Sweet Love
IBL Representative
I have been thinking about this for a while, but just saw a couple of topics today that made me think the subject of struggling teams doing a timeshare between two cities. The NFL is popular for many reasons, but one of the reasons that I do not think it is discussed enough, iss because it is convenient for professionals in the 21st century. For me, if someone gave me season tickets to the Carolina Hurricanes (I like hockey as much as football) and told me they are free and food and parking is "comped", BUT, I had to show up for all 40 home games, I would turn them down. On the flipside, if given the same offer for the Panthers, I would take it in a heartbeat, even though they are 2.5 hours away from me. Why? Because it is easy to dedicate 8 Sundays to an outing versus 40 random days for an almost equally long event.
Where I am going with this is that as simple as it may seem for teams to fill their stadium, it still costs a lot of money and there are just not enough people willing to go to even 8 games. It really would be a sin if a team like Buffalo or Jacksonville lost their teams. By timesharing with another city, it would drive up revenues (in the case of Buffalo) or total attendance (in the case of Jacksonville). Obviously, you need a close city in proximity to be able to pull this off. I am sure there are die hards who would be extrememly opposed, but would you rather lose your team outright to LA or San Antonio? The biggest issue would be "how much do we share"? As a Raleigh resident, I would be thrilled with two games a year played at Carter-Finley stadium (NC State's home) by the Panthers. Wouldn't expect more as it may "water-down" the home field advantage and "true" home crowd too much. But it might just be enough to sell out those couple of games and ALSO get the people in the hometown (especially the people who show for 4-6 games a year) to come to the 6 games a year and therefore have a better chance of selling out ALL of the true home games. Thought it would be worth discussing...here are my pros and cons:
Pros:
Would drive up revenues by getting those seats filled
Market to a bigger crowd and gain more fans (and more monies) - i.e. expand the fanbase
Eliminate worries of a relo
Cons:
Lose some of that homefield (not homecrowd) advantage - especially in the short-term
Costs of renting a stadium, travel (although I believe the hometeam stays in a hotel the night before a home game)
Sub-par facilities in regards to NFL standards (no one is going to build a stadium for two games/year)
Where I am going with this is that as simple as it may seem for teams to fill their stadium, it still costs a lot of money and there are just not enough people willing to go to even 8 games. It really would be a sin if a team like Buffalo or Jacksonville lost their teams. By timesharing with another city, it would drive up revenues (in the case of Buffalo) or total attendance (in the case of Jacksonville). Obviously, you need a close city in proximity to be able to pull this off. I am sure there are die hards who would be extrememly opposed, but would you rather lose your team outright to LA or San Antonio? The biggest issue would be "how much do we share"? As a Raleigh resident, I would be thrilled with two games a year played at Carter-Finley stadium (NC State's home) by the Panthers. Wouldn't expect more as it may "water-down" the home field advantage and "true" home crowd too much. But it might just be enough to sell out those couple of games and ALSO get the people in the hometown (especially the people who show for 4-6 games a year) to come to the 6 games a year and therefore have a better chance of selling out ALL of the true home games. Thought it would be worth discussing...here are my pros and cons:
Pros:
Would drive up revenues by getting those seats filled
Market to a bigger crowd and gain more fans (and more monies) - i.e. expand the fanbase
Eliminate worries of a relo
Cons:
Lose some of that homefield (not homecrowd) advantage - especially in the short-term
Costs of renting a stadium, travel (although I believe the hometeam stays in a hotel the night before a home game)
Sub-par facilities in regards to NFL standards (no one is going to build a stadium for two games/year)
