Rams Stadium Delayed

sdog1981

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The best part is the Chargers playing in the soccer stadium when they could still be playing in San Diego.
 

hawkfan68

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sdog1981":1i51661p said:
The best part is the Chargers playing in the soccer stadium when they could still be playing in San Diego.

This doesn't make sense at all...they can't use the Rose Bowl or the LA Coliseum? Why play in a stadium that only seats 27,000 - 30,000 max. If they can't sell out games at that stadium that would really bad...should've just stayed in SD. They could always move to Oakland...
 

JGfromtheNW

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hawkfan68":3g1jfuv0 said:
sdog1981":3g1jfuv0 said:
The best part is the Chargers playing in the soccer stadium when they could still be playing in San Diego.

This doesn't make sense at all...they can't use the Rose Bowl or the LA Coliseum? Why play in a stadium that only seats 27,000 - 30,000 max. If they can't sell out games at that stadium that would really bad...should've just stayed in SD. They could always move to Oakland...
Yup, I imagine the Chargers brass isn't all that enthused about the situation right now. It's not like these organizations get rich off of ticket sales, but I imagine they're going to be cutting that revenue in half until they're set up shop in a proper stadium.

It's weird to think that both the Chargers and Rams are going to be in the LA market now. I wouldn't be surprised if the Chargers end up having a much larger fan base than the Rams in the next 5-10 years, considering they're from just down the road vs. St. Louis.
 
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HawkGA

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Well, it's not like the Rams are strangers to LA . . . .
 

minormillikin

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I went to the last two Seahawks at Rams games, one in St. Louis and the next at Los Angeles. I remember thinking what a dated, bland place the dome was in St Louis, like what the kingdome would be like today.

Then at LA, I realized how nice the dome actually was, because the LA Coliseum is a serious dump and not a good place for nfl football. Poor concession layout (impossible to get around when it's full) and weird seating arrangement.

Plus, the Dome was in a very decent, walkable part of town but the la stadium is in a hell hole with difficult access.

In any case... I'm sure the new place will be a paradise where the "Ram Rules" can be luxuriously enforced.
 

JGfromtheNW

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FlyHawksFly":306um3ub said:
HawkGA":306um3ub said:
Well, it's not like the Rams are strangers to LA . . . .

Yeah, what a strange comment. I have to remind myself all the time that we have a younger generation of fans.

Of course they're not strangers to LA, but they were gone for 20 years and from what I remember LA fans were pretty upset about losing the Rams to St. Louis; not to mention it's widely cited that the Rams didn't have a very good fan base before Georgia Fronteire moved the team. 20 years and that's an entire generation of fans that likely decided they'd root for SD, OAK or SF, plus all of the estranged fans that won't give the Rams franchise the time of day because of what happened in the 90's. I imagine the majority of fans in the St. Louis area aren't going to be following the Rams organization halfway across the country... meanwhile fans who care to stay loyal to the Chargers are located *gaaaaasp* within a few hours of driving. Granted, they're going to lose some fans, but it's going to be nowhere near the level of abandonment that the Rams franchise has faced over the last three decades.

I think the Chargers are going to, maybe unexpectedly, have the better hold of the LA market. I don't know enough Chargers/Rams fans or pay that much attention to the overall sentiments down there, but it's something that wouldn't surprise me in the least.
 
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HawkGA

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JGfromtheNW":yb7o6q46 said:
Of course they're not strangers to LA, but they were gone for 20 years and from what I remember LA fans were pretty upset about losing the Rams to St. Louis; not to mention it's widely cited that the Rams didn't have a very good fan base before Georgia Fronteire moved the team. 20 years and that's an entire generation of fans that likely decided they'd root for SD, OAK or SF, plus all of the estranged fans that won't give the Rams franchise the time of day because of what happened in the 90's. I imagine the majority of fans in the St. Louis area aren't going to be following the Rams organization halfway across the country... meanwhile fans who care to stay loyal to the Chargers are located *gaaaaasp* within a few hours of driving. Granted, they're going to lose some fans, but it's going to be nowhere near the level of abandonment that the Rams franchise has faced over the last three decades.

I think the Chargers are going to, maybe unexpectedly, have the better hold of the LA market. I don't know enough Chargers/Rams fans or pay that much attention to the overall sentiments down there, but it's something that wouldn't surprise me in the least.

STFU! Now I feel old. Has it really been that long? Crap.
 

JGfromtheNW

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FlyHawksFly":1f9y2em6 said:
There were still a ton of Rams fans in the LA area, their move was definitely less of a fiasco than the Chargers move. I think you underestimate how many people HATE the Spanish family, on top of the Chargers have one of the smaller fan bases to begin with. The ONLY hope Chargers have is if they become a dominant team, which looking at their front office and roster is probably a long shot.
Thanks for the insight.

I think I was having some revisionist history and correlating the Rams' attendance/popularity based off of hearing they were getting poor TV ratings last season. After doing some reading on the Rams last season, they actually had the second highest attendance in the league (granted, the Coliseum holds like 93K or something like that).

Add to that how consistently bad the Rams org. has been over the last decade and I figured they would be LA's red-headed-sports-step-child. I'm genuinely interested to see how the LA market shakes out, though. I don't have any type of rooting interest, but I'll admit that I'll root for the Chargers over the Rams as long as they're in our division.
 

mikeak

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Bigpumpkin":2zd69cr7 said:
mikeak":2zd69cr7 said:
Lol - lost the Super Bowl to tampa now

What a pile of feces! We've never had a Super Bowl.....and they grant it to Tampa Bay?

Seattle doesn't meet the weather requirement (can't be fixed but can be waived) nor the seat requirement (could be fixed)
 

mrt144

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FlyHawksFly":3g6monqm said:
mikeak":3g6monqm said:
Bigpumpkin":3g6monqm said:
mikeak":3g6monqm said:
Lol - lost the Super Bowl to tampa now

What a pile of feces! We've never had a Super Bowl.....and they grant it to Tampa Bay?

Seattle doesn't meet the weather requirement (can't be fixed but can be waived) nor the seat requirement (could be fixed)

There was also concern about having enough hotel space for the influx of people.

This is a big one. I work in the tourism industry on the IT side. We have decent hotel capacity for our current convention capacity and the bids that go out to various associations. The Superbowl would eat up so much of that to the point that people who wanted to come as spectators would probably wind up in hotels as far out Federal Way with a normal hotel flow in Feb. Surprisingly we do a nice clip of business in Feb due to being competitive against other cities like KC, Detroit, Minneapolis, etc etc that suffer from inclement weather for winter convention bids.

Another thing that comes into play is the amount of comp room nights the NFL would command for the sake of itself - Hotels aren't going to eat the revpar handing out comps without rebates from the Seattle CVB - the CVB has an 8 million dollar a year budget.
 

mikeak

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^ Jacksonville brought in multiple cruise ships to fix that problem. Couldn't Seattle do the same?
 

mrt144

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mikeak":38zrph30 said:
^ Jacksonville brought in multiple cruise ships to fix that problem. Couldn't Seattle do the same?

Potentially - we have cruise terminals that aren't really being used during Feb - most Seattle traffic is from May to September before they reposition down to LA. I'm sure that charters could be arranged but would require some finagling with the Port of Seattle.
 

Seahawkfan80

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Kinda glad they changed the venue for the Owl. One year is not long enough for all the bugs to be worked out in a new stadium. Also the security would not be up to spec with all the other bugs adding to the chaos. That is one rule I could go with...that is not being able to host an Owl in the inception year of a new facility......and the stadium too. :twisted:
 

RiverDog

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JGfromtheNW":1rulapne said:
I think I was having some revisionist history and correlating the Rams' attendance/popularity based off of hearing they were getting poor TV ratings last season. After doing some reading on the Rams last season, they actually had the second highest attendance in the league (granted, the Coliseum holds like 93K or something like that).

Add to that how consistently bad the Rams org. has been over the last decade and I figured they would be LA's red-headed-sports-step-child. I'm genuinely interested to see how the LA market shakes out, though. I don't have any type of rooting interest, but I'll admit that I'll root for the Chargers over the Rams as long as they're in our division.

The Rams were one of only two teams to have less than 90% capacity for their home games, the other being the LA bound Chargers. Besides, the name of the game isn't attendance, it's television ratings, especially in the Rams' case as they operate in the country's 2nd largest TV market, and the Rams ratings for their first season were disappointing to say the least. Their ratings were better when they played a couple of lame duck seasons in St. Louis.

http://footballstadiumdigest.com/2016/1 ... e-numbers/
 

Popeyejones

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RiverDog":ytccp7gm said:
JGfromtheNW":ytccp7gm said:
I think I was having some revisionist history and correlating the Rams' attendance/popularity based off of hearing they were getting poor TV ratings last season. After doing some reading on the Rams last season, they actually had the second highest attendance in the league (granted, the Coliseum holds like 93K or something like that).

Add to that how consistently bad the Rams org. has been over the last decade and I figured they would be LA's red-headed-sports-step-child. I'm genuinely interested to see how the LA market shakes out, though. I don't have any type of rooting interest, but I'll admit that I'll root for the Chargers over the Rams as long as they're in our division.

The Rams were one of only two teams to have less than 90% capacity for their home games, the other being the LA bound Chargers. Besides, the name of the game isn't attendance, it's television ratings, especially in the Rams' case as they operate in the country's 2nd largest TV market, and the Rams ratings for their first season were disappointing to say the least. Their ratings were better when they played a couple of lame duck seasons in St. Louis.

http://footballstadiumdigest.com/2016/1 ... e-numbers/

That article gets into this, but the ratings argument is a really bad one. Ratings are based on percentage of available viewers, not number of raw viewers.

The L.A. Metro Area has 13 million people compared to St. Louis metro's 3 million. It's why a local advertisement for a show that gets a 5 rating in the Los Angeles metro is MUCH, MUCH more expensive than a local advertisement for a show that gets a 5 rating in the St. Louis Metro.

Basically, the Rams could have 1/4 of the TV rating in L.A. as they did in St. Louis, and they'd still be attracting more viewers and more ad revenue.

Based on the figures in the article, once you take the local context of the rating into account, a 20 rating in St. Louis equals 600K viewers, and a 10 rating in LA equals 1.3 million viewers. Even with a lower rating they're generating a TON more local TV revenue than they were before. We're talking around double the TV revenue at worst.

The attendance argument is also a bad one. There's 13 teams which reported greater than 100% attendance, which tells you right away these numbers are fake and pretty wonky. In any case though, for those 13 teams we can't say what the their true attendance WOULD BE with unlimited seats.

There were however, 19 teams that could have sold more tickets than they did. Out of those 19 teams, the Rams sold the most tickets overall tickets, and second most tickets in the NFL overall. http://www.pro-football-reference.com/y ... ndance.htm

Basically, their "bad" move to LA resulted in around double the number of people watching on TV, and a 60% increase in ticket sales, and people in the stadium to buy merch, food, beer, etc.
 

Popeyejones

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Oooh should also add that even given all this I agree with Riverdog that the Rams' fan metrics WERE disappointing for their inaugural season of their LA return.

I think people sometimes just take that simple fact WAY, WAY too far by arguing that they shouldn't have left St. Louis, as even this "disappointing" season in LA absolutely obliterates their best year in STL from a raw numbers and revenue generated perspective.
 
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