A Bad Bet for “Sin City” and the Raiders
Las Vegas, the city of lights. Regardless of how you feel about gambling, “Sin City” is truly a testament to American ingenuity, an oasis in the desert. To quote the film Dodgeball “it’s the home of sand, broken dreams, and five-dollar lobster.” It will soon also be the home of the NFL’s Raiders. On the surface it appears a perfect match. With a crumbling stadium in Oakland and the death of longtime Raiders owner Al Davis, the team wanted a change of scenery. The Raiders, tired of playing second fiddle to the 49ers in the Bay Area and unable to return to Los Angeles due to two other franchises moving there, can relocate to a new home with a growing population and massive tourism industry. 42.9 million people visit Las Vegas every year, surpassed only by Orlando and New York in terms of tourism revenue. The Raiders have always been popular among Hispanic fans and with Las Vegas’s population that is over a third Hispanic, the Raiders can expand their footprint into the desert of Nevada. From a marketing standpoint, it makes perfect sense. The NFL’s perennial “Bad Boys” in the “City of Sin” is a perfect couple.
In addition to the Raiders, the Las Vegas Stadium (it’s working name) will play host to the UNLV Rebels Football Team, a collegiate bowl game, UFC fights, the Monster Jam World Championships, a Superbowl, an NCAA Final Four, the Pac-12 Championship Game, neutral-site college football games, international soccer matches, concerts, corporate events, and probably much more. The stadium will be equipped with a retractable roof, a roll-in natural grass field, and a designated pickup/drop-off loop for services such as Lyft and Uber.
Sounds fun right? However, in typical Vegas fashion, it appears the actual cost of all this “fun” is being ignored. As of now, the estimated cost of the stadium is $1.8 billion. According to the budget report from the Raiders, the franchise will pay $850 million of the costs and $750 million will be covered by the public. This does not include the addition $100 million that the city of Henderson will be responsible to pay for, to build the teams HQ and practice facilities. In addition, Clark County will be providing offsite parking a public transportation to and from the stadium.
1) Your title is dope— I wouldn’t change it
2) You might struggle with “exigence” a little bit because your issue is only pertinent to the Las Vegas area, but that’s simply due to the nature of your topic. It might be useful to reference the fallbacks of having sports teams in general (i.e. draw upon examples of teams being manipulative like the Rays, Rams, and Marlins)
3) There isn’t one line that I can point to as a clear and specific thesis, but I can tell where your argument is going.
1) I like your title. It’s brief and clear enough to tell your reader what your standpoint is.
2) The introduction is very informative, and you give a sufficient amount of background for your audiences. But maybe lay more focus on the exigence. I’d like to put some specific data to underline the exigence.
3) Even though there’s no clear sentence saying your main thesis, I can tell who you stand with. So it’ll be good if you have one or two sentences at the end to assert your statement.
Ps: i like where you put the quot from “Dodgeball”. It perfectly transit to the home of the Raiders. And it’ll be the home of AB.