One hopes so, for their sake. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Chargers are heading into a down period (if they aren’t already in one), and that’ll make it harder still to draw casual support.
The Rams likely had the advantage of still having a semblance of a fan base in Los Angeles when they moved back; they’d only been gone for 21 seasons, and as they weren’t replaced in LA when they left, I imagine that a lot of Rams fans from before remained fans.
The Chargers, OTOH, are essentially having to build a fan base from scratch in LA (the fact that they started out in LA in '60 is mostly just a trivia answer now), and they have to do so at the same time that the Rams are working to build up their own fan base. And, the sense I get is that the Chargers fans who were left behind in San Diego are very bitter about being jilted, and most have little interest in making the trek north for games.
Incidentally, as to this… there is no major pro sport where population matters LESS than the NFL. You only have to sell out eight home games, plus playoff games if you get them, and they’re mostly on Sundays. The NFL thrives in Green Bay, which is very small (granted, it draws from Milwaukee, but that’s not a very large market either) and New Orleans, which is quite a bit smaller than many cities without NFL football. St. Louis isn’t even close to being the smallest NFL market; its metro area is larger than Green Bay, New Orleans, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, or Cleveland, and I think the Titans play in Nashville and it’s bigger than that, too.
True statements but moving forward I’d think the NFL would want markets that are growing rather than stagnant. They don’t care about the unwashed masses, but they’d still prefer to be in a growing area where there’s corporate sponsors and luxury box buyers.
But, what do I know? Jacksonville is still a head scratcher to this day.
St. Louis is currently suing both the NFL and the Rams, and it’s unlikely the suits will be settled by putting an NFL team back in St. Louis.
And you can forget about the taxpayers approving any funding for an NFL team/stadium for at least an entire generation. Those burns were third-degree. Besides, the stadium the Rams and NFL deemed not good enough to play in won’t even be paid off for another five years.
This article seems to do a good job of explaining it. Charlotte had been an obvious choice for expansion in the early '90s, but the finalists for the second expansion city were Baltimore, St. Louis, and Jacksonville. For Baltimore, they had been looking at Bob Tisch to be owner, but he bought into the Giants instead, and Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke was fighting against having a new team in his backyard. Experts had figured that St. Louis would get the other spot, but they had problems getting an ownership group put together (even after the NFL gave them another month to sort things out). So, they kind of wound up with Jacksonville (which had been lobbying the NFL for a team for 20 years) by default.
Jacksonville has a lot of issues, as we’ve discussed in the past here – smallish metro area, shoehorned geographically in between the fan bases of three existing teams (Falcons, Bucs, and Dolphins), and in a region where football is loved, but the NFL is often second-tier behind college ball.
Yeah, that makes sense. I went to college at FSU and while the common room at the dorm was packed on Saturdays for college football (Mostly ACC/SEC/Big 10) but on Sundays barely anyone watching the NFL. Of course, that may have just been students getting back to reality on Sunday after shaking off the hangover from non stop partying from Friday afternoon until Saturday night
Agreed. I think this shell game is declining in popularity and mostly needs new suckers to survive. The old victims are especially wary of being burned.
I wonder if I’m the only East Coast guy who periodically gets confused about which California team is currently playing out of which city? Talking about the Oakland/LA/Oakland Raiders… the LA/San Diego/LA Chargers… the LA/Anaheim/Angels… (are there more?). It seems like they’re all on endless journeys up and down the coast.
It’s understandable. The NFL has had four teams based in California (down to three as of this upcoming season), and of those four, three of them have both (a) moved to Los Angeles at some point, and (b) moved away from Los Angeles at some point.
30 minutes, 28 vs. 43 miles. The main difference is that Santa Clara is not really a suburb of SF in any particular way, it’s a suburb of an even larger city.
agree Chargers to LA is a bad idea. they only need 1 team.
If the NFL ever goes to London Jacksonville is the likely team to go there . Their owner owns a soccer team in London, Fulham. Even though they keep talking about it I think a London team is not likely. Makes more sense to have a team in Canada or Mexico due to the time zone issue in London. Fans in Canada already follow the NFL since the CFL is basically a minor league .
The NFL has a policy of not hurting the CFL, so expansion to Canada is unlikely.
Obviously Toronto would do very well as an NFL city, but that would be fatally harmful to the CFL, even though the Toronto Argonauts are one of its least popular teams. Canadians tend to rally around a Canadian franchise in a major league; you will find that Vancouver has more Blue Jay fans than Mariners fans, for instance, and that Winnipeg has more Raptors fans than Timberwolves fans. Even in Windsor, where you can see Tigers, Red Wings, Lions and Pistons games in about a twenty-minute drive, Toronto teams have made headway. A Toronto NFL team would risk pulling fans across the country away from interest in the CFL.
Of course, even if the NFL said “fuck it,” again, you need an owner in Toronto willing to put up a metric (ha!) shit-ton of money for expansion fees and to partially construct a new stadium ANd with the pull to fleece the government into hundred of millions of dollars of funding; the SkyDome/Rogers Centre is not suitable.
NFL does not care about hurting Mexico I assume? Mexico city area has 21 million people so it would be no brainer to go there. Lots of night games I would think due to the climate. Altitude is 7200 feet which might be an issue for visiting teams. (obviously Denver is around 5200)
actually I just noticed the hot season in Mexico city is March to June so that’s not really a problem
And, of course, the players need to be eligible to enter Canada as well as be able to get a work permit quickly should you have some marginal guy who gets signed at the last minute to be a special teams guy. It’s occasionally been an issue in hockey.
That ain’t gonna happen. Not until everybody involved in San Diego loses 150 IQ points. Taxpayer funded stadiums are always and always will be boondoggles to subsidize billionaires. San Diego has wised up to this fact. If the Chargers want a new stadium in SD, they can bloody well pay for it themselves. There will be no tax incentives or public money spent on such a thing in the foreseeable future.
From what I know about the political climate in SD, I think you’re right. And a lot of voters have wisened up to the ‘only the visitors will pay it’ nonsense. Even if it was true, I think people are sick of massive hotel and car rental taxes when they travel to other cities. The Dallas/Fort Worth area is particularly awful, no idea how much goes to stadiums but you get soaked with taxes and fees there
The way I see it, the minute the A’s get a new stadium - and I doubt it will be where the current one is - the Coliseum is doomed for demolition. What does the arena have now, other than when the Globetrotters show up?
From what I have heard, the only non-baseball stadium even on anybody’s drawing boards in the San Francisco Bay Area is a soccer stadium in Concord, but that has limited support as it is; I don’t see plans to make it large enough for an NFL team working out, and even if they did, (a) where would Concord be on the list of cities to move an NFL team to, and (b) what makes everyone so sure that the team would be called Oakland?
It appears their television numbers increased last year and though game attendance was down last year it’s hardly a steep decline. In fact, their television viewership was up.
Since each team equally shares the TV revenues that’s the more important number than the people who sit in the stadium if your team sucks.
cites:
Attendance numbers last 10 years.
If the game is dying it sure is taking it’s sweet time about it.
