Mayor Hardberger and Tom Benson want the San Antonio Saints

[Marcus Bryant]

Which is why they want a team in Los Angeles, rather than San Antonio.

An apathetic L.A. with a privately-financed stadium still would generate a great deal more revenue than a fiercely loyal S.A., unless S.A. offers a sweetheart stadium deal.

And given that Mayor Hardberger won't even consider city money for a stadium, there aren't any sweetheart deals on the horizon.

I think the city could offer something to the Saints at present for playing in the Alamodome. At least for a couple of seasons.

There is precedent...didn't the city pay the Cowboys to hold their training camp in SA?

There couldn't be a sweetheart deal today. But in 5 years after the city has had the chance to grow attached to the idea of having NFL games to go to every fall?

[ChumpDumper]

I seem to remember a large metro area about 180 miles to the southeast, that has about a quarter of the state's population by itself... do they use I-35? Seems like a rather roundabout way.

Since when does 290 go by the stadium? Oh, when it's also I-35. Roundabout indeed.

Does everybody just have to drive single file to a handful of entry points to the stadium and fill just the one parking lot? Given how small the lots are around DKR-Memorial, what do they do when they fill up?

Well isn't that a horrible pain in the ass fans won't put up with? Oh wait -- they do. So having a huge lot around a stadium would be worse in that respect? Yes, I can see the anger now.

[ChumpDumper]

And you provided your own answer earlier.

If somebody wants to bring SH 130 into the conversation -- well, that would be another option for folks north of Austin, but then a new road has to built from 130 to San Marcos. It's possible, but it just adds $$$ and takes a while to get done.

Well, all of this will take money and time, but the area along 130 is set up for enormous growth, so something like widening Hwy 21 or 80 might happen anyway.

[SWC Bonfire]

Chump, I admire your optimism, but if the NFL is in SA, it's going to have to fly on the backs of San Antonians and South Texans (Corpus, small towns, Laredo, Valley) and any extra from Austin will be a bonus.

[Marcus Bryant]

I think you have to have a population that will identify with the team. San Antonio has demonstrated that it will identify strongly with a pro franchise. Granted, the Spurs have been a rather successful franchise on the court for most of its history, so maybe it's not the best indicator of how a lackluster NFL franchise would be received.

But, this is South Texas we are talking about. Football is king. If South Texas can fall in love with a NBA team, anything is possible.

I don't see it as an either/or proposition with the Spurs. Sure, for some that will matter, but I think that a lot of people would open up their wallets to see a NFL game.

[ChumpDumper]

I'm not optimistic in the least.

I don't think it's going to happen.

Just throwing out ideas as to how it could work.

[Marcus Bryant]

I think a NFL team has a better chance of breaking into Austin than the Spurs have had, especially at the corporate level.

When all you are selling are 8 games a season, I think that's a lot more palatable. Also, the games will be almost exclusively weekend games. Plenty of opportunity for the 'weekend getaway' down the road to SA.

Could work, at least better than in NO.

[j-6]

This whole situation is going to revolve around one major date, and what Tags, Benson, Hardberger, and other owners such as Al Davis and Jerry Jones will do after such date passes.

November 19, 2005. If the Saints use the destruction clause to opt out of their standing lease with the state of Louisiana's stadium board, then the team is a bonafide free agent and New Orleans is completely out of the picture.

A.D. Football, Inc., the Raider's managing en y, claims to hold some sort of territorial stake in LA. If a move to LA is planned for the Saints, will he pull up stakes in Oakland and try to get to the City of Angels first? Can he?

Will Jerry Jones, and to a lesser extent Bob McNair, agree to have yet another competing team in their state? And will Tags approve of the last two major league changes (with the Texans expansion in '02) happening in the same region?

[TheWriter]

#1: The Alamodome has 38 finished suites, with space to build an additional 28.

#2: When/If Benson claims force majeure, where do all of ya'lls "He's just playing San Antonio" talk go?

#3: LOL at all these Miss Cleo's posting in this thread.

#4: No damn way a stadium is built along I-35 in another metro county.

#5: Why not build a new stadium in the Quarry the Spurs wanted to their arena in. In northeast San Antonio.

[Extra Stout]

Indianapolis is closer to Chicago than SA is to Houston, right? It's like a little under three hours in the car.

It's in a different state, however. And its per capita income is about 15% higher.

With Tennessee as their name and not Nashville, I figure the ans are supposed to appeal to a regional following like Carolina.

I guess. Without regional support, it's hard to figure how Nashville can support a team.

On the one hand, SA is a better market than Jacksonville, New Orleans, and Buffalo, to be sure. On the other hand, Los Angeles (obviously), Portland, and even Salt Lake City are better markets than San Antonio.

Even with all that, if a stadium is sufficiently lavish, it can make all this talk about market size sort of a moot point. Georgia Frontiere left L.A. for St. Louis because of the stadium. Bud Adams left Houston for Nashville because of the stadium. If San Antonio could come up with a football palace rather than trying to see how little it can spend to spruce up the Alamodome, or how much of the costs in can foist upon others, it wouldn't matter what Portland or New Orleans or anybody else was doing, and even Paul Tagliabue would have to change his tune.

[TheWriter]

I don't think you can under estimate what kind of state incentive package the Gov throws at Benson. Not to mention whatever SA throws to him.

I think this study the city is doing will help a great deal. Like Hardberger said, if for every dollar you spend you get 3 dollars back, it doesn't freakin' matter how much you spend.

[Marcus Bryant]

Benson seems to be looking for the best stadium deal out there. I agree that terminating the lease is significant, but that has to be coupled with the prospect of a new stadium in Louisiana not being in the works. If Louisiana state govt has their together, then SA's hopes dim. But if it is clear that a new stadium won't get past the planning stages for years, that's all SA needs.

At the league level, who knows? I would think that most owners would want the right to move their teams as they see fit.

I think a lot is riding on SA being proactive and putting together an attractive deal for the Saints to use the Alamodome for the next few years as well as to get a new stadium plan in the works.

[j-6]

The attendance and Dome record crowd of 65,562 yesterday, while a good-sized crowd, would have been only 1,400 over the 64,147 the Saints averaged in the Superdome in '04 at an average of 87.9% capacity.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/attendance?year=2004

(I'm not looking for the television market argument we've had over the last month or so...just thought that was an interesting statistic.)

[Marcus Bryant]

#1: The Alamodome has 38 finished suites, with space to build an additional 28.

#2: When/If Benson claims force majeure, where do all of ya'lls "He's just playing San Antonio" talk go?

Still there. Benson's been trying to get a new stadium out of Louisiana for a while now.

#3: LOL at all these Miss Cleo's posting in this thread.

Pot meet kettle.

#4: No damn way a stadium is built along I-35 in another metro county.

Then you'd have to hope that SA can support the team on its own.

#5: Why not build a new stadium in the Quarry the Spurs wanted to their arena in. In northeast San Antonio.

Wouldn't that be over the recharge zone?

[Marcus Bryant]

The attendance and Dome record crowd of 65,562 yesterday, while a good-sized crowd, would have been only 1,400 over the 64,147 the Saints averaged in the Superdome in '04 at an average of 87.9% capacity.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/attendance?year=2004

(I'm not looking for the television market argument we've had over the last month or so...just thought that was an interesting statistic.)

Hmmm....you'd have to account for any difference in ticket prices as well as suite revenues and the subsidy the Saints have been getting from the state to come up with a good comparison of the difference in stadium revenues.

There's also stadium signage revenues.

[Extra Stout]

Well isn't that a horrible pain in the ass fans won't put up with? Oh wait -- they do. So having a huge lot around a stadium would be worse in that respect? Yes, I can see the anger now.

Many folks get around it by coming in Friday night and getting a hotel room, or by parking in another lot elsewhere on campus and walking, or by parking elsewhere downtown and walking. There are options. You can pretend that it's one way in and one way out as long as you like, but it's bull .

In a greenfield facility outside any major city with no surface streets and little to no overflow parking, and few hotel rooms nearby, the options dwindle. Either you sit in traffic all the way from 1604 going northbound or Ben White Blvd. going southbound on Sunday morning to the one exit for the stadium, or you don't go.

So take the traffic jam around DKR-Memorial and double it at least, for a newcomer team without an established fan base.

If you were a prospective Austin fan, which would you rather do: sit in traffic for hours to get to San Marcos as traffic backs up from that one exit to the stadium, or deal with considerably less traffic on a trip that is longer distance-wise but comparable time-wise into downtown SA where you have plenty of options to get downtown and find parking?

[Marcus Bryant]

I think Austin fan will go down to SA once or twice a season to see a game. Probably make it a weekend.

[Extra Stout]

#1: The Alamodome has 38 finished suites, with space to build an additional 28.

More is better.

#2: When/If Benson claims force majeure, where do all of ya'lls "He's just playing San Antonio" talk go?

He can go wherever he wants, at least until he goes bankrupt.

#4: No damn way a stadium is built along I-35 in another metro county.

Agreed.

#5: Why not build a new stadium in the Quarry the Spurs wanted to their arena in. In northeast San Antonio.

Talk to NEISD. If they hadn't gotten bent out of shape about the tax abatement, that's where SBC Center would be.

[ShoogarBear]

I think a NFL team has a better chance of breaking into Austin than the Spurs have had, especially at the corporate level.

When all you are selling are 8 games a season, I think that's a lot more palatable. Also, the games will be almost exclusively weekend games. Plenty of opportunity for the 'weekend getaway' down the road to SA.

Could work, at least better than in NO.

I'd bet that any business analysis will demonstrate that it's not just desirable, but imperative for any South Texas franchise to have significant support from the Austin market.

Just as a WAG, it wouldn't surprise me if anywhere between 20 to 40% of the attendance revenue for a sucessful team would be dependent on Austin.

[TheWriter]

Wouldn't that be over the recharge zone?

Nope. The recharge zone is in Northwest San Antonio/Bexar.

This Quarry is in the North east side off of Wurzbach Parkway.

[j-6]

#1: The Alamodome has 38 finished suites, with space to build an additional 28.

Doesn't Tags want at least 100? Any ideas on how to shoehorn 35 or so more in the Dome without negatively affecting attendence?

#2: When/If Benson claims force majeure, where do all of ya'lls "He's just playing San Antonio" talk go?

Then a bunch of us either need to chip in and buy you a first-edition 2006 Mapsco with Phil Hardberger's autograph, or start a longer thread ing about the Los Angeles Saints.

#3: LOL at all these Miss Cleo's posting in this thread.

LOL at you making fun of anyone of us that are wanting the Saints to stick around.

#4: No damn way a stadium is built along I-35 in another metro county.

If that's what it's going to take to have the franchise relocate to the area, someone on the corridor will have the foresight to present this option. With an eye on how it will benefit whatever county this could be it and how they could benefit as well, of course.

#5: Why not build a new stadium in the Quarry the Spurs wanted to their arena in. In northeast San Antonio.

Not a bad idea, but who's going to pay for it?

[j-6]

There's also stadium signage revenues.

Speaking of which, anyone at the game yesterday know what logos by the play clocks were covered up, and why?

[TheWriter]

I think San Antonio voted in the best possible man for the job in terms of getting a team to San Antonio.

Hardberger is not only a John Wayne type guy, he's friends with both Benson and McCombs.

[Marcus Bryant]

I'd bet that any business analysis will demonstrate that it's not just desirable, but imperative for any South Texas franchise to have significant support from the Austin market.

Just as a WAG, it wouldn't surprise me if anywhere between 20 to 40% of the attendance revenue for a sucessful team would be dependent on Austin.

The one thing a SA-based NFL team would have going for it is that the there are only 8 games in a season...on the weekend. Season ticket packages don't look that bad. I think this is a significant factor that hurts the Spurs in Austin. Who wants to have to think about 41 games a season with at least 2/3rds of those games on a weeknight?

So a season ticket would be 8 games a season. You'd have to figure that most people would go to something less than 8 games a season. But at least you can sell them the full 8.

[Extra Stout]

I don't think you can under estimate what kind of state incentive package the Gov throws at Benson. Not to mention whatever SA throws to him.

The state is not a magic money pit. Citizens outside of S.A. are going to go berserk if the governor talks about using tax money to subsidize a stadium deal. I know I would. If S.A. wants a team, let S.A. pay for it. Don't tell people in Dallas and Houston to pay for it. They've got their own teams and don't give a whether S.A. has one or not.

I think this study the city is doing will help a great deal. Like Hardberger said, if for every dollar you spend you get 3 dollars back, it doesn't freakin' matter how much you spend.

Stadia only generate revenue if they are part of a larger development initiative, a la Coors Field and LoDo in downtown Denver, or Petco Park and the Gaslamp Quarter in San Diego.

If S.A. wanted to build a stadium smack dab in the middle of downtown in a place where they could get that many more people to spend time and money downtown, and simultaneously have developers invest to put even more restaurants and shopping and other attractions down there, that could work. But it seems that everybody freaks out at that those kinds of proposals.

Likewise, if a stadium were built around the Quarry, and developers had a plan to expand the area to serve the huge influx of people before and after the game, that could be a workable plan. But everybody has to be on the same page.

In and of themselves, stadia don't make any money. If you build one in a crappy industrial part of town, people will drive in to the game, and leave right afterward. SBC Center is a prime example.