[Hacksaw]

Hopefully the 'shield' wont retaliate by assigning all the corupt crappy ref's to our games upcoming.

That said, how much has the return of the rams and SoFi stadium put monies in their coffers.
And F Spanos, ,, hope that chunk flattens him.

[St. Loser Fan]

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/348 ... is-sources

Sources: NFL to OK Stan Kroenke $571M payment to St. Louis

NFL team owners are expected to approve a resolution Tuesday that will have Rams owner Stan Kroenke reimbursing the league for the remaining $571 million paid to St. Louis over the team's relocation to Los Angeles, multiple owner and league executive sources told ESPN.

The NFL has already paid the $790 million settlement to St. Louis, but how the payment was divided up between Kroenke and the league has been a contentious issue for months.

NFL teams already have contributed a total of $219 million toward the settlement reached with the city last year. Under the resolution expected to be approved at Tuesday's quarterly league meeting in New York, Kroenke would be responsible for the remainder.

Owners would waive the league's limit on allowable debt in order for Kroenke to do so, the sources said.

The settlement announced last year ended a 4½-year-old lawsuit filed in the wake of the Rams' departure from St. Louis. Kroenke and the NFL had failed in bids to have the lawsuit dismissed or at least moved out of St. Louis, and courts were sympathetic to the St. Louis side's effort to disclose financial information of team owners -- rulings that hastened the push for a settlement.

The lawsuit sought more than $1 billion. It claimed the team's move cost the St. Louis region millions of dollars in amusement, ticket and earnings tax revenue.

Then-owner Georgia Frontiere moved the Rams from Los Angeles in 1995 to her hometown of St. Louis, where they stayed for 21 seasons before Kroenke moved them back.

Kroenke, a Missouri real estate developer who is married to an heir of the Walmart fortune, became a minority owner when the team first came to St. Louis. Frontiere died in 2008 and left the team to her children, who sold the Rams to Kroenke in 2010.

Not long after the sale, the Rams began pushing for hundreds of millions of dollars in improvements to the downtown domed stadium, which was built with taxpayer money in the early 1990s to attract an NFL team.

St. Louis interests initially proposed a more modest upgrade, then eventually proposed a new $1 billion stadium along the Mississippi River that would be funded jointly by taxpayers, the team and the NFL. Instead, Kroenke purchased land in Inglewood, California.

SoFi Stadium opened in September 2020 and is now home to the Rams and the Los Angeles Chargers, who moved from San Diego in 2017.

[Hacksaw]

That article did fail to bring up the top tier clause which was the whole enchilada.
I still don't see how they won that settlement.

[St. Loser Fan]

That article did fail to bring up the top tier clause which was the whole enchilada.
I still don't see how they won that settlement.

The Titans are getting $1.4 billion in taxpayer money for a new domed stadium because their lease also had a top tier clause. BUT that same contract said the lifespan of Nissan Stadium was expected to be 50 years.

[ramsman34]

That article did fail to bring up the top tier clause which was the whole enchilada.
I still don't see how they won that settlement.

STL loses the rams and nets $1.2 billion. Must be nice to cut a check for half a billion and just keep truckin with your 1% buddies.

[St. Loser Fan]

St. Louis moved the NFL/Stan's money to a longer life higher yield account last week. No comment issued but the assumption is this another move in banking the money in preparation to use it as part of a completely redo the terminals at Lambert Field.

[rams1974]

You know what I found amusing about that 571 / 790 split was Peter King's MMQB asserting something like, each owner was pitching in $6-7m to help out ole buddy Stan out of the goodness of their hearts. Because that is how billionaires behave, you know it is like getting the next round for your buddies at the bar when it comes to millions for them. Totally not because Kroenke was rightly holding the other owners accountable for bad faith behavior, including sending confidential materials to St Louis.

[AltiTude Ram]

That article did fail to bring up the top tier clause which was the whole enchilada.
I still don't see how they won that settlement.

Great point. The problem was the courts wanted the NFL to open their books on income.

That was never going to happen so the Rams/NFL settled on a number that would make this go away.

It was more important for them to keep the information hidden than the ultimate monetary settlement.

That's why the NFL is picking up part of the tab.

[St. Loser Fan]

From the St. Louis subReddit with the tag "She's not coming back, bro."

[rams1974]

I still don't see how they won that settlement.

I'm quoting an ancient post here but they won the settlement that they did because what was happening is, the owners who wanted the Raiders/Chargers Carson project were leaking information to St. Louis to strengthen their case, hoping it would prevent the Rams from moving.

It is why Kroenke balked at the "full indemnity" part of the move agreement, he said wait a minute, WTF, you guys were helping the other side, increasing the likelihood of a big payout, and I'll have to pay up to cover that? Um, no.

The Rams made their own silly mistakes and public comments which didn't help, but this was a major factor in how this lawsuit got as much traction as it did.

One of my favorite parts of this outcome was Peter King characterizing the other owners chipping in as just doing their old owner buddy Stan a solid. Yes, because that is how billionaires think, here ya go buddy, here's $7m from each of us just 'cuz we like ya. I emailed him to tell that is what is called "poor person thinking." (Poor person thinking was also the St. Louis rationale of "C'mon Stan, you have like $6 billion, you can give us $1 billion and you'll still be well off")