Does he have season tickets?
San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg is ready to fill up some of his fall Sunday afternoons watching an NFL game at the city’s Alamodome sports venue sometime between now and 2028. Nirenberg told the San Antonio TV station KSAT you will see an NFL team in San Antonio in the next 10 years. San Antonio has never really been a contender for an NFL team although Oakland Raiders owner Mark Davis did have some talks with local officials about the possibility of relocating to the city. Davis ultimately took a Las Vegas deal which included three quarters of a billion dollars in subsidies to help pay for a stadium. San Antonio provided a temporary home for Tom Benson’s New Orleans Saints in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and parts of the Gulf Coast. Benson also looked at San Antonio as a possible relocation city as a hedge when he was renegotiating a Superdome deal nearly two decades ago. San Antonio will have an Alliance of American Football team in 2019. The city had a United States Football League team in 1984 and 1985.
The NFL is not expanding so the only way San Antonio could get a team is through relocation. The NFL has made London, England a priority market with the hope that somehow the league will establish enough of a footing that putting a team in the city can happen. There are no teams on the market at present. There are leases that are ending soon in Charlotte and Buffalo. But neither city is in imminent danger of losing an NFL team. There are reports that NFL owners are not happy with the Spanos family’s Chargers in Los Angeles but it is hard to see that team pulling up stakes without giving the new Inglewood stadium and its enhanced revenue streams a chance. San Antonio is not on the NFL’s radar.
