San Dee-Ay-Go, make that Los An-Gel-Es, Super Chargers?

*BUMP* NFL vote on move could happen as early as Monday. Looks like Raiders to Vegas is about to happen:

Column: Raiders in Sin City? You can bet on it

 

Viva Las Vegas!

 

WTF would be Miami's opposition? Do they want it for themselves?

 

So that's 3 NFL teams that have voted to relocate in 14 months. How is the NFL still considered so stable and powerful?

 

Maybe the owner didn't like the long term business model of a NFL franchise in Vegas or he didn't like the proximity to the gambling empire of the US. Does seem a little odd that one owner would hold out after all that went into making this deal.

 

The money they print.

 

Raiders to play 2017 and 2018 in Oakland before moving to new playpen. Yeah, that's gonna go over well.

 

The Chargers move was the idiotic one of the three. They had a loyal fan base and a place to build a new stadium but the city/county wouldn't do it for them. So now they're going to play in a soccer stadium while a new facility is built catering to fans who don't want them there and unable to bring along the fans they already had. Raiders at least makes sense they moved because that stadium was crap and Oakland is hemming and hawing about whether there was actually a plan to finance a new facility. The Rams was just an owner being greedy, but again, they have the left overs of a previous fan base to draw from.

That all said, this will bite the NFL in the ass. The Chargers are going to fail badly, the Raiders won't be able to sustain enough season tickets and if they have two crap years, people will find other shit to do in Vegas. At the very least if the two franchises do take a massive dump, we can finally forget thoughts of NFL London.

 

The NFL gambled on San Diego voters approving the stadium deal, clearing the path for the Raiders to join the Rams in LA. But I think San Diego voters got tired of Spanos' act (see also, Bud Adams' relationship with Houston) and voted him out.

Roger Goodell miscalculate badly ... unpossible.

 

With the exception of Pittsburgh, Green Bay and Dallas, all the other teams have traveling fan bases that are mediocre or practically nonexistent. If the NFL thinks 10,000 people are flying from Tampa to Vegas to watch the Bucs, that's nothing but a fantasyland.

 

Cleveland would fill that place up. Probably Chicago fans, too.

 

I imagine their late-season games against anybody from the snowy north will probably draw a few hundred well-heeled travelers.

I could see a decent number of Denver or KC fans doing it sometimes.

When and if they play the Cardinals they could probably get a little desert rivalry going.

That's a matter of geography and travel costs as much as anything. Flying anywhere and staying a couple nights in a hotel for two people costs a thousand bucks at the drop of a dime. Even high-roller NFL ticket-holders don't have thousand-dollar bills they can toss out the window like confetti. Yeah, some do, but not that many.

So the teams with fanbases that "travel" are the teams in the Northeast and Midwest where you have a dozen teams within one day's drive.