And why, if it’s a populous burg, wouldn’t it have one? Do the Conferences deliberately restrict the number of franchises for some reason?
Los Angeles.
It’s a long, long story as to why they don’t have a team right now. And yes, there is a limited number of teams because the league (the conferences don’t mean anything anymore) controls all expansion.
Is there a difference between “an NFC/AFC franchise” and “an NFL franchise”?
32 teams is a perfect number; 8 divisions, 4 teams each; don’t want to mess with that.
After Los Angeles, San Antonio, San Jose and Austin are the largest US cities with no NFL team
- Los Angeles
- San Antonio
- San Jose
- Austin
- Columbus.
But San Jose is already 49ers/Raiders country.
No. The corporate entity is the NFL. The conferences exist primarily exist for scheduling purposes and to maintain the memory of the old NFL and AFL.
The largest markets without an NFL franchise after Los Angeles are Portland, San Antonio, Orlando and Sacramento, all of which are larger than Cincinatti, Cleveland, Kansas City, Indianapolis, Nashville, Jacksonville, New Orleans, Buffalo, and Green Bay.
The Rams will be moving to LA in 2016 or 2017. Bank on it.
On top of which, the 49ers actual stadium is now in Santa Clara, much closer to San Jose than San Francisco:
The question is probably better posed as “What is the largest US media market without an NFL franchise?”
I think an exercise like this is more valid if we use the size of the metro area,* rather than the rather arbitrary size of city boundaries. Just about every NFL team draws a considerable amount of its fanbase, including the people who actually go to the game, from outside the city limits.
By that measure, LA still tops the list, of course, but then you’d have to think about Portland (2.3m), Orlando (2.25m), Sacramento (2.2m), and Las Vegas (2m), all of which are above Columbus (1.95m), San Jose (1.92m) and Austin (1.88m). By this measure, San Antonio remains round #2 or #3, having a metro area about the same size as Portland.
Of course, for a few of those places, you’d have to consider that putting a team there might undermine the fanbases of other, close NFL teams. As you note, plenty in San Jose root for the 49ers. I’ll bet many people in the Orlando area probably support the Bucs or the Dolphins, and people in Columbus are probably split between the Browns and Bengals (wow, what a set of options!). Even folks in Sacramento probably root for one of the Bay Area teams. Who do Portland NFL fans support? The Seahawks? Or is there no real team favored by the locals?
- Edit: or, as yabob suggests, the size of the media market
Baltimore is already Washington DC country, but that hasn’t stopped either from insisting on a team, even when one of theirs ran away in the middle of the night.
(Pace Baltimorians. I know you’re completely different and utterly distinct from the other major metropolis in your area. The 30 whopping miles is all the distance you need.)
Santa Clara (home to the 49ers offices for years and now the home to their stadium) is adjacent to San Jose. It’s the first city on 101 when you leave San Jose heading towards San Francisco.
FWIW, San Antonio has been in play for a potential franchise. There were rumors swirling last off season about a potential bid if the Raiders chose to move.
Texas is certainly big enough to support a 3rd NFL franchise without too much overlap in media markets. As it is, they split their time in some proportion between the Texans and Cowboys.
My thought, of course, being from there. While overshadowed by the Bay Area teams, they are some 80-100 miles away, much further than many East Coast teams, and it’s always been something of an embarrassment that they couldn’t attract any major league team. (The Kings… just don’t count. Basketball is utterly meh to me and both it and they were more so when they limped into town.)
The San Antonio city fathers built a downtown domed stadium in the 1980s to lure an NFL franchise. It did serve as a the Saints temporary home during the Katrina year, but SA missed out on the Jaguars/Panthers expansion round, likely the last real “expansion” the NFL will ever do. Jerry Jones holds the potential of a very strong veto over anyone moving to San Antonio though. There was a survey done some time ago that found that San Antonio has a higher percentage of people who identify themselves as “Cowboys fans” than the DFW Metroplex area and every five years or so, Jerry throws San Antonio a bone by holding training camp in San Antonio instead of Oxnard, California.
The Alamodome is now 30 years old or so and is due for a round of renovations in order to host the NCAA Final Four in a few years. But if an NFL team (the Rrrrraiders) did come to town, the dome would likely have to be a temporary home while a ~$1 billion proper from scratch modern NFL stadium gets built. If it happens, the smartest place to put it would not be in downtown SA but somewhere off I-35 between San Antonio and Austin to maximize the potential of combining the Austin and San Antonio metro areas.
Columbus is more evenly split between Browns, Bengals, and Steelers. The Colts and to a much lesser degree the Lions also draw. In other words, Columbus is never getting an NFL team.
Other than LA, who of the biggest open markets wants a team? I can see San Antonio supporting an NFL team, might as well count Austin as part of that market. But Portland? They seem very happy with the other type of football. Orlando, maybe.
Moved to the Game Room.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Austin and Columbus already have professional football teams. Kidding, sort of.
Can’t believe I completely forgot LA when answering the OP’s question in my head., though I did think of SA unprompted.
FiveThirtyEight did a statistical analysis a few months ago concerning where the best markets for an NFL team would be, based on population and general interest in football (based on Google metrics.) After LA, they concluded that the metro areas in the US with the most “unserved” football fans would be Las Vegas, Sacramento, Virginia Beach/Norfolk, San Antonio, Austin, Columbus, and Portland. (Portland suffers from a low interest in the sport.) They also noted that Mexico City and Toronto would have more potential NFL fans than any of the US cities except LA; and that potential teams in Sacramento, San Antonio, Austin, and Columbus might struggle to build a fan base due to their proximity to other teams.
Oh, and if you combined Austin & San Antonio into a single market (as fiddlesticks suggests), it would be the largest potential football market in the US save LA. But, as noted, they might still struggle to build a fan base.
As a Las Vegas resident, I have to say I certainly feel like we’re one of the best untapped markets for a football team. Or any pro sports team, actually.