This just in: The Oakland Raiders might move to San Diego for the 2019 season!
The Raiders have reached out and are said to be in discussions with the San Diego mayor’s office about the possibility of calling San Diego home for the 2019 season. This according to Dan Sileo of 97.3 The Fan in San Diego.
“I got this email last night,” said Sileo, noting it was from a somewhat well known San Diego attorney who he would not name. He then read the email aloud. ‘I wanted to let you to know off the record here . . . that I learned tonight (this was last night) that there have been discussions between the Raiders playing next season in San Diego with both the Mayor’s office and management of the Raiders.’”
No, no, wait, this just in: The Oakland Raiders might move to Tucson, Arizona for the 2019 season!
Tucson attorney Ali Farhand hopes to make a pitch to the NFL team to consider playing their 2019 home games at Arizona Stadium…
According to Farhang, he and University of Arizona president, Robert Robbins have reached out to the Raiders to discuss the possibility of relocating the franchise to the Sonoran desert.
Listen, guys: Just because two groups are “discussing” something doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. It’s like hot stove baseball rumors: Just because your team took a meeting with some free agent doesn’t mean that they’re actually going to sign him — it could mean they’re just kicking the tires. Likewise, it seems pretty likely that Raiders execs are meeting with anyone and everyone who has a stadium for rent this fall, if only to keep their options open.
That said, the Raiders presumably do have to play somewhere in 2019, so it’ll have to be either Oakland or Santa Clara or San Diego or Las Vegas or San Antonio or Tucson or London or any of a dozen other places. They just don’t seem any closer to figuring it out than they were when they declared back in September that they were throwing a hissy fit over Oakland’s antitrust suit and refusing to return there for one more lame-duck season. Maybe instead of trying to guess where the Raiders should play, we should be trying to handicap when they’ll figure out where they’ll play. How does May sound like as an over-under? I think I’ll take May.
So you listed “Oakland or Santa Clara or San Diego or Las Vegas or San Antonio or Tucson or London” as possible venues.
One more, and they can play one home game in each of the eight cities. Since we know the Raiders love to troll, how about the 8th home game going to St. Louis?
And as a backup in case they can’t even book a one-game lease in Oakland, how about another Alliance city (they’re already visiting two in this scenario) – Birmingham, perhaps?
Boise State has a cool looking field. Let the Silver and Black play on a blue field.
I saw a RED field somewhere over the holidays (bowl season… highlights clip).
Now that was weird… but yeah, Boise and the blue fake grass… Oh well, I guess if its fake it can be any colour right?
There’s got to be at least some interest in having the Raiders play in all black on an all black field with dark grey markings, yes?
Eastern Washington U has a red field. That’s probably it.
Thanks.
If you have been there… can you tell us whether it looks as weird in person?
Every NFL weekend, 15 or 16 NFL stadiums are empty. Why not have the Raiders rotate through the 8 that would draw the most folks when the home team is out of town, or simply play all 8 games at the stadium where they could draw the most week-in, week-out?
Funny thing about the “traveling circus” idea where they played every “home” game in a different stadium is I wouldn’t put it past Mark Davis to do that. If he could make an extra $0.50 off that as opposed to just picking one single location I think he’d probably do it.
Agreed Jeff. I think the only reason he won’t be allowed to do that is that Raiders “home” revenues would likely drop off a cliff if they had 8 different home stadia to play in.
Having them be a road only team (meaning each of their opponents for what would have been “home” games in 2019 get an extra home game themselves) might pass muster… but how they determine the revenue split for these would be an interesting discussion.
Would the Broncos, Chargers (HA!) and Chiefs be willing to share their extra home game gate more equally with Davis just because he so completely bungled his stadium situation?
Or would all Raiders opponents simply say, “yeah, we can host that home game for you. But you only get the visitors share of the gate you would normally get as a road team… less a processing fee of course…”
I don’t get the feeling that the Davis or Spanos families are particularly loved among the NFL owners…
For scheduling purposes, the NFL wants the matter resolved by next month so you’ll get a decision well before May.
I believe I saw February as well.
Probably not within the realm of possibility, but I wonder if the NFL, getting fed up with Davis’ ineptitude, would pressure the Raiders to stay in Oakland, be the fall guy and maybe sweeten the pot for the Raiders to do so.
If the NFL wants February, I’m willing to move my guess up to April.
Well it presumably has to be before April. That’s when the NFL is announcing its schedule and you can’t really announce a schedule if you don’t know if the stadium of one of your teams will be available on the date you announce.
Could you move the schedule announcement later? One would think so. However, that would impact the NFL Schedule Announcement show sponsored by Verizon exclusively on NFL Network (yes, that’s an actual thing, because NFL) so now you potentially impact cable carriage rights, corporate sponsorships, etc. and TV and corporate sponsorships are the real money.
Just play in London already and make yourself useful while embarrassing the league and your fan base with your ineptitude, Mark.
I’m still hoping to see the NFL twist itself into knots if the Chargers are the highest remaining seed come conference championship weekend….
Nothing like seeing one of the league’s marquee games played in front of 26,000 fans of the visiting team….
That would be pretty hilarious. And it would be nice to see Rivers and Gates reach that level again.
Honestly, I’m not even sure the last time the NFL miscalculated so badly in letting a team relocate. The Chargers were in LA for one season in 1960, and they thought they would have a fanbase there.
The NFL is beyond embarrassment.
I’ll go off the board, and predict they follow the lead of the Chargers and move to an MLS stadium. Avaya Stadium in Santa Clara. Sure it only seats 18,000, but that doesn’t mean they won’t outdraw the 49ers. Also, Santa Clara with 2 NFL teams, how crazy would that be? The VTA rail super bowl.
Avaya Stadium is owned by a group associated with the A’s that didn’t want the Raiders at the Coliseum site (and the Raiders didn’t really want the A’s there either). It’s not gonna happen.
But don’t you think they’d jump at the chance to make money off of the Raiders while showing that they can’t even fill a soccer stadium? I mean you have to think their fans will be sufficiently pissed that they stay away.
Why not the Rose Bowl? I know, the NFL doesn’t want to admit that football stadium that don’t cost a billion dollars and are less than 10 years old are perfectly good for football.
The board that runs the Rose Bowl voted down a proposal to be a temporary home for either the Rams or Chargers when they moved to LA. I don’t see why they would have changed their tune with regards to hosting an NFL team: https://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-rose-bowl-nfl-20150708-story.html
Play their home games on a practice field in parts unknown, and stream it to 50,000 spectators in the coliseum with their noses pressed up to their smart phones. Would anyone notice a difference?
I think the league will force Levi’s Stadium or the league will pay off Oakland for another year. (Double what it was this year).
It’s fun to speculate where the Raiders will play next year, especially the possibility of a “traveling road show” of 8 home games in 8 different stadiums, but I find it pathetic that they don’t already have an answer as to what they’re doing.
Where the Raiders will play is, like, kind of an important thing to figure out, since they’re a football team, and, like, they play football games. So knowing where they’ll play is, like, a critical business decision. If they’re still in talks with various places to figure out where that will be, 7 months before they start playing games (exhibition, to be sure), then they clearly don’t understand their own basic business needs.
It’s like a mechanic starting a business without a garage, or a doctor starting his/her practice without an office or clinic. I simply can’t believe the Raiders, and by extension the NFL, are this catastrophically stupid.
Oh wait. They are that stupid! Never mind.
Do keep in mind that the Raiders have a place to play in 2019 — Oakland — but Mark Davis has decided to throw a hissy fit over the fact that Oakland is suing him on antitrust grounds for moving the team to Las Vegas, and so is threatening to take his ball and go home. Possibly literally, if his back yard is big enough.
Statista shows the Raiders home attendance remains reasonably strong (57k and change) over the last couple of seasons.
Wondering if any Oakland fans would care to comment on the veracity of that number as far as actual fans in seats vs tickets sold?
If the numbers are accurate, it seems like support for them has remained strong even after Davis announced they were leaving… not what I would have expected (despite the fact that Raider fans love their Raiders…) for a lame duck organization on it’s way out of town.
The worst thing the NFL allowed was the Chargers moving to LA. And only so the Raiders would not move there. So if I’m Mark Davis I do the following: Play 4-6 games at Santa Clara. Money talks, Play 2 games in San Diego.Play 1 game each in Mexico City and England. Can’t blame the Raiders for not wanting to pay a large rent increase in an old stadium.Might as well play a few games in a similar old stadium(San Diego) with much cheaper rent.