Raiders’ arrival means competition for the Golden Knights with potential corporate sponsors

Charles Sizemore, CEO of The Memory Company, holds Vegas Golden Knights and Raiders shot glasses during the annual Sports and Tailgate trade show at the Las Vegas Convention Center, upper floors of South Hall on Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2017. (Jeff Scheid/Las Vegas Review-Journal)

Vegas Golden Knights owner Bill Foley address the media during a press conference on Wednesday, March, 1, 2017, at the team office, in Las Vegas. "I'm very excited," said Foley. "I feel like I'm part of the club now." (Benjamin Hager/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @benjaminhphoto

They haven’t dropped the first puck and the Golden Knights already have company — and competition — in Las Vegas.

With the Raiders getting the NFL’s approval to relocate from Oakland to Las Vegas, it means a battle of dollars for Bill Foley’s NHL expansion team, which the NHL granted on June 22 after Foley paid a record $500 million to give the city its first major league pro sports franchise.

And it’s not just about ticket sales. It’s about corporate sponsorships, business opportunities, suite sales and other marketing ventures.

“The bottom line is we have to do our job,” Foley said Monday from Northern California. “I truly believe the Raiders won’t have an impact on our fan base, on ticket sales or our TV and radio deal. The only area where we may have too many lines in the water is in (corporate) sponsorships. We need to do a good job selling sponsorships and selling hockey.”

For the previous 14 months as speculation began then grew that the Raiders may be coming to Las Vegas, Foley and the NHL didn’t seem too concerned. Foley even initially joked that he would be first to buy season tickets while the league said it didn’t concern itself with hypothetical situations. In October, he said he didn’t care about the Raiders, that the Golden Knights were Las Vegas’ first pro sports team and he didn’t like the idea of spending $750 million of public money to build a stadium when the money could be better spent on police, fire and teacher salaries and services.

Monday, he was a little more conciliatory.

“Our preference would be not to have a second team in town so quickly,” Foley said. “But I learned a long time ago not to worry about things that were out of my control. We welcome Mark Davis and the Raiders to Las Vegas.”

But what was first considered fantasy has become reality. And the reality is hockey now has football to deal with in vying for the consumer and corporate dollar in Southern Nevada. Monday, the NHL was also taking a softer stance regarding the Raiders.

“We continue to have every confidence the Vegas Golden Knights franchise will be successful regardless of whether (and when) an NFL franchise might enter the market,” NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly said in an email to the Review-Journal. “The team is committed to working hard to establish close and lasting relationships with its fans and sponsors and to becoming a valued member of the local community — things it has already begun to do.

“At the end of the day, relationships with the two teams offer different value propositions to potential partners, and we believe both can be successful in Las Vegas.”

While the Raiders’ proposed 65,000-seat domed stadium won’t be ready until 2020, that won’t stop the NFL team from establishing business relationships in the Las Vegas community. It will have plenty of selling points, not the least of which is the NFL itself, the most powerful brand in American sports. The team will also sell the Raiders’ rich history which is well-known to football fans.

The Golden Knights don’t play their first-ever game until early October. And while the hockey team has been working diligently on securing those necessary sponsorship deals within the local business community, the fact is they no longer have exclusivity to the market.

“We anticipated this would happen and we’re not surprised by it,” Knights president Kerry Bubolz said. “We’re embracing it.

“You can’t think in a vacuum. You have to look at the big picture. The Raiders are going to increase the visibility of this market and create more opportunities to do business.”

Follow all of our Oakland Raiders to Las Vegas coverage online at reviewjournal.com/Raiders and @NFLinVegas on Twitter. Follow all of our Golden Knights coverage online at reviewjournal.com/GoldenKnights and @HockeyInVegas.

Contact Steve Carp at scarp@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2913. Follow @stevecarprj on Twitter.