First, the 49ers moved from San Francisco digs to a new stadium in Santa Clara. Will the Oakland Raiders be moving south next?
“They have to make that determination, whether they’re in a new stadium in Oakland or whether they feel that it’s best to join this stadium,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said about the Raiders at a ribbon-cutting ceremony at Levi’s Stadium. “We’re working on that, and that’s one of the decisions they’ll have to make.”
The Oakland Raiders remain the only franchise in the NFL to share a stadium with a baseball team. The team’s lease on O.co Coliseum, which recently experienced unpleasant sewage problems, runs out after this season. Whereas the Raiders seek to build a new stadium on the site of a torn down O.co Coliseum, the A’s just extended their lease to play there for ten years. Do the tenants talk?
The aging structure surely hurts the team’s bottom line. The recent Forbes list of the most valuable franchises in sports left two NFL teams off. One of them plays in Oakland.