Are Bay Area Football Fans Ready To Share?
OAKLAND (KCBS) - Should the San Francisco 49ers and the Oakland Raiders team up to share a new football stadium? NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said during a halftime appearance at Sunday's Raiders home game win over the San Diego Chargers that it's an idea the two Bay Area teams should explore.
Goodell reasoned that a shared stadium would benefit both teams, as well as the fans.
"I'd encourage them to evaluate it because it has worked in New York," Goodell said in reference to the stadium the Giants and the Jets share in New Jersey.
Goodell stressed that a joint stadium would offset construction costs for both teams.
"Getting a stadium built is a challenging project, particularly in this environment. I encourage them to take a look at that and evaluate it."
Construction costs, Goodell added, would likely otherwise be passed on to the fans, in the form of higher ticket prices.
"We know in this kind of environment how difficult it is for fans to afford to come to a stadium. We try to address that in a variety of ways. We try to manage our policies, we try to look at our ticket policy to try to see if we can make it easier so we try to address that and be smart about it."
There is little debate about the current condition of the Bay Area football stadiums. Most agree the Oakland and San Francisco venues are outdated.
The Raiders had no public plans to leave the Oakland Coliseum. In June, voters in Santa Clara signed off on a plan to build a 68,500-seat stadium in the city for the 49ers.
"If you knew they would use the stadium, would you have voted no on Measure J?" KCBS reporter Matt Bigler asked one Santa Clara voter.
"Yes I would, yeah," she responded. "Only because of their reputation."
It was that stereotype of Raiders fans as a rowdy bunch that made her anything but keen on the East Bay team playing in Santa Clara.
"Well if they're involved in it, yeah, that would be a problem."
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