GAME ON: RAIDERS, 49ERS RESUME PLAY
Preseason series suspended after 2011 game at Candlestick tied to shooting
SANTA CLARA >> Against the backdrop of fan brawls at two recent NFL preseason games and daily reports of people behaving badly in a post-lockdown America, the 49ers and the Raiders will resume their exhibition series Sunday after a 10-year hiatus.
Given the history — the series was suspended in 2011 after a double shooting in the parking lot at Candlestick Park — who thought this was a good idea? Yes, the Raiders have moved to Las Vegas, but their Bay Area fan base remains strong enough to clash with the 49ers’.
The 49ers and the Raiders declined interview requests this week, passing the hot potato to the NFL. The league confirmed that it scheduled the game but offered nothing in the way of explanation except to say that the 49ers and Levi’s Stadium are “among the leaders in fan experience and stadium security and operations.”
Those statistics, whatever their source, were compiled in a different time. The time we’re in now might be more volatile, a Stanford doctor suggests, citing the stresses of the pandemic.
“I’d say that the tinder is dry and it doesn’t take much to set it off,” said David Spiegel, associate chair of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford.
The 49ers and Raiders met 38 times from 1967-2011, including 11 consecutive years leading up to August 2011. But after that game, when one man was beaten in a restroom and another was shot multiple times in the Candlestick Park parking lot, the series was suspended.
The teams were scheduled to meet last August, but the game was postponed because of the pandemic.
Last week in Pittsburgh, a preseason game between the Steelers and Detroit Lions was marred by a brawl in the stands. A week earlier, at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, a fight broke out between fans of the Rams and the Chargers.
The 49ers and Raiders used to control their own preseason schedules, but with increased television ratings for preseason games, the league has taken full control of the preseason in re
cent years.
The league aims to limit the preseason travel burden for its teams by keeping them fairly close to home. Unofficial requests can also be made to avoid certain opponents.
Former Raiders CEO Amy Trask said the 49ers made such a request to avoid the Raiders after the 2011 game. That game, incidentally, was played four months after Giants fan Bryan Stow was brutally beaten into a coma outside of Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.
Trask said former Raiders owner Al Davis didn’t like the idea of suspending the series with the 49ers.
“We expressed that we wanted to continue the series with different protocols, different security, enhanced security,” Trask said. “But the 49ers felt
strongly we should suspend it.”
49ers owner Jed York declined two requests for interviews this week.
The 49ers and Raiders have played twice in the regular season since the suspension. The NFL’s regular-season schedule rotation mandates that teams play each opponent at least once every four years, so the teams will meet again in 2022 in Las Vegas.
The game in December 2014 at the Coliseum in Oakland was attended by a crowd of 55,300. According to reports, there were about 20 arrests.
In November 2018, the teams played at Levi’s Stadium, where there were several fights in the stands captured by cellphone video. The two fights that garnered the most attention online were actually friendly fire — a 49ers fan punching a 49ers fan and a Raiders fan fighting a Raiders fan.
In all, the 2018 game included 32 arrests, mostly for public intoxication, and one for felony assault, stemming from the Niners fanon-fan violence.
Preseason games are drastically different from regular-season games not only on the field but also in the stands. Many seasonticket holders, forced to buy
preseason games as part of the package, sell those tickets at a deep discount on the secondary market or give them away for free.
That element was cited as an issue with the violence at Candlestick Park in 2011.
“Every team has magnificent fans and every team has a handful that act inappropriately,” Trask said. “And most often those are not your season ticket holders.”
According to TickPick, an online secondary ticket marketplace, Sunday’s Niners-Raiders game is the most popular preseason ticket of the week in the NFL. As of Thursday morning, the cheapest ticket for the game was $127, with the average ticket price rising over the last week to $173.
A TickPick spokesperson said its data indicates that ticket prices are being driven up by Bay Area Raiders fans, who presumably want to see their team in person with an easy commute.
Anyone expecting a sleepy preseason crowd could be in for a surprise Sunday.
This news organization reported that in 2018 the Santa Clara Police Department regularly employed more than 100 out-of-town police officers to work an NFL game, and that number was “noticeably higher” for the 49ers-Raiders game that season, according to a department source.
There were also undercover officers in the stands as well as cameras located throughout Levi’s Stadium, technology that wasn’t available at Candlestick Park.
But is Levi’s Stadium prepared for what should be a different clientele than a regular-season 49ers game?
Lt. Cuong Phan of the Santa Clara Police Department declined to give specifics about the security detail Sunday.
“We will have appropriate public safety personnel on hand for this event, both
foreseen and unforeseen,” Phan said in an email.
Phan also declined to specify plans for placing undercover officers in the stands Sunday.
Outside of police, factors that could possibly mitigate fan violence are a 1 p.m. kickoff that reduces time for pregame tailgating, the change of venue from Candlestick Park to Levi’s Stadium, and COVID-19, which could slow fan interaction through protocols.
Will that be enough? All we can do is wait and hopefully not see.