Back to LA, again

Stan could always rent or sell the stadium to the Raiders.

He’s a real estate guy–who knows.

It sure looks like he’s planning to move the team. Is it a big bluff? No idea.

I’d love to hear the “behind-the-scenes” chatter of the owners. I’d say that they all probably know what’s going to happen and it may end up being a deal where moving trucks pull out in the middle of the night.

We’ll see.

yah beat me to it! LOL. No PA, don’t be silly. Why would Stan build an 80,000 seat stadium in LA to stay in STL in a Stadium he doesn’t own?

Grits

Stan Kroenke, owner of the St. Louis Rams, plans to build an NFL stadium in Inglewood
The Rams left Southern California for St. Louis. Is the team on the verge of coming back?

The owner of the St. Louis Rams plans to build an NFL stadium in Inglewood, which could pave the way for the league’s return to Los Angeles.

Rams owner Stan Kroenke, who bought 60 acres adjacent to the Forum a year ago, has joined forces with the owners of the 238-acre Hollywood Park site, Stockbridge Capital Group. They plan to add an 80,000-seat NFL stadium and 6,000-seat performance venue to the already-massive development of retail, office, hotel and residential space, Stockbridge and the Kroenke Group told The Times.

The announcement is the latest in more than a dozen stadium proposals that have come and gone in the meandering, two-decade effort to bring an NFL franchise back to the nation’s second-largest media market. But Kroenke’s move marks the first time an existing team owner has controlled a local site large enough for a stadium and parking.

What’s more, Kroenke, a billionaire who built his fortune in real estate, has the ability to move quickly. The Rams can choose later this month to convert their lease in St. Louis to year-to-year. The Rams declined comment on any plans to move, but it’s no secret that the team is unhappy in the Edward Jones Dome, which is outdated by current NFL standards.

Kroenke’s Inglewood plans ratchet up pressure on St. Louis to either strike a deal for a new stadium or watch the team return to Southern California, where it played from 1946 to 1994.

Under their current deal, the Rams can end their 30-year lease a decade early because they have not reached an agreement with St. Louis officials on improvements to the stadium. The sides remain about $575 million apart. St. Louis is expected to offer the team a new proposal by month’s end.
lRelated Inglewood NFL stadium

The San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders are similarly unhappy in old stadiums that don’t offer updated amenities. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said the league would not be accepting relocation applications for the 2015 season. So the earliest any team could move would be 2016. Any team that moves could play in a temporary venue, such as the Coliseum or Rose Bowl, until a new stadium is constructed.

The Inglewood site Kroenke bought last year is too small for a stadium and parking, but the deal with Stockbridge, the neighboring developer, provides ample space.

“We are excited to unveil an expanded plan that will bring a world-class sports and entertainment district to Hollywood Park,” Terry Fancher, founder of Stockbridge, said in a statement. “We are committed to working with [the Kroenke Group] to build a project that will put Inglewood back on the map as home of the truly great sports and entertainment venues.”
NFL stadium
An artist’s rendering of the proposed NFL stadium called Farmers Field in downtown Los Angeles. (Anschutz Entertainment Group)

The developers said no tax dollars would be used for the construction project, including the stadium. The group plans to begin gathering signatures soon for an initiative that would place the entire project on the Inglewood municipal ballot in 2015.

Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts Jr. said he was “extremely supportive” of the ballot initiative that would add the sports and entertainment complex to the already-approved Hollywood Park development and speed construction. The stadium could be completed by 2018, the developers said.

“This will hasten the time for the citizens of Inglewood to get the project they deserve,” Butts said. “This is something they have waited for for a long time.”

The owners are calling the combined Kroenke and Hollywood Park projects the City of Champions Revitalization Project. Wilson Meany, a San Francisco firm, is heading development of the site. Wilson Meany is also developing Bay Meadows, a former horse racing track in San Mateo.

The developers want to restore Inglewood to prominence as a sports and entertainment hub. Before Staples Center was built in 1999, Inglewood’s Forum was home to the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team and Kings hockey team. The Forum was recently renovated to be a pure music venue.

Since the Raiders and Rams left after the 1994 season, the threat of moving to Los Angeles has been used as leverage by NFL teams looking to get stadium deals done in their current cities. In that sense, the region has been more valuable to the league without a team than with one.

Because stadiums are so expensive, now routinely topping $1 billion — and because there is no appetite in Los Angeles for public funding — the NFL has a great deal of influence on which team or teams ultimately move into the market. The league can issue loans to help pay for a stadium and award Super Bowls, which are used as a financing mechanism. Any relocation must be approved by a three-quarters majority of team owners.
sp-industry-stadium
Artist rendering of Ed Roski’s potential City of Industry NFL stadium. (Hammes Company Sports Development)

As it stands, Los Angeles has two sites with the legal, political and environmental clearances for NFL venues: the Farmers Field plan downtown and Ed Roski’s proposal in City of Industry. The stadium entitlement process, which invariably involves resolving lawsuits filed by people opposed to a given project, typically requires at least a year, thousands of pages of documents, and millions of dollars in legal and consulting fees.

The developers of the proposed downtown Los Angeles stadium, entertainment giant AEG, have a few more months to find a football team under an agreement with the city. AEG has vowed to build a stadium called Farmers Field along with a new wing for the city’s convention center. The center’s obsolete West Hall would be demolished to make way for Farmers Field.

AEG, an international sports and music entertainment firm founded by Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz, owns the Los Angeles Kings and the L.A. Galaxy soccer team.

Hollywood Park, through its sheer size, offers a rare opportunity for large-scale development in an urban area, industry observers said. At neary 300 acres, it is about the size of Boston’s financial district and twice as big as Vatican City.

The developers aim to create a new neighborhood in Inglewood, with curving streets and parks. The first phase of construction that began in June includes preparation of the site and demolition of the racetrack and grandstands.

Wal-Mart originally owned the 60 acres adjacent to the Forum but sold it to Kroenke after failing to get public approval for a superstore. Madison Square Garden Co., which owns the Forum, had planned to buy the lot in order to acquire more space for parking and possibly additional development, but Kroenke beat them to it.

Kroenke is a former Wal-Mart board member and husband of Ann Walton Kroenke, daughter of Wal-Mart co-founder Bud Walton. Forbes magazine estimates Kroenke’s net worth at $5.8 billion — not counting his wife’s $5.6 billion — making him the NFL’s second-richest owner to Seattle’s Paul Allen, the Microsoft co-founder who is worth an estimated $17.1 billion.

In addition to owning the Rams, Kroenke’s family owns the NBA’s Denver Nuggets and the NHL’s Colorado Avalanche, and is the largest shareholder of the English soccer club Arsenal.

I went ahead and posted the entire article, grits.

=============================
The NFL is getting closer to returning to Los Angeles.

Major news in the NFL-returns-to-L.A. saga early Monday morning. The Los Angeles Times reports that Rams owner Stan Kroenke is planning to build an NFL stadium in Inglewood. Kroenke is teaming up with Stockbridge Capital Group, which owns the 238-acre Hollywood Park site, to build an 80,000-seat stadium and a 6,000-seat performance venue as part of a major retail-office-residential development, which is being dubbed the City of Champions Revitalization Project.

News of the development will put pressure on the city of St. Louis, which owns the outdated Edward Jones Dome. The Rams can convert their lease there to year-to-year next month and leave as early as the end of the 2015 season.

This doesn’t necessarily mean the Rams are moving to Los Angeles—yet. Shortly after the story broke this morning, I spoke with veteran Times NFL reporter Sam Farmer, who has covered the story of the NFL’s flirtations with Los Angeles since 2000.

The MMQB: How is this different from all the other proposals for returning a team to Los Angeles over the last 20 years?

Farmer: This is appreciably different than all the other concepts that have come and gone—the two dozen or so viable proposals. This is different, because it’s an existing owner with a site that can accommodate a stadium and all the parking and retail and a 6,000-seat theater. It’s a game-changer, because there hasn’t been a current owner who can identify a site and make it happen. If this were a game of Clue, we’d already have two of the answers—the who and the where. This is not a done deal. But this is the first major step toward returning the NFL to Los Angeles, and it could trigger a land rush between the Rams, Chargers and Raiders to all try to get to the market first.

How likely is it that St. Louis has lost the Rams?

Farmer: It would certainly be pins and needles time for the city of St. Louis. The city has to come back by the end of the month [of January] with a serious proposal to keep the Rams. That’s when the Rams can roll over the lease to a year-to-year deal. This move ratchets up the pressure on the city of St. Louis and will smoke out the city’s best deal. This is a dramatic, bold and aggressive move toward the nation’s second-largest market, and a market that had the Rams for decades. And it’s the second-richest owner in the league, with deep ties to Los Angeles, who has a history of making bold and aggressive moves like this one. So St. Louis certainly should be concerned.

When is the earliest the Rams could play in L.A.?

Farmer: 2016. They could conceivably play in the new stadium by 2018—but they won’t put shovels in the ground for the stadium until they get the Environmental Impact Report done, which is all the legal, environmental and political clearances to build the stadium. The earliest that could happen would probably be early in 2016.

Where would the Rams play until 2018, if they move?

Farmer: I think it’s most likely the [Los Angeles] Coliseum. But I wouldn’t rule out the Rose Bowl.

More possible in Los Angeles: one NFL team or two?

Farmer: The concept of dropping two teams into the city simultaneously is very difficult. Two teams at once might be overwhelming. The first team would be so much better off in Los Angeles. Would the second team basically want to be the Jets playing in Giants Stadium? The first team is much more enticing. My expectation is you wouldn’t see two teams for a while.

mmqb.si.com
==========================

GreatRamNTheSky wrote:

Good post WV. I disagree with Farmer in that I think this is a done deal.

1. Kroenke is not stupid. He would not just make this move without acknowledgement from the league.
2. Could be Kroenke has agreed to be the heavy in this scenario so the league doesn’t take a beating PR wise.

People in STL need to stop rationalizing this and accept what is happening.

Grits

Well, i got no idea what’s goin on, LoL.

I’m just gonna sit here in West, by god, Virginia
and eat popcorn, and wait and see.

w
v

But Dak…you don’t know that Kroenke isn’t just leveraging.

You don’t know that he isn’t seriously exploring options in St. Louis. I’m sure he knows what Peacock is doing; he’s seen the sketches, and has an idea of the plans.

And over the past 20 years, there have been more than a dozen Los Angeles plans, some promising, all of which died in the 11th hour. There are two other plans which still have a heartbeat.

Meanwhile…Kroenke’s plan has to make it through various legal hurdles (which have killed other plans) and navigate lawsuits from opponents.

Plus…he has to get 24 votes from the owners. No sure thing. There are the cross ownership issues for one thing, and there may be owners who believe that letting Kroenke get by that rule creates potential problems for them down the road. There are Spanos and Davis who make money out of merchandising in LA right now. If the Rams move back, they will absorb most of that revenue stream.

No deal in business – or in life – is done until it’s done.

We don’t know how ANY of that is going to play out. Kroenke has a LOT of money, and that is a useful tool, but the other 31 ownerships have a lot of money, too, and some of them may feel their interests are threatened.

St. Louis will make its offer shortly, and the direction of this conversation will turn again on the basis of that information.

In the mean time, all we know is Kroenke laid a very interesting card on the table, carefully timed, and with a strategy behind the move. But we don’t know what the end game is. And we don’t know what the other owners think. At all.

ummm…

wow.

wv wrote:

Dunno if this has been posted:

http://www.insidestl.com/insideSTLcom/STLSports/STLRams/tabid/137/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/15922/Peacock-Blitz-to-Present-St-Louis-Stadium-Plan-to-Nixon-on-Friday.aspx

Former Anheuser-Busch executive Dave Peacock and Clayton attorney Bob Blitz, heads of the St. Louis stadium task force, have released a statement in response to news Rams owner Stan Kroenke plans to build a new stadium Inglewood, Calif….see link

w
v

“The news today is another reminder of how much competition there can be for National Football League franchises and projects that include NFL stadiums, but it does not change our timeline or approach. It is important to remember this will be a long-term process, but one that the State of Missouri and the St. Louis region are fully pledged to seeing through. We are ready to demonstrate our commitment to keeping the NFL here, and to continue to illustrate why St. Louis has been and will always be a strong NFL market. We will present a plan to Governor Nixon this Friday as scheduled, and we expect that it will meet his criteria, thereby allowing us to share our vision with the public shortly thereafter. In the meantime, we will continue to have discussions with the NFL, as well as Rams leadership.”

In November, Gov. Jay Nixon appointed Peacock and Blitz to develop plans for a new outdoor stadium on the St. Louis riverfront, as well as ways to finance it.

Peacock’s and Blitz’s statement Monday falls in line with similar comments made by St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay.

“We’re committed to keeping an NFL franchise in STL because they have value,” Slay tweeted. “I am confident that Dave Peacock and Bob Blitz, working within Gov Nixon’s parameters, can come up with a viable plan to do that.”

Slay’s chief of staff, Jeff Rainford, also said the threat of a land deal in Inglewood shouldn’t change anything related Missouri’s expected proposal.

“The parameters the governor laid out were spot-on,” Rainford told The Post-Dispatch. “It doesn’t make sense to take money away from other important needs or to raise taxes or raise fees.”

something about this makes me believe this is actually going to happen. and i don’t think the nfl is being completely honest about this. my bet is they want this to happen.

http://espn.go.com/los-angeles/nfl/story/_/id/12125028/project-nfl-stadium-los-angeles-going-forward

L.A. stadium plans ‘going forward’
Updated: January 5, 2015, 6:05 PM ET
By Arash Markazi | ESPN.com

LOS ANGELES — The St. Louis Rams could be headed back to Los Angeles as early as 2016.

A year after purchasing 60 acres of land in Inglewood adjacent to the Forum and Hollywood Park, Rams owner Stan Kroenke has teamed up with the owners of the Hollywood Park site to build an NFL stadium, the Hollywood Park Land Company announced Monday.

Stockbridge Capital Group, which owns the 298-acre Hollywood Park site, already had plans for a mixed-use community on the land that formerly housed the famed thoroughbred racing track, which closed in late 2013.

Signature gathering will begin soon for an initiative that would place the “City of Champions Revitalization Project” on the Inglewood municipal ballot in 2015. if it passes, construction on the project would begin by the end of the year.

“This project is going forward,” Inglewood mayor James T. Butts Jr. said at a news conference in front of Inglewood City Hall on Monday. “We’re thrilled in the City of Inglewood. Here we are in in the position to build that field of dreams and hope that they’ll come.”

Butts said he spoke to Kroenke about the project over the weekend but would not comment on any conversations with the NFL.

As described in the ballot measure, the project will include a stadium of up to 80,000 seats and a performance venue of up to 6,000 seats while reconfiguring the previously approved Hollywood Park plan for up to 890,000 square feet of retail, 780,000 square feet of office space, 2,500 new residential units, a 300-room hotel and 25 acres of public parks, playgrounds, open space and pedestrian and bicycle access.

At a separate news conference at the Hollywood Park site, Chris Meany, senior vice president of Hollywood Park Land Company, said they were committed to beginning construction on the stadium with or without a commitment from an NFL team. The declaration, not to mention the involvement of a current NFL owner, sets it apart from other “shovel-ready” stadium proposals that have always first required a team committing to playing there before construction could begin.

“I’ve heard that there’s a lot of talk about a lot of sites that have been out there for a very long time, for years and years and years,” Meany said. “I don’t see shovels in the ground on those projects. We’re putting our shovels in the ground and going forward. This is the location in Los Angeles that for decades was the best location for sports and entertainment.”

The stadium authorized by the ballot measure will be designed by HKS Inc., one of the world’s leading firms for the design of sports and entertainment complexes. A successful ballot measure would shorten the time frame for Inglewood’s approval of a stadium and would mean that professional sports could return to Inglewood by 2018.

Many proposed stadium plans have come and gone in the hopes of bringing the NFL back to Los Angeles after the city lost both the Raiders and Rams after the 1994 season, but none of those plans were ever backed by a current NFL owner capable of moving his team into the country’s second-largest market.

The 80,000-seat stadium would be designed to house multiple teams and would be covered but open from the sides and be able to not only hold football and soccer games but also be in the running to bid on events such as the Final Four and major prizefights. It would also conceivably be part of Los Angeles’ bid to host the 2024 Olympics and possible future bids for the World Cup.

“We’re going to have the most important, good-looking, best, state-of-the-art sports venue in the western United States, if not the world, and we’ll be ready when people want to use it,” Meany said. “We hope to attract more than our fair [share] of large-scale events here. I can’t speak for what the NCAA would do, but we have designed a building that would be perfect to house the Final Four. … We have not had any talk with the Olympic organizing committee, but we think we’ll have a venue that will enhance Los Angeles’ opportunities.”

Meany and Butts were careful not to call the stadium an “NFL stadium” or claim that it was being built to house an NFL team, but it was clear that was the underlying expectation as a handful of Rams fans cheered from a distance during both news conferences.

“When the Lakers and Kings left [Inglewood], they left for what was a better offer,” Butts said. “We’re not trying to take anybody’s team. These are businesspeople. They make business decisions. But if the best, newest stadium in the world is in Inglewood, I’d imagine that someone would be interested.”

The Rams are expected to convert their lease at St. Louis’ Edward Jones Dome to a year-to-year agreement later this month, and if the team and the city fail to come to an agreement to build a new stadium, the Rams could move back to the area they called home from 1946 to 1994.

On Monday, a representative of the two-man task force working on a St. Louis stadium proposal released a statement on behalf of former Anheuser-Busch president Dave Peacock and local attorney Bob Blitz.

“The news today is another reminder of how much competition there can be for National Football League franchises and projects that include NFL stadiums, but it does not change our timeline or approach,” the statement read. “It is important to remember this will be a long-term process, but one that the State of Missouri and the St. Louis region are fully pledged to seeing through. We are ready to demonstrate our commitment to keeping the NFL here, and to continue to illustrate why St. Louis has been and will always be a strong NFL market. We will present a plan to Governor [Jay] Nixon this Friday as scheduled, and we expect that it will meet his criteria, thereby allowing us to share our vision with the public shortly thereafter. In the meantime, we will continue to have discussions with the NFL, as well as Rams leadership.”

Developers of the Hollywood Park project said that no tax dollars would be used for the construction project — including the stadium and more than 4 million square feet of retail, office, hotel and residential space — which could be completed by 2018. Before construction can begin, however, the project must pass several political and environmental hurdles and the Rams must, of course, commit to moving back to Los Angeles after the 2015 season.

“We are excited to unveil an expanded plan that will bring a world-class sports and entertainment district to Hollywood Park,” Terry Fancher, founder of Stockbridge, said in a release. “We are committed to working with [the Kroenke Group] to build a project that will put Inglewood back on the map as home of the truly great sports and entertainment venues.”

Any NFL franchise interested in relocating for the next season would have to apply between Jan. 1 and Feb. 15 of that year, according to league bylaws, and prove it has exhausted all attempts to remain in its current location. The earliest a team could relocate to Los Angeles would be January 2016, and that team would likely play in either the L.A. Coliseum or the Rose Bowl until a new stadium is completed.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said last month that no teams would be moving to Los Angeles for the 2015 season. The two teams that have always made the most sense to relocate to Los Angeles are the last two NFL teams to leave Los Angeles 20 years ago: the Oakland Raiders and the Rams.

The Raiders’ lease to play at O.co Coliseum, formerly known as the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, has expired, and the team is now on a year-to-year agreement. Meanwhile, the Rams can get out of their lease agreement with the St. Louis Convention and Visitors Commission to play at the Edward Jones Dome, as well. The third team in play for L.A., the San Diego Chargers, can announce its intention to leave San Diego between Feb. 1 and May 1 of each year through 2020 if it pays an early-termination fee tied to the bonds used to expand Qualcomm Stadium in 1997.

Kroenke shows his hand

By Bernie Miklasz

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/columns/bernie-miklasz/bernie-kroenke-shows-his-hand/article_cd866b7a-0724-52b2-aa17-639e503f8d7a.html

By divulging plans to team with an investment firm to build an 80,000-seat football stadium at the old Hollywood Park location near Los Angeles, Rams owner Stan Kroenke has at least one foot out the door as he plots his attempt to get away from St. Louis.

From a business and strategy standpoint, this was a bold move by Kroenke. Oh, turning the Rams into a hopelessly emaciated lame-duck franchise for 2015 isn’t Kroenke’s concern. His bull-rush move for the California gold is horrible for ticket sales and sponsorships in St. Louis.

But isn’t that the point? Kroenke can continue to choke off fan interest in St. Louis, do everything possible to enrage the fan base — and then use the declining support as part of the case for moving the team.

Kroenke’s decision to jump the line and great ahead of the Raiders and the Chargers to plant a flag in Los Angeles for a potential 2016 move is all about Kroenke, all about LA, all about staking a claim in a lucrative market.

In theory this puts more pressure on St. Louis to come up with a viable stadium plan — but that also assumes that Kroenke is interested in staying here. And he isn’t. At least Kroenke has once and for all declared his true intentions.

The signs have been there all along. Kroenke has refused to enter into any type of stadium negotiations here. He won’t take a meeting with Gov. Jay Nixon, or the St. Louis stadium task force leaders Dave Peacock and Bob Blitz. But he’s obviously made time to have multiple meetings with parties in LA. Kroenke remains elusive in St. Louis for a reason: He mentally checked out of St. Louis and has turned his attention to working on the deal in Los Angeles.

I wonder: How does that go over at the NFL headquarters? The NFL has rules on relocation. As a refresher, here are some key excerpts:

“Because League policy favors stable team-community relations, clubs are obligated to work diligently and in good faith to obtain and to maintain suitable stadium facilities in their home territories, and to operate in a manner that maximizes fan support in their current home community…”

And this: “No club has an ‘entitlement’ to relocate simply because it perceives an opportunity for enhanced club revenues in another location. Indeed, League traditions disfavor relocations if a club has been well-supported and financially successful and is expected to remain so.”

Kroenke hasn’t come close to fulfilling those obligations. And having a chance to make more money in another market doesn’t justify moving a franchise.

As for the matter of support in St. Louis …

Despite being subjected to mostly hideous football through the years – only 16 winning records in 48 NFL seasons – St. Louis fans still filled the Edward Jones Dome to 88 percent capacity in 2014 as the Rams lurched to their 11th consecutive non-winning season.

And if Peacock, Blitz and Nixon come up with a viable plan for a new stadium — one that would satisfy league standards, greatly enhance the Rams’ revenue and presumably engender NFL support — then how could the league possibly green-light a Kroenke move to Los Angeles?

Well, there are two intertwined reasons:

1. The NFL relocation rules are worth less than the printer paper that spits them out, and the league will brazenly discard its own bylaws to accommodate Kroenke. The league already has granted Kroenke one significant favor by allowing him to continue to violate the NFL rules preventing cross ownership. Kroenke has had four years to divest his ownership of the NBA Denver Nuggets and NHL Colorado Avalanche, but he’s yet to comply with league rules.

2. The NFL could decide that Kroenke represents its best opportunity to set up shop in Los Angeles. He checks off several important boxes. He has the money and the willingness to build his own stadium there. He has the real estate to house the project. He has an NFL team to anchor the Los Angeles stadium complex. The situation in Los Angeles has been a mess for 20 years, leaving a trail of flimsy stadium plans and promises. Kroenke’s all-encompassing commitment provides a neat, tidy package that can solve the NFL’s longstanding LA problem.

Kroenke isn’t popular with the NFL or its owners, but he can deliver a Los Angeles solution. The NFL’s second-wealthiest owner is throwing down to go big into Los Angeles. With no other credible Los Angeles plans on the table, does the NFL have the stomach (and integrity) to cut Kroenke at the knees? Call me skeptical.

But it may not be so simple.

The NFL has been steadfast in its desire to control the Los Angeles market. The league has set up a process for going back into Los Angeles, and other owners have complied with the league’s wishes to proceed in an orderly fashion. Kroenke’s decision to go rogue could backfire on him.

According to multiple NFL sources, Kroenke’s decision to go public with his Los Angeles bid caught the NFL off guard. The league wasn’t happy with being ambushed by Monday’s big news.

The NFL already has cut Kroenke a break on cross ownership. Now the league has been put in position of having to surrender the lucrative Los Angeles market to Kroenke at a time when other teams (Raiders, Chargers) have more of a case for moving there.

How many times can one owner grab for the money and his additional self enrichment before the NFL takes a strong stand?

I don’t have the answer. I guess we’ll find out.

In the meantime, Peacock, Blitz and Nixon can’t afford to be rattled or distracted by Kroenke’s power play. In my conversations with NFL people Monday, one message resonated: Stay the course, St. Louis. Keep working on that stadium plan. Make sure that it’s real and viable and will result in a new stadium here.

Get the stadium going. It’s the best plan — the best protection — that St. Louis can produce. A new stadium would reduce support for Kroenke. A new stadium would turn the NFL into an ally. A commitment to a new stadium could keep the Rams here. But if the Rams should go, a new stadium could attract another NFL franchise.

From the beginning, Peacock’s strategy has been to make a direct appeal to the NFL. Peacock hasn’t been able to get Kroenke to the table, so Peacock has focused on bringing the NFL into the loop and keeping the league fully updated on the stadium initiative here.

Peacock has maintained steady contact with Commissioner Roger Goodell, NFL executive VP Eric Grubman and several NFL owners. And league sources insist that the NFL is encouraging Peacock to keep doing what he’s doing. Why? Even if the Rams defect, Peacock’s approach is geared to gaining the NFL’s support to put St. Louis in line to land another franchise.

A new stadium – especially one that benefits Kroenke – would set off a contentious debate locally. The plans for funding a new St. Louis stadium haven’t been divulged, let alone approved. And the plan could be shouted down, and get blown up.

We have some excruciating decisions to make here.

This region could decide to stand on principle by refusing to capitulate (again) to NFL greed.

Of course, that would mean losing the Rams and would probably foreclose on the possibility of acquiring another NFL franchise. And given all of the atrocious football and awful ownership that’s challenged the loyalty and patience of even the most devoted fans, who could blame our town for collectively rising up and declaring:

THAT’S ENOUGH.

NO MORE.

JUST LEAVE US ALONE.

Of course, that declaration of NFL independence comes with repercussions.

Namely: No more NFL. As in … ever.

We’re quickly approaching the crossroads.

Are we in or out? It’s just about time to make that decision.

fwiw
==========================
The St. Louis Rams Would Be Worth $2.5-3.5 Billion The Moment They Moved To Los Angeles

http://www.businessinsider.com

The NFL is now closer to moving back to Los Angeles with news that St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke plans to build an 80,000-seat stadium in Inglewood, a move that would more than double the value of his franchise.

In the latest valuations released by Forbes.com, the Rams were dead-last, with a value of $930 million. Meanwhile, teams in the top-5 TV markets (L.A. is no. 2) all rank among the eight most valuable teams with an average value of $2.11 billion and those numbers are almost certainly on the conservative side as the Cowboys are probably worth closer to $5 billion.

The Buffalo Bills, valued just above the Rams at $940 million, recently sold for $1.4 billion. If teams in the top-5 TV markets are undervalued at the same rate, they would be worth $2.54-4.79 billion with an average of $3.16 billion and there is no reason to think an L.A. team wouldn’t be at the upper-end of that range.

So, while a new stadium may cost Kroenke $1 billion to build, he will more than make up for it with the increase in the value of the Rams alone.

I don’t know what WILL happen. But, I really do believe that everything that SK has done and hasn’t done all lead you to believe that he wants his franchise in L.A. He won’t even meet with the local leadership group, which means it’s not that he’s playing hard ball … it’s that he’s not even playing ball.

Dak wrote:

As for whether I’ll be a Rams fan if they leave St. Louis, time will tell. I’ll just see how I feel at the time. It’s not so black and white, the city vs. team thing. Right now, I can turn on talk radio and hear discussion about the Rams much of the year. I can talk with friends and family who follow the Rams. I can go to a game or camp, if I desire. That all goes away once they leave. And, if the NFL ever comes back, so does that experience.

So, we’ll just see what happens.

I was just gonna ask if any of the local St.Louis posters
are gonna keep following the Rams if they move to La.
I cant remember if Dak is the only local st louie regular
on this little board or if there are others. Is Trench in St.louis?

If i were an omnipotent Time Lord, I’d go back and fix it
so Bidwell lost his team in a poker game, and the new owner
kept the Cardinals in St.Louis,
and I’d fix it soze Carroll Rosenbloom never drowned, and the
LA Rams never fell into the hands of the Evil-Frontiere,
and thus they’d still be in LA.
I’d also make sure Modell never moved the Browns from Cleveland.
Also, the Colts should be in Baltimore.
Indy shouldnt even have a pro team. The Indy team should
be in West Virginia. It could be the WV Fighting Frackers.

Also, I’d bring back the Coastal Division.
I believe it was the Rams, Colts, 49ers and Saints.
Or Falcons. I forget.

Alrighty then. I’m snowed in. Got lotsa
time on my hands. I got tired of watchin
cars slide down my steep street into car-piles,
so now, I’m a-postin.

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