Throughout the years, a number of teams in the National Football League (NFL) have either moved or merged.
In the early years, the NFL was not stable and teams moved frequently to survive, or folded only to be resurrected in a different city with the same players and owners, while the Great Depression era saw the movement of most surviving small-town NFL teams to larger cities to ensure survival, and franchise mergers were also popular during World War II in response to the exodus of players to war service. Few, if any, of these relocations and mergers were accompanied with widespread controversy.
Franchise moves became far more controversial in the late 20th century when a vastly more popular NFL, free from financial instability, allowed many franchises to abandon long-held strongholds for perceived financially greener pastures.
Despite a Pete Rozelle promise to Congress not to relocate franchises in return for a law exempting the league from certain aspects of antitrust laws, thus making possible the AFL–NFL merger, several franchises have relocated since the merger and the passage of the law (Public Law 89-800) which sanctioned it. While owners invariably cited financial difficulties as the primary factor in such moves, many fans bitterly disputed these contentions, especially in Baltimore, St. Louis, and Cleveland, each of which eventually received teams some years after their original franchises moved.
However, Los Angeles, the second-largest media market in the United States, did not have an NFL team from 1995 to 2015. The league had started actively promoting a return to Los Angeles no later than 2006, and in January 2016, the NFL gave the St. Louis Rams approval to move back to Los Angeles. A year later, the Chargers also relocated to the city, while the Raiders relocated to Las Vegas in 2020.
Within the United States, the San Diego–Tijuana market is currently the largest metropolitan area (and only one with over 3 million residents) without an NFL franchise. The only other city to be seriously considered in the country in recent times was San Antonio, Texas, which the Raiders seriously considered as a relocation candidate in 2014 before choosing Las Vegas.
Speculation on future relocation has mainly been centered around two larger cities outside the United States: Toronto, Canada (q.v. National Football League in Toronto) and London, England, United Kingdom (q.v. Potential London NFL franchise), the latter of which would be the first attempt by one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada to place a team outside North America.
Additionally, with the increasing suburbanization of the U.S., the building of new stadiums and other team facilities in the suburbs instead of the central city became popular in the 1970s.
Timeline
Teams making more significant moves, in chronological order
The NFL considers these continuous franchises that relocated to different metropolitan areas.
The list also includes franchises from the 1960s American Football League that moved during that league's existence. The NFL and AFL agreed to merge in 1966, with the merger taking effect in 1970. All AFL franchises were accepted into the NFL, and the NFL incorporated the AFL's history, records, and statistics.
Decatur Staleys: to Chicago in 1921 (renamed the Chicago Bears in 1922) Toledo Maroons: to Kenosha, Wisconsin in 1924 Cleveland Bulldogs: to Detroit as the Wolverines in 1928 Pottsville Maroons: to Boston as the Bulldogs in 1929 Dayton Triangles: to Brooklyn as the Dodgers in 1930 (renamed Brooklyn Tigers in 1944) Portsmouth Spartans: to Detroit as the Lions in 1934 Boston Redskins: to Washington, D.C. in 1937 (renamed Washington Football Team in 2020, Washington Commanders in 2022) Cleveland Rams: to Los Angeles in 1946 Chicago Cardinals: to St. Louis in 1960 Los Angeles Chargers: to San Diego in 1961 (AFL) Dallas Texans: to Kansas City as the Chiefs in 1963 (AFL) Oakland Raiders: to Los Angeles in 1982 Baltimore Colts: to Indianapolis in 1984 St. Louis Cardinals: to Phoenix as the Phoenix Cardinals in 1988 (renamed Arizona Cardinals in 1994) Los Angeles Rams: to St. Louis in 1995 Los Angeles Raiders: back to Oakland in 1995 Houston Oilers: temporarily to Memphis in 1997 as the Tennessee Oilers and permanently to Nashville in 1998 (renamed Tennessee Titans in 1999) St. Louis Rams: back to Los Angeles in 2016 San Diego Chargers: back to Los Angeles in 2017 Oakland Raiders: to Las Vegas in 2020