Why Jerry Jones is Helping Mark Davis
Jerry Jones has made no secret of showing his support for Mark Davis and the Las Vegas Stadium plan. This begs the question though.
What’s in it for Jerry?
Before we tackle that, lets talk about the level of Jerry’s involvement. Jason Cole of Bleacher Report tweeted out that Jerry Jones was trying to gather investors to fill Sheldon Adelson’s shoes. This was quite the buzz over the weekend, because a week earlier Jason Cole reported that Oakland Raiders Vice President Marc Badain told the NFL he had at least two banks. Those banks are rumored to be US Bank, and Bank of America. I even heard rumor of a third bank, and that is JP Morgan-Chase.
Later Jason Cole tweeted other sources said Jerry was not involved in securing financing for Mark. Jason Cole is pretty accurate in all three tweets.
What’s In It For Jerry
Jerry Jones actually likes Mark Davis. Not only that, but Jerry and the late Al Davis were the best of friends. For those who do not know, Jerry Jones was the only NFL Owners, besides Mark, at Al’s funeral. Now friendship only goes so far in business. Jerry is not just helping Mark out of respect for Al.
First, Jerry has issues with the NFL revenue share. He feels that those teams that put the most in should get the most out. He seems to have realized that the revenue share wont change though. So it appears he is taking a different tact. He is now pushing for every team to have an NFL palace. The more money other owners make, the more money Jerry earns, he gets to keep.
Here is the real nugget though.
What a lot of people do not know is that Mr. Jones is part owner of a company called Legends. That company handles many aspects of a stadium project from management to concessions and a lot in between. In Inglewood, Legends Project Development is handling project management services. When that stadium is complete, expect Legends to handle all hospitality services as well.
Just take a guess at which company will being doing that in the Las Vegas Stadium.
It is expected that Legends will handle a portion of project development, and then all the hospitality services as well. So while it still remains unclear that Jerry actually helped Mark secure financing, his company, Legends, is set to handle a lot of the stadium management. That alone helps secure financing. By adding Legends, a premiere brand in the industry, Mark Davis might have gotten all the help he needed from Jerry to get the stadium funded.
For Jerrah, it is a win win win. He helps the son of one of his closest friends. Another owner gets a palace to the NFL gods. And Jerry gets a nice dividend from his company Legends.
So just as this little piece of news to the economics of the Las Vegas Stadium article I did last week.
Special thanks to Jason Cole, and his tweets. As well as Danial Kaplan of Sports Business Daily who broke the US Bank story.
