Over 50 years of Raiders fandom came to a peak for Barbara Estrada when she received a surprise announcement.
She is the team’s 2025 International Fan of the Year.
Estrada, a retired bilingual teacher from Mexico City, Mexico, gained access to American football once her family got cable television. While her father was a Pittsburgh Steelers fan, Barbara was ironically drawn to one of the Steel Curtain’s biggest rivals in the 1970s.
“There was something about Ken Stabler, Ray Guy and Fred Biletnikoff,” Estrada said. “They just caught my eye and I said, ‘This is it. This is the team that’s made for me.'”
Four decades later, she attended her first Raiders game as the team traveled to her hometown to play the Houston Texans at Estadio Azteca in 2016. She was one of the nearly 77,000 fans that witnessed Derek Carr find Amari Cooper for a 35-yard touchdown pass to defeat the Texans, 27-20.
She’s also found ways to connect with Raider Nation and football fans alike through making content, a hobby she picked up after retiring. Known as “Raiders Baibis” on TikTok, she has over 4,000 followers and nearly 33,000 likes on the platform.
Estrada applied to be the Raiders’ International Fan of the Year back in November, and was later invited to what she thought would be an interview among other fans. At the end of her faux interview, it was revealed that she’d been chosen as the team’s winner.
“After the question, ‘What does Just Win Baby mean to you?’ the next question was, ‘How does it feel to be announced as the International Fan of the Year?'” Estrada recalled with a chuckle. “I was very emotional at the time.
“It is an honor really. … This to me was something totally unexpected. I thought to myself, ‘Yeah, maybe I can submit my application,’ but I never expected to [win] on the first time around.”