As I've posted before, the Spanos family is closer to bankruptcy than people know. They live off the team income. The entire family is employed by the team at inflated salaries. They cleared (netted) $65M per year in SD and it wasn't enough for them.
I think this is a legitimate claim as the virus has seriously hampered PSL and construction licensing. Also, the Chargers haven't paid a penny toward any of this. So yes he needs the money and yes it's a way of leveraging the Spanos family out. As I've said Eli Broad has been wanting the team for decades. He would buy the team now and then build his own stadium in the City of Industry where he would at least have some fanbase. Then Stan would have his palace all to himself which is what he wants.
Greedy Spanos made a huge mistake. For a 30% stake in ownership, Broad would have built them a stadium in the City of Industry. The team would be an IE, OC, and North SD County team with an actual existing fan base. The funny thing about franchise value, it's like home equity, you only get it when you sell. IMO selling has always been Spanos' end game. But with a loser team with no fanbase, it erodes his franchise value.
I think Stan gets his loan and in the process screws Dean because their portion of obligation would cut into any team sales profit. This is so fitting. Spanos gave the finger to first San Diego followed by Broad and then Las Vegas, and now he's playing in a soccer stadium he can't sell out with only 10K in fans and facing BK. Now Stan is going to burden him with even more debt. Oh BTW the Chargers have never paid for their relocation fee to the NFL of $365M which is due next year if they play in the new stadium this year. IMO the Chargers will be insolvent next year.
Well, I think the ticket sales for Chargers games will be pretty solid, but only because it's a destination game to see the newest and best stadium in the NFL.
If the Chargers hated playing in front of 25k opposing fans in StubHub, they're gonna REALLY hate playing in front of 60k opposing fans.
Now, the restaurants, bars, hotels and other venues will LOVE SD home games because of all that out of town money, but otherwise, uch.
Good point about making Spanos insolvent. That extra loan was a genius move. If anything, they'll make the team such that they can't extract more money.
Worse for them, they won't have the liquid cash to pay signing bonuses. Wouldn't surprise me AT ALL if someone other than Eli Broad bought the Chargers after the 2021 season and immediately sought to relocate them back to SD.
A new owner with a solid plan which included a privately funded stadium would be welcomed back there. There'd still be some hard feelings and Spanos could never pull it off, but a SD person could.
but yeah, good take. The Chargers are clearly a team in limbo. LA is NOT their forever home.