Many people wrongly attribute the the move of both the Raiders and Rams from the LA market to sagging fan support but the truth is both relocations were totally driven by the desire for stadium improvements which were not forthcoming. The main improvements sought were luxury boxes and the additional revenue they bring in.
Al Davis' moved out of Oakland was done for the same reason in the first place. While it's true that the Raiders attendance had been falling in Los Angeles as Al Davis began the long march toward senility and the team began to decline, the fact is that the attendance in 1994 was only 626 less per game on average than the following season back in Oakland. This after four years of Davis threatening to move the team.
I don't know where you got that figure for the crowd at the last game in LA, but the fact is that the Raiders’ last crowd in LA was 64,130, more than the capacity of Oakland Coliseum TODAY.
As for the Rams, their last season playing in Anaheim drew an average of 42,312 per game. Four years before that they were averaging almost 60,000.
Compare that to the Cardinals last year in St. Louis, when they averaged 28,000. The last game drew 39,147 to the Big A.
Georgia had planned to move to St. Louis all along, since she was from Missouri originally, though of course she kept her place in Newport Beach. In fact the Rams front office conducted sham negotiations with Baltimore to hide the fact they were really talking in earnest to St Louis, where the city fathers opened the treasury for the pleasure of Madame Ram.
Since the move both teams have suffered declining attendance as the years went on. It was so bad in Oakland that a couple of years ago the smallest crowd since the AFL days came out, 32,218 to see them lose to the Texans in 2010. They have since seem a resurgence, but on average the crowds in Oakland have been comparable to those in LA.
Of course Georgia never had to worry about fan support after the move, since for years the city of St Louis bought any unsold tickets. But as a fiscal conservative you support the politicians in So Cal who refused to give welfare to rich NFL owners, right?
As you say, this discussion was some time ago so I have little recollection of where it was going at that time. I did get that stat from the internet about the last attendance, it may have been for the Rams, I don’t know now.
I know the move of both teams had to do with fan support, perhaps more so for the Raiders than the Rams but it played a part in each.
Living near Oakland during the 80s, Davis move from there to LA was hardly a surprise.
Aside from that, I don’t have much to add to your commentary.