The Alamodome opened in 1993. Since then the Raiders and Rams moved, Jacksonville and Carolina got expansion teams, Baltimore and Nashville got old teams they could call new, and Cleveland and Houston got replacement teams. All San Antonio got was three Saints games after Katrina tore up the Superdome.
San Antonio now gets to be the “we’ll move if you don’t give us what we want” city. Don’t expect them to actually get a team, though.
The NFL would love it if the Raiders shared Levi’s Stadium with the San Francisco 49ers, but that’s a tenant situation. Nothing about the Santa Clara stadium says silver and black. Davis wants nothing to do with it.
On the news here in Sacramento, they were saying Levi’s stadium was built for two teams, and includes two home locker rooms, as well as LED lighting that can change colors. Altho all the seats are 49er red. The mayor of Santa Clara is supporting a Raiders move to the stadium (altho I am not sure how much pull he has). If the Chargers go and become room-mates with the Rams, the Raiders’ owner may have no other option.
Amazing how in baseball Fenway Park and Wrigley Field are a century old, they have small seating capacity yet the fans love them and both franchises are very profitable.
I've seen estimates that moving to Los Angeles increases the value of the Rams by $500 million. While all NFL teams are profitable (and many of the other teams in other sports are), where an owner really makes money is when he sells it.
I don’t think an NFL team would have trouble affording some sprinklers and a water bill.
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Amazing how in baseball Fenway Park and Wrigley Field are a century old, they have small seating capacity yet the fans love them and both franchises are very profitable.
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Fenway and Wrigley are both significantly different from what they were a long time ago, and their seating capacities are not that small anymore as compared to the average. I don’t think Wrigley’s even in the bottom ten anymore. MLB stadiums have been getting smaller, in terms of seating capacity, for some time now. There used to be many stadia above 50,000, some above 60,000 and one in Cleveland above 70; now only one, Dodger Stadium, is substantially above 50,000, and just a handful more are around that number, and one of them, Turner Field, will soon be gone. The truth is that most of the seats past a certain number were all cheapies anyway. You’re better off building a stadium that gets rid of those but allows you to charge more for the good seats.
To be fair-ish, Turner Field was not built as a baseball stadium but as the olympic stadium for the 1996 Olympics. It was converted to a baseball stadium a year later.
Don’t take this as a defense of the Braves moving, though; everything about that deal stinks to high heaven.
You are right but I suppose a newer stadia could have more corporate luxury suites, which a lot of owners love. The Red Sox in the mid 60s were talking about a new stadium but dropped the idea when they suddenly got good in 1967. I also think a lot of stadium and arena deals are also tied to developing the land around it.
This is very true. I would say ALL deals are tied to additional development, with promises of “multi-use” development, additional jobs, and “revitalization”, which may or may not work. The plan in L.A. is very much like this, but the location at the Hollywood Park race track is going to make things interesting on the surrounding freeways - I wonder how they are going to mitigate that.
I visited Turner Field in 2004 and was stunned at how nice a ballpark it was. I expected a multipurpose stadium and it looked like nothing of the sort. They planned its transition to baseball field really, really well. I found it a really lovely ballpark and my visit was thoroughly enjoyable.
One cool feature of Turner Field was the Braves Hall of Fame, literally a mini-Hall of Fame and Museum dedicated specifically to Braves history and great players (which is a hell of a history, when you think about it.) I spend 20 minutes in it before the game and was enchanted. It was such a wonderful idea and yet I’ve never seen anything like it at any other park I’ve visited.
This is going to utterly fuck traffic which is my main concern. I was just fine with no team in the area.
The guy who sits next to me at work had a great idea (maybe not original to him). They should have built a big stadium there and done like they do with London except do it like ten times a year. Have different teams every week. L.A. has so many people from all over who would love to see their team and they wouldn’t have the problem of fickle LA fans abandoning a shitty team.