The NFL's Relocation Problem

For over a year now, I’ve been preaching the gospel of Jeffrey Siniard, who theorized that the rising cost of NFL stadiums would one day lead to a situation where each of the 32 NFL teams resided in the top 20 markets in the country and leaving a lot of teams sharing stadiums.

The Oakland Raiders being allowed to move to Las Vegas is one more domino to fall in that scenario, another team leaving their home market for no reason other than it can not afford to hand out $750 Million in public money while Las Vegas can (or at least is going to, whether or not it can).

You can fully expect the next team that wants to build an NFL stadium in a not-top-20 TV market to begin threatening to move in with the San Francisco 49ers in Santa Clara, California.

Things are going downhill in a hurry for the NFL’s relationship with its long-time fan bases, and it’s 100% the fault of overpriced stadiums and a reliance on public money (which is drying up).

How does the NFL exist in a world where they have to pay for these stadiums themselves and can only make a profit off of them in a mega-market with multiple teams filling it?

You can hear me rant more about it in today’s Generally Speaking podcast:

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Thanks for listening!