The NFL may be readying a return to the City of Angels.
Or not.
Owners of the league’s 32 teams are slated to huddle on Jan. 12 and 13 in Houston to weigh proposals from the Chargers, Raiders and Rams for relocating to Los Angeles. The owners also will hear from San Diego, St. Louis and Oakland — the teams’ current home cities — about plans to keep the teams put.
The showdown stems from a mismatch between America’s most popular sport (according to a poll last year by Harris Interactive) and its second-largest city, which has been without a team since the Rams and Raiders decamped following the 1994 season.
(For more on why the teams left Los Angeles and why no team has returned since then, read here.)
In February, Roger Goodell, the NFL commissioner, formed a committee made up of owners of six teams. Goodell charged the panel with overseeing the application of the league’s relocation guidelines if a team or teams applied to move.
The guidelines reportedly give deference to keeping teams in place if their home cities can accommodate – generally meaning fork over their share of the cost of a stadium – them. But the owners can do what they want, according to a lawyer who represented the Rams in their move from Los Angeles.
“It doesn’t matter one iota,” Mark Levinstein, the attorney, told Sports Business Daily recently, referring to the guidelines. “It is written for litigation. The goal is to be able to say to jurors, ‘We had a good reason,’ when the reality is, ‘We had 28 guys voting for God knows what reasons. And we don’t want all the discussion and back-room dealing and all the rest the focus of the case.’”
The cities themselves have until this Wednesday to present proposals for blocking a move, which requires a three-fourths vote. Teams have until a week later, on Jan. 4, to apply for a move.
Rams owners Stan Kroenke – a billionaire who also owns a majority stake in the English Premier League club Arsenal, the Denver Nuggets, the Colorado Avalanche, and Major League Soccer team Colorado Rapids – has announced plans to build a domed stadium in Inglewood, about 12 miles southwest of downtown Los Angeles.
The Chargers and Rams have proposed to build and share an outdoor stadium in Carson, about 14 miles further south.
For their part, officials in St. Louis have offered to build a $1 billion stadium using mostly public funds. Officials in Oakland, which is still paying off its share of upgrades to the stadium where the Raiders play currently, say they would like the team to stay and suggest they might forgive the $100 million in debt the team owes on the building in return for the Raiders’ agreeing to remain.
San Diego has proposed to build a $1.1 billion stadium for the Chargers, but the team has rebuffed the plan, saying the city will be unable to persuade voters to commit to paying roughly a third of the cost.
In early December, the Rams told the NFL they would consider partnering with the Chargers or Raiders (they didn’t say which one) on the stadium in Inglewood, a compromise that might help persuade owners to back the Rams’ bid.
Though taxpayers nationwide have paid 60% of the $10.5 billion spent on new NFL stadiums since 1990, researchers concluded in a study published in 2011 that local communities derive few economic benefits from stadiums, sporting events and franchises.