The Oakland Raiders might not have played their last game in the East Bay after all. In an interview with Michael Gehlken of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Coliseum Support Authority executive director Scott McKibben expressed hope that the Raiders will reach a deal with stadium officials to play one final season in Oakland.
“I am cautiously optimistic that a deal will get done, yes,” McKibben said.
Last week, news broke that team executives were in discussion with Coliseum representatives about the Raiders playing at their longtime home stadium in 2019. The franchise’s forthcoming move to Las Vegas, Nevada was approved by NFL owners on a 31-1 vote in March 2017. But re-location won’t come until 2020, and the Raiders’ lease at the Coliseum expired after last season, leaving them without a place to play home game games next season.
Reports surfaced last month that owner Mark Davis and company were considering a temporary move across the Bay to San Francisco, where they would share Oracle Park with the MLB’s San Francisco Giants.
San Francisco mayor London Breed pushed back on that idea, alluding to existing congestion in the city’s South Beach neighborhood as one of the reasons why she believes the Raiders “should stay in Oakland.”
Where do the Raiders and Coliseum officials go from here?
“The next step for me is I will get back to the Raiders, and I will discuss with Marc what exactly we discussed [in closed session],” McKibben continued. “Like any other deal or negotiation, we will hammer down to the shorthairs. If we reach a complete and full agreement, then we’ll move forward, do a contract, and at that time, we would have a meeting…where we call people back for a formal approval.”
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