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Rendering of proposed 49ers stadium in Santa Clara

They will still be the San Francisco 49ers, but they will soon be playing in a new, billion-dollar stadium in Santa Clara.

The team's South Bay destiny was cemented Thursday, when the National Football League's owners approved a $200 million loan, providing the final piece of financing for the new stadium. The news, delivered in a tweet by team CEO Jed York, comes on the heels of December's announcement that the Santa Clara Stadium Authority had secured $850 million in loans for the project.

“This means that we are fully funded for Santa Clara, and we are building a stadium in Santa Clara,” York said on a conference call Thursday afternoon.

York said the new 68,500 seat stadium could open as soon as 2014 and no later than 2015. An official groundbreaking is slated to take place sometime in the next two months.

"Clearly, this is a milestone," said Christine Falvey, spokeswoman for San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee.

Since the people of Santa Clara voted in 2010 to bring the team to their city, sports economists have raised serious questions about whether the team would be able to find the money to build the new stadium. Those lingering doubts gave San Francisco leaders hope that the team might stay in the city it has played in since 1946.

Falvey said that the city always had "a Plan B should the Santa Clara effort not move forward." That effort was "well under way when the mayor took office last year," she said.

Santa Clara city leaders welcomed the news, but not everyone there was celebrating. A vocal group of stadium opponents, Santa Clara Plays Fair, said the NFL loan doesn’t address their concerns. The group is trying to put a referendum on the ballot to stop the current stadium deal, an effort that is now held up in the courts.

Michele Ryan, the chairwoman for the group, said that the current financing plan is different from the stadium deal the voters approved in 2010.

“All their campaign advertising was that the Niners, the NFL and the stadium project were going to cover 88 percent of the cost,” Ryan said. “Two hundred million dollars is, at this point, less than 20 percent of the cost, and the 49ers aren't contributing anything.”

During the conference call, York countered those assertions, saying that the team had paid some predevelopment costs and “is on the hook if the loans are not paid back.”

The money to pay back the loans will come from the sale of stadium naming rights, seat licenses and luxury suites. York said that team still hadn’t landed a naming rights deal, but is in talks with “potential partners.”

Current 49ers season ticket holders have been made painfully aware of the seat licenses. Some of them were outraged when they received a letter last month from the team asking for between $20,000 and $80,000 to keep their spots at the new stadium. 

York fended off repeated questions about the expensive seat licenses, saying the team hasn't determined pricing for most of the seats. “We want to make sure that there’s options for all of our fans,” York insisted.

Andy Dolich, a former Niners executive and sports business consultant, said that the stadium and move are a sure thing now.

“They're in the highest level of ball security on this,” said Dolich. “It would have to be something completely unexpected to derail this.”

The question that remains now is whether the team will be able to secure a naming-rights deal and sell enough seat licenses to pay back the loans, Dolich said. The Oakland Raiders famously failed with a similar seat-license scheme, leaving taxpayers on the hook for more than $100 million.  

“To me this is the ultimate public referendum on disposable income in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area,” Dolich said.