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L.A. tug-of-war looming

Posted by Mike Florio on November 15, 2015, 7:55 PM EST

The battle lines are being drawn over the future of the NFL in Los Angeles, and there’s currently no clear solution.

As Peter King of TheMMQB.com explained on NBC’s Football Night in America, the old-guard of NFL owners believe that Chargers owner Dean Spanos deserves the spot in Carson. The Wall Street crowd (as Peter put it) prefers to let Kroenke build a venue in Inglewood, which would be more profitable — and which could have plenty of free stuff for the league like new (and free) studio space for NFL Network.

Ultimately, either Spanos or Kroenke need 24 votes to win the L.A. contest. Which means that nine votes could kill it.

Jason La Canfora of CBS listed on Sunday the owners who support Kroenke, which when added with Kroenke could nudge the total toward the magic number of nine. However, PFT has learned that at least one of the owners identified as supporting Kroenke doesn’t actually support Kroenke. If more actually don’t support Kroenke, Spanos could win the vote.

Aiding Spanos is the perception among more than a few owners that Kroenke hasn’t respected the league’s processes in positioning himself to move to Los Angeles.

The next question, if Spanos gets the votes to move, becomes how Kroenke will react. There’s already speculation among some owners that he’d possible sell the Rams. And some think he’ll move to L.A. regardless of whether he receives the approval of his partners to do so, sparking expensive, high-stakes litigation over whether Kroenke can do it.

Ultimately, it has the potential to become a gigantic mess. And it means that Commissioner Roger Goodell could eventually be tiptoeing through a minefield far more precarious than the one he faced in #DeflateGate.

You know what? Spanos, if you want to move, then pony up the cash, build a stadium and move? Otherwise, STFU!

If both owners could block a move then why not partner up and both move to LA?

Unless this is a conspiracy and the end game has always been for the Chargers/Rams to play in Inglewood?

Since when has Spanos even wanted to move to LA? Just since Kroenke had the moving trucks warming up, right? Sure, Spanos has wanted a new stadium in downtown SD for a long time but he never said anything about moving to LA as far as I know.

Plus, now he won't even go to the proverbial table with SD. They are coming up with options for the Chargers and he won't even negotiate. Screw him. He wants taxpayers and the league to pay for what he wants and I say, what does the world owe him? I hope the Chargers get nothing. I'm tired of his shit.

I have a hard time believing this is gonna end up a winner takes all and loser gets slapped back without compensation. I just don't see these guys screwing over one of their own.

And all the talk about Kroenke not being liked by other owners is way overstated by the media. Kroenke has been playing a lot nicer than Spanos in all this. Also, Kroenke allowed Fisher to draft Michael Sam when no other owner would, and avoided a PR nightmare for the NFL. I'd be livid if I were Kroenke and told you never did anything for the NFL.

I think this thing is gonna go one of 2 ways.

Either there is a grand bargain with the Rams in LA, or it gets real ugly with Kroenke going rogue if he gets shafted by the other owners.

I don't see Kroenke selling his team. He's never sold one before. He just keeps buying teams, and the NFL is the top of the heap.

Now I see where Shane Gray gets his speculation

The NFL cannot stop ESK from moving to LA, so they are just squeezing him for what ever they can get out of him for themselves and their buddy Spanos. This is posturing, because they don't really have any sticks to use.

moklerman wrote:Since when has Spanos even wanted to move to LA? Just since Kroenke had the moving trucks warming up, right? Sure, Spanos has wanted a new stadium in downtown SD for a long time but he never said anything about moving to LA as far as I know.

Plus, now he won't even go to the proverbial table with SD. They are coming up with options for the Chargers and he won't even negotiate. Screw him. He wants taxpayers and the league to pay for what he wants and I say, what does the world owe him? I hope the Chargers get nothing. I'm tired of his shit.

Spanos was in the later phases of going to Farmers Field. AEG wanted too much control so he balked. At least that is/was what is being floated. The article below is all I could find directly discussing Chargers only. Was it intended merely for leverage then as Carson could be now?

Chargers not close to LA move
Arash Markazi
19 de August de 2011, 8:32 PM

LOS ANGELES -- It would take a miracle of biblical proportions for the San Diego Chargers to move to Los Angeles next year, in the eyes of the man in charge of finding the team a new stadium.

Chargers special counsel Mark Fabiani said the team would not even consider a move to a temporary location if the city wasn't breaking ground on a new permanent stadium. And he believes Farmers Field, the proposed $1.2 billion football stadium in downtown Los Angeles, won't be close to that point by next year.

"I think the downtown L.A. project is years away," Fabiani said while in Los Angeles for a charity board meeting Thursday. "I think it would be a miracle like the loaves and the fishes if they could [break ground next year]."

Ten days ago, the Los Angeles city council unanimously passed the financial framework of an agreement between Anschutz Entertainment Group and the city to build Farmers Field and a new $275 million wing of the Los Angeles Convention Center. AEG president and CEO Tim Leiweke said he would like to have a deal in place with a team and break ground on the project by June 2012, with Farmers Field opening by September 2016.

The Chargers are the team most commonly linked to a move to Los Angeles. The team can announce its intentions to leave San Diego between Feb. 1 and May 1 of each year through 2020 by paying an early-termination fee, which would be $24 million next year -- a fee AEG has said it would be willing to pay.

Fabiani, however, continues to work with San Diego mayor Jerry Sanders to keep the team in San Diego. Sanders is in the midst of a three-city tour of stadiums in Kansas City, Indianapolis and Denver to gather ideas for a future Chargers stadium.

The Chargers are hoping to build a retractable roof stadium in downtown San Diego, which would be part of an expanded San Diego Convention Center. The stadium would not only house the Chargers, but also be used to attract Super Bowls, Final Fours and larger conventions. It's a similar proposal to AEG's in downtown Los Angeles, except it doesn't have the support of the San Diego Convention Center, which has its own proposal for an expansion.

While the Chargers are far from figuring out how they will be able to finance such a project, Fabiani said Farmers Field is also far from becoming a reality.

"The downtown L.A. project still needs a final agreement with the city," he said. "What they have now is a non-binding agreement and the devil is in the details with these things, so they first need a binding contract. Second, they need to finish their environmental impact report and get it certified by the city. Third, they need to be able to survive the lawsuits, and they're not going to get an exemption like Ed Roski got. Fourth, they need an agreement with the NFL on a relocation fee because that is going to be a huge number. And fifth, they need to have a deal with a team. If you don't have every one of those things you're not going to start digging in the ground."

Sanders and Fabiani want to get a Chargers stadium financing plan in front of the voters by November 2012, which is Sanders' final month in office. In the meantime, Fabiani said the Chargers aren't looking to move to Los Angeles.

If they were, he said, they would have already moved to the City of Industry, where Ed Roski has a shovel-ready project for a 75,000-seat football stadium that could conceivably break ground as soon as a team decided to move there.

"Ed Roski is a billionaire and one of the most respected people in Los Angeles and one of the most respected developers in the country," Fabiani said. "He's had a shovel-ready project for over two years. He's got support from the city and money from the city. He has his EIR done and he's got the exemption from the lawsuits. He has everything and he hasn't turned over a single shovel full of dirt because he doesn't have a team, and it's not from a lack of trying."

If the Chargers' proposal to build a stadium in downtown San Diego meets the same fate as previous proposals in Mission Valley, Chula Vista, Escondido, National City and Oceanside have the past 10 years, Fabiani admits that could eventually spell the end of the Chargers in San Diego.

"I think if we didn't make the ballot in 2012 we would have to seriously look at our other options," he said. "I don't think there's any way to avoid saying that to people."

AEG's deal or "memorandum of understanding" with the city states it must have a deal in place with a team before they can break ground, and Leiweke said he's willing to wait a year if necessary.

"If it takes a little bit longer, then we'll take a little bit longer and we'll be playing in the building in 2017. We're prepared to do that," Leiweke said. "All of our deals anticipate that. Legally we don't lose our memorandum of understanding with the city or our naming right agreement if we open September 2017. We have time to figure this out on the team side, but my gut tells me if a team is going to make a move, they don't want to be a lame duck and they're going to make a move sooner rather than later."

Arash Markazi is a reporter and columnist for ESPNLosAngeles.com.

This from back in February.

There was plenty of news breaking during The Fred Roggin Show on Monday, with the city of San Diego publicly battling with the San Diego Chargers leadership and the L.A. Times reporting a backroom connection between the Inglewood city officials and stadium developers.

Fred Roggin reads between the lines, and he thinks that AEG, who has been quiet about their Farmer’s Field project in recent months, may be forming a partnership with the Chargers while slowing down Stan Kroenke and the Rams.

The Chargers were in talks with AEG years ago. That’s how this whole thing started! Spanos and Phil Anschutz couldn’t come to an agreement on the evaluation of the team, because I still believe and maintain that Phil Anschutz is not going to spend close to $2 billion dollars on a stadium and get nothing out of it. That’s lunacy!

I think the deal here is that AEG and the Chargers are talking, and someone wants to slow [the Inglewood stadium project] down to give those two a chance to figure this out, and dig first. Think about this: what if tomorrow there was an announcement that AEG had acquired part of the Chargers or was in the ownership group of the Chargers? What would happen? You’d see bulldozers moving down Figueroa right now, which would take [Stan Kroenke’s Inglewood stadium project] out of the mix.
So, whoever digs first, wins. That’s really what this comes down to.
Click here to listen

The Fred Roggin Show can be heard weekdays from 12pm-3pm on your new home for L.A. sports, The Beast 980.
audio
http://thebeast980.com/2015/02/16/are-t ... p-kroenke/

Hacksaw wrote:

moklerman wrote:Since when has Spanos even wanted to move to LA? Just since Kroenke had the moving trucks warming up, right? Sure, Spanos has wanted a new stadium in downtown SD for a long time but he never said anything about moving to LA as far as I know.

Plus, now he won't even go to the proverbial table with SD. They are coming up with options for the Chargers and he won't even negotiate. Screw him. He wants taxpayers and the league to pay for what he wants and I say, what does the world owe him? I hope the Chargers get nothing. I'm tired of his shit.

Spanos was in the later phases of going to Farmers Field. AEG wanted too much control so he balked. At least that is/was what is being floated. The article below is all I could find directly discussing Chargers only. Was it intended merely for leverage then as Carson could be now?

That's my conclusion. Especially given that a guy like Fabiani is driving strategy and PR. It's the nature of the beast.