Almost all the time they are a money loser.
You can make money if the owner and league break the lease apparently.
They didn’t break the lease. They didn’t follow the NFL’s own relocation guidelines. This column by Sam Farmer of the Los Angeles Times explains it well.
Isn’t he trying to renegotiate the deal right now?
What deal? I am not trying to be snide. I am asking seriously.
The article discusses how the Rams were able to get out of the lease due to the top 25% tier provision but how the NFL did not follow it’s own relocation guidelines with St Louis. The settlement is with the entire NFL, not just the Rams.
I haven’t followed closely, but I was thinking I saw recently something about him trying to get out of paying for some of the LA stadium costs. Not seeing it now, just this.
Read the article. It discusses cost associated with any litigation arising from the Rams move to Los Angeles. It has nothing to do with stadium costs.
Now the NFL and Kroenke are fighting over who will pay the settlement.
I think Kroenke self funded the stadium, or a vast majority of it.
And that is not clear either. The NFL had some really lousy lawyers write the indemnification agreement.
I believe he took out loans to fund it. However, those loans are backed-up by his collateral, so yes, at the end of the day he is funding it.
There is no way any project like that was every going to be funded with public money in Southern California. That is why the area went twenty-one years without an NFL team and would still be without one without a privately-financed stadium.
I saw an article on that about a week ago.
This is a case where one could only hope that both parties lose.
The new owner of the KC Royals put out a teaser regarding a new downtown baseball stadium.
The talking heads and politico’s seemed interested, but the public sentiment regarding public financing so far has been ice cold.
Back to the original subject, I think this is another case where the NFL settled because it didn’t want its dirty laundry aired in public. From the St. Louis side, from what I read it was not a slam dunk that the would come out in the end, at least on appeal, though the potential of a big pay-day was also there. From what I read, the NFL had resigned itself to losing the initial trial but was looking to win on appeal, where some of this judge’s rulings could be questioned. Plus, even if St. Louis did win, the whole process would have dragged-on for a long time and cost the City a lot in legal fees.
I think the City did the prudent thing in settling and taking the sure win.
I think the NFL put their eggs in the basket that they could get the trial moved.
When it was kept in a local court they kind of knew they were screwed.
That would have been one point of an appeal, and a very valid one in my opinion. St. Louis is hardly the most unbiased location for this issue.
Another point was the relocation policy and whether it is binding on the cities. The Sam Farmer article discusses this and how a similar lawsuit in Oakland was tossed over this reason. I am far from a legal expert, but the St. Louis judge’s reasoning seemed a bit questionable.
At the end of the day St. Louis should consider itself fortunate that the NFL has a lot it doesn’t want made public.
I think the argument, and I tend to agree (but I am admittedly biased), is that the agreement between the team and city (actually County in KC) is dependent upon the NFL relocation policy. Without that policy, a city may be hesitant to agree to the terms of stadium financing.
However, as we have discussed before, St. Louis did not build that stadium based on any promises related to that relocation policy. They broke ground on the stadium without any actual commitment of receiving a team but rather based on the assumption that they were a lock to get an expansion team. Then, when the NFL did not award them an expansion team they struck the sweetheart deal with the Rams to relocate there.
That St. Louis settled now at the amount they did tells me that they weren’t totally confident of winning out in the end had they carried this forward. Like I said, I think they did the prudent thing settling.
Here is a good column that I recall from 2016 when the Rams announced they were moving. It pretty much says St. Louis came out all the better for it.
Agree 100%.
A bird in the hand so to speak.
Also, I forgot to mention earlier that St. Louis did not get any commitment for an expansion team as part of this settlement. That also says a lot.