San Antonio Raiders would be more successful than Las Vegas Raiders
The now-Oakland Raiders but soon to be Las Vegas Raiders made a mistake in choosing Sin City over San Antonio, which is a better market in nearly every category that matters for professional sport franchises.
In the final days leading up to the nearly unanimous vote by the National Football League’s owners that made the Raiders’ move to Las Vegas pending, it seemed clear that the franchise’s future in Oakland was short. There was another option besides those two cities, however. Becoming the San Antonio Raiders would have been a wiser move.
The first reason that San Antonio is the superior NFL market is a comparison of the two cities’ population demographics.
Las Vegas vs. San Antonio population comparison
San Antonio is the seventh-most populous city in the United States, outranking Las Vegas by 23 spots and over 800,000 people. The city resides in the second-most populous state in the United States of America, Texas. Nevada comparably ranks 34th of 50.
San Antonio is just 80 miles from Forbes’ fastest-growing city in the United States of Austin. While there are many more permanent residents in San Antonio as compared to Las Vegas, it’s the capability of those residents to open their wallets to the Raiders that really matters. Again, San Antonio outperforms Las Vegas in this area.
The individual median income in San Antonio grew by nearly triple the rate as compared to Las Vegas from 2000 to 2015. For families as well, San Antonio’s median income growth outperformed Las Vegas’ significantly over that period. Not only does San Antonio have more actual residents, it has more people with expendable income.
San Antonio also has a higher potential for a future fan base. The city is above the national average for percentage of the overall population which has children under 18. Comparatively, Las Vegas is below the national average.
The NFL isn’t counting on Las Vegas’ year-round residents to reap a profit for the Raiders, to be thorough. The Raiders are instead banking on tourist traffic. An examination of the NFL’s projections for tourism in the city by a Stanford economist shows them to be overly-optimistic, however. Depending on tourists versus established residents is an unwise gamble.
San Antonio doesn’t just look superior to Las Vegas in terms of potential customers and buying power, however. It also scores highly in another key factor: interest.
San Antonio’s football fever potential is high
There’s an added benefit to San Antonio being in Texas, and that’s the culture of the state. In short, football is treated as a vital part of community life.
On top of already being home to the Dallas Cowboys and Houston Texans, the state also contains four FBS-level college programs. The state’s youth program for the sport is second-to-none, as evidenced by the fact that a $63 million facility for high school football is being constructed in McKinney.
It could be argued that the market is already saturated, but it seems that there is enough population which is committed to the sport to support another NFL team. California currently has four NFL franchises (counting the Raiders) and Florida has three. Those are the other two of top three most populous states in the union. Add in the fact that San Antonio is much closer than Dallas or Houston to Austin, and many current Cowboys or Texans fans might be willing to swap their present colors for the Silver and Black.
That distance from Dallas and Houston, along with love for football, is why San Antonio has expressed serious interest in NFL teams. Actually, the Raiders have been one of those franchises.
Flirtations between the Raiders and San Antonio
As recently as last January, the Raiders relocating to San Antonio got some press. Former Minnesota Vikings owner Red McCombs offered to facilitate the move. McCombs said he had a dozen sponsors lined up for the Raiders, and would be willing to invest himself if that is what it took.
That news from McComb came on the heels of a revelation that Mark Davis, the Raiders’ chairman, had purchased land between Austin and San Antonio that would have been able to house a new football facility.
San Antonio Mayor Ivy Taylor said that the city would be willing to house the Raiders on even a temporary basis while their new facility is constructed elsewhere. That statement came just months after Davis and other team officials toured the city.
Obviously San Antonio’s efforts to attract the Raiders fell short, as there was never a concrete stadium plan or offering of tax dollars for the construction, as is the case with Las Vegas. This history shows that San Antonio is ready for the NFL, however.
There is a final reason that San Antonio would have been superior to Las Vegas, and that’s because it would have allowed the NFL to avoid the compromising venture that it is has now undertaken.
The NFL maintains an official stance of being against sports betting, confirmed as recently as Tuesday by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. It’s hard to maintain that stance in the public eye, however, when it’s so readily available in such a close proximity. San Antonio would have allowed the NFL to avoid the move to Las Vegas, which appears to compromise the NFL’s stance on gambling.
Ultimately, San Antonio didn’t land the Raiders because it didn’t offer the hundreds of millions of dollars in government subsidies that Nevada did. It’s unclear how seriously the Raiders were looking at the venue, though. That’s unfortunate for both parties, as the relationship between them would have been better than the new marriage between the Raiders and Las Vegas will be.