Top Dem Under Fire After 'Egregious' NFL Deal Bilks the Taxpayers Out of Millions

[wmj]

@crparrothead

@wmj

Ask the good people of St Louis how this turned out for them.

The NFL had to pay them because the Rams broke their contract.

We had discussed that subject before, and I summed it up here in this post where the same article talking about good faith efforts and the chances of relocation being legally slim first was posted:

@wmj

And, here is another misleading article.

Exclusive | Kathy Hochul needlessly handing $850M to Buffalo Bills, legal experts say

That article says how the NFL’s settlement with St. Louis over the NFL’s relocation guidelines should have given Buffalo leverage. It says that the NFL no doubt wants to avoid another scenario like that. What it doesn’t say is that St. Louis lucked-out when it got a homer judge and that that any verdict would have stood a very good chance of being overturned on appeal but that the NFL didn’t want its dirty laundry aired and therefore settled. It also didn’t mention that Oakland tried filing a similar lawsuit in Federal Court and had it dismissed. Oh, and at the end of the day St. Louis is still without an NFL team and unlikely to get one.

Similarly, if Buffalo and New York State had held out trying to get a better deal it is very possible that the Bills may have left Buffalo once their lease expired after 2023. I am sure the NFL would have very happy to have allowed the Bills to go elsewhere and charge a nice relocation fee. Then, they could dare Buffalo to sue the NFL and see what happened. In the worst case for the NFL, just like with St. Louis, the NFL writes a check and Buffalo is without an NFL team, and the part about the NFL writing a check is hardly a given.

Bottom line: Given the size of the Buffalo market the Buffalo area was in a very weak negotiating position and a good chunk of public money was always going to be needed to ensure the team did not leave. If the ultimate goal was to keep the team in Buffalo, using the New York Post’s strategy was flat out dumb. The State and County made the decision that keeping the team was their objective, and they acted as such. Whether that is good public policy or not is open for debate.

Edit:

The NFL never had a contract with St Louis, and the Rams lease had expired. The NFL did not follow its relocation guidelines, as we had also discussed before.

Edit Two: Here is our first discussion on that subject:

The first time a stadium payed off

Almost all the time they are a money loser. You can make money if the owner and league break the lease apparently.