The 49ers are the only team still in the Bay Area, now that the Raiders have relocated. Again. And the 49ers have adopted a new slogan that seems to acknowledge that reality.
“Faithful to the Bay” is the phrase that the 49ers will use. Which easily can be interpreted as a slap at the team that has left Oakland for Las Vegas.
“We’re not trolling the Raiders; that was one of our key tenets internally,” 49ers chief marketing officer Alex Chang said of the new slogan, via Sports Business Daily. “We don’t have a plan or strategy to convert Raiders fans.”
Those are two separate concepts, however. It’s one thing to not be trolling the Raiders. It’s another thing to not have a plan or strategy to convert Raiders fans.
Why wouldn’t the 49ers want to convert Raiders fans? The Raiders left Oakland. To the extent that any fans in Oakland had an affinity for the Raiders because they were tied to Oakland, there’s still a team tied to the Bay Area, with a stadium that is actually closer to Oakland than it is to San Francisco.