Rams Fans United - Los Angeles Rams Fan Discussion Forum

Someone left some documents unsealed for a few hours before they realized their error. Read the article.



Includes 70 pages total from 2 PDFs.

Stan admitting he was looking to move prior to 2013 is a new thing.

Well, interesting.

Gee, the owner of the Rams, knowing a clause in his lease is approaching in two years that will allow him to no longer be tied to the current stadium, considers relocating to the former home of the franchise as an option in case the local politicians don’t want to live up to the terms of the original lease that was signed to lure the franchise away and make needs improvements to the stadium.

Absolutely shocking

majik wrote:Gee, the owner of the Rams, knowing a clause in his lease is approaching in two years that will allow him to no longer be tied to the current stadium, considers relocating to the former home of the franchise as an option in case the local politicians don’t want to live up to the terms of the original lease that was signed to lure the franchise away and make needs improvements to the stadium.

Absolutely shocking

All fair points.

On the flip side, part of the justification for moving to LA was that the first Dome renovation proposal from the St. Louis CVC was so lackluster, it hurt Stan’s feeling and spured his move LA. So was Stan looking at LA before the proposal even came to him because
1) he assumed St. Louis would give him crap
2) he’s a shrewd businessman covering all his bases
3) or did St. Louis have no chance to keep the Rams and they were going to LA no matter what?
The bigger question is any of this actionable in court?

The interesting part at the end is how the NFL appears to have painted themselves into a corner.
-If the case goes to trial, everyone sees how the sausage is made.
-If they settle, that might “set a price” that teams must pay to relocate to another city.

I dunno. I might be looking at it the wrong way. If my favorite restaurant wanted to move to a bigger town because there is more money to be made there, and it would increase their overall value, I would think they have every right to do that. Especially if they can't come to an agreement with the landlord on their lease.

snackdaddy wrote:I dunno. I might be looking at it the wrong way. If my favorite restaurant wanted to move to a bigger town because there is more money to be made there, and it would increase their overall value, I would think they have every right to do that. Especially if they can't come to an agreement with the landlord on their lease.

That seems like logical and I would mostly agree with you. But if I remember the way the second Al Davis lawsuit resulted, that’s not true for the NFL given their limited antitrust exemption. You can’t just move a football team for better money elsewhere.

So that’s why they had the dog-and-pony show hearings and the relocation “guidelines”. Then they issued the harshly worded statement dumping on St. Louis when the move was ok’d to further “prove” their move.

Again: I don’t want to clean Stan for $1,000,000,000. Pay the tens of millions for the National Rent a Car stadium proposal, give up the Rams Park claim and toss in some more money so they pause a little more when it’s time to screw the fans in Cincinnati, Washington, New Orleans etc next relocation time.

If the big news here is the NFL also wanted the Rams in L.A., i thought we already knew that?

and we were worried..

Money grab and a pound of flesh. Pure and simple. I don't see StL prevailing based off the responses filed, but whudda I know.

St. Louis broke the lease long before the Rams decided to not renew. Not only was the stadium not kept in the top 25%, the Rams had to waive maintenance and upgrades for years. The city never met it's 5 year benchmarks. If they didn't even have the money to keep up what they promised, how could the Rams count on them catching up with what they owed AND renovate/build a new stadium, much less allow the Rams to be profitable?

But, this is all secondary to what the real problem was. Control. St. Louis refused to let Kroenke build and control his own stadium. Not only that, they wanted him to foot at least half the bill for what they were proposing and then wanted to maintain control and share in the profits. St. Louis, IMO, could have easily offered something along the lines of what Inglewood offered and had a good chance to keep the Rams.

The local government in St. Louis is just a mess.

We don’t know what happened behind closed doors, but I got the initial impression that St. Louis officials approached the coming negotiations regarding the out clause in 2015 as if they holding all the cards and that is why Stan started exploring the LA option to get some kind of leverage.

I mean the initial stadium proposal was like Stan you provide the funding for most of the stadium but St. Louis gets most of the benefits.