NFL in OKC

[Jersey Boss]

While there are threads in the Sports section dealing with the OKLAHOMA INDIANS baseball, the OU pressbox, Big 10 expansion, Penn State/NCAA sanctions, etc. there is nary a thread on the NFL playoffs or Super Bowl itself. It would not appear that there is much interest in these parts on the pro game based on the lack of discussion concerning the game itself.

[Rover]

WE WILL NEVER GET AN NBA TEAM!!! We aren't big enough or rich enough. Never going to happen.

Oh wait..... never mind.

[MikeLucky]

WE WILL NEVER GET AN NBA TEAM!!! We aren't big enough or rich enough. Never going to happen.

Oh wait..... never mind.

I think most people thought that we had enough corporate support for something of the scale of an NBA team... at least here locally. But, to try to compare that to an NFL franchise, again, illustrates that you are another person in this thread that really has NO IDEA about the financial realities of the NFL vs. the NBA.

[SoonerDave]

I think most people thought that we had enough corporate support for something of the scale of an NBA team... at least here locally. But, to try to compare that to an NFL franchise, again, illustrates that you are another person in this thread that really has NO IDEA about the financial realities of the NFL vs. the NBA.

Since "Liking" isn't working right now, I'll just offer you a big hairy

THIS!!!

Remember that OKC made a strident effort to land an NHL team long before they even had a notion of snagging the NBA. That's why we built the arena, and its failure is why the baseball team is now named the Redhawks instead of the 89ers. So there most certainly was the idea that there might be enough support for a pro sports franchise of the proper scale. In retrospect, the NHL played us, but our city leadership played its cards perfectly to pursue the Hornets. I don't think most folks realize just how perfectly those dominoes had to be aligned for the Thunder to end up here the way they did.

Scope and perspective, folks: Pricetag for the Bricktown Ballpark: $40M (then). Chesapeake Arena: About $90M. A new NFL-caliber stadium: $325 MILLION-$1.6 BILLION (range for costs of Gillette Stadium, Ford Field, to Met Life Stadium, to Cowboys Stadium).

The bottom line? You're talking about a minimum of a ten-fold increase in expense just to build a stadium, one you don't even have a team to play in it. And that's another staggering pile of money.

Scope and perspective. There's dreaming, dreaming big, and then going straight to hallucination....

[Hawk405359]

WE WILL NEVER GET AN NBA TEAM!!! We aren't big enough or rich enough. Never going to happen.

Oh wait..... never mind.

The least profitable NFL franchise is still worth significantly more than the most profitable NBA franchise.

[Rover]

Just keep thinking small.

All stadiums don't cost. A billion. The Nets spent a billion on there new arena. Doesn't mean all new NBA arenas cost that.
BTW, Buffalo, Green Bay, Jacksonville, New Orleans....all not mega cities.

[SoonerDave]

Just keep thinking small.

All stadiums don't cost. A billion. The Nets spent a billion on there new arena. Doesn't mean all new NBA arenas cost that.
BTW, Buffalo, Green Bay, Jacksonville, New Orleans....all not mega cities.

No, not all stadiums cost a billion. That's why I included a range of $325M-$1.6B to demonstrate a representative range, and then compare that to the cost of the Brick and the Chesapeake Arena. Whether you compare $90M for Chesapeake or $40M for the Brick, the jump from that range to a minimum stadium cost is 3x-8x. That's a cost element people are just too ready to ignore because we've "done" the NBA, so the NFL "can't be much different." Sad truth it is.

Yes, all those cities are small cities. And Buffalo is prime on the current list of franchises that may be moving. Green Bay exists due to its unique public ownership characteristic that is no longer possible in the NFL, and Jacksonville is a failing franchise by virtually any measure. There's even speculation the Jags could move to London.

I realize its next to impossible to sound like anything but a wet blanket on this NFL discussion. My heart tells me, "Oh, Boy, the NFL, let's do it!!", but when I see the way cities have run like moths to a flame and sold their financial souls to get a stadium, then find themselves on the wrong end of a bunch of red ink, I look at Oklahoma City and just beg the well-iintentioned people advocating an NFL effort to learn what these cities did not, to really look at the kind of financial obligation required of a city to make it happen, and realize it just isn't prudent. I don't want to see Oklahoma City suffering in hindsight from the mistakes other cities have already made, but chose not to learn from them.

[zookeeper]

Look at it like this. A small town somewhere is on the cusp of landing a WalMart, they know the market is there. WalMart arrives, opens and sure enough it's successful. Then some begin saying the town needs a Nordstrom, we just need to dream big! People try to reason with them that just because the community is a slam dunk for WalMart doesn't mean it could support a Nordstrom. The gulf and comparison is just about the same between an NBA arena and team and an NFL stadium and team. Leave some room for hyperbole in this analogy, but it's actually pretty much the kind of thinking that could doom a town, or a city in our case.

[MDot]

Just keep thinking small.

All stadiums don't cost. A billion. The Nets spent a billion on there new arena. Doesn't mean all new NBA arenas cost that.
BTW, Buffalo, Green Bay, Jacksonville, New Orleans....all not mega cities.

If "thinking small" is what you call reality. And I can't believe you brought up Buffalo and Jacksonville as your support argument, both cities are endanger of losing their teams to MUCH bigger markets, although it's not guaranteed either team will relocate. Green Bay is the third oldest franchise in the NFL, founded in 1919 and SoonerDave already explained the public ownership they have, so you can't really compare the two. New Orleans is the only real argument; the only time they were at the end of the relocation talk was during Katrina.

[Hawk405359]

It's not about building a stadium, we could manage building a stadium if we really wanted to. Facilities are the easy part. It's about the corporate partnerships that are required to make any team realistic. We just don't have that, and it's probably not coming in the near future. We've got a few companies that are carrying the Thunder on their backs and, lo and behold, one of them isn't doing too well right now. A single market shift and what happens? Could Integris and NewsOK support the Thunder on their own if the energy market goes down? Probably not, and corporate ownership is more important for the NFL. We're not anywhere close to being able to support two teams.

Jacksonville (Who doesn't have any other big-4 sports franchise) and Buffalo could both very well lose their teams in the not so distant future, they're on such shaky ground. Green Bay is owned by the city in a manner that the NFL would never approve nowadays. So none of them make a very good comparison.

[rezman]

All this talk that's been going on about having an NFL team here in Okc should be just that. ... Talk.

There are too many unfinished projects around town that need to be completed, in addition to the rest of the MAPS projects that were promised. And after all that is finished, this city needs to concentrate on roads and infrastructure before it tries to do anything else to be a "big league city"

[BoulderSooner]

this is the 7th year of the nba in OKC .. pretty sure the "novelty" is over

[Praedura]

this is the 7th year of the nba in OKC .. pretty sure the "novelty" is over

7th? The team relocated here in June or July of 2008. So it will be 5 years as of this summer.

[BoulderSooner]

7th? The team relocated here in June or July of 2008. So it will be 5 years as of this summer.

plus 2 year of the hornets

[ou48A]

this is the 7th year of the nba in OKC .. pretty sure the "novelty" is over

I don’t think the extent of the novelty will really be known until the Thunder has a few poor seasons in a row.

[Hawk405359]

I don’t think the extent of the novelty will really be known until the Thunder has a few poor seasons in a row.

Bingo.

The first two years of the Hornets were a novelty, when we got our own team, we got to ride the euphoria of having a real OKC pro sports team, which helped when they weren't very good. Then they got good before that ever wore off. Now we're showing that we can support a good team, well whoopie, that's easy. Any championship team will get support.

When Durant and/or Westbrook leaves, when the team starts doing poorly and an NBA title isn't even in the discussion? That's when a fanbase is really tested and determined. We haven't had to support a bad NBA team yet that didn't have the novelty of being new, but the Thunder won't be good forever. That's the real test of a viability of a market just getting to the pro sports level.

[ou48A]

Bingo.

The first two years of the Hornets were a novelty, when we got our own team, we got to ride the euphoria of having a real OKC pro sports team, which helped when they weren't very good. Then they got good before that ever wore off. Now we're showing that we can support a good team, well whoopie, that's easy. Any championship team will get support.

When Durant and/or Westbrook leaves, when the team starts doing poorly and an NBA title isn't even in the discussion? That's when a fanbase is really tested and determined. We haven't had to support a bad NBA team yet that didn't have the novelty of being new, but the Thunder won't be good forever. That's the real test of a viability of a market just getting to the pro sports level.

To your point….. During the 1990’s during the very worst stretch of OU football in history OU’s average attendance never dropped below the 69,000 mark in a roughly 75,000 seat stadium. That’s standing the test of time and shows what our culture is. Today there is a lengthy waiting list to buy OU season tickets.

How hard is it to by a Thunder season ticket during these better times? I don’t know.

[BrettM2]

How hard is it to by a Thunder season ticket during these better times? I don’t know.

There's a waiting list, several years long at this point. Whether it remains, we'll have to see. It's a good sign right now, though, that there are so many people who want to get them. We'll see if CHK's struggles will open up a bit more supply in the coming years or if they'll keep their huge blocs of seats.

[SoonerDave]

To your point….. During the 1990’s during the very worst stretch of OU football in history OU’s average attendance never dropped below the 69,000 mark in a roughly 75,000 seat stadium. That’s standing the test of time and shows what our culture is. Today there is a lengthy waiting list to buy OU season tickets.

How hard is it to by a Thunder season ticket during these better times? I don’t know.

I know that the "official" attendance during those years was around 69K, but having attended a few of those games I can assure you there were plenty of times when there was nowhere near that number. There was one game in particular - I wish I could remember the opponent, but I can't - but the memory of the crowd (or lack thereof) was so incredibly vivid. I got a ticket outside the gate for $5, and sat alone in a chairback seat on the 50 yardline in the west upper deck, and looked around a stadium with the endzones nearly vacant, and a crowd that looked and sounded more like a high school crowd. As a Sooner fan since I was a little kid, it was heartbreaking to see how the program had disintegrated at that time.

As far as the OU season ticket waiting list goes...well, that's a thing that's grown to one of mythic proportions. Yeah, there's a season ticket list, and its been around for years. The majority of those "waiting" on the list, however, include folks who used to be on and want to rotate to better seats, or involve multiple entries from the same family or groups, and so on, such that the "real" wait isn't quite as forboding as it might seem. The last time I checked a (relatively) modest contribution to the Sooner Club can still get you season tickets immediately, so if one were of a mind and had the $ resources to get season tickets, they're available.

Considering that you can routinely pick up game-day tickets for well under face value, I've felt for a long time that the "season ticket waiting list" was a bit of a red herring in terms of measuring demand. Yeah, its there, but in terms of actual, real individuals teeming at the gate for tickets....not so much.

All that is to say that the point of the Thunder's success long term as it relates to future ticket sales is a point very well taken. When KD's and/or RW's contract(s) are up, granted several years down the road, things locally could change quite a bit. We'll see. And how all this, ultimately ties to the difficulty in supporting an NFL franchise, with more home dates and (much) higher tickets, and higher parking costs...the math isn't hard to do.

[ou48A]

I could be wrong but I thought I had read somewhere that OSU was considering Beer sales at its football games next season that would be available to anyone over 21….If true, I hope the find a way to limit how many beers somebody can buy.

[SoonerDave]

I'd still be interested to know from someone authoritative, such as an attorney, what the legal rule is for an entity like OU or OSU to sell beer/alcohol at sporting events. If someone else knows that alcohol has been sold at recent sporting events, then I'm certainly in no position to dispute that, but I also wonder if it is literally OU selling the beverage, or if its a "private entity" selling it within the confines of a restricted access club (or other similar legal construct) to make it permissible.

Borrowing a bit of a post from another thread, there's a bit of a legend at OU that some big alcohol/beer company approached OU about footing the cost for rebuilding/bowling the entire south endzone, provided that company would get beverage/promotion rights, but the alcohol rules made the notion a non-starter. I stress here, as I did there, that I hold this to be mostly urban legend, as I've never heard it confirmed from anyone other than a "friend of someone who overheard it at 31 Flavors last night..."

On the broader issue (regardless of legality) I tend to agree with ou48A that the likelihood of open beer sales at OU home games is next to nil. I don't have a dog in the fight (don't drink), but having been to a few professional arenas where it is allowed, I'd be just as happy if OU never chose to go down that path. And, frankly, I think they won't. I think the logistical hassles + wear/tear on the facilities would prove to be more than OU would want to get into.

[ou48A]

Starting at the age of 13 in 1971 I have attended exactly 260 OU football games and never once did I even think about drinking beer.
I am not going to say that people can’t drink responsibly but there are those who can’t or won’t and look at a football game as a reason to get drunk.

I have attended OU games in other stadiums that did sell beer….. I have seen several people puking all over the place, bloody fights and arrest……. I am just fine with the current OU stadium drinking policy and the goal of keeping it a family environment.

[MikeLucky]

Starting at the age of 13 in 1971 I have attended exactly 260 OU football games and never once did I even think about drinking beer.
I am not going to say that people can’t drink responsibly but there are those who can’t or won’t and look at a football game as a reason to get drunk.

I have attended OU games in other stadiums that did sell beer….. I have seen several people puking all over the place, bloody fights and arrest……. I am just fine with the current OU stadium drinking policy and the goal of keeping it a family environment.

This ^^^^^^^

I would be so very disappointed if OU started selling beer in the whole stadium. I mean it's not like the fans can't get plenty leading up to and after the game anyway. And, if you can't go 4 hours without getting blitzed, then that's just sad. I've never understood the point of having tickets to go see a live football game, then doing everything you can to drink so much that you can't even stand up, much less remember the game. Just don't get it...

[ou48A]

This ^^^^^^^

I would be so very disappointed if OU started selling beer in the whole stadium. I mean it's not like the fans can't get plenty leading up to and after the game anyway. And, if you can't go 4 hours without getting blitzed, then that's just sad. I've never understood the point of having tickets to go see a live football game, then doing everything you can to drink so much that you can't even stand up, much less remember the game. Just don't get it...

I think you and other likeminded people can rest assured that the OU football drinking policy will not change as long as Boren is around to have a voice in what goes on at OU.

[BoulderSooner]

I think you and other likeminded people can rest assured that the OU football drinking policy will not change as long as Boren is around to have a voice in what goes on at OU.

again it already changed some this year .. in both the football games and at the LNC pregame ... it very well could change in the future