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Foley, Golden Knights welcome Raiders to Las Vegas

2016 NHL Awards - Red Carpet

LAS VEGAS, NV - JUNE 22: Owner Bill Foley of the new Las Vegas NHL franchise attends the 2016 NHL Awards at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino on June 22, 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

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Today, the NFL approved the Oakland Raiders’ move to Las Vegas, marking the second professional sports franchise to land in the city in the last nine months.

Golden Knights owner Bill Foley, the man responsible for the first, welcomed the Raiders with open arms.

“On behalf of the entire Vegas Golden Knights family, I would like to welcome and congratulate Mark Davis and the Oakland Raiders on their relocation to the great city of Las Vegas,” Foley said in a release. “It truly is an exciting time to be from Las Vegas. There is only a select group of cities in North America that are home to both an NHL and an NFL franchise and Vegas is now one of them.

“This alone should be a great source of pride for our community and our fans. Las Vegas has always been one of the most popular destination cities in the world and it is now emerging as a premier location for major league professional sports.”

More on when the Raiders will move to Vegas, per the Review Journal:

The Raiders will debut in Las Vegas no later than the 2020 season, when a 65,000-seat domed stadium, to be constructed at an estimated cost of $1.9 billion, is expected to be ready. The site of the new stadium has not been finalized, although the leading location is an empty lot on the west side of Interstate 15, between Russell Road and Hacienda Avenue, across from Mandalay Bay.

The Raiders might very well play regular and preseason games at UNLV’s Sam Boyd Stadium in 2018 and 2019, possibly playing fulltime at the site during that time frame.

In speaking with the RJ’s Steve Carp, Foley acknowledged the Raiders would provide competition for corporate sponsorship, adding the Golden Knights would have to “work harder” to secure them.

Carp also reached out to NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly:

In prepping Vegas for draft, McPhee cites ‘outstanding’ record with CapsRelated: