See?

We are all counting on the updates because it’s slow around here. There isn’t one damn thing that Rams fans can think of to talk about. And we gotta keep talking. Otherwise there could be an awkward Bro Pause.

wv wrote:

Zooey wrote:

Yeah. Stan was not interested in St. Louis at all. Plan B may have been London. He wasn’t after a new stadium. He was after Something Bigger.

Yes, something bigger. Money, power, ego, etc, etc.
The Usual.

And when Georgia/Shaw took the team away from LA,
it was much the same. Mainly money.

What did you think of the Costas audio.
He talks about this stuff.

w
v

I didn’t agree with him on the baseball stuff. I agreed with him on the Rams stuff more or less with the exception that I don’t think St. Louis had no chance. Moving to LA wasn’t a sure thing. The fix was not in. I thought from the first time I saw the scope of the project and heard that he was paying for it privately that there wasn’t much chance it would be turned down, but I think Carson and St. Louis both made legitimate runs that were taken seriously. I’m not at all surprised it fell out the way it did, but it wasn’t a sure thing, so I think Costas overstates all of that. I thought he was good on the inherent nature of violence in football and the way he distinguished it from domestic violence, steroids, corruption of the NCAA and so on. When I heard, though, that Glenn Frey is dead and realized they were going to talk about that, I ejected, because I always loathed the Eagles.

Happy birthday, RM. And thank you.

Retail rental was $25 sq. ft in 2013.

And there is 890,000 sq ft of that.

So that’s over $22 million per month.

So Retail + Office + Rams only = > $100,000,000/year. Never mind the housing, casino, theatre, hotels, parking lots, concessions, and merchandising. And local radio rights and whatever. Plus whatever Spanos pays to lease the stadium, as well as other uses of it, plus the advertising and naming rights. TV revenue.

Yeah, he’s going to need a couple dozen CPAs just to count the money.

The good news, though, is that the NFL runs a “keeper” league, so the Rams don’t have to draft Gurley again. They already have him.

Isiah58 wrote:

While it seems counter intuitive for the Chargers to move in with the Rams knowing that Mark Davis is ready to pounce on their former market, there are also rumors that there is no shortage of investors who are willing to go in with Spanos to split the megatropolis that is the new stadium in LA. They believe that they are going to be printing money, and if that is the case who cares if you have no real fan base? Vinnie B also believes that if Spanos declines, the Raiders absolutely would move to LA. Thus, the Rams will almost certainly be sharing with someone.

The moratorium on beginning their marketing initiatives is kind of a big deal for the Rams, too. We have heard that they will be heavily into promoting the Rams here in Southern California, but none of that can begin until the second team is situated. So while there is a buzz in Southern California about the NFL returning to LA, until they can really start to promote the team there may be a dead period after the initial excitement. By the way, the web site goes online in an hour to put your name on the waitlist for tix. I am going to be the first person on the list! : )
Isiah 58

I don’t understand much of what you said there. I agree that the Rams will be sharing that stadium with either the Chargers or Raiders. A tenant seems inevitable.

I don’t understand “there is no shortage of investors who are willing to go in with Spanos to split the megatropolis that is the new stadium in LA.” AFAIK, ownership of the stadium and the surrounds is not on the table. The 2nd team is going to be a tenant, not a landlord. No? The money printing presses are owned by SK and his Hollywood Park partnership – forgotten its name.

Also – the moratorium is on selling PSLs, suites, and naming rights to the stadium – not on marketing. AFAIK. I haven’t seen anything saying they can’t promote the Rams. I mean – they already have with their public press conference and new logo and the ticket sales that you are signing up for this morning.

zn wrote:

Also being widely discussed is the possibility that if the Chargers move in with the Rams the Raiders will then move to San Diego. One problem: Chargers fans HATE the Raiders and I can’t see any of them converting into Raider fans. Charger fans will drive up to Inglewood to cheer on the L.A. Chargers before they will ever support the San Diego Raiders (which doesn’t sound right at all). True, there are a lot of Raider fans in the L.A. area who would drive down to attend games in San Diego, but…really? 95% of San Diego football fans are Charger fans who, I repeat, HATE the Raiders. I can’t imagine how you can have a “home team” that is utterly despised by the “home fans”.

That kind of strikes me as obvious now that he says it. I never thought of that.

The networks want an AFC team in LA.

I don’t think it’s an “if” question, but a “when” question.

zn wrote:

PA Ram wrote:

Apparently there is some incentive for Stan by having a second team–with advertisers or some such thing, can’t remember what I read.

It has to do with PSL sales. I forget the details but they’re findable.

From and article in the LA Times by Sam Farmer:

To encourage the Rams to make a deal with a second team, the resolution barred the Rams from selling personal seat licenses, suites or naming rights until February 2017 unless another NFL team joins them before then.

The advantage, of course, of selling PSLs and naming rights immediately is that Stan can write the checks for building the stadium with other people’s money. Without that, he is going to have to get loans or liquidate his own stuff for the first year of construction.

InvaderRam wrote:

he’s better off staying in san diego just to keep another team from moving in. he’ll then have the san diego market as well as part of the orange county market. he’d be dumb to move in with stan.

I tend to agree that having the Raiders take over San Diego is worse for him than having the Raiders in LA. It would be all uphill in LA to get a fan base. In fact, some of the LA residents who have remained Raiders fans would probably stick with the Raiders, especially if they move to San Diego.

But he needs a deal before he locks himself into San Diego, and that could be tough to pull off. I bet he is going to buy himself time to try to do just that, and he won’t move to LA for 2016.

Yeah, Spanos knew he would be the Clippers or Mets or Jets if he shared LA with the Rams. That was the whole point of hooking up with another team and trying to keep the Rams out. It isn’t that he liked the Carson project better; it’s that he didn’t want the Rams in LA at all.

So now he is in a tough spot. He doesn’t want the Raiders in San Diego, but he doesn’t want the Raiders in LA, either. He’s screwed. He now has to decide if he is better off as the unwanted kid brother in Stanland, and possibly losing a good chunk of his San Diego fan base to the San Diego Raiders, or paint himself in a corner in San Diego while yielding ALL of LA to other teams. He has one year to either get a signed and sealed deal with San Diego, or he is really, really screwed. He has to figure that whatever market he leaves open is going to be filled by the Raiders. Unless he’s lucky.

But the Raiders currently have nothing brewing in Oakland, and I’m pretty sure the Cowboys and Texans both have fans in San Antonio and all of western Texas that they don’t really want to hand over to the Raiders. The Raiders would have to apply for relocation to San Antonio, and they might get approval, and they might not. They probably would, but there is no certainty. It’s much easier for the Raiders to move to LA, and they already have a fan base there, and it wouldn’t require giving up as big a chunk of equity in the team as moving to San Antonio likely would.

So I think Spano has to choose between LA and SD with the assumption that the Raiders take the other spot.

It sucks to be Spanos right now.

PA Ram wrote:

Yeah I do think this has been in the plans for a long time. And knowing what he knew may even have played into Fisher’s decision to come to the Rams for all we know. Of course he’ll never say that but I do wonder.

Fisher has roots in LA.

We knew at the time of the interview that the conversation took place. The only thing we didn’t know for sure was what was said i.e. was Fisher willing to go through that again, or did SK promise they weren’t moving. Well, pretty obviously, Fisher knew Kroenke’s intention, and Kroenke knew Fisher was on board. So, yeah, Fisher is not only safe this year, he is safe probably up to the opening of the new stadium. At least.

Now. We need somebody with connections in the real estate business to find out if Jenkins, Johnson, McLeod et al are shopping for houses in the LA area.

Cuz I’m gonna guess that now is a real good time to pack up and resettle for everybody.

Welcome to LA. The first thing you are going to experience is Sticker Shock.

Grits, Grits, Grits. I heard you’ve been banned from so many places, I was beginning to worry you had been banned from the 21st century altogether.

QB, DE, and (gawd help me), a TE.

Now, where the heck is RFL? We haven’t heard from him in all this.

zn wrote:

All of which I take as saying they basically ignored their own relocation guidelines and more or less just jerked St. Louis around on the stadium stuff.

Certainly. Yes. Exactly.

I remember the discussion of relocation guidelines coming up a year ago. I don’t think there were many voices who thought those guidelines would be binding. Pretty much everyone thought the NFL would do whatever it wanted regardless.

I think people who are hoping to see SK damaged by financial overreach are deluding themselves. This development is going to be thousands of money-generating units that it will be staggering. I bet that if the Rams play in front of a half-empty stadium every week, Stan will still be in the black. There are residential units, business suites, Hotel suites, retail and restaurant suites, a theatre, and goodness knows, all writing rent/lease checks to SK every month for the rest of eternity. Plus Super Bowls, Final Fours, Olympics, World Cup, geezus the cash will flow like a river in the rainy season. The fortunes of the Rams are almost irrelevant. This is an Empire.