The joke is that originally the Kroenke and Spanos had talks about building a joint stadium in Inglewood. This is all the while Spanos was jerking the City of San Diego around with plans everyone said wouldn't work even if approved. Then Kroenke declines to partner with Spanos feigning an interest in staying in St Louis. The minute Spanos turns his back and starts talking to Mark Davis, Kroenke begins his quiet acquisition of the Inglewood property.
Mark Davis keeps Spanos focused on Carson because he knew his only competition in Las Vegas were the Chargers. Vegas was publicly courting the Chargers at the time. So Davis also had no intention of partnering with the Chargers either as Spanos has a very bad rep in the building industry as a developer.
When things finally fell through in San Diego because the city began to suspect Spanos was dealing in bad faith Spanos was really backed into a corner. So now he's a tenant in Kronke's palace that will sport the Ram logo on the roof...LOL. The real interesting part is the Spanos family is locked in for years into the Inglewood lease. What would happen if the Chargers can't hold up their end of the deal? They can't even fill a 27,000 seat soccer stadium. When they sell out it's because brokers are buying the seats to sell to visiting team fans. At any given game there are no more than 12-15K Charger fans. The so called Battle for LA was put to bed with the Ram's Super Bowl appearance.
So if the Chargers can't uphold their financial obligations what will the NFL do? In 1999 I was working for a company that was looking into the LA bid for a new NFL franchise. It was all bogus of course because the NFL already knew it was going to Houston. They were only driving up the price to McNair. All the data back then showed that the Chargers had virtually no following in LA. Teams like the Broncos, Cowboys and the NY teams had far and away bigger fan bases. The Chargers were down around the middle of the list if I remember correctly. That is why 20 years later I'm not surprised that they can't draw. The NFL can't allow a franchise to become insolvent. But any new owner would want to move the team and the only place they have any base is in San Diego. So if a new owner buys the team they will pull a Raven's and move to a new city and re-brand like the original Browns and the Oilers.
Knowing Kroenke's history I'm sure he's got contingency plans in that event. LA doesn't need two teams and probably doesn't want two. Heck even the mayor told Spanos not to come. LOL The Rams are LA's team. Always have been and now always will be.
