Who will move to Los Angeles? Here's the View From America
Wednesday 13 January 2016 12:17, UK
For the next couple of days, the NFL will decide which of three teams moves to Los Angeles: San Diego, Oakland or St Louis. Sky Sports’ US sports expert Alex Ferguson gives his view on the situation facing the teams’ fans…
If you're a fan of the San Diego Chargers, Oakland Raiders or St Louis Rams, your heart is probably on overdrive this week. Because of play-off excitement? Nope. That drained away pretty quickly over the 2015 season. The excitement about a talented quarterback that you're going to draft that's going to take you to new places in the 2016 season? Nope. The well is dry for new, good quarterbacks in 2016.
So why all the excitement? Your ownership wants out. They want to leave your sunny shores and move the good ship to Los Angeles. Actually, it's not actually Los Angeles. It's Inglewood. Or it's Carson.
The real reason why Stan Kroenke (owner of the Rams), Mark Davis (Raiders) and Dean Spanos (Chargers) want to leave is that their cities need billion dollar stadiums and the owners wanted hundred of millions of dollars of investment.
But Kroenke triggered this clamour for LA by signalling his intention to build a stadium in a massive market that has been untapped for 21 years. The temptation is great and the time is now.
Both potential locations will see teams sharing their stadiums. Any team that moves to LA will see the value of their franchise probably double, thanks to the huge exposure in the city.
The first is in Carson, which will see the Raiders and Chargers share a $1.8bn stadium. Of course, fans of the Raiders and Chargers - who dislike each other immensely - hate the idea, but the owners love it. It's an original deal done between Spanos and Davis. The scheme has the backing of Jerry Richardson (Carolina Panthers) and Bob McNair (Houston Texans). "They have the partnership to build a stadium", McNair told the press in December.
The partnership will also include a part-owner in Disney CEO Bob Iger (I can see the stadium getting turned into the Millennium Falcon for Star Wars Night!). The sharing deal is hardly ideal for fans. You can just imagine the marketing guys selling THAT to fans. "This stadium's for you… and your most hated rival the next week!"
The second is in Inglewood, where the the Rams and Chargers would be the home sharers at a stadium that used to be the old Hollywood Park racetrack. The Inglewood guys are so excited that construction has started already. Kroenke says: "Build it, and they will come."
But the Chargers aren't interested in partnering with the Rams on that move, leaving the Rams looking a little dry. "On December 7, the Chargers made clear in writing that we had zero interest in the Inglewood project, and nothing has changed since then," Chargers counsel Mark Fabiani told USA Today. The paper added that a move from Carson to Inglewood would be "messy".
It has been noted by multiple members of the US media that the deal needs 75 per cent of the NFL owners to agree to move a franchise before the deal's done. But herein lies a problem. Despite the Chargers-Raiders deal, the powers that be (the NFL Committee making a decision on the move) aren't excited about Oakland upping sticks and moving to Southern California again.
After all, the team has already done that before. Raiders owner Mark Davis and friends are lobbying the NFL furiously to get the team moved, attacking everyone but the loyal Silver and Black fan-base. The Raiders camp are furious about the dilapidated state of the O.co Coliseum (the current stadium), and the fact that the team is seen as a second team in Oakland to the baseball team, the Athletics.
The likeliest to move is simple: San Diego. The Spanos family looks as though they will charge off to Los Angeles, moving to Carson or Inglewood, depending on what the NFL wants them to do. The other two? That's up to the owners to decide.
