Raiders Want to Build New Oakland Stadium — But Public Dollars Needed

Proposed 50,000-person stadium in Oakland would cost $800 million

The Warriors want to go to San Francisco and the A's want to flee to San Jose.

Luckily, the Raiders want to stay in Oakland. There's just one catch.

The City of Oakland will need to pick up some of the bill -- about $200 million worth.

There's enough interest -- economic and from the fans -- in Oakland for a 50,000-seat football stadium, according to the Oakland Tribune.

Interest is nice, but financing is another matter. The stadium could cost as much as $800 million, the newspaper reported. The Raiders have proposed pitching in about $300 million, with another $300 million from the NFL.

That leaves $200 million -- which the City of Oakland would have to raise if such a stadium were to be built, the newspaper reported.

Oakland already has stadium debt: the city has $100 million in outstanding debt from when renovations were made to the aging O.co Coliseum in order to attract the Raiders back from Los Angeles, the newspaper reported.

It was the city and Alameda County that were forced to pick up part of the bill when the Raiders failed to sell seat licenses sufficient to pay for the stadium upgrades.

Seat licenses are part of the way that the 49ers have paid for the $1.2 billion Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara -- though the city of Santa Clara did put up hundreds of millions of dollars up front through a bond measure.

At about 53,000, O.co Coliseum has the smallest capacity in the NFL. Soldier Field, the home of the Chicago Bears built in 1924, has the next smallest capacity at just under 62,000. Including standing room, the Raiders' current home can hold about 63,000.

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