Las Vegas Raiders home games should start at Midnight on Saturday / by kevin murray

The National Football League (NFL) is not permitted to have games on either Friday as this conflicts with High School football games, or on Saturday as this conflicts with College football games, per the anti-trust agreement enacted in 1961. The thing is though that Saturday officially ends at midnight, and thus games could be played at midnight, if the NFL were so inclined to do so. When it comes to cities that are open 24/7, the city that many a person considers to be the epitome of being open all night long, as long as there is money to be made and money to be spent, is Las Vegas. So too, in Las Vegas, for many years, Saturday night has been considered to be fight night, because the hotel industry, which essentially is a duopoly, between MGM Resorts International and Caesars Entertainment desires strongly to have those so visiting their city to be booked for the entire weekend to see the big event, as opposed to tourists coming into town so as to take in an NFL game on a Sunday, and then leaving the very same day.

 

When it comes to a televised NFL event starting at midnight, one must take into consideration that the West Coast of America consists of about fifty-four million people, of which, some of those people, might very well be interested in watching a live NFL game at that time period. The only tangible way to find out though would be to televise a game at midnight. Additionally, the only way to tell how well the attendance for a home game for the Las Vegas Raiders would be at midnight would be to have a game at that time. So too, the only way for Las Vegas to know whether a Raiders home game at midnight is better for their overall revenue and foot traffic would be to have a home game at that time. It would therefore then seem rather logical to at least test out the theory and see if the result would be something that was beneficial for Las Vegas or not.

 

Indeed, Las Vegas is not a normal city, for it keeps its lights on as well as the drinks flowing, all throughout the night and well into the wee hours of the morning, of which, a game at midnight, may well be the type of event that would get the party started or keep the party going, and therefore then have many a person expending more money to enjoy the watching of such.  It must be said, that the overall interest in a midnight game would probably be as good or perhaps better than those games currently being played in Europe, which begin at 9:30AM ET, which is 6:30AM on the West Coast.  It would seem that having a game at midnight, would encourage those that are natural night owls to take in a live sporting event, that would thus extend the evening for them, which seems superior to expecting people to rise up bight and early on a Sunday morning, to take in a game that isn’t even been played within the Continental United States, and because of its early start, would seem inappropriate then to start the party so early in the day upon.