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It was not so long ago the Raiders were in the thick of the three-team battle for the Los Angeles market. It appeared at one time as if a shared stadium between the Raiders and Chargers in Carson had a fighting chance of getting that market over the Rams’ Inglewood project.
But, ultimately, with a big push from Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, the Rams got the bid along with the Chargers, and the Raiders were left out.
A lot has happened since then. The stadium in Inglewood broke ground, and the Raiders turned their attention to Las Vegas. Since then, the two stadiums have been under construction simultaneously just under 300 miles away from each other.
Things seem to be moving along fairly smoothly for the Raiders’ Las Vegas stadium, with reports that they are at or near the initial budget, seat licenses are exceeding expectations, and the completion date is on schedule. The same cannot be said for the Inglewood project.
An article from ESPN.com today detailed the turmoil involved in the Rams/Chargers shared SoFi stadium in Inglewood. Part of the issue is they are way over budget. The other major concern involves uncertainty about fan support.
The Rams’ owner is a shrewd real estate mogul who has found changing the Los Angeles sports landscape more challenging and expensive than he’d imagined. Both L.A. teams suffered losses the previous weekend. The Rams drew an announced crowd of 75,695 to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, but it was half-empty at kickoff and contained so many San Francisco 49ers fans that the Rams’ offense was forced to use a silent snap count. The Chargers, on national television against the Pittsburgh Steelers at the 25,300-seat Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson, 16 miles south of downtown L.A., felt as if they were playing on the road — again. Steelers fans either outnumbered Chargers fans or came close, as did Denver Broncos fans at the prior home game, as did Houston Texans fans at the home game before that, as did Indianapolis Colts fans in the season opener.
We’ve all seen the crowd at StubHub/Dignity Health Sports Park packed with opposing fans. Of course, we tend to notice that the crowd is dominated by Silver & Black. That was nearly the case in San Diego as well, with crowds regularly 50-50 Raiders-Chargers.
It was only going to get worse when the Chargers pissed off the San Diego fans by picking up and moving to LA, where they had little to no fan support. And the Rams were banking on there still being a large contingent of fans remaining from when they left for St Louis back in the mid-90s. That hasn’t materialized as they had hoped.
The red flags that are obvious now were visible then. League research indicated neither the Rams nor the Chargers had an overwhelming reservoir of support in the L.A. region, with fewer local fans than the Patriots, Steelers, Packers, Cowboys and even the Raiders, according to some team and league studies.
Yeah, the Raiders also left in the mid-90s to head back to Oakland. But the diehard fans in Southern California understood Oakland to be the Raiders’ original home, and being that it was an easy five-hour trip up or a quick, cheap plane flight, they could still catch a few home games, not to mention that annual trip to San Diego. So, the Raiders fans in LA remained fairly strong.
What’s more, a “fair amount” of the Raiders SSL buyers live in L.A. and will hop on I-15 on weekends, an executive with knowledge of the sales says. It has left a few owners and team officials worried and irritated that the Raiders have siphoned off part of an already wary L.A. fan base.
Now the Raiders are basically the same road trip away as they were before, so why wouldn’t those same fans just keep doing what they’ve always done? For many Raiders fans in LA, it would make no difference whether they were heading to Oakland or Las Vegas. For some, in East LA, Vegas is quite a bit closer.
The most surprising thing about all this is the seeming surprise of the owners. They had to know bringing a team to town wasn’t going to result in an instant shift in loyalty.
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