Surely you can see the trend and surely you have the sense to realize this is a symptom of a bigger problem. Forget the Chargers for a minute. What's it going to be when ComiCon leaves? ComiCon's a boondoggle that nobody really ever wanted?

You realize these events have virtually zero impact on regional GDP right? SD will be fine.

Just saw the aerial shot of downtown Minneapolis on NBC and its new amazing stadium for Vikings and probably Final Fours. That metro are is just a tad larger than SD basically a peer in population and their skyline is about 85% of LA's (I would be embarrassed if I was an LA booster and saw that shot of their CBD) with tons of quality infill going in and many more Fortune 500's than San Diego. Is it the Scandinavian roots? More highly evolved populace for sure...

Speaking of Comic Con how much space do they really need? You have PETCO Park next door, huge lawn in front of Hilton that you can put nice tent structures on, the Marriott in finishing up their amazing new space, Hyatt right there with tons of space. How big can Comic Con be? Basically the entire Gaslamp and Bayside area is theirs for that entire week seems like they can figure out plenty of space to put everything. Who in the hell wants to be in boring ass Anaheim? What is the draw their I don't get it at all, "oh honey we can go to Disneyland the day before or after convention..."

right... 85%... Downtown LA is building as many buildings right now as are currently standing in Minneapolis.

While our city is incompetent in many respects, I think the organizations need to meet us half way. I look at the Chargers and Comic Con as total separate issues. The people who run Comic Con are actually willing to work with the city and expressed they want to stay. This is in contrast to the Chargers who have economic incentive to go to LA. They might have been willing to work on a deal earlier, but they left the negotiation table in this most recent attempt by the city to come up with a plan. I think ComicCon is more reasonable, more transparent, and more flexible than the Chargers are. I'm more optimistic CC will stay.

Mello - CC has expressed they want a contiguous convention space. I think they don't mind if there are a few off-site events, but they don't want the whole thing to become some disjointed mosh-mash of venues all over downtown, and I don't blame them. I really hope the city can forge ahead with the contiguous convention plan and that this initiative Brigg's is peddling fails. I think Briggs' meddling could cause us to lose ComicCon

I agree. Granted it's been many years since I've been to Minneapolis, but LA is a far better city in pretty much any metric you want to use - weather, diversity, culture, architecture, global influence, etc.

As far as SD and Minneapolis, I'll take the ocean and our climate over some tall buildings in the middle of the frozen tundra any day ;)

What...what?

Just why in the heck would you use such a wide cast of regional GDP for something like ComicCon other than to find a number so big as to make a large number in its own right look small.

Remove for a second the free press that San Diego gets for each ComicCon. Press all over the world by the way. Press that paints San Diego as an amazing destination to visit. Coverage that many cities have to pay for with commercials by the local tourism industry.

Remove for a second the fact that every single year San Diego becomes the epicenter of film, television and digital media. A phenomenon that only happens in a handful of cities around the globe on a consistent basis.

Remove those two items that many cities would bend over backwards to have and pay a lot of money annually to try and become.


$135,000,000 (on the low end) in economic impact each and every year. That's a lot of money. It's spent over countless businesses and goes way behind hotels and restaurants in the Gaslamp.

$2,800,000 in direct taxes. Beyond the payments for services, booking fees for rooms and tips to a massive service industry...the region gets $2,800,000 in taxes.

15% in convention center attendance. For the entire year, this single event is responsible for 15% of the people who come to San Diego for a convention at the convention center.



San Diego is not going to 'go under' if and when ComicCon leaves. Your right about that.

But it's pretty foolish to suggest that it won't be a massive blow to the economy and global perception of the city.

The biggest difference between Minneapolis and San Diego is how they rank in terms of the overall state. After Minneapolis/St. Paul, the biggest city in Minnesota is Rochester. San Diego is #3 maybe 4 in pecking order in California.

Now I get it that California is a much bigger economy but the political will to fund stadiums is not the same.

U.S. Bank Stadium is estimated to cost $1.061 billion, of which $348 million is coming from the state of Minnesota, $150 million from the city of Minneapolis, and $551 million coming from the team and private contributions.

32% of the funding is coming from the State and only 7% comes from the City. By comparison, I have not seen a financing plan for San Diego that includes a penny from the State.

If San Diego had a similar % of support from the State and could assume an equal level of support from the NFL and Private sources...there would not be the need for a penny from the City or County as 68% of the funding has already been pegged at coming from the Chargers, NFL and PSLs.

FWIW, there are two sides to this coin.

If you can afford to live near the water in San Diego...sure, this is a nice lifestyle. That said, unless you are really wealthy...you're going to be living in a tiny house and most likely renting.

Minneapolis and Minnesota in general are super cold in the winter but they also have amazing summers. When it's too hot or too cold, they enjoy living in larger homes that they mostly likely own.

Here's a good link for stadium info. This isn't just about San Diego and its old stadium. This represents the ability of the other owners to extract public money for a stadium. It's the reason they don't want our proposal to go to a vote. If it failed it would have a domino effect on the other owners and the less-rich owners. This will be the start of the downward slide of the NFL. Moving teams to LA might prevent that for 10 more years. San Diego just happened to be a victim of circumstance.

http://www.boltsfromtheblue.com/2015...e-nfls-horizon

Here's a enticing quote:

Stadium costs are skyrocketing.
About half of all NFL stadiums are likely to need replacement or significant modifications within the next 10-20 years.
About half of the current NFL owners cannot afford to build their own stadiums because they inherited their franchise and didn't build wealth independently.
After Los Angeles, there are only 2 open markets left in North America which absolutely could afford (or help afford) to build stadiums at the current size, amenities, and cost required.
While some of these owners will settle for renovations to their existing structures, several others will do what they've done previously, and demand taxpayer subsides which are not available, both in terms of open markets or in terms of the amount of public money needed to make a deal work.

So, what happens when seven or eight owners get into a competition for Toronto, Mexico City or London? While a few will succeed, what happens to the losers? You think the drama over Los Angeles this year was bad? Just you wait as the large markets dwindle and the number of competitive and desperate owners increase.

This is the hidden reason the OGs are fully in support of Dean Spanos. Their fear is that the NFL decides to sacrifice the elders by forcing the OGs outside "megamarkets" (h/t to Carmen Policy) to sell majority control of their franchises to multibillionaires who can fully or mostly finance their own stadiums for the good of the NFL. Before you think that owners of professional sports teams can't be forced to sell, just remember three names: Frank McCourt, Jeff Moorad, and Donald Sterling.

Thank you for proving my point.

Don't sleep on Minneapolis as a major (albeit much quieter) corporate player. Sort the following list by Number of Fortune 1000 Companies:

http://www.geolounge.com/list-fortun...es-urban-area/

The Minneapolis/St. Paul (26) metro isn't that far behind the L.A. metro (32), and it destroys L.A. when you look at it from a per capita perspective. San Diego, on the other hand, checks in with 5 (tied with Oklahoma City and Toledo).

Thought this list was interesting given all the recent banter about city rankings.

Don't get me wrong, I'll take living in Southern California any day of the week over the Upper Midwest. I just thought it was interesting to see how well Minneapolis stacks up against the other major players...

Haha, I love that you used the girlfriend analogy because I was just about to do the same for the other side. I keep thinking of the NFL as the girlfriend who wants to date a guy with more money, but doesn't want everyone to think she's completely shallow. Therefore, she starts stirring up drama with her current, average-salaried boyfriend to make it look like he's not treating her right and rationalize the idea that she deserves better. Meanwhile, the poor sap she's currently dating wrestles with idea of taking on massive credit card debt to make his suddenly pretentious long-time girlfriend happy.

It's a great analogy! hahaha

Considering the longer history between San Diego and the Chargers, here's how one could look at it: The Chargers are the girlfriend who wants her boyfriend to pop the question (a.k.a., build a stadium) but finally says "fuck it, I'm moving on" after years and years without a proposal.

I like Minneapolis too but come on...

...and LA is the sugar daddy who hasn't got any for a quarter of a century and could care less about the bolts. :D

http://www.nflreligion.com/wordpress...rgers-Logo.jpg

It's got a nice ring to it, don't you think Mello?:cheers:

So the Chargers got their wish with a option to go to LA.

The only problem it wasn't the option the Spanos family wanted.

Oakland has backed off from LA (unless the Chargers decide not to move there)
but that doesn't mean they are staying in Oakland either since they are already looking at other cities for their options.

The only winner so far is the Rams.

Chargers: forced to take an option they didn't really want.
Raiders: still stuck in Oakland and have to start over with options.
Oakland: they kept the Raiders but no one expects for much longer
San Diego: people can guess but they are still in play for someone until they aren't.
St. Louis: well the Rams really weren't theirs anyway. Their team is still playing in Arizona. Anyone think St. Louis will ever see another NFL team? Does anyone really care?


Los Angeles: probably the biggest loser since all 3 teams trying to get there pretty much suck. You'd think at least one good team should have been offered to the number two market. No wonder the city has been cool to the whole NFL fight to get to LA.