Rams new stadium dazzled the NFL, but league didnt want to rush Chargers
HOUSTON—The still-unresolved status of the Chargers following Tuesday’s Los Angeles relocation vote by NFL owners was a product of insufficient time to craft a partnership between the Chargers and Rams combined with an attempt to put the Chargers in a favorable position to evaluate options in Los Angeles and San Diego, people familiar with the situation said Wednesday.
“The option was an attempt to do something for the Chargers,” a high-ranking official with one NFL team said.
The official and others spoke on the condition of anonymity because those issues were not addressed publicly by league leaders.
Owners of the NFL teams voted, 30-2, Tuesday during a meeting at a Houston hotel to ratify the relocation application of the Rams. The Rams were authorized to move immediately from St. Louis to Los Angeles, which regains an NFL franchise for the first time since the Rams and Raiders left town following the 1994 season.
The Rams are expected to play next season in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum while their new stadium in Inglewood, Calif., is under construction. That palatial Inglewood stadium proposed by Rams owner Stan Kroenke wooed owners Tuesday. The stadium, scheduled to open in 2019 and expected to cost around $2 billion, is part of a nearly 300-acre complex planned to also include entertainment, retail and housing.
Under the owners’ vote, the Chargers were given an option to join the Rams in Inglewood. That option extends for a year. If the Chargers do not exercise their option, it transfers to the Raiders and they would have a one-year option to join the Rams. The Raiders, at least for now, remain in Oakland.
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The arrangement was not the ideal outcome for the Chargers, who had proposed a Carson, Calif., stadium with the Raiders. But once the owners decided on Inglewood over Carson, the high-ranking team official and others said, the option given to the Chargers was reflective of the strong support among the owners for the Chargers and their chairman, Dean Spanos, to be included in the sport’s L.A. solution.
“It gives them the chance to work out something in San Diego and/or negotiate with Stan,” the high-ranking team official said. “I think they will try to do a deal with Stan.”
Another person familiar with the league’s inner workings said the Chargers being put ahead of the Raiders in the line to get to L.A. resulted from sentiment among the owners that Spanos deserved that because he’d been working for longer than Raiders owner Mark Davis to get a new stadium.
According to that person, neither Spanos nor Davis had been willing to consider prospective options for teaming with the Rams in Inglewood until the Carson project was rejected by the owners. That happened, in effect, on the owners’ initial vote Tuesday — when Inglewood apparently received 20 votes and Carson had far less support. That was short of the 24 votes needed for ratification, but it made the owners’ preference clear.
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From there, the push was made to dissolve the Chargers-Raiders partnership in Carson and put together a Rams-Chargers pairing in Inglewood. But that could not be completed on such short notice.
This setup gives Spanos the “opportunity to weigh” a potential Inglewood partnership with Kroenke and a prospective new-stadium deal in San Diego “rather than rushing into a deal with Stan that he doesn’t understand” yet, the person familiar with the NFL’s deliberations said.
The pause gives politicians in San Diego more time to secure approval for public financing of a stadium. The owners’ resolution Tuesday earmarks $100 million for the Raiders to put toward a new stadium, and the same amount for the Chargers to put toward a new stadium if they remain in San Diego.
In the meantime, Spanos and the Chargers can negotiate Inglewood terms with Kroenke and the Rams. Spanos said Tuesday it was too soon to know what he would do.
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“We have offered either a partnership in the stadium as an owner or we’ve offered the lease arrangement,” Kroenke said Tuesday. “The teams will have their choice of those options.”
The exact terms that will be offered by the Rams are not clear. When the Rams previously offered to partner with a team on the Inglewood project, they were willing to split stadium costs and revenues but were not willing to give the other team a say in stadium design or share in revenues from the project’s surrounding business ventures, according to reports.
The owners were dazzled Tuesday by the Inglewood proposal. It represented a big idea and a grandiose, lucrative approach to the sport’s return to a massive market.
“The Inglewood project blew Carson away,” the high-ranking team official said.
The owners’ L.A. committee had recommended the Carson proposal to the entire ownership group. That was reflective, it appeared, of old-school appreciation for a more football-focused undertaking with good access to major roadways.
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