Santa Clara 49ers?

The 49ers have announced that they are planning to move to Santa Clara by 2012. The main reason is the high cost of infrastructure improvements around the planned site for the new stadium, so they may be just trying to put a little pressure on San Francisco officials to chip in on that cost, especially since the city can have huge investments rolling in if the 2016 Olympics will be held there (i just can't imagine having an extra few hundred thousand / million people on the streets, but that's another story).

Which brings me to an interesting point. I live in the area, and i see the people. One of the main reasons why San Jose has the biggest per capita income is very simple - a lot of high tech companies. Who works there? Not a kind of people who'd go to a professional football game (few of them do, but it's not like it's Green Bay, let's face it). Many are immigrants who could care less about the sports and many are simply not interested in sports because of the internal inclinations (ever see somebody good at sports and computers - shouldn't be a lot). The Sharks arena is rarely sold out (according to one of my co-workers), and there is only one shop that sells non-Sharks jerseys that i've been able to find in the area. Granted, ice hockey is not as popular as football, but still. They can't assume to boost ticket sales just by moving into a rich area, and corporate sponsorship / luxury boxes alone can't save the day, especially in the post-bubble era. Some other good questions raised here.