When Teams Leave Cities Behind
The emotional and economic impact of professional sports franchise relocation
—By James Foster
Louis Garr remembers exactly when his fandom with the St. Louis Rams ended. “There was no chance in the world I would be able to support [owner] Stan Kroenke after stealing our team away,” he recalls, referring to the team’s departure to Los Angeles in 2016. For Garr and Rams fans alike, Kroenke’s decision was devastating. Ultimately, Garr, like many others from St. Louis, had to find a new team to support.
Over on the west coast, Jonah Azevedo, former Oakland A’s season ticket holder, was equally heartbroken with their relocation to Las Vegas. “The manner in which they left was horrific,” he says. “They stripped all the benefits a few seasons before, like free parking and discounted concessions. It seemed like they didn’t want us to root for them anymore.” 800 miles north in Seattle, Hunter Broughton still feels the effects of the Supersonics departure to Oklahoma City, even though it was over a decade ago. “Despite the talent and love for basketball in the city, there’s no professional team to go watch.”
These three fans represent a painful reality in sports: when franchises relocate, they leave behind not only empty stadiums, but shattered fans. As small market teams continue to pack up and move out, cities lose their identities, and fans are stripped of their allegiances.
Nomads in American sports
Since 1950, more than 30 major professional sports teams have changed cities, almost always driven by financial motives. In the National Football League (NFL), the Rams have a long history of relocation, having moved from Cleveland to Los Angeles in 1946, then to St. Louis in 1995, and then returning to Los Angeles in 2016. As for Major League Baseball (MLB), there have been 11 since 1953, with the Oakland A’s being the most recent with their upcoming move to Las Vegas. Even in the National Basketball Association (NBA), relocations have rattled fan bases, with the Supersonics’ move to Oklahoma City being one of the most recent in 2008, leaving basketball fans in the Pacific Northwest with nothing to root for.
Stefan Szymanski, professor of sport management at the University of Michigan, sees relocation as an inevitable byproduct of the scarcity in major sports leagues. “That scarcity is entirely artificial,” Szymanski explains. “In baseball, football, and basketball, it is driven entirely by the ability of the major leagues to limit the entry in the market…all at the expense of fans. [They] lose out because they’re being fleeced by monopolists.”
Unlike systems we see in European soccer, where the process of promotion and relegation determines what teams play in which leagues, American sports have a fixed number of teams, where poor performance usually just awards teams with a good draft pick. Ultimately, cities must compete against each other to attract, and in some cases, retain teams.
The emotional toll on fans
For fans, the impact of relocation stretches beyond disappointment. A recent YouGov survey found that 56% of MLB fans view geographic proximity as a crucial component of their experience. As for relocations, the survey found that 49% of fans would keep their allegiance to a team if it relocated, while 37% would not.
“I was only in pre-school when the Supersonics left Seattle, but even at such a young age, I certainly felt the impact,” recalls Broughton, a junior at the University of Michigan. “In my first year of rec basketball, all people would talk about is how our hometown Supersonics were leaving for Oklahoma City.”
The nature of the departure often has a profound impact on fanbases, and ultimately on fans’ relationships with the relocated team. Garr, a senior at the University of Michigan and former St. Louis Rams fan, points to the ownership as a main factor. “I think all the fans were just upset with Stan Kroenke and his decisions…. The lawsuit further represented the anguish the city had with his decision, and further increased the resentment towards him as a person and an owner,” said Garr, referring to a lawsuit against the NFL and Kroenke by the city of St. Louis, awarding the city with a $790 million dollar settlement.
As for Azevedo, a sophomore at the University of Michigan, the A’s departure was the “cherry on top” for the devastating and unprecedented relocation of three of the Bay Areas’ beloved teams: The Raiders to Las Vegas, Warriors from Oakland to San Francisco, and now the A’s to Las Vegas. “It has completely changed the teams I root for,” he explains. “I can’t root for the A’s, they treated our fanbase with such disrespect, so now I’m a San Francisco Giants fan. I can’t rationalize rooting for any team other than those in the Bay Area, so I’ve been a 49ers fan since 2020.”
The emotional investment and connection fans make with their teams create personal identities, community bonds, traditions, and more, raising the stakes of relocation. In an article in The Guardian, long-time Oakland A’s fan Kristin Young expresses her unhappiness with the A’s decision. “You get used to seeing the same concession people, the same ticket takers. I’ll miss knowing the shortcut walks, the weird B [parking] lot entrance that looks like a terrifying war zone.… I won’t have that same experience with my kids, or even my nieces and nephews, taking them to games.”
The economic reality
While relocation has a significant impact on fans’ emotions, the economic consequences of relocation remain a debate. Jesse Stephenson’s research at the University of Kentucky found that there are “no statistically significant effects caused by relocation,” using per capita income and unemployment rates in cities that had lost professional sports teams. In the end, Stephenson concluded that “policymakers shouldn’t use public funds to entice teams to remain in their city on the basis of economic development.”
Professor Szymanski holds a similar view, claiming that decades of study have shown that a team’s economic impact on a city is negligible. “Team owners have essentially been committing fraud by claiming that they could provide economic benefits to the city, which never materialized,” he added. Rather than spurring new economic activity, Szymanski suggests that new teams just redirect spending within a city. “Much of the revenue for sports teams is just money substituted away from other local businesses,” he says. “Instead of attracting lots of new money into a city, the teams are just drawing spending that would’ve gone to concerts, restaurants, etc. in their absence.”
However, this hasn’t deterred cities from offering enormous subsidies to attract teams. In a Sports Letter article, Marissa Kasch explains that the city of Las Vegas offered the Raiders $750 million in public funding for their new stadium, and around $380 million to finance the A’s new $1.5 billion stadium. Brad Congelio, economist and professor of sport and data analytics, noted in a USC Annenberg Journalism article that promises of economic benefits made by team owners often don’t materialize. “The NFL, for as rich as they are, as wealthy and powerful as they can be, I don’t know if they could do something to ease these things from happening,” he expressed. “But at least they can try. It’s just bad. Words escape me, almost, just in terms of how hopeless the situation seems.”
The aftermath: the post-relocation identity
For the unlucky cities that lose their teams, the impact goes beyond that of an economic standpoint. Professional sports teams give their fans identities, and act as powerful symbols for their cities and communities, bringing people together through shared experiences.
When looking at the historical patterns of team relocation, there’s a common pattern in that some cities fill the “void” created by a team’s departure rather quickly with a new team. Houston, for example, lost their NFL team, the Oilers, to Tennessee in 1997, only to be given an expansion team, the Houston Texans, in 2002. Others have to wait much longer, with Seattle spending nearly two decades without an NBA team, and St. Louis approaching a decade without an NFL team.
“The St. Louis community put more investment into the Cardinals [MLB] and Blues [NHL], especially when they won the Stanley Cup in 2019,” Garr states, referring to St. Louis fans who redirected their fandom once the Rams left. “More recently, the city received an expansion Major League Soccer (MLS) team, the St. Louis Soccer Club, and those games have been continuously sold out with long season ticket waitlists.”
As for the situation in Seattle, their basketball void remains unfilled, despite the rich tradition in the city. “Seattle is a basketball city. We’ve had players like Paolo Banchero, Jamal Crawford, and Michael Porter Jr., just to name a few,” says Broughton.
Even physical reminders haunt fans of what once was. “Driving by Oracle Arena and the Coliseum, knowing they are both empty, is extremely sad,” Azevedo explains.
Stadium financing issues
The dynamics of stadium financing, a common drive in relocations, represent a unique feature of the economics of sports in America. Professional sports teams often put the burden of stadium costs on taxpayers through subsidies, while still maintaining their private profits.
According to a 2005 study article, the costs of sports facilities publicly reported by teams are often underreported. Judith Long found that “the average public cost for professional sports facilities was underreported by $50 million per venue, shifting the average public financial burden from 56% to 79% of total costs.” Oftentimes, this results in cities offering overly generous subsidies, leading to taxpayers paying the bulk of costs.
Even the threat of relocation serves as a way for teams to leverage public funding. As previously mentioned from the Sports Letter article, The Raiders were offered $750 million in public funding when they were considering departing Oakland. Similarly, when the ownership of the Jacksonville Jaguars, another NFL team, opted for public funding, “they claimed the team would bring an estimated $130 million into the city’s economy each year, and create 3,000 jobs,” which was viewed skeptically by economists.
Geographic loyalty and digital fandom
As media and technology advance, the landscape of geographic proximity and fandom has shifted significantly. While many fans still see a team’s location as a key factor for their fandom, improvements in broadcasting and streaming technologies have made it easier to be a fan than ever before, regardless of proximity.
However, this shift has added a new complexity to fandom, where loyalty can go beyond borders, especially in places without teams. “I would describe it as a mixed bag,” says Broughton, speaking to Seattle’s basketball culture without the Supersonics. “If people want to have some loyalty to a ‘local’ team, then typically they’ll root for the Portland Trailblazers, but a lot of people, such as myself, they root for a team that isn’t local that they have some sort of connection to.”
One of the largest risks associated with relocation is the loss of an established, passionate, and loyal fanbase for an untested market. According to YouGov, 22% of fans said their engagement would decrease if their team relocated, with 11% saying they’d maintain their loyalty, and another 9% saying they would disengage from the sport as a whole. Today, the A’s decision to move to Las Vegas represents the large risk of relocation. While the A’s had the lowest attendance in the MLB in 2023, with just over 10,000 fans per game, they had a rich history in Oakland, with several World Series championships under their belt, as stated by David Lengel in The Guardian.
Even then, with rising technology, some fans just can’t replace what once was. “I certainly feel less connected to the teams I now root for,” says Azevedo, who had to become a Giants and 49ers fan after the Oakland exodus.
The psychology of fandom
The psychology of fan allegiance reveals to us the complex relationship between sports teams and fans. For many, their connection to their teams becomes a part of their personal identity, which makes relocation feel like a personal abandonment more than a business decision.
Due to this, relocation can often leave fans disgruntled and angry. Cleveland, for example, lost the Browns to Baltimore, where they became the Ravens in 1996. However, just three years later, the NFL gave Cleveland the Browns back, with their same colors, logo, and history, largely due to the uproar from fans, as stated in a Sports Letter titled “The History of Team Relocation.”
The betrayal fans feel is commonly due to the investment city communities make into their teams, whether that be emotionally or financially. The Edward Jones Dome, former home of the St. Louis Rams, had a cost of $280 million, and 96% of that was publicly financed, whereas just 4% was private, according to a Stadiums of Pro Football article. The Rams, who in the 2010’s were not seeing many successful seasons in St. Louis, still had a supportive fanbase, and when the tides seemed to be turning, the city abandoned them, departing to Los Angeles. Similarly, as stated in “The History of Team Relocation”, the Baltimore Colts left for Indianapolis in 1984, where they left in moving trucks in the middle of the night, with fans waking up to the news the next morning.
Walter J. Haas, a member of the Haas family who formerly owned the A’s, was broken hearted with the A’s relocation. Haas called the team’s move to Las Vegas “frankly unforgivable,” in an interview with The Guardian. The A’s saw great success under the Haas’s ownership in the 80s and 90s, winning a World Series and consistently packing out the stands, demonstrating that Oakland had a dedicated fan base under proper ownership.
The future
While it is hard to say what the future of team relocation holds, it’ll likely be a result of ever-changing economics and fan relationships. However, from what we have seen recently, cities like Las Vegas with large amounts of tourism, entertainment, and money might start to see more and more success. Vegas, which just a few years ago had no professional sports teams, now has three: The Raiders in the NFL, the Knights in the NHL, and now the A’s in the MLB.
For the cities that lose their teams, their respective recoveries have been widely different. Some cities, like Seattle and St. Louis, have seen some sort of recovery, with Seattle getting a new expansion NHL team, the Kraken, and St. Louis getting their MLS expansion team. On the other hand, cities like San Diego redirected their energy to other parts of their community, losing the Chargers to Los Angeles with no signs of any new teams entering.
“I think many diehard fans stayed with the franchises, but many also decided they wanted to root for teams that are closer to home,” reflects Azevedo on Oakland’s losses. His perspective aligns with those of many who struggle with their fan identity post-relocation, weighing loyalty and betrayal, nostalgia against a new beginning.
As American sports continue to evolve, the relationship between teams, fans, and cities will most definitely continue to change. However, what stays constant is the fact that teams operate as businesses and civic organizations, and will continue to have a deep cultural significance on their fans. Moreover, teams cannot always act in their best interests both financially and civically, leaving fans, communities, and cities navigating the aftermath.
Feature photo: Oakland A’s Fan Protesting Their Departure From Oakland, Oakland Coliseum, 2023, Photo Credit: James Foster