NFL Relocations and League Expansion

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Kroenke will build his stadium to hold 2 teams - but it will never get used that way (except maybe for a future expansion team). The NFL will instead use that space as 'LA leverage' - they get the stadium they want in LA, the owner they want in LA and get to keep the priceless ability to threaten to move a team to LA to get more stadiums built by public money in the future.

Brian Feldt ‏@stlbizbfeldt 4h4 hours ago
There are now betting odds for first NFL team to move to LA, Rams are the favorite at -245. http://www.bookmaker.eu/live-lines/futures
 
Everyone expects Stan Kroenke to get LA over the Raiders. But if they approve that, and leave the Raiders out, it would be flatly against their own criteria for re-location. The Rams have the support in their own market, and a stadium plan in place. Same with the Chargers. It comes down to Kroenke simply wanting to move so he can profit and nothing more. The Raiders fit all the criteria, so Mark Davis would have a legitimate beef if he is denied.

Alternatively, if Stan Kroenke gets denied, he'll just take the league to court and he'll win.
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GG said:
Apparently raiders and chargers are staying put
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Yeah this isn't true. Both the Raiders and Chargers are still firm on going to LA, and last time I checked with my sources (less than a week ago), the Carson project is currently preferred among the NFL's LA relocation committee when compared to Inglewood. Also note that the Raiders and Chargers have more popularity than the Rams when it comes to owners votes as well.

Regardless of what happens, all three teams are going to get their stadium situation sorted. What I can definitively say is that the Raiders will not be moving into Levi's on a permanent basis, and that they are not going to relocate to St. Louis. If LA falls through, they will explore alternative opportunities such as relocating to San Diego (currently the #1 alternative), relocating to San Antonio (a long shot), and staying in Oakland and trying to get something done for another year (the longest shot of all).

The Raiders and Oakland are regularly meeting each other. Nothing is coming of substance from these meetings. There is still a 400 million dollar gap in the financing of any stadium in Oakland. The Raiders have committed 500 million to the project. The City of Oakland have committed zero, and most importantly, the City has drawn a line in the sand and said that no public funds will be used in the construction of any stadium. The only way to get that extra 400 as it currently stands, is to bring in a third party, which is exactly what both the NFL and the Raiders do not want. So to sum up, Oakland has no chance of keeping the Raiders unless they are content in staying in that dilapidated dump of a stadium that is the Coliseum.

What a number of people need to realise is that there is a "Pro Oakland" group out there right now who will say anything to convince people that the Raiders have absolutely ZERO chance of relocating, and that they are fully committed to staying in Oakland. I find it ironic, because originally they said that Quan was the answer to the Raiders problems. Then they said that Colony Capital brought on by Quan would fix everything. Then it was "Kephart to the rescue!" Then it became "Kephart has made so much progress bringing the City and the County to the table to negotiate as a joint entity" even though they conveniently overlook the fact that the County is opposed to any redevelopment of the Coliseum site in this capacity, and have actually made it clear to the City that they want to be bought out. But wait, it gets better. The "Forever Oakland" mob then claim that this is a good thing because the City can buy the County out and then the Raiders only have to negotiate with one political entity. Sounds great in theory. How is the City going to buy out the County? And then how is the City going to make up the 400 million dollar stadium finance gap? The City has no money in these negotiations, the County need to stay on if only because they have the big $$$ to get something done, but they don't want to be part of this in the first place! And last but not least, the current narrative is that from that mob of fvckwits is that even though Kephart is out of the picture, he accomplished a lot in that he's brought the Raiders and the politicians to the negotiating table. * me, and I thought that the political in-fighting between Rudd and Gillard was bad. That looks like great government compared to this rabble!
 
Chewy316 said:
Regardless of what happens, all three teams are going to get their stadium situation sorted. What I can definitively say is that the Raiders will not be moving into Levi's on a permanent basis, and that they are not going to relocate to St. Louis. If LA falls through, they will explore alternative opportunities such as relocating to San Diego (currently the #1 alternative), relocating to San Antonio (a long shot), and staying in Oakland and trying to get something done for another year (the longest shot of all).
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Rename them the Californian Nomads?
 
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/committee-685920-league-angeles.html

Reid: Handoff to NFL owners' committee could signal boost for Carson project

Oct. 2, 2015 Updated 8:47 p.m.

After graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy, Eric Grubman served on the USS Boston, a nuclear submarine.

In recent years, Grubman, the NFL executive vice president, has deftly navigated the league through often troubled and now uncharted waters to the shores of Los Angeles.

That the NFL appears to be only months, possibly weeks, away from committing to return to Los Angeles for the 2016 season after 20 years of missteps, false hopes and promises, is due in large part to Grubman’s stewardship.

“Eric deserves credit for bringing (the Los Angeles relocation process) to where it is today,” said Marc Ganis, a Chicago-based sports business consultant who was involved in the Raiders’ and Rams’ relocations in 1994.

But as the NFL prepares for meetings next week in New York that will shape the final stages of the relocation process, Grubman is turning over the controls to Commissioner Roger Goodell and a committee of six influential owners, a move that many in and around the NFL believe favors the Chargers’ and Raiders’ $1.75 billion stadium project in Carson over Rams owner Stan Kroenke’s plans for a $1.86 billion venue in Inglewood.

“Very important and very appropriate,” Ganis said of the move to shift the direction of the relocation process to the Los Angeles committee. “This is not a staff decision. This needs to be made by the owners.”

Franchises need approval of three-quarters of the league’s 32 owners to relocate. The Chargers and Raiders currently have the nine votes to block the Rams from relocating to the Los Angeles market, according to league sources.

Many in the league believe a majority of the six owners on the NFL’s Committee on Los Angeles Opportunities favor or are leaning toward the Carson project, especially if a task force appointed by Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon can come up with a viable stadium option for the Rams in St. Louis.

The six owners who make up the committee that will steer the league through the remainder of the relocation process are Bob Kraft of New England, Art Rooney of Pittsburgh, John Mara of the Giants, Bob McNair of Houston, Clark Hunt of Kansas City and Jerry Richardson of Carolina.

“The most powerful committee ever assembled in the league’s history,” Ganis said.

Richardson, as co-chairman of the NFL executive committee, played a leading role in negotiating a 10-year collective bargaining agreement with the NFL Players Association in 2011. Mara is the chairman of the league’s management council executive committee. Kraft chairs the broadcast committee, McNair heads the finance committee and Rooney is chairman of the stadium committee. Hunt heads the international committee.

The Los Angeles committee and league staff will go over relocation guidelines, relocation fees and timing of potential moves to Southern California during meetings next week in New York. While the Los Angeles committee and league staff will report on trends in the relocation process and discuss logical outcomes, there will be no votes or commitments on specifics.

Richardson has told people in the league he favors the Carson project.The Carolina owner, Rooney and other owners have pushed for telling the three franchises looking to relocate where they stand with the league so they won’t continue to spend money on projects that might not come to fruition and signal to the team or teams that they might need to begin repairing relations in their current markets.

Rooney and Richardson are also said to be bullish on enforcing the league’s relocation guidelines. Under the guidelines, before locating, franchises must address “the willingness of the stadium authority or the community to remedy any deficiencies in or to replace such facility, including whether there are legislative or referenda proposals pending to address these issues.”

Los Angeles committee members believe St. Louis is currently the only one of the three local markets on track to produce a viable stadium option, though league sources said that San Diego officials met with Goodell and some committee members to seek more time to reach a deal with the Chargers.

The St. Louis task force has proposed a $998-million waterfront stadium north of downtown. Under the task force’s proposal, $201 million of the stadium's financing would come from city and state bonds with another $160 million coming from the sale of seat licenses. Nixon wants to fund the new stadium by extending bonds on the debt for the Edward Jones Dome, the Rams’ current home. Extending the bonds could provide as much as $350 million for the new stadium.

The plan also calls for the Rams to provide $250 million. The project would also receive a $200 million loan from an NFL fund and another $187 million in tax incentives.

Committee members have made it clear they would have a hard time approving the Rams’ relocation to Inglewood with a viable plan including hundreds of millions in public money on the table in St. Louis.

“From my point of view, if they come up with a plan that looks pretty good and a strong financial package, I think we, the NFL have an obligation in my opinion to have a team in St. Louis,” Kraft said earlier this year.

The enigma on the committee is Hunt, although many in the league believe it would be hard for the Chiefs owner to support the Rams’ relocation for political reasons in Missouri.

Kroenke has his own high-profile supporters including Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, Daniel Snyder of Washington and Jeffrey Lurie of Philadelphia.

Still NFL insiders don’t expect the Battle for Los Angeles to be decided in a floor fight at league meetings in Dallas in December or early in 2016. Instead, Goodell and the Los Angeles committee are expected to work behind the scenes to build a consensus in order present a unified front publicly when relocation is ultimately approved.

In doing so, the committee, like Grubman, will proceed carefully. While franchises relocating to Los Angeles could up their value to $2 billion according to some estimates, the nation’s second-largest market has been invaluable to the league in the 21 years since the Raiders and Rams left, the threat of moving to Los Angeles serving as a glittering hammer to leverage cities and municipalities into funding stadiums in their current markets.

Since 1997, NFL stadiumconstruction projects have received $4.76 billion in public funding.

“Los Angeles has been so important to the league’s stadium negotiations or you could say Los Angeles has been important to the league’s stadium blackmail,” said Victor Matheson, a Holy Cross economics professor. “The NFL needs to come up with the best possible deal for L.A. because as soon as it loses L.A. to relocation the stadium deals become harder. You only get to take a bite out of that L.A. apple once.”
 
Rams owner willing to share LA-area stadium with another owner

October 4, 2015 9:20 am ET

Rams owner Stan Kroenke, intent on playing next season in Los Angeles as he attempts to build a new stadium in Inglewood, has made it clear to the league he is willing to share the facility with another owner from the onset, league sources said, but how equitable such an arrangement might be remains a critical issue.

The Chargers and Raiders have partnered on a potential project in Carson, Calif., though numerous league sources have continued to stress that the ultimate solution in Los Angeles could involve a pairing of any of the three teams seeking to relocate, and that essentially everything remains on the table at this point.

The Chargers in particular would strongly oppose playing in Inglewood, sources said, though the NFL could try to steer things in several different directions to finally bring this process to a conclusion. There remains some skepticism about how much Kroenke would truly share the wealth of a project he has singularly spearheaded.

At the league meeting in August, sources said Bears ownership asked Kroenke a direct question about what a deal might look like between him and another team in Inglewood, and at that time it was clear that the lease arrangement would make the other team more his tenant than his partner. However, sources said the Rams have never been approached by other owners or the league about a detailed plan for Kroenke's preferred plan for a two-team stadium. While “ideally” a tenant/lease arrangement would be his choice, the team is also open to option that would include more of an “equity” stake as well. That would require more of a cash investment from the second team.

With just three months remaining in this calendar year, one would expect issues like this to be moving quickly if the NFL is indeed going to begin playing in LA next year. Of course, the possibility always exists that they could push things back another year, something the teams involved would dread.

Stan-Kroenke.jpg

Rams owner Stan Kroenke is intent on playing in LA next season. (USATSI)
Should the NFL endorse a two-team arrangement in Inglewood, it's conceivable that the finances of a such a deal could be massaged to the point where all parties could agree. One source involved in the process maintained that Kroenke “is open-minded regarding a two-team scenario,” though that sentiment is not so readily backed up among the factions of ownership more inclined to vote for the Carson project at this time.

League sources continue to indicate that if a vote was taken today, neither project would have the requisite support (24 votes), with the Chargers/Raiders needing to swing another four to six votes to get there. Ownership sources estimate Kroenke has roughly 10-12 owners in his corner.

The move to LA will be a key topic at the NFL's annual fall meeting, to be held Wednesday in New York, and while the league is not close to being ready to bring anything to a vote, there could be incremental signs of progress to come at the meeting, sources said.

During a conference call last week to prepare teams for the meeting, they were informed that “relocation guidelines” will be discussed in a private session limited to just one representative per club. The NFL could set a relocation fee soon, enter into a formal agreement to play games temporarily at the Los Angeles Coliseum and at some point between now and December, the league will have to settle of a preferred project and begin ensuring that it has the sufficient votes required to pass.

Should owner Mark Davis bring in a minority partner to the Raiders with significant experience and acumen in the Los Angeles business/real estate/entertainment community, it only strengthens his odds of being one of the two teams in that market. Throughout this lengthy process he has continued to be seen as the most malleable of all the teams involved, desperate to get out of Oakland and willing to take a subsidiary role if need be to another team if deemed necessary to ensure he ends up there.

With Commissioner Roger Goodell more focused on this project than ever before and likely to play a critical role in its ultimate resolution, it could take a considerable compromise from multiple teams to facilitate things Expect the league to have a major role in steering the financials and details that carry the day.
 
I guess this goes here - from USA Today

NFL approves more international games, some outside England

NEW YORK (AP) — The NFL's appetite for international games is growing.

The league's owners approved more such games through 2025 on Wednesday, including ones in places other than England — possibly Mexico, Germany and Canada.

"We think it's time to expand our international series to other countries and respond to the growing interest in our game not only in the U.K., but elsewhere around the world," Commissioner Roger Goodell said.

So not only was the agreement for games in Britain extended through 2016, but other nations will be considered as well. Mexico, where one regular-season game was played in 2005 and drew a record attendance of 103,467, is a front-runner for next year.

"That's our biggest fan base, our most vibrant market," said Mark Waller, the league's vice president/international. "It would be a logical place to start."

The NFL will announce the 2016 international games this fall. Three games are at London's Wembley Stadium this season for the second straight year, and that number could be increased.

"We haven't committed to any games in London, but it would be a big surprise to me if we went backward," Waller said. "We have great momentum. We sold out three games there. I'd be shocked if we didn't play three games. ... We could've played four this year."

Earlier this year, the NFL agreed with English Premier League club Tottenham to play at least two games a season at its new stadium in north London, which is scheduled to open in 2018. That is a 10-year deal.

Regular-season international games began in 2007 at Wembley. One game per year was played until 2013, when the league increased it to two.

Now other locales very much are in play.

"The great news now is that we have the ability to go look at all geographies," Waller said. "We've been very clear that our priority after getting the UK up and running is Mexico and potentially Germany, so that's where our focus is. Mexico we are hugely excited about, always have been, at least since 2005."

Cowboys executive Stephen Jones said his team would be interested in playing in Mexico City, but not if it meant giving up a home game.

"We'd like to see if we can add a game in a new country for 2016," Waller added. "That's our goal. We'll definitely continue the U.K. focus."

The league also is looking at Canada — Toronto and Vancouver, British Columbia — and several cities in Germany have expressed interest.

Waller said the NFL would not place international series games in two countries other than the United Kingdom next year.

The league also is looking at moving the Pro Bowl outside the U.S. Brazil has expressed interest in the all-star game, and Waller said Australia, South Africa and Asia also were potential sites, but probably not before early 2018.

"You could realistically look at taking that almost anywhere in the world where it's appealing," Waller said. "It's hard to imagine taking a regular-season game to Australia or Asia or the Far East because how would you make the logistics work and then be competitive?

"But the great thing about the Pro Bowl is that it's a celebration of the end of the season, so we are much more open to where in the world would it be fantastic for players to go and celebrate the end of the season. Rio would be great. South Africa would be great. Australia would be great. It's a very different animal."


--------------

Of course, none of this is stopping Australian media outlets from discussing the impact of Hayne bringing games out here.

I hope it ain't dependent on Hayne in any way, cos I suspect 2018 is going to be too far away for him.

Realistically, I think the Pro Bowl is our most likely option. And as much as I'd love to see the NFL out here and as much as I love it - I doubt even I would go to the Pro Bowl. Maaaybe if it were here in Melbourne and wasn't outrageously expensive... but I can see it being super expensive, and it being in Sydney...
 
GG said:
Heres another scenario....

The NFL ends up saying.....NO TEAM will move to LA in 2016, we'll think about it for another year. Just to try to again coerce Oakland, San Diego, St Louis to finalize new stadiums.
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This is a potential scenario, but it's highly unlikely. As it stands, there are 3 teams and two proposals that have been put forward for the LA market. In past years, there hasn't even been a team that has stepped up and said "We want LA."

Furthermore, virtually every owner who is on the record in interviews, have said that LA is likely to have at least one team by next year.

I think it's also worth noting that the "big quotes" so to speak; the ones we should pay more attention to, are from the people on the LA committee. Jerry Richardson (owner of the Panthers) said at the owners meetings yesterday that for any team to move to LA, they first have to satisfy the guidelines for being able to relocate in the first place. Regardless of how good any plans they might have are, if they don't satisfy the guidelines, everything else is a mute point. This was a clear jab at Kroenke. It's also well known that Bob McNair (Texans owner and LA committee member) is in favour of the Carson project. As it stands today, the Carson project is the favourite to win out.

Last but not least, if the Raiders land this investor that has been floated around (it's factual, not a rumour), then they will be one of the teams going to Los Angeles, that's a given.
 

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GG said:
This morning on 1360AM sports radio San Diego. The city is pushing for Spanos to get a deal done with Kroenke. It's going to be The Rams and Chargers in LA. It's what the city and what the NFL want.

Done deal.
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This is incorrect. Simply put, there have been ZERO pushes from anyone at this stage to get Kroenke to negotiate with either Spanos or Davis to come on as a 2nd tenant. Such a move will only happen if and when there is a majority support for the Inglewood project. As it stands, if you polled all 32 owners, Carson is favoured. Whilst I don't have any official vote numbers, last I heard from a source the count was 20-12.
 
andana said:
Where does that leave us?.
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It certainly won't be Levi's. Mark wants no part of that place. Despite it being able to host a 2nd team, it has been built exclusively as a 1 team stadium. Mark had a chance to share that stadium with the Niners during the initial development stages and they turned it down. The NFL also suggested it again a few years ago once Colony Capital were out of the picture and once again, Mark said no.

The chance for a Raiders stadium to get done in Oakland is next to zero. St. Louis is not an option for relocation. San Antonio is an extreme long shot. If for whatever reason the Raiders don't get to LA, expect them to push hard to relocate to San Diego. Sounds ridiculous at first, but consider the following:

San Diego is a little over an hour drive from the Los Angeles market. If they moved to SD, they would keep their existing fan base in SoCal. Fan support wouldn't be an issue. Some internal surveys and polls have also showed enough businesses in San Diego who would support the Raiders from a marketing and sponsorship point of view.

Unless the city of Oakland do a 180 though, as it currently stands, the Raiders will be leaving the Bay Area.
 
Chewy316 said:
This is incorrect. Simply put, there have been ZERO pushes from anyone at this stage to get Kroenke to negotiate with either Spanos or Davis to come on as a 2nd tenant. Such a move will only happen if and when there is a majority support for the Inglewood project. As it stands, if you polled all 32 owners, Carson is favoured. Whilst I don't have any official vote numbers, last I heard from a source the count was 20-12.
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Wouldn't be 20-12 = 32 votes. As the three owners in the mix wouldn't be voting. Max 29.
 
GG said:
Wouldn't be 20-12 = 32 votes. As the three owners in the mix wouldn't be voting. Max 29.
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My understanding was that the 3 owners still voted on the matter. If not, the score becomes 18-11. What I said in the earlier post was that "...if you polled all 32 owners..."

If only 29 of the owners voted on LA, then you would need 22 votes. Based on the polling above, Carson is a lot closer to that than Inglewood.
 
Why would the NFL allow the Chargers to leave San Diego for LA, with a stadium proposal on the table in San Diego, and then let the Raiders relocate to San Diego??

It doesn't make any sense, and imo wont happen. Raiders sharing Levi's with Niners, or Niners in SC and Raiders re-upping another couple years in Oakland, with the Chargers/Rams in LA, or Rams in LA, Chargers in SD, makes far more sense.
 
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