AxelRipper Posted January 22, 2010 Share Posted January 22, 2010 I should also add that the opposition to spending even a nickel of public money is hugely powerful here (and enshrined in law) so whoever brings a team would have to self-finance everything unless they make the Coliseum home. See, the Coliseum, a big financial drain, is owned by the state, the city and the county, and about the only thing those three political entities can agree on is that it needs the revenue stream a pro football team can bring into the coffers. Competitors need not apply. So any NFL team locating within the county of Los Angeles is damn well going to play its games in the Coliseum. This, in fact, is the heart of the battle between LA and the NFL that's been going on for years now. The NFL continues to insist on a new stadium and the politicians insist on the Coliseum. excellent post... good to see someone who knows LA good but i have to ask, hasnt this already been approved if they secure a team to play there? http://www.losangelesfootballstadium.com/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EndZoneCrew Posted January 22, 2010 Share Posted January 22, 2010 http://nky.cincinnati.com/article/AB/20100...for-stadium-fix new stadiums will be the death of pro franchises in most cities.....maintain what we have, there is no need for a new stadium! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PromoTheRobot Posted January 22, 2010 Share Posted January 22, 2010 new stadiums will be the death of pro franchises in most cities.....maintain what we have, there is no need for a new stadium! If you think RWS is a dump, you never saw War memorial Stadium. "Rockpile" is being kind. More like a dogpile. PTR Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
8-8 Forever? Posted January 22, 2010 Share Posted January 22, 2010 You are most certainly wrong. I have lived in Orange County, CA for the past 13 years until moving back to Buffalo, and traveled all over this great country. No one wants to see the Bills to move, and alot of people care. The Bills are a unique important franchise in the NFL. By stripping Buffalo of the Bills its another important unique experience lost. The NFL isn't stupid, it needs teams like the Bills, and many of the fans agree. I sincerely hope you are right. But I've lived in Dallas, Chicago and DC for the past 25 years and the Bills are simply not part of the NFL conversation among NFL fans. They just kind of listen to you and then go the other way. Just not part of the average fans vocabulary. Being crappy for 10 years hasn't helped. No one wants to see them move, I agree, the place/franchise is an interesting "curiosity" in NFL lore. Hey , I grew up in the Ralph. My point was that if/when it happens, the publicity will likely be narrow and brief. That's all. Doesn't make it right, it just is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yungmack Posted January 22, 2010 Share Posted January 22, 2010 excellent post... good to see someone who knows LA good but i have to ask, hasnt this already been approved if they secure a team to play there? http://www.losangelesfootballstadium.com/ Note that the last entry on the timeline was in 2008. Roski is a big time developer who put together the Staples Center deal which is in the Coliseum corridor, a burgeoning area in the heart of the city. While I don't know this for a fact, I have to assume he owned a lot of the land around there and profited greatly. His proposed location in the City of Industry is on the fringe of the county. Not a bad spot but far from the ideal. My guess is that Roski who, naturally for a developer, uses Other People's Money, owns a lot of land around the proposed site and is hoping to replicate the Staples experience. Building a stadium and bringing in an NFL team is in one sense a "gimmick" upon which to build out the area. I don't believe he's doing this because he's passionate about the NFL. If Grand Opera suddenly became popular enough to draw 80,000 fans every Sunday, we might just as easily see a gigantic version of La Scala rising in the rat lands to the east of LA. For what it's worth, this isn't the first stadium proposed for that area. Nor is Roski the first bigtime guy to come forward with a privately funded package - stadium included - to induce an NFL team to relocate here. Every single one has crashed and burned. Do not underestimate the political clout of LA county and city to frustrate the heaviest hitters. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
8-8 Forever? Posted January 22, 2010 Share Posted January 22, 2010 and I'll start rooting for the Maple Leafs when that happens. you will likely be in the minority, me thinks. half the teams fans don't even live in the area anymore. they will simply see their team in a different stadium on TV.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ntjacks79 Posted January 22, 2010 Share Posted January 22, 2010 again, i agree with you......toronto is now part of the bills market......the nfl and any future owner would be foolish to give that up......as long as we continue sellouts we keep the team......i do see the NFL going to an 18 game seasson with less pre season games. thats 9 home games.......i could easily see 2-3 home games in toronto, eventually. Wouldn't that be "just lovely"? Now we can have the privilege of giving away home-field advantage for 2-3 games per year rather than 1. Doesn't anyone see what this does to the team? Coaches and GM's are using it as one of the reasons not to come here and it's obvious it hurts the team on the field. If this team truly can't survive in Buffalo (I don't believe it) than it should leave. But destroying the team and doing something SO stupid as this Toronto-Fiasco is absolutely moronic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dwight in philly Posted January 22, 2010 Share Posted January 22, 2010 i do not get all the negativity on the RALPH!.. it is a great venue to watch a game(tailgating goes without saying). i think new ownership would be wise to tweek the stadium the way the folks in green bay did to lambeau. it does not help that the media is "gloom and doom" about the bills long term future in buffalo. i may have my head buried in the sand but i just refuse to believe the bills will move. they have a storied legacy and the reason they are not "relevant" is not due to the fans or profitabilty. it is because of a meddling owner.. plain and simple.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ntjacks79 Posted January 22, 2010 Share Posted January 22, 2010 that is exactly what will happen. 6 games in toronto, 4 in the Ralph. done. no one taking on a $750m mortgage for a franchise is going to rely on income solely from the leagues smallest , poorest market to pay it off. . sucks, but WNY hasn't been able to afford the bills in a long time... the NFL is the big time financially , and WNY is less than minor league. heck the area can't even support a minor league baseball team. And no one sees anything wrong with this? 6 games in Toronto and 4 in Buffalo is STUPID. The team won't have home field advantage in ANY of it's home games and neither city will feel passionate towards the team. If this is such a great idea why don't we disband the Sabres and have the Leafs play 25 home games at ACC and 15 at HSBC? If that sounds crazy to you, that's the same that 6-4 for the Bills sounds to me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tcali Posted January 22, 2010 Share Posted January 22, 2010 I sincerely hope you are right. But I've lived in Dallas, Chicago and DC for the past 25 years and the Bills are simply not part of the NFL conversation among NFL fans. They just kind of listen to you and then go the other way. Just not part of the average fans vocabulary. Being crappy for 10 years hasn't helped. No one wants to see them move, I agree, the place/franchise is an interesting "curiosity" in NFL lore. Hey , I grew up in the Ralph. My point was that if/when it happens, the publicity will likely be narrow and brief. That's all. Doesn't make it right, it just is. Chicago isnt part of the conversation either. Or DC. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EndZoneCrew Posted January 22, 2010 Share Posted January 22, 2010 you will likely be in the minority, me thinks. half the teams fans don't even live in the area anymore. they will simply see their team in a different stadium on TV.. Are you kidding me? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kota Posted January 22, 2010 Share Posted January 22, 2010 So things on the NFL Network are Fact now? I seriously hate that station. I don't think the Bills aren't moving ever. Even when Ralph Wilson passes on. People get so down on the Bills because they are losing and they start thinking worst case scenario. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jr1 Posted January 22, 2010 Share Posted January 22, 2010 The moving story is filler Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Meark Posted January 22, 2010 Share Posted January 22, 2010 they should jsut move the chargers to LA. The majority of their fan base is located their anyways. You obviously don't know what the hell you are talking about.. I lived in LA for 10 years and have lived in San Diego the past 20 years.. The Chargers fan base is in San Diego, PERIOD. Most people in LA are NOT Charger fans. However, this town (San Diego) is freaking nuts for the Chargers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Malazan Posted January 22, 2010 Share Posted January 22, 2010 Would David Beckham be playing for an LA team? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ntjacks79 Posted January 22, 2010 Share Posted January 22, 2010 You obviously don't know what the hell you are talking about.. I lived in LA for 10 years and have lived in San Diego the past 20 years.. The Chargers fan base is in San Diego, PERIOD. Most people in LA are NOT Charger fans. However, this town (San Diego) is freaking nuts for the Chargers. +1. I'm a Buffalo native and had Chargers season tix a few years while leaving in SD. Orange County has it's Charger fans. But LA is "Raider Nation". You ought to go to a Charger-Raider game in San Diego. 25% of the Stadium roots for the Raiders... and they ALL come from LA County. The Chargers are way bigger than I realized in San Diego County. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Billsfansince72 Posted January 22, 2010 Share Posted January 22, 2010 Don't forget the Chargers started in Los Angeles. They want a new stadium but aren't getting one from the taxpayers. Move them 80 miles north and call them the SoCal Chargers. Would it suck for SD fans? Sure, but at least they could still drive 90 minutes and follow their team. PTR You obviously never drove in SoCal if you think there's only a 90 minute commute from San Diego to LA. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
All_Pro_Bills Posted January 22, 2010 Share Posted January 22, 2010 I've lived in Los Angeles since the 1960s so let me give you my observations on the NFL putting a team here. First of all, LA is constantly referred to as "the second largest media market in the US," so the NFL needs a team there. What goes unexamined is that a huge percentage of that market is made up of immigrants from Korea, Iran, Hong Kong, China, Armenia, Russia, Israel and just about anywhere else you can think of. There is even a community of Inuits. And the largest group of immigrants are Latinos from Mexico to the tip of South America. And among these people, there is almost zero interest in American football. The native born in LA who do love pro football include a very large percentage of "immigrants" from other parts of the country who continue to support their hometown teams. No respectable sports bar here can survive without enough TVs to carry all the Sunday games. They really aren't interested in "the LA Bills." Or any other team for that matter. The final segment of the potential fan base for an NFL team are the locals, and most of them are die-hard Rams or Raiders fans who continue to follow them. Raider fans especially continue to congregate in large numbers at sports bars. Southwest flights are packed on gameday with fans flying into Oakland for the game. So they're not interested in another franchise moving here either. My estimation is that only the Rams, Raiders and Chargers have a reasonable chance of stirring up enough fan excitement to make the move viable (and the Rams are supposedly in serious talks with Ed Roski to do just that). Your post is excellent and drills down the issue of 'market size' to the detailed level needed to understand what kind of interest a transplanted team would garner. Measured purely by individuals interested in a local pro football team, I'd wager the Buffalo market would fare pretty well in terms of 'relative' market size (football fans divided by total population). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chalkie Gerzowski Posted January 23, 2010 Share Posted January 23, 2010 new stadiums will be the death of pro franchises in most cities.....maintain what we have, there is no need for a new stadium! There was a better, more in-depth article about Cincinnati's situation elsewhere on the web. More like Cincinnati is holding the soap and they just bent over for the Brown family. But, that's what Cincy people voted for. They paid about $450 million for Paul Brown Stadium, yet many other stadiums built in that same 1998-2002 time frame cost about $300 million or a bit under that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chalkie Gerzowski Posted January 23, 2010 Share Posted January 23, 2010 you will likely be in the minority, me thinks. half the teams fans don't even live in the area anymore. they will simply see their team in a different stadium on TV.. I won't root for them if they go elsewhere... to me it's about Buffalo, not the team itself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts