The mystery of who bought The Las Vegas Review-Journal wrapped up in December with Fortune breaking the news that it was casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, and now we’re perhaps starting to see some of Adelson’s impact. The newspaper’s editorial board strongly endorsed the $1 billion proposal for a new, domed stadium at UNLV to host UNLV football, major concerts and potentially even the NFL (if the Raiders or another team moves to town). What’s the issue? That proposal just happens to be led by Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands Corporation:
Casino giant Las Vegas Sands Corp. will lead a consortium of investors planning to build a $1 billion domed stadium on 42 acres near the University of Nevada, Las Vegas that would house the school’s football team — and possibly a National Football League franchise.
Andy Abboud, Las Vegas Sands’ senior vice president of government relations and community development, said Thursday that Las Vegas needs a modern stadium with at least 65,000 seats to drive additional tourism to Southern Nevada.
Mark Davis, owner of the Oakland Raiders, is scheduled to meet with Las Vegas Sands Chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson, and team representatives are expected to tour the site Friday.
The NFL earlier this month rejected a Raiders move to Los Angeles. Abboud said Las Vegas Sands also has had conversations with officials from other NFL teams.
“We are moving forward with the stadium concept with or without an NFL team,” Abboud said Thursday. “We see a lot more opportunities — conference championships, bowl games, NFL exhibition football, boxing, soccer, neutral site games, and music festivals. There is an entire segment out there.”
To their credit, the Review-Journal does disclose the connection to their ownership in the fourth paragraph of their editorial, relatively high up:
Full disclosure: The family of Las Vegas Sands Chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson bought the Review-Journal in December. Las Vegas Sands or the Adelson family would contribute an undisclosed share of about $420 million in private financing for the stadium.)
Of course, the paper would be expected to cover a big local project like this regardless of who was behind it, and their news coverage of the project has seemed fairly balanced despite their ownership. (That’s refreshing, as there have been plenty of concerns raised since the sale about executives trying to impact the coverage of Adelson.) Newspapers endorse all sorts of things, too, sometimes connected to their ownership and sometimes not, and an opinion in favor of the project isn’t inherently bad. Still, it’s awfully hard for anyone to give much credence to the various arguments the editorial makes in favor of the project when you consider how much this project would benefit their owner, so this turns into essentially just a wasted editorial. It’s not that the Review-Journal has done anything specifically wrong here, but their ownership makes it tough for their endorsement to be taken seriously or have much value, and it seems likely that their editorial space could have been used more wisely than this.
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