The real loser of the deal is the Raiders’ Davis, who is left with little leverage for a better stadium deal in Oakland.
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The decision ends the NFL’s 21-year absence from the nation’s second-largest media market.
Stan Kroenke’s proposed $1.1 billion stadium plan in Inglewood was voted down by the NFL’s six-member relocation committee this morning, but that doesn’t mean that owners won’t vote for his team to move.
New York Giants co-owner Steve Tisch made the announcement after a full day of meetings by owners in which speculation ran rampant over whether the league would choose the St. Louis Rams’ Inglewood proposal over the joint plan in Carson proposed by the Chargers and Raiders.
The Rams are expected to move to LA next season and play at the LA Coliseum until 2019, when the Inglewood stadium is finished.
The Chargers, should they decide to relocate to the new stadium, would have to negotiate lease terms with Kroenke. Despite the biased L.A. committee recommending the Carson project, Kroenke’s Inglewood project with an open slot for another team is more favored 20-12 over Spanos’ Carson project with the Raiders. It’s likely that during negotiations Kroenke leveraged the Raiders’ desire to move to LA – even as the Rams’ tenant – against Spanos in order to have Spanos partner with him. Something that hasn’t proven to be easy as with the Los Angeles door closing the options have once again drastically decreased for the Raiders in their search for a new stadium to play in.
No NFL franchise has moved since 1998, when the Tennessee Titans, formerly the Houston Oilers, moved from their temporary, one-year setup in Memphis three hours northeast to their permanent home in Nashville.
As Chargers and Rams fans mourn their departing teams, the fate of the Raiders remains comparatively uncertain.
The Los Angeles Times first reported Goodell’s comments.
The National Football League is headed back to Los Angeles in a big way.
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The city of St. Louis had offered 0 million in public money to go toward a new $1.1 billion riverfront stadium, with the rest of the money coming from the state, team owner and the NFL. Hunt said if there is relocation to Los Angeles is should be for only one team. The team said in its relocation bid that the St. Louis market lags economically and that the stadium proposal is doomed to fail.
