Former Mayor of San Antonio Henry Cisneros says it is a “very clear 50-50 proposition” that the Oakland Raiders will move to San Antonio.
Cisneros leads a consortium of government and civic officials who met with Raiders brass on Friday in the Oakland area to once again discuss relocating the storied franchise to the Alamo City.
In July Breitbart News reported that San Antonio began talks with Raiders owner Mark Davis and that, according to city manager Sheryl Sculley, Davis had “expressed interest in a possible relocation of his NFL team to San Antonio and we are engaged in preliminary due diligence.”
According to the San Antonio Express-News, the earlier discussions included Spurs owner Peter Holt and former Minnesota Vikings owner B.J. “Red” McCombs. Since then, the Express-News further reported, that the city of San Antonio and the Raiders split the cost of a survey of fans in South and Central Texas to measure the enthusiasm for a potential San Antonio Raiders team.
Of course, the city of Oakland hasn’t given up on efforts to retain the team. In a September article in the San Francisco Chronicle, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan reportedly was working on a deal that would give free land to the Raiders to build a new stadium. Moreover, she said that Oakland and Alameda County taxpayers would shell out $120 million to pay off the debt the Raiders still owed from the 1990s on renovations to the Oakland Coliseum.
The new stadium complex would be called Coliseum City. Zach Wasserman an attorney for the backers of the proposed project claimed in September that “basic terms” had been worked out with the Raiders. “I expect to execute it soon,” he said back then.