for his unwavering support and friendship. I wish him and the Raider family the best. I will always feel a part of the team because everyone knows . . . Once a Raider Always a Raider.”
Not much was revealed in that statement as to why Badain resigned at this particular juncture.
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The kid from Queens, NY who grew up in Rochester in western New York state has a disarming and likable personality with solid financial cred.
It’s a good business combo that paid off in riches for an NFL franchise that had ranked toward the bottom in corporate partnerships in the league before the Raiders moved into their swanky subsidized venue.
Thanks to the move to Las Vegas and the palatial stadium, the Raiders lined up 12 founding stadium corporate partners: Caesars Entertainment, Cox, America First Credit Union, Credit One Bank, Twitch, Reyes Coca-Cola Bottling, San Manuel Casino, Ford, MGM Resorts International, Coors Light, Modelo and Wynn. Plus, the Raiders signed up Intermountain Healthcare as the sponsor for the team’s Henderson HQ, while Summerlin-based Allegiant Air bought the naming rights to the stadium.
The Raiders nearly signed the Southern Nevada Water Authority as a founding stadium partner for a $30 million, 10-year deal. But the deal could not be consummated because of the pandemic’s impact on the water authority’s finances, so the agency shut the faucet on the sponsorship talks.
The water authority’s marketing director said the $30 million founding sponsorship amount was what the founding partners paid, so that’s 12 founding stadium corporate partners times $30 million each. That’s $360 million in founding partner revenues/value.
Add the Allegiant Air naming rights deal. Caesars Entertainment is cutting a 20-year, $138 million naming rights deal at the New Orleans Saints’ Superdome. So let’s be on the conservative side and say the Raiders’ 30-year deal with Allegiant is valued at $150 million. That’s $510 million in stadium sponsorship money, plus millions of dollars from Intermountain Healthcare for the team headquarters deal.
Add the $510 million plus in sponsorships to the $551 million in personal seat license revenues generated by the Raiders and you have more than $1 billion in revenues thanks to the stadium under Badain’s leadership. That’s not even counting stadium ticket revenues, which will be tens of millions of dollars more.
On game day, team presidents typically like to cruise their venues, check in on their top-spending sponsors and schmooze with some fans.
You’d think Badain would have enjoyed taking a few victory laps around the stadium’s main concourse as team president on Raiders game day as fans are now allowed to attend home games.
But no. Not going to happen.
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About one year ago, the stadium construction was completed a few days ahead of the July 31, 2020 completion date. Badain was proud of that. Through the past year, it was common to see Badain talking to workers at the stadium.
He was friendly and cordial with the media, though no loose cannon. His public statements were carefully measured, though Badain has a good sense of humor that was on display at sponsorship events and even stadium board meetings. At an MGM Resorts-Raiders sponsorship announcement, Badain made some funny comments to the MGM Resorts speaker who just happened to be a former 49ers player. All in good fun.
Who knows how the Badain resignation went down. He’s in his early 50s so Badain is young enough to aspire for any “new pursuits,” as he put it in his statement a week ago. It’s no secret that the Raiders and MLB Oakland Athletics were hardly pals as former co-tenants of the Coliseum in Oakland, so it doesn’t seem plausible that Badain would want to work for the A’s if the baseball team plans to build a ballpark in metro Las Vegas.
The COVID-19 pandemic prompted many people to re-evaluate their life goals and careers. Did Badain, a team executive with a sense of big-picture perspective, want a new direction after three decades with one organization? He easily qualifies to work as a consultant for the NFL or a company in the stadium management/event business.
There are always office politics no matter the industry. Badain was well-liked by Raiders staffers. There were no rumors that Badain would say goodbye when he did on July 19.
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LVSportsBiz.com reached out to Badain offering him a chance to elaborate on his statement from seven days ago. Badain declined.
We also requested comments from Davis, but have not heard back. It’s doubtful Davis will follow up on his release from a week ago.
Raiders players report for training camp tomorrow.
Their first practice is Wednesday, 7:30AM.
What about Badain?
Hunch: We haven’t seen the last of Marc Badain around town.
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