There is still a chance the Oakland Raiders and Green Bay Packers play a pre-season game at Mosaic Stadium in the Saskatchewan capital, according to the former voice of the Roughriders, Rod Pedersen.
“The game isn’t dead, yet. There’s still a chance that it could be played in Saskatchewan, and specifically, Regina. It has to do with the timing of the game, the Riders are home Saturday, the NFL game was originally slated for Friday,” Pedersen said on 680 CJOB radio in Winnipeg.
“What I’m told is that the Raiders are amenable to playing this game on the Thursday moving it up a day. The organizers – there’s a lot of people that want this game to be played in Regina – chief among them the City of Regina, Evraz Place, which is the grounds which houses the stadium, they want it, and believe me the fans want it.”
CJME/CKOM radio host John Gormley reported the possible NFL exhibition game between the Raiders and Packers won’t happen in Regina. He said the Raiders-Packers game won’t happen in Regina because a certain green and white football team didn’t want anything to do with it.
“It hasn’t been a very good 24 hours for the Saskatchewan Roughriders. The report from CJME was the Riders are the ones blocking this game. The Riders sent out a statement saying we would accommodate the game, but we can’t flip our stadium over in time for the NFL game to the CFL game. I believe that’s the fourth or fifth reason why the Saskatchewan Roughriders don’t want this game in what they feel is their stadium,” Pedersen said.
“I don’t think that they want to give up revenue to the NFL. They think that every dollar spent on the Raiders or the NFL is not a dollar being spent on their football club and revenue for them, that’s No. 1. No. 2 I don’t think they want to give up their stadium. And No. 3 I don’t think they want their field tinkered with. And then when you get into flipping the stadium over, that’s reason four or five.”
The NFL exhibition game would have been economic boon for the city and the province and if it’s not played there’s going to be some very upset people Pedersen said. The Raiders want the game north of the border to try and capture new fans.
“The Raiders are going to play this home game in Canada, somewhere. The Raiders don’t really care whether it’s Saskatchewan or Winnipeg, but it’s going to be played in Canada, period. They want to expose the game to Canada. The Raiders wanted to put an imprint on Saskatchewan sort of like the Vegas Golden Knights have as their fan base,” Pedersen said.
“They see a lot of football fans up here, they just want to expand their brand within Canada and within the province of Saskatchewan. That’s why Regina was ideally locale No. 1. They’re coming to Canada no matter what. The organizers of this and the City of Regina still want it to be played in Regina.”
https://3downnation.com/2019/03/27/raiders-packers-nfl-pre-season-game-in-regina-isnt-dead-yet-rod-pedersen/
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