NFL’s 3-team race to Los Angeles just got started
A big chunk of the city of Los Angeles has been misinformed about the Raiders moving to the city. They got all gassed up when it was announced that Bob Iger of Disneyland would help the Carson project. Somehow, that made the Oakland Raiders and San Diego Chargers the clear-cut favorites to get to LA.
Then the NFL-to-LA committee was in town and Houston Texans owner Bob McNair started talking. His agenda is to get his buddy, Chargers owner Dean Spanos, in LA over the St. Louis Rams. He made it sound like the Rams are set to stay in St. Louis and it’s a done deal for the Chargers and the Raiders to go.
McNair told the LA media as well as Chron.com, “St. Louis, they have come up with a proposal that is getting pretty close, in my opinion, to being an attractive proposal. And if they do come up with an attractive proposal, then in my view, my personal opinion, I don’t think the Rams will receive the approval to relocate. So that would mean then you’d have two teams, San Diego and Oakland, that would be going into Carson. They have a partnership to build a stadium.”
But the Rams are very much in the same situation that the Chargers are in right now. After St. Louis submitted a proposal that has city funds and state funds involved, a Missouri State official informed NFL commissioner Roger Goodell that there is no guarantee that state funds will be used.
That’s the same as the city of San Diego submitting their plan that has to be voted on in June. If the plan were to work out, it would actually leave the city of St. Louis $100 million short anyway. So the Rams qualify for relocation just as much as the Chargers and Raiders and applied along with them.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has sent a report to all 32 teams in the NFL reading as follows per NFL Media Insider Ian Rapoport:
” The current stadiums in the three respective cities are all “inadequate and unsatisfactory.” The cities did not develop proposals sufficient to ensure retention of their respective NFL teams. The leadership in each city agrees in the inadequacy of the current stadium and the lack of a timely response.
” Each of the teams in those cities has been working to improve on the inadequacies.
” None of the three clubs has received a stadium proposal from its current city free of significant contingencies or were presented with a long-term solution. In one case (Oakland), there was a conceptual proposal without a formal offer. In two (St. Louis and San Diego), the plans are dependent on various contingencies, such as money from the league not yet approved or financing plans not passed through. They lack in certainty, financially speaking. The league funding allows $200 million for a new stadium, while the St. Louis proposal calls on $300 million.
” None of the three teams would be breaking a stadium lease to move. In the St. Louis situation, relocation is actually in the lease. So all three franchises are eligible to relocate.
” The stadium experience is critical for the future. Both the Hollywood Park site in Inglewood and the site in Carson are ready for development. They are both locations where a first-class stadium can be built. Both stadiums are approved for one or two teams and without any obvious contingencies.
” Market research supports that the L.A. market can support two teams.
This means the NFL’s race to Los Angeles just started.