With the city of New Orleans refusing to allow Saints to open their stadium for fans amid the coronavirus pandemic, the team started looking into other options to avoid playing home games in front of empty stands. One of them is moving to Louisiana State University’s Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge.
According to Saints’ senior vice president of communications and broadcasting Greg Basel, the organization already met with LSU officials on Tuesday to discuss this possibility.
“LSU has been gracious and enthusiastic regarding hosting our future games, and we very much appreciate their partnership,” Bensel told ESPN. “We have also discussed the possibility of moving our home games to LSU with the NFL, and they are aware of our exploring this option.”
This wouldn’t be the first time that Saints play at Tiger Stadium, as they hosted four games there during the 2005 NLF seasons when Hurricane Katarina forced them out of New Orleans. Also, they played a handful of preseasons games in Baton Rouge during the franchise’s early years.
Both NFL and Saints have been trying to get approval from New Orleans’ Mayor LaToya Cantrell to allow fans in Mercedes-Benz Superdome at limited capacity but got rejected. The ban for “large gatherings” is still in place in New Orleans, and according to Cantrell, having 20K fans in a closed stadium “presents significant public health concerns.”
Baton Rouge, on the other hand, gave an exception to LSU Tigers for their home games, with Tiger Stadium operating at 25% capacity.
So far, 15 NFL teams have opened their stadiums to fans in a limited capacity while several other organizations plan the same move in the coming weeks.
