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The LA City Council today gave final approval to plans to build a new NFL stadium downtown, a key step in returning a pro football team to the nation’s No. 2 media market by 2017. The $1.5 billion project, which includes upgrading a portion of the adjacent LA Convention Center, is the one proposed to be privately funded by Anshutz Entertainment Group — the same AEG that has just put itself up for sale. 
That complication, plus the fact the plans face potential lawsuits from environmental and anti-poverty groups, usually means a governing body might have reservations about moving forward. But AEG gave city lawmakers a bit of assurance this week the key players who have carried the ball this far plan to stay, with AEG president Tim Leiweke saying earlier this week he has signed a deal to remain atop the company no matter who ends up buying it (AEG is financing the deal with help from city redevelopment bonds). It’s clear by the 12-0 vote that the Council is fully behind the 72,000-seat Farmers Field and the projected 10,000 temp and 4000 full-time jobs it will create. It now sets up the next step: finding a team. It’s expected that a current franchise will relocate (Chargers or Raiders anyone?) rather than come via league expansion. Movement on that front could come as early as March at the NFL owners meeting.
Related: AEG Sale Could Clear Way For Philip Anschutz To Become An NFL Mogul
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Please!!! NO RAIDERS!!!!! Please!!!
there goes my kids college fund for season tickets. wait, i spent that on developing these 2 movies and reality shows. darn. go la chargers!
The NFL doesn’t need LA (come to think of it, nor does anyone else), and these fools will just be used to bribe other cities into paying for stadiums.
LA really doesn’t need the NFL. We have been perfectly fine since they left.
Not a surprise but a terrible development. The idea that AEG is “paying” for it is laughable. The city — we — our paying for it through no-interest loans, by giving AEG city-owned land, by paying the costs for remodeling the convention center. And AEG gets to own the land, the stadium, and receive all of the revenue from it. What a wonderful deal for the city. We can’t afford to pay for our schools or to fix our roads and we’re closing down fire stations but, hey, there’s plenty of money to pay for someone else’s football stadium.
This is great news for the NFL and any NFL Owner looking to leverage his city into building a new stadium. This means NOTHING for LA right now. An existing NFL team still has to agree to move — and at what cost? How much ownership will an NFL owner have to part with (to AEG) in order to justify AEG financing a $1.5B stadium, and over time (x10-15 years) are existing NFL Owners better off ($$) staying in their city, keeping full control and ownership (%) waiting for new term politicians to be elected to build them a new stadium? As for the PENDING AEG SALE and AEG president Tim Leiweke stating he’s signed a new contract and will remain with AEG after any sale… Sorry, but contract or no contract, that’s not his choice. He can be paid-off and let go by the new AEG owner(s). As for everyone thinking this is a BIG step for the City of LA to approve this deal, let us be reminded that the City is allocating ZERO $$ to this deal. Why wouldn’t they. In fact, it would be political suicide for any Official not to approve a deal where a stellar company like AEG is offering to unimaginably improve downtown and create 10,000 temp and 4000 full-time jobs! The fact of the matter remains, unless, Mr. Anshutz (or another mega-billionaire) personally buys an NFL team to move to LA and makes a unique deal with the new AEG Owners to still build the stadium, this is still a long shot from being done… Until then, NFL Sunday Ticket on DirecTV is great and will have to suffice…
Any NFL team that decides to play here needs to change their name to the Los Angeles Chupacabras!
So sick of wealthy billionaires extracting money from cities/taxpayers to fund their stadiums. Cities do not see any tangible benefit from the costs associated and all promises of revitalization or spurring the economy and creating thousands of full time jobs inevitably fail. But if you don’t play the game, some other city will and it becomes a race to the bottom.
“Cities do not see any tangible benefit from the costs associated and all promises of revitalization or spurring the economy and creating thousands of full time jobs inevitably fail. ” Really? Did you live in LA before Staples Center opened? It was a ghost town after 6:00. Between the (good) restaurants, lofts, hotels, retail shops… that have opened since Staples opened, it has definitely spurred the downtown economy. And Coors Field completely changed the face of downtown Denver!
Assuming arguendo that those 2 cities benefited from new arenas and there’s no other way that they could have been built, they aren’t the norm. There are numerous studies that conclusively show these sweetheart deals for owners and bad deals for the cities and the taxpayers. Detroit has not benefited from 2 major new stadiums. St. Louis taxpayers are still waiting for that promised entertainment complex to open across the street from the stadium. New Yankee Stadium hasn’t done anything for that area of the Bronx, as old Yankee Stadium didn’t. If I’m not mistaken the owners of a new entertainment complex around the new Meadowlands stadium are bankrupt or on the verge of bankruptcy. Philadelphia’s opened a single new bar for the hundreds of millions spent on 3 new stadiums in South Philly. The list is endless.
This is great news for strippers, steroid dealers and gun shop owners.
This whole stadium deal is nothing more than political bullshit at the highest levels. AEG was given two questions at a previous council meeting.
Question 1: How much do you project ticket prices will be. Answer: “That is too complicated to estimate at this time” from AEG which has worked out every financial detail, but this is too complex for them to handle.
Question2: “This project is hyped (as in this post) as being such a good deal for the people of LA. With that in mind, how do you reconcile that 12 to 14 million folks in LA will have more blackouts and lose football on television while some 70,000 high rollers attend the games?”
Answer: AEG refused to address this issue and it was not brought forward at this or any other council meeting.
Where has the public outcry for an NFL team been for the past 15 years? It has never existed and been substantiated other than by the politicians, AEG and rich folks who want this stadium deal.
And… that is the real truth about this project…plain and simple.
“Build it and they will come” does not apply in LA.
Who is going to move their team to LA? Buffalo?
I think the leading contender is the Rams. I think it could also be Chargers, jaguars and Bills in that order. I doubt the Bills would move. Of course, you can never count out the Raiders. If I had to place money on it though, I would have to believe it will be the Rams if they do not get stadium upgrades in St Louis. It would seem fitting for the Rams to return.
Now that the son has done his part to ruin the Colts legacy, maybe he’ll move the team from Indianapolis in the middle of the night.
No thank you. I enjoyed coming to LA in part to escape football blockheads.
Great now the taxpayers who are already hurting get to subsidize more sports teams. On the other hand Californians are already really good at burning money so what’s another billion or two between friends?
Obviously it is a win-win situation for the city of Los Angeles and the billionaire investors. However the NFL and team owner should be paying to build the stadium not the city. That little “paypal” system should have played out in the 90s.
It’ll be one of four teams…the Chargers, Raiders, Jaguars or Bills and my money is betting on the Chargers as they can’t seem to get a deal done in San Diego. Dean Spanos has just about had enough of the San Diego city council in trying to get a new place built for the team and they started off as the LA Chargers back in the 1960s, so it would be a good fit but don’t rule the Raiders out either, after they destroyed the Alameda County Coliseum, where the A’s can’t even draw a decent crowd for a game anymore.
Don’t tell me Dean Spanos has had enough of the SD City Council (I am not a Councilmember). We are sick of him, the Chargers, and the new owner of both the south and north county newspapers, Mr. Doug Manchester. Taxpayers in San Diego are bled dry from paying for stadiums built by billionaires – we are still paying for Quaalcomm Stadium, not to mention Petco Park. I have to have the tires on my car realigned every 3 months because the roads in San Diego are so bad. Half the Chargers games are blacked out because not enough people buy tickets (oh remember the Charger ticket guarantee)?
No team is moving, the NFL has been looking to expand.
There are fewer and fewer NFL teams that are looking for a new venue deal. Once the Vikings were considered a potential because of an aging stadium and a smaller market, but they have a new deal and won’t move anytime soon.
Oakland or San Diego? Don’t bet on it, unless one of the teams is sold. Carolina and Tennessee have new stadiums, even though they’ve publicly complained about their respective markets. Jacksonville is an outside chance because they don’t like their existing facility, but don’t expect the city to let them go.
Ask any NFL owner (or MLB or NBA owner for that matter) and they will tell you the bigger money is in setting up a regiuonal sports network on cable/satellite. Without that, team owners’ revenues are limited to ticket sales, concession and souvenir sales, parking, and naming rights. A sport with maybe 10 home games per year doesn’t yield enough in revenue based on those sources alone.
Carolina doesn’t have a new stadium. Built in 1994 and is one of only six NFL stadiums that hasn’t had renovations done recently. Plus no one has complained about the market.
One fact that I believe the new LA NFL team will have to consider — UCLA and USC are the only school rivalry that are in the same city. Even when these college football programs are in a down year, they draw at least 60,000 fans per game, on Saturday. That’s a down year.
Not to mention their basketball programs that pull in 12,000 fans on Saturdays as well.
UCLA and USC alums are very loyal to their universities. We alums lived on the campuses. And the memories of those carefree days will live on forever in our minds. We have an emotional connection to our universities.
So, my point is, an NFL team in Los Angeles will have a smaller pool of potential ticket purchasers to go after.
I don’t think many fans will have the time or financial resources to afford tickets to both college games on Saturday, and NFL games on Sunday. I’m a UCLA Alum. We don’t have much of a football program these days, but I am a Bruin. On good days and bad days. Rain or shine. I am a UCLA Bruin.
So my season ticket dollars will be spent on UCLA football and UCLA basketball games. I’m sure my friends from that school in Watts are thinking the same way.
So, the new NFL team in LA will have some serious competition. Perhaps, that competition will bring down NFL ticket prices for the average Joe.
Look for the Jacksonville Jaguars to move West to this new stadium.
Also look for the St. Louis team to drop the “Rams” nickname so that the new Los Angeles team can use the traditional nickname Rams.
As for St. Louis? Well, they could make a deal with the Arizona Cardinals to have the latter drop the name “Cardinals” so St. Louis can pick it up (and bring the old NFL nickname back to the Arch City).
As for the current Arizona Cardinals?? They could re-name themselves the Phoenix Firebirds.
This way, the classic NFL team names return to L.A. and St. Louis, and Phoenix’s team gets a more appropriate name for that city.