(TSX / STATS) OAKLAND, Calif. — The Oakland Raiders’ season tickets for the 2017 campaign have sold out despite their impending move to Las Vegas.
Fans spending money on season tickets for a lame-duck team comes as Raiders owner Mark Davis is hinting he will ask to stay around the Oakland Coliseum for an extra season while Nevada builds his Vegas dome stadium, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
The team’s lease in Oakland runs through the 2018 season, but the Las Vegas stadium may not be ready until 2020.
“We haven’t heard anything official, but that’s what we are hearing through the NFL blogs,” Scott McKibben, executive director of the Oakland Coliseum Authority, told the newspaper.
The authority is run by Oakland and Alameda County, and members have been lukewarm to the idea of the Raiders playing in the Coliseum in 2019.
Last week, the Raiders took an important step toward having a stadium ready for the 2020 season when the Las Vegas Stadium Authority unanimously approved a conditional lease agreement for the team.
The Raiders would like to begin construction of the $1.9 billion, 65,000-seat domed stadium this summer. The Raiders will share the stadium with UNLV’s football team.
Davis does not want to move to Las Vegas until the dome is complete and also indicated he does not want to play a season at UNLV’s 35,500-seat Sam Boyd Stadium.
