SF Candlestick Park politics (0983)

Hm. That wouldn´t happen here - I thought you are talking about leaving a stadium, but you are talking about leaving a city at all - if I thinking about that my fav team will leave my city and going to another, this sounds just weird.
In Germany there are sometimes stadiums change their names (because of advertisement) or team switching to another stadium, but always in the same city...
I don´t even know if it was allowed that FC Bayern München (for example) switching to Hamburg (at the other end of Germany) and playing there, I don´t think so, but nobody even thinking about doing something like that.

What you're writing about is one of the reasons I have never understood professional sports, at least as played in the U.S. I don't understand how citizens of a city can talk about 'their' team and have allegiance to it, when the allegiance of the teams' owner (and most of its players) is only to what city they can strike the best financial bargain with.

I had somehow missed that the 49ers were leaving Candlestick, and, for that matter, San Francisco. This sort of thing has always puzzled me, but then I grew up in a place without professional sports (though our college basketball is its own can of worms). I adopted the White Sox as my preferred professional sports team when I moved to Chicago, and I've learned about the way the team's ownership threatened a new stadium out of the city in the early 1990s. (They came very close to becoming the Sarasota White Sox.) As much as I enjoy going to a game, I can't imagine the benefit of keeping the Sox ever came close to the expense of building the park.

Chicago, at least, seems to have learned a lesson. The new owners of the Cubs tried their damndest to wrangle public money for a long-needed renovation of their private park, but the city held fast. It's one of the few initiatives of the current administration I agree with.

Another point which is so different between Europe and America... "The new owners"... ;-)
Professional clubs doesn´t get owned by somebody here. At least 51% of a club can´t owned by someone, even if there are parts sold on stock marketc etc.

"Sarasota White Sox", that's even more laughable than "Indianapolis Colts" (nee Baltimore). Glad to hear that Chicago knows how to say "no"

I've always been surprised at the amount BBC covers European sports. Now that I know that sports teams actually are committed to the cities, the European attitude towards team sports makes more sense.

So are the teams publicly owned? There's only one example of that in U.S., the Green Bay Packers football team. Major League Baseball actually prohibits public ownership.

Publicity owned was the wrong phrase for it because nobody own these clubs. ;-)

Mostly these clubs which are playing in Bundesliga (soccer) or other professional leagues in Germany are an "Eingetragener Verein" (Registered nonprofit association) --> de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eingetragener_Verein#Eingetragener_Verein (_many_ other languages, but funny none in english, bt maybe you found another language you are understand - or google - translate...) so formally they are officially "non-profit".
Of course the higher league- teams acting money - orientated, but casually there was something below the professional part in these clubs, too (such as youth leagues etc. which are integrated pretty well and acting under same logo, name, brands etc.).

Have posted the picture for the new stadium for the 49ers that is being built 38 miles south in Santa Clara.