NFL Bidder Owns Casino; League Rule Forbids It

Edward P. Roski Jr., who is bidding to land a National Football League expansion for a refurbished Los Angeles Coliseum, owns a casino in Las Vegas--an apparent conflict under league rules.

Roski operates the Silverton Hotel Casino and RV Park, which he opened about 18 months ago when the previous casino went bust. Roski--who owns the property--had been leasing the site to operators of the Boomtown casino.

Roski said he was unaware that the NFL bars team owners from owning an interest in a casino.

“I would have to deal with it,” he said. “If there is such a rule, I would have to discuss it with the NFL, what the alternatives are.”

League spokesman Greg Aiello said there is indeed such a rule. “The rule is that an NFL owner is prohibited from having an ownership interest in a casino--that’s what it is,” he said.

Roski’s casino ownership injects a dash of uncertainty into the bid of his New Coliseum project to beat two rivals for the awarding of the NFL’s 32nd team.

Three weeks ago, Roski had announced that he, rather than colleague Philip Anschutz, a Denver businessman, would be the New Coliseum project’s controlling partner. Anschutz and Roski are now building the Staples Center downtown for the hockey Kings and basketball’s Lakers and Clippers.

They are competing against Michael Ovitz, a former talent agent and Disney executive, who leads a group hoping to build a stadium and mall in Carson. Houston has the third proposal.

The NFL could award the franchise at its Feb. 16 meeting in Dallas.

“We’ll live by the rules of the league,” Roski said in an interview. Noting that the newest expansion team is not scheduled to begin play until 2001 or 2002, he said, “I’ve got plenty of time to look at it.”

The NFL bars its owners from casino ownership for two reasons. One is the potential for conflict of interest.

But the public relations aspect is “probably even more important than the specific ability” to fix a game, said Bill Eadington, an University of Nevada at Reno professor and expert on the relationship between sports teams and gambling.

“All of the professional [leagues] have got to set up for their own self-image some kind of a firewall between them and gambling,” said Eadington, an economics professor who directs the Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming.

The National Hockey League allows team owners to own a casino. But that casino can’t operate a so-called sports book--meaning it cannot take bets on the outcome of games, said league spokesman Frank Brown.

The National Basketball Assn. also permits team owners to own a casino and permits sports betting on all but NBA games, said league spokesman Chris Brienza.

Roski and Anschutz own the NHL Kings, and last week they exercised an option to buy 25% of the NBA Lakers. Silverton does not operate a sports book, said its executive vice president, Craig Cavileer.

The NFL derived its no-casino rule from the power given the league’s commissioner to ban conduct deemed detrimental to the league, Aiello said.

At NFL meetings last month in Kansas City, owners discussed the rule with an eye toward formalizing it in writing, Aiello said.

Although barring casino ownership, the NFL has danced an intriguing minuet when it comes to owners and other gambling-related interests.

Team owners, for example, may own a racetrack. The families of some owners have long had an involvement in tracks--among them the DeBartolos, who own the San Francisco 49ers, and the family of Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney.

Roski said his casino is “not my [principal] business.”

He said, “My business is investing and real estate. I was the owner of a piece of property and I had to take it back.”

In 1989, Roski, who has real estate holdings nationwide, purchased the 80-acre parcel where Silverton now sits. The plan, he said, was to build industrial warehouses.

Instead, with Las Vegas in the midst of a casino building boom, Boomtown went up. After executing a long-term lease with Roski, it opened in 1994.

From the beginning, however, Boomtown struggled--in large part because the site is a five-minute drive south of the Las Vegas Strip, close enough so that potential customers on the road from California whiz by en route to larger gambling venues.

Three years after opening, Boomtown abandoned its lease.

According to the Nevada Gaming Control Board, Roski now owns 90% of the casino. A Roski company, Majestic Nevada Inc., owns the remaining 10%, according to the gaming board.

Silverton operates 1,200 slot machines and 18 gaming tables; it offers 304 hotel rooms and 460 RV spaces, Cavileer said. The RV spaces average 80% occupancy, shooting up to 100% in the winter months, he said.

Instead of hoping to lure tourists, the casino now targets locals. It plans to renovate its restaurants--including the Comstock coffee shop and the Quickdraw snack bar.

Staffing levels, meanwhile, have been cut from 850 to 700, Cavileer said.

“We’ve turned it around, put it back into shape,” Roski said.

Because Silverton is privately held, its financial details are not available. In general, experts said, a casino that size takes in between $40 million and $75 million annually in total revenues.