Zizou wrote:
If the Rams and/or Raiders go, what city will owners threaten to move to when they want a new stadium?
Curious Hair wrote:
The league has successfully used Los Angeles to blackmail Minnesota, San Francisco, Buffalo, Jacksonville, Arizona, Indianapolis, Houston, and Seattle's respective government entities into either furnishing new stadiums or making significant capital improvements to existing ones. That's pretty significant. San Diego is probably going to join the list too. But now the league is running out of places to threaten. It might be time to just cash in the Los Angeles card, might as well do it with the team that played there for about 50 years.
There aren't really any portable teams left once the Rams and Raiders are accounted for. Only nine out of 32 stadiums are more than twenty years old, and of those nine, five don't count: Soldier Field and Lambeau Field are almost total rebuilds, Arrowhead Stadium has been heavily renovated, Ralph Wilson Stadium is going to be heavily renovated, and the Georgia Dome is going to be replaced altogether. That leaves the Oakland Coliseum, the Superdome, Qualcomm Stadium, and Joe Robbie's Name of the Week. Saints aren't going anywhere, duh, I don't think the Dolphins are either, and the Chargers seem to have changed their tack from exploring a move to Los Angeles to asking for indemnification fees (that they aren't entitled to) from whoever does move in. The Raiders will keep sniffing around San Antonio, Los Angeles, and Oakland until someone gives them what they want, and with that the NFL will be pretty much rock-solid, or at least as rock-solid as a league based around sociopathy and brain damage is going to get in the coming years.
And sure, the league has done fine without Los Angeles, but if you can subtract a low-ceiling market in St. Louis and add a high-ceiling market in Los Angeles, why not do it? Bear in mind we're talking about America's Favorite TV Show here, not the goofy-ass niche-market economics of hockey where Winnipeg can generate more revenue than cities five times its size.
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Molly Lambert wrote:
The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.