Raiders charging toward biggest taxpayer subsidy

If the relocation deal is approved, a hotel-room tax increase at the nation’s gambling hub would help pay for a shiny new $1.9 billion stadium.

If the relocation is approved (and Bay Area investors fail to entice the team to stay), then the new home of the Las Vegas Raiders would become the largest taxpayer-subsidized stadium deal in NFL history, blowing past the $600 million in public money used to build the Atlanta Falcons’ $1.5 billion Mercedes-Benz Stadium and the nearly $500 million the public is picking up for the U.S.

With the help of Goldman Sachs, the NFL and Raiders owner Mark Davis would arrange $500 million in financing to fund the new Vegas stadium.

Local officials and team backers often argue that deals like this ultimately benefit the public by creating jobs and generating peripheral economic activity and tax revenue.

Yet the immense wealth of team owners and stakeholders has critics questioning why public funds are needed when the primary individual beneficiaries are private citizens with enough financial clout to fund and build these projects on their own.

Pitching in a few tens of millions of dollars on a big project that would benefit private investors might be justifiable if there’s a proven net increase in jobs and tax revenue to help fund truly public projects like road maintenance and schools.

Bay Area proponents of keeping the Raiders in Oakland are offering a new $1.25 billion stadium, but so far that proposal would be privately funded, and smaller.