Oakland Sues Raiders, NFL Teams Over Impending Move to Las Vegas

(Bloomberg) -- The City of Oakland is suing the Raiders and the National Football League for damages, alleging the team’s decision to move to Las Vegas was illegal.

Oakland claims the team violated federal antitrust laws and broke its contract when formalizing its move to Las Vegas slated for 2019-2020, according to a complaint filed Tuesday in federal court. The city wants unspecified damages, tripled under U.S. law, to cover lost revenue and its “significant investment in the Raiders,” according to the filing.

The city asserts Raiders ownership paid fellow NFL clubs a $378 million “relocation fee” in 2017 when they announced their move to Las Vegas. The payment amounted to monetary compensation for NFL owners to vote “yes” and approve the Raiders’ move, according to the lawsuit. While Oakland proposed a $1.3 billion stadium plan in the city, including some public funding, it didn’t offer what it calls “cartel payments” to persuade the rest of the league to support Oakland, according to the complaint.

NFL Rules

“The defendants brazenly violated federal antitrust law and the league’s own policies when they boycotted Oakland as a host city,” Oakland City Attorney Barbara Parker said in a written statement. “The Raiders’ illegal move lines the pockets of NFL owners and sticks Oakland, its residents, taxpayers and dedicated fans with the bill.”

Representatives of the Raiders and the NFL didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

The city contends that the Raiders’ process for moving violated antitrust laws and the NFL’s own team relocation guidelines set in 1983 at the behest of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Those rules were set by the NFL after the Raiders and the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum sued the NFL for antitrust violations to force the team’s move from Oakland to Los Angeles.

The norms direct teams to prioritize their home markets and extinguish any sort of entitlement an owner may have to “relocate simply because it perceives an opportunity for enhanced club revenues in another location,” according to the filing. Oakland argues that while the Raiders appeared to negotiate with the city over a new stadium in good faith from 2014 to 2017, some statements by owner Mark Davis were “blatant misrepresentations.”

“The Raiders, the NFL, and ultimately the vast majority of NFL Clubs, were just stringing Oakland along as part of their collusive scheme to move the Raiders,” the city said in the complaint. It isn’t seeking an injunction to stop the team from moving.

The City of St. Louis filed a similar complaint in Missouri state court in 2017 after the Rams and their owner, Stan Kroenke, formalized plans to move to Los Angeles. Plaintiffs are seeking more than $1 billion in damages, claiming the league violated those same relocation policies. The NFL tried to force the case into private arbitration, a motion denied by two state courts.

The case is City of Oakland v. The Oakland Raiders, 18-cv-07444, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (Oakland.)

To contact the reporter on this story: Kartikay Mehrotra in San Francisco at kmehrotra2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Elizabeth Wollman at ewollman@bloomberg.net, Peter Blumberg

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