“I hate Las Vegas”: Green Day’s personal war against the city that ‘stole’ the Raiders and A’s
As Green Day prepares to perform in Santa Clara ahead of Super Bowl LX, their previous comments about Las Vegas are coming back into the conversation.
Since Green Day is opening Super Bowl LX between the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks at Levi’s Stadium on Sunday, some of you may be wondering if they are fans of any NFL team themselves. Well, one thing is for certain. They’re not fans of the Raiders...at least not anymore.
The Bay Area punk icons have never hidden their roots, their politics, or their grudges. And for nearly a decade, Las Vegas has been squarely in their crosshairs, a symbol of what Oakland lost when its teams packed up and left.
That frustration boiled over in 2017, when the Raiders’ relocation to Las Vegas became official. The band publicly expressed anger and disappointment about losing the team, criticizing the city of Las Vegas itself. Later that same year, while performing at the UC Theatre in Berkeley, Armstrong again took aim at the move, joking that Raider Nation traveling to Nevada would look like “Mad Max, looking for gasoline and killing each other.”
From Raiders to A’s, the wound only deepened
Fast-forward to 2026, and the resentment hasn’t gone away. If anything, it’s gotten worse. The Raiders have now been gone from Oakland for years. MLB’s Athletics have recently followed, finalizing their own move to Las Vegas and leaving Oakland without a major professional sports franchise. For many Bay Area fans, the A’s departure reopened the same scars left by the Raiders and reinforced the idea that Las Vegas took something away from them.
During a September 2024 concert near San Francisco, Armstrong drew national attention when he said of Las Vegas, “I hate Las Vegas. It’s the worst s***hole in America”, comments that led at least two Las Vegas radio stations to pull Green Day’s music from their playlists.
Seattle Seahawks vs New England Patriots live: Super Bowl LX
Green Day has never positioned itself as neutral in that conversation. The band has long aligned itself with working-class Bay Area culture, and Oakland, in particular, has been central to its identity since the early 1990s. The loss of both teams turned Armstrong’s earlier anger into something closer to a running grievance, one rooted in loyalty.
There’s always been a layer of irony to Green Day’s stance. Even after Armstrong’s comments, the band continued to tour Las Vegas, playing shows there as part of major international runs. Armstrong himself has never suggested boycotting the city entirely.
That’s what makes Super Bowl LX so interesting. Instead of performing in Las Vegas, where the Super Bowl has recently made multiple appearances, Green Day will open the NFL’s biggest game back home, in Santa Clara, in front of a national audience. The moment doubles as a celebration of the league’s 60th Super Bowl and a reminder of where the band’s allegiance still lies.
Nearly a decade after Armstrong first yelled “I hate Las Vegas” from a stage, Green Day’s return to the Bay Area spotlight to perform a victory lap at the Super Bowl.
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