NFL & LA doing their same old dance, but is this tune different/LATimes

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Dodgersrf

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Kroenke's desire to take on the challenge of making St. Louis into a media player is what might keep the Rams in St. Louis.

His desire to be a power player in the NFL is what might make them leave.

That's the only real question. If Kroenke wants to be one of the top power players in the NFL, he might have to move his team to LA. There are very few juggernaut-type media markets and I don't think St. Louis will ever be in that kind of position.

It will cost millions in league fees to move the team to LA.
However, the LA Rams will be worth more than the STL Rams. Would the relocation fees counter the equity?

One thing I do know. The 750 mill renovation to the dome that Kroenke wants, is half the cost of SF new stadium.
750 million to renovate the dome and keep the Rams seems reasonable. A new stadium in any city will cost twice that.
 

moklerman

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It does seem odd, that Goodell is clamoring for SF, to let Oakland play in their stadium.

If they want football in LA as badly as they say they do, why won't they push to have the Raiders go back to LA?
There's a lot of misinformation going on. I think it's all smokescreens and mirrors. Goodell let it slip that they wanted to expand again a while back and then quickly backtracked. Everything since then has just been a waiting game for the NFL to do whatever their master plan is.
 

Dodgersrf

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There's a lot of misinformation going on. I think it's all smokescreens and mirrors. Goodell let it slip that they wanted to expand again a while back and then quickly backtracked. Everything since then has just been a waiting game for the NFL to do whatever their master plan is.
Agree.
I'll tell you one thing that's an almost certainty. If they do move the team, the fans won't know until the movie g trucks are 1000 mile down the road. It would be financial suicide to tell the STL fan base that they are moving the team in a couple years.

I'd feel bad for the STL fans. It sucked when they left LA. I'm fine that there in STL. I can't lie though, I would be nice to have them back.

Just stay the hell out of London
 

bluecoconuts

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LA doesn't want the Raiders. Raider fans in LA (and there are a lot) for the most part do, but the city of LA does not.
 

moklerman

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Agree.
I'll tell you one thing that's an almost certainty. If they do move the team, the fans won't know until the movie g trucks are 1000 mile down the road. It would be financial suicide to tell the STL fan base that they are moving the team in a couple years.

I'd feel bad for the STL fans. It sucked when they left LA. I'm fine that there in STL. I can't lie though, I would be nice to have them back.

Just stay the hell out of London
London's actually what scares me the most. I've long thought that it was a bit of a pipe dream by the NFL but the won't quit talking about it. That it was mentioned again recently right alongside LA makes me think it might actually happen and I don't think Kroenke would go back on his word to Georgia and move the team to LA.

I basically have no idea what's going to happen and I don't even know what I want to happen. My instinct is that I'd like the Rams back in LA but in terms of practicality, it doesn't make a lot of sense for me. With blackouts anyway. But I know I don't want them to move to London and then I don't know why. London...St. Louis...who cares? I won't be going to a game in either case and if I ever did, I think I'd rather visit London than St. Louis again.

As much as I think LA would be good for the value of the franchise, London would be an even bigger story. The Rams returning to LA would get some press but being the first team in London would dominate the headlines. It's all very confusing and ultimately, I just want it to be settled, whatever "it" turns out to be.
 

Dodgersrf

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London's actually what scares me the most. I've long thought that it was a bit of a pipe dream by the NFL but the won't quit talking about it. That it was mentioned again recently right alongside LA makes me think it might actually happen and I don't think Kroenke would go back on his word to Georgia and move the team to LA.

I basically have no idea what's going to happen and I don't even know what I want to happen. My instinct is that I'd like the Rams back in LA but in terms of practicality, it doesn't make a lot of sense for me. With blackouts anyway. But I know I don't want them to move to London and then I don't know why. London...St. Louis...who cares? I won't be going to a game in either case and if I ever did, I think I'd rather visit London than St. Louis again.

As much as I think LA would be good for the value of the franchise, London would be an even bigger story. The Rams returning to LA would get some press but being the first team in London would dominate the headlines. It's all very confusing and ultimately, I just want it to be settled, whatever "it" turns out to be.
I don't want them to have 8 monster road games. Talk about jet lag. London isn't a two hour flight.

The London talk is ridiculous to me. Canada makes far more sense if they are going out of the US.

It's Stl or LA IMO.

Jacksonville to LA also makes a ton of sense. Jacksonville shouldn't even have a team.
 

moklerman

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I don't want them to have 8 monster road games. Talk about jet lag. London isn't a two hour flight.

The London talk is ridiculous to me. Canada makes far more sense if they are going out of the US.

It's Stl or LA IMO.
Maybe it's just a smokescreen but they won't get off that subject for some reason. I don't envy the team that has to deal with that travel schedule by any means but that's not to say that I can't envision the NFL making some kind of arrangements or compensations.

As many proverbial dots as there seem to be connecting the Rams back to LA, I just don't have the feeling that it's going to happen. There may not be as many dots keeping them in St. Louis, but there are a couple of really big one's that are.
 

Ozoneranger

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Here's my take on this...

The NFL is about money. And LA is a potential cash cow of epic proportions. Think about it...the Houston Texans owners plunked down $700 million to join the club. $700 million- in 1999. That was split between 31 other teams.

Think about what two expansion teams in La-La Land will bring in terms of dollars- two billion is conservative. Which is exactly what the NFL wants. The only issue is a stadium. That ground has to be broken first. This is the key to the whole enchilada. Build a stadium and the billionaires will come calling. But in California, you can't get a stadium done with public money. The last two, AT&T Park and Levi's Stadium, were both privately financed with an assist from their hosts cities in the form of local infrastructure improvements.

Now, let's look at the Rams, Raiders and Chargers. The Raiders, due to a decrepit stadium, are cash poor. No way they can pay the bounty the NFL will demand in return to LA. They're stuck in an untenable situation with a baseball team to deal with to boot. Basically, they're fucked. The Chargers have been haggling with the city of San Diego for years, and pretty much have met all NFL criteria for a move. Why haven't they jumped into the void? Same thing...relocation fees...and no new stadium. The Rams are everyone's favorite to move back. History. Monied owner with his fingers in every sports pie except baseball. And Stan just bought a chunk of land that's big enough for a stadium but would lack parking in car-loving, mass-transit poor LA. He'd have to take a chunk of Hollywood Park, which is in the development stages for other projects, to build his own stadium. Thing is, he just put another couple of hundreds of millions in taking control of the team...would he be willing to pony up hundreds of millions more to make a move to LA? On the other hand, would the other owners forgo a huge payday...x2...to allow Stanley Kroenke's Rams to become the most valuable team in the NFL without some kind of bounty?

So the stalemate continues...until someone gets a spade in the ground in LA. If that happens, Missouri will get off their asses big time and get something done...real quick. Ditto San Diego. And the billionaires will give the NFL what it wants most...a huge payday with two expansion teams in LA.
 

Ozoneranger

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It does seem odd, that Goodell is clamoring for SF, to let Oakland play in their stadium.

If they want football in LA as badly as they say they do, why won't they push to have the Raiders go back to LA?

No way the City of Santa Clara will allow the local neighborhoods to be held hostage to NFL football from August until January. They didn't buy into that.

The PSL issue would be huge. Niner fans paid exorbitant fees just to keep their spots in line. Like the Raiders are just going to move in and charge their fans $80 to $100 with no PSL fee? I don't think so.

Raiders in Santa Clara is a pipe dream for Raider Fan.
 
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Here's my take on this...

The NFL is about money. And LA is a potential cash cow of epic proportions. Think about it...the Houston Texans owners plunked down $700 million to join the club. $700 million- in 1999. That was split between 31 other teams.

Think about what two expansion teams in La-La Land will bring in terms of dollars- two billion is conservative. Which is exactly what the NFL wants. The only issue is a stadium. That ground has to be broken first. This is the key to the whole enchilada. Build a stadium and the billionaires will come calling. But in California, you can't get a stadium done with public money. The last two, AT&T Park and Levi's Stadium, were both privately financed with an assist from their hosts cities in the form of local infrastructure improvements.

Now, let's look at the Rams, Raiders and Chargers. The Raiders, due to a decrepit stadium, are cash poor. No way they can pay the bounty the NFL will demand in return to LA. They're stuck in an untenable situation with a baseball team to deal with to boot. Basically, they're fucked. The Chargers have been haggling with the city of San Diego for years, and pretty much have met all NFL criteria for a move. Why haven't they jumped into the void? Same thing...relocation fees...and no new stadium. The Rams are everyone's favorite to move back. History. Monied owner with his fingers in every sports pie except baseball. And Stan just bought a chunk of land that's big enough for a stadium but would lack parking in car-loving, mass-transit poor LA. He'd have to take a chunk of Hollywood Park, which is in the development stages for other projects, to build his own stadium. Thing is, he just put another couple of hundreds of millions in taking control of the team...would he be willing to pony up hundreds of millions more to make a move to LA? On the other hand, would the other owners forgo a huge payday...x2...to allow Stanley Kroenke's Rams to become the most valuable team in the NFL without some kind of bounty?

So the stalemate continues...until someone gets a spade in the ground in LA. If that happens, Missouri will get off their asses big time and get something done...real quick. Ditto San Diego. And the billionaires will give the NFL what it wants most...a huge payday with two expansion teams in LA.

I agree with a lot of this. One thing that I think this article came out is to drive the price of the Bills up. We have heard stories of Bon Jovi, Donald Trump, and the Sabres owner vying to keep the Bills in Buffalo, however there needs to be increased competition, in a much larger market for which the lesser of two basketball teams sold for $2 billion, to help drive the price up.

Back to Ozoneranger's post. IF a team would relocate to LA, the three teams mentioned in the article:
- Rams - has been covered ad nauseum so I wont get into it again
- Chargers - their struggles for a new stadium go back to the early 2000s, and yet here they are in 2014 with no hope of a new stadium in the forseeable future. There have been talks of a possible ballot issue in 2016, but nothing concrete has been set yet
- Raiders - what more can I say other than they are in the worst position of any of the teams. Not only are they in a conflict over the city of Oakland for a new stadium, they are in a dispute with their co-tenants (the A's) on what to do with the stadium.
 

GreeneCounty

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It is a bizarre anniversary, one that would have been crazy to predict.

Los Angeles has gone nearly two decades without an NFL franchise. The Rams and Raiders began their final season in Southern California 20 years ago. Since, the nation’s No. 2 market has watched its No. 1 sport from afar.

In a nod to Roman numerals, we’re fast approaching LAXX.

Dozens of ambitious plans — from billionaires to business leaders to blowhards — have been tossed on the scrap pile. In the meantime, the NFL has flourished without Los Angeles, and L.A. fans have grown comfortably accustomed to watching the NFL from their homes. Even with stadium proposals that gained momentum, there has been no cohesive, community-wide push for any particular concept. And there probably never will be. There’s one general consensus that even the league has learned to live with: No public money for a stadium.

That said, this season is different. The St. Louis Rams, San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders — all of whom previously played in L.A. — are eyeing the market. That’s not new. What’s different, though, is for the first time since this saga began, each team has what amounts to a year-to-year lease in its current venue.

It used to be that only the Chargers had an option to leave after each season, a considerable advantage over other NFL clubs weighing relocation. But now the Rams and Raiders have caught up, and all three teams are searching for stadium solutions.

With long-term TV and labor deals in place, and a proven willingness to experiment with a new way of doing things — witness changes to the Pro Bowl, draft and scouting combine — there are indications the NFL is ready to make another run at L.A.

“We’re excited about that,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said this week. “We’re investing billions of dollars in new stadiums. We’d like to do that here. We think there’s a great opportunity here. We think opportunities are starting to develop, maybe in part because we have that long-term planning in front of us.”


In one sense, the league has already taken a step toward Southern California. L.A. and Chicago are the two finalists to play host to the 2015 NFL Draft. That event has been held in New York since 1965, but the league couldn’t work out a deal with Radio City Music Hall to keep it there.

All this L.A. talk will set eyes rolling, of course, because of the rich history of all talk and no action. The threat of L.A. unquestionably has been used as leverage over the years to get deals done in other cities. Without that hammer, for instance, would there be new venues in Seattle or Indianapolis? Would Minnesota have a new stadium in the works? Absolutely not.

The fact that the iron is glowing hot doesn’t guarantee a return to L.A. any time soon.

But league executives and owners insist the city is once again a bright blip on the radar screen.

“I think ownership is collectively very concerned that we don’t have at least one team in downtown L.A.,” New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft said. “We’d like to do everything [we] can to help facilitate that happening.”

There is another difference about this year too. Last December, Rams owner Stan Kroenke quietly bought the 60-acre Inglewood parcel that sits between the Forum and Hollywood Park, land that’s sufficient to accommodate a stadium but not all the parking that the league would want.

Kroenke has looked into buying the whole Hollywood Park property, which would give him all the land he’d need for a stadium, parking and ancillary development. And seeing as the Rams and St. Louis are about $600 million apart on how much the city, county and state should chip in for a new stadium, Kroenke’s interest in L.A. should not be underestimated.

Buying that land was a shrewd move by Kroenke because he can keep it and potentially move forward with a stadium project, develop it in some other lucrative way, sell it (the owners of the Forum wanted it in the first place), and all the while hold smelling salts under the noses of negotiators in St. Louis.

As for the L.A.-area sites that are currently in play — and keep in mind these fall in and out of favor with the league and team owners — most of the inside chatter these days involves Hollywood Park, downtown, Carson and Dodger Stadium. At this point, there is little talk about City of Industry.

The most viable of these is Hollywood Park, mainly because Kroenke owns those adjacent 60 acres and might not be able to find a solution in St. Louis.

The Raiders are scrambling to line up their own Southern California stadium options in case they feel compelled to leave Oakland, and they have said they’re not interested in becoming a second tenant in the San Francisco 49ers’ new stadium in Santa Clara.

O.co Coliseum in Oakland is the only venue shared by the NFL and Major League Baseball. But the Raiders and the Oakland Athletics don’t share the same stadium vision. While the A’s are working on a 10-year lease to stay at the site, the Raiders would like the city to demolish the stadium and build them a new place to play football. One or both of the teams could end up leaving.

There are indications that the Raiders would be willing to be the second team at Hollywood Park. Al Davis, late owner of the Raiders, wanted to build his own stadium at Hollywood Park, subsequently arguing in court that the NFL torpedoed his plans by insisting that his be a two-team venue.

The Chargers, too, are kicking the tires on L.A., just as they have for the last decade. During that span, the city of San Diego has seen seven mayors come and go. The franchise has never gotten much traction on a stadium solution.

The Chargers’ most recent unsuccessful bid was made last fall when the club proposed combining a new stadium with the expansion of the Convention Center, similar to the Farmers Field concept in downtown L.A. That San Diego concept is now saddled with at least three pieces of litigation that could require years to resolve.

Sitting idle as another team moves into the L.A. market would be devastating to the Chargers, not only because a significant number of their premier customers (suite holders, local sponsors) are from Orange County and north, but also because they would lose what leverage they now have to get a deal done in San Diego. In other words, if another team is already in L.A., San Diego would be far less concerned about the Chargers’ threatening to relocate.

So the Chargers are quietly on the lookout as well.

All this could just be more fantasy football. L.A. has been “at first and goal” so many times that even the most ardent NFL fans have lost hope, interest, or both. Still, there’s no denying the dynamics have changed this season.

That could mean the stage is set for a solution. Or just another false start.

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/foot...cle_6bbf6834-ff8f-51a8-96ab-ceea2b511f89.html