Here are some fundamental reasons why I believe San Antonio will eventually join the NFL and MLB as a host city.
1. Finances
San Antonio has been one of the more prosperous and economically resilient cities in the country over the last 15 years, and this trend has continued over the most recent recession—yes, the one that is currently ongoing.
2. Fan Base
The typical 100 mile radius for an NFL team’s fan base for a potential San Antonio team now contains over 3.7 million people to include Austin and the surrounding South/Central Texas region. A centrally located NFL or MLB franchise such as one in San Antonio could draw from this region and be very successful doing so.
3. Personal (Residents) Income
Personal incomes in the San Antonio area have been rising steadily over the last several years. This bodes well for an NFL or MLB team wanting to sell expensive tickets and sky boxes.
4. Location
San Antonio’s area, for the purposes of an NFL or MLB team would be very profitable as a revenue producing television market compared to places like Buffalo, Jacksonville, Nashville, New Orleans, or Kansas City. And will only be growing bigger in years to come.
5. Expansion
All forecasts point to the fact that the San Antonio/Austin area will become much larger than it is today over the next several years. That is an excellent forecast for a potential NFL owner or an NFL expansion committee considering placing a team in San Antonio.
Based on this list, I see the NFL and MLB for that matter coming to San Antonio as inevitable events.
Additionally, San Antonio was passed over for being awarded a team by the NFL during the last round of expansion. I thought that was a mistake made by the league.
In my opinion, if the Jaguars franchise would have been awarded to San Antonio instead of Jacksonville in 1993, I believe the team would not be suffering its current attendance and support problems. San Antonio has grown tremendously since the early 1990’s and Jacksonville has not grown as much during the same period.
Alas, there has been a lot of talk of Los Angeles being the next city to get an NFL team because of its size, importance etc. But I tend to disagree.
L.A. has on more than one occasion lost an existing NFL team due to a variety of reasons. Those reasons being lack of support, old facilities, and so on. I still believe that if it was that important to have placed a team in Los Angeles since the Rams and the Raiders left in the mid ’90s it would have already been done by the league or by a current owner somewhere.
San Antonio on the other hand has a stadium in place for use today. Not three years from now. And even though the Alamodome is an outdated stadium, it still could be used by an NFL team at least until a bigger, better stadium could be built. Nowhere else in the country is this the case.
The bottom line is that San Antonio, more than any other non-NFL city, is prepared to host an NFL team through either relocation or expansion now.
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