The Southern Nevada Water Authority is proposing a 10-year marketing deal with the future Las Vegas Raiders that will pay the NFL franchise more than $30 million in tax dollars over the next decade, enabling the agency to use team logos and place advertising in the $1.9 billion Allegiant Stadium.

The deal, which is up for approval at the water authority’s board meeting on Thursday, is worth $2.5 million with an automatic annual four percent increase that will see the annual payment top out at about $3.5 million by 2029.

Scott Huntley, a public services senior manager with the authority, said that the marketing contract price was the same for a group of roughly 20 “founding partners” including Caesars Entertainment, Desert Ford Dealers and Cox Communications that have initial advertising rights at the Allegiant Stadium, which is partially funded by $750 million in Las Vegas hotel room taxes. 

Huntley said the Raiders had contacted the water authority’s general manager John Entsminger about potentially advertising in the new stadium earlier this year, and that the two sides have been in contract negotiations since July. 

The proposed contract is a major expansion of the SNWA’s marketing budget with professional sports teams; agency spokesman Bronson Mack said the water authority’s advertising budget with UNLV, minor league baseball team Las Vegas Aviators, Las Vegas Lights FC and the National Hockey League’s Golden Knights is only about $500,000 in total. SNWA’s total advertising campaign for water compliance and conservation is roughly $4.9 million a year, he said.

But Huntley said the proposed advertising contract would reap many positive water conservation benefits for the authority, including an estimated 169 million impressions and would help SNWA target a larger and more diverse audience of Raiders fans than a normal marketing campaign or through partnerships with other sports teams.

“It is a big, big audience and it is an audience that we very much would like to get to,” he said.

The contract gives the water authority wide advertising privileges — focused on water conservation and restriction programs — at the stadium and during NFL games, including the ability to place English and Spanish television ads for games controlled by the Raiders and other ads during other team television and social media programming. 

The contract buys the regional water authority digital and physical advertising spaces on TV, radio, social media and physically at the stadium, including the sponsorship of a two-minute warning, a large sign in the stadium’s main concourse and a “marquee signage package” allowing SNWA material to appear on a team-operated billboard near the stadium on Interstate 15.

On the digital side, the contract affords the SNWA branding and a rotating advertisement on the team’s desktop, tablet and mobile sites (plus the team’s official app) with an entitlement of 1 million impressions a year, plus rights of up to 250,000 15-second pre-roll advertisements on the team’s digital platforms. It also guarantees a full page color advertisements in the team’s gameday magazine.

The water authority would also be designated as the “presenting sponsor” of the team’s final non-nationally televised preseason game. The contract also allows the water authority to have advertising privileges in bathrooms throughout the upper and lower concourse of the stadium; something Huntley said was advantageous given the connection to water in bathrooms and the presence of a “captive audience.”

“We like to use a lot of humor in our advertising and the jokes in bathrooms almost write themselves,” he said.

The contract will also give the authority license to potentially use Raiders players in advertisements — something that SNWA used to great success with Golden Knights fan favorite Ryan Reaves in a television ad with more than 117,000 views on YouTube. Mack said the agency had the “exact intention” to use the Raiders in the same way in future advertising and marketing material.

“We're hit with over 5,000 ads and messages a day as Americans from media, and you only have that 1.3 (to) 1.5 seconds to capture that attention and get that message through and cut through the noise,” he said. “And that's one of the things that Ryan Reeves really helped us do, because those ads are so over the top, and really kind of silly...but those ads are cutting through the noise and they're getting people to stop (and) listen to the message.”

Mack added that the water authority had found in research that in residential homes, the individual most often responsible for setting or changing the sprinkler clock is a male, making sports advertising (and its predominantly male audience) suitable for conservation messaging.

“Utilizing sports and communicating through sports is just a great way for us to reach that target demographic,” he said.

The contract also gives the SNWA the ability to use various designations, including “Official Water Conservation Partner of the Raiders” and “Official Water Conservation Partner of Allegiant Stadium.” 

Additionally, the contract requires the Raiders to annually donate $600,000 for the installation or upgrade of two Clark County School District football fields from grass to synthetic turf. The school district will select which fields to upgrade. The contract allows the Raiders to make “reasonable efforts” to secure NFL grants for similar donations and for the schools to use turf previously used by the Raiders.

That portion of the contract also requires the Raiders to invite a “mutually agreed number” of SNWA Youth Advisory Council for a tour of the stadium, including an appearance by a Raiders executive, a catered meal and a social media post by the team.

The SNWA will also receive some other benefits through the contract, including guaranteed annual appearances by six Raiders alumni, six appearances by at least two Raiderettes and three appearances by the Raider’s mascot. The appearances are limited to an hour, must be in Clark County and specific alumnus and Raiderettes are up to the team’s discretion.

The contract also gives the SNWA an annual $100,000 “Activation Fund” credit, which can be used to purchase stadium tour tickets, rental of the team’s practice facility, advertising inventory and other “mutually agreed inventory.” The water authority is the latest public agency in the state to become financially involved with the Raiders, who agreed to move to Las Vegas after state lawmakers in 2016 approved allocating $750 million in hotel room taxes to fund construction of the stadium.

The city of Henderson gave the football team a $6 million discount on a sale of unused land for the team’s headquarters in early 2018, and NV Energy — the state’s incumbent electric monopoly — reached a deal with the football team in October for a specially designed, discounted electric rate model for stadium operations.

Daniel Rothberg contributed to this story.