In 2010, when Santa Clara voters approved creating a city-run stadium authority to build an NFL stadium to attract the San Francisco 49ers, politicians patted themselves on the back for getting things done and luring a storied franchise 45 miles south to Silicon Valley. The relocation took place

The contrast with Oakland and its inability to come up with a stadium proposal that would keep the Raiders from eyeing other metro areas was clear. Leaders in the cash-strapped city were unable to prevent the Raiders from committing in 2017 to moving to Las Vegas and working with the Nevada state government on a financing plan that should yield a 65,000-seat stadium for the team to begin using in the 2020 season.

But now the narrative has taken a dramatic shift, and it’s Santa Clara leaders who are facing grief in their community over the 49ers’ arrival in town and the impact of the $1.27 billion Levi’s Stadium (pictured), named after the San Francisco company which paid for marketing rights.

What was billed as a win-win situation by team and local officials now looks far more complex. The initial honeymoon has long since given away to a fractious relationship.

The biggest annual strain is over how much the team must pay per season. A complex agreement set the 49ers’ rent and operating fees at $24.5 million for the 2017 season. The 2018 assessment was fought over for months before an arbitrator recently said the amount should be set at $24.762 million for the coming season, an increase of just over 1 percent.

The ruling contradicted the team’s analysis of baseline rent, stadium operating expenses, debt service and capital reserves. The 49ers argued their total payment should be as little as $16.775 million – a 32 percent cut. The city asked for as much as $25.862 million – a 6 percent increase.

“We want to work with 49ers, not against them,” Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor said in a statement released after the arbitration decision. “Hopefully the team understands that Santa Clara will always put community interests first.”

There have also been squabbles over the city’s 10 p.m. weeknight curfew for events at the stadium, which has the potential to cause headaches for the team, given the regular season games the NFL holds each week on Monday and Thursday nights, as well as the preseason games that are regularly scheduled on weeknights. Some residents respond by citing quality-of-life issues created by team-related traffic.

Personal-seat license fees needed for revenue model

Both the city and the team share concerns over attendance. While the 68,500-seat stadium regularly sells out on paper, Pro Football Talk and other popular NFL websites took to mocking the 49ers last fall after an October game in which the stadium seemed less than half full, pushing ancillary revenues down. An unexpected problem has been the intense heat seen at Levi’s Stadium for several preseason and regular season games.

A five-game winning streak to end the 2017 season raised hopes that attendance will improve going forward. But as Pro Football Talk pointed out, the team and city have reason to be deeply worried about renewals for personal seat licenses, the expensive way that fans can guarantee themselves top seats at games.

The license fees are crucial to the revenue model being used to pay off construction and related debt. Many once-successful teams have struggled to sell PSLs after their fortunes took a turn for the worse.

Meanwhile, the long-shot hope that the Raiders would continue to have a presence in Northern California after their 2020 move to Las Vegas has been dashed. Nevada media outlets recently reported that the team is likely to move its preseason training camp from its longtime base in Napa to Reno that summer.

San Diego Chargers’ fans woke up Wednesday morning to hear the most encouraging news yet that the team wouldn’t be returning to Los Angeles after 55 years in San Diego: a report that the Chargers had asked, and the NFL had granted, a request for a

Six weeks earlier, an ESPN report had depicted the Chargers’ departure as a sure thing. But the ugly end to the Rams’ first season back in Los Angeles had shaken up conventional wisdom. As the team’s losses mounted in what ended up a 4-12 season, the fan enthusiasm that helped the team sell out all its season tickets after moving from St. Louis evaporated. If the Los Angeles market wasn’t thrilled about one team unless it was successful, why would it like a second team with a recent history of exasperating fans?

But Wednesday evening brought the news that fans and San Diego leaders had dreaded: ESPN’s NFL insider Adam Schefter reported, seemingly definitively, that the Chargers would be leaving:

Almost one year to the day that the Rams moved to Los Angeles, the Chargers now likely intend to do the same.

The Chargers plan to announce as early as Thursday that they are moving to Los Angeles, league sources said, ending a 55-year stint with San Diego and returning to their birthplace.

The Chargers played their inaugural season in Los Angeles in 1960 before moving to San Diego in 1961.

The Chargers have notified NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and other league owners of their intent to move to Los Angeles for the 2017 season, sources said.

As CalWatchdog reported earlier this week, all signs suggest the Oakland Raiders will relocate to Las Vegas, so this appears likely to be the most turbulent year for California and professional sports since 1994, when the Los Angeles Rams headed to St. Louis and the Los Angeles Raiders moved back to Oakland.

San Diego has better chance than Oakland for new team

So is this the end for professional football in two of California’s iconic cities? Maybe in Oakland, maybe not in San Diego.

The San Francisco 49ers’ recent attendance woes at new Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara seem likely to depress enthusiasm for the idea that Oakland should partially subsidize a stadium for the Raiders, as the team and the NFL want.

But San Diego, the 17th largest metropolitan area in the U.S. and a global leader in biotechnology and life sciences industries, is in better shape. Its leaders appear ready to support a public stadium subsidy of up to $400 million.

A Yahoo News analysis from 2016 predicated on the idea that the Chargers would move to Los Angeles concluded that San Diego was the clear favorite to be home to the NFL’s next relocated team.

The fate of two of California’s four NFL teams should become much clearer this week. The Chargers

If the Chargers decide to stay put, then as of Jan. 16, the Raiders will have the option to move in with the Rams.

The early 2016 conventional wisdom — bolstered by a seemingly definitive early December leak by Chargers officials to ESPN and by fan anger over the team’s latest bad season — was that the Chargers were sure to move without big taxpayer subsidies for a new stadium. The assumption also was that the Raiders would jump at the chance to go to Los Angeles if the Chargers passed on the opportunity.

The new conventional wisdom, however, suggests there is a fairly good chance the Chargers will remain in San Diego using an aging Qualcomm Stadium in Mission Valley that they despise. It also holds that the Raiders will bolt for Las Vegas, possibly after getting extensions to keep using the Oakland Coliseum for two more years while their Nevada stadium is built.

Fans turned on Rams in first year back in L.A.

The financial appeal of being a second team relocating to Los Angeles lost much of its allure when the Los Angeles Rams’ first season back in town went badly. Fans and sports talk-radio turned on the team as an awful 4-12 season unfolded, leading to tens of thousands of sold but unfilled seats in the Los Angeles Coliseum. Suddenly, the NFL was reminded of the apathy on display when the Rams and Raiders left for St. Louis and Oakland, respectively, in 1994. Unless NFL teams are winners, Los Angeles residents have not been heavily supportive. “Their hearts are with the Dodgers and the Lakers — period,” the late L.A. sportscaster Joe McDonnell liked to say.

There are other financial factors as well. If they moved to Los Angeles, the Chargers would have to pay relocation fees to the other 31 teams totaling either $550 million or $650 million, depending on whether it was a flat payment or a 10-year payment plan. Once there, Rams owner Stan Kroenke would either expect them to pay millions of dollars in annual rent or to contribute heavily to the cost of building the stadium; he might also ask for some of both.

But in San Diego, as a Sunday Union-Tribune analysis noted, the Chargers pay “negative rent.” “From 2006 to 2015, San Diego paid the Chargers $3.2 million for the privilege of playing there, as $25.9 million in rent credits offset $22.7 million in rent,” the analysis noted. The lease is up in 2020, but few expect City Hall to strike a hard bargain if the team remains.

Los Angeles losing its appeal isn’t the problem for Raiders owner Mark Davis that it is for Chargers owner Dean Spanos. Davis has been eyeing a move to Las Vegas for nearly a year and has already trademarked the “Las Vegas Raiders.” The Nevada Legislature has committed to providing $750 million toward a stadium, meaning that if the NFL and the Raiders commit $400 million to $500 million, the funding is firming up for a modern, suite-laden NFL stadium in a booming metropolitan area eager for its first team in the big three of North American pro sports leagues.

Oakland officials have been more strongly opposed to taxpayer stadium subsidies than San Diego officials.

As San Jose Mercury-News columnist Tim Kawakami joked after the Raiders ended a strong 12-4 season with a loss in the first round of the playoffs, the team’s future is bright — but it very well might be in Las Vegas.

As CalWatchdog reported earlier this week, the San Diego Chargers are much closer to moving to Los Angeles, having gotten the formal blessing of team owners at a meeting in Irving, Texas, to leave if they choose by the Jan. 15 deadline the NFL established a year ago. But the situation in Oakland with the Raiders seems cloudier — at least in California media, as opposed to websites that specialize in the NFL.

With the Raiders, the seeming good news for fans who want the team to stay starts with the fact that the Oakland City Council and the Alameda County Board of Supervisors appear enthusiastic about working with Fortress Investment Group, which is led by NFL Hall of Famer Ronnie Lott and billionaire investor Wes Edens, on a stadium plan. On Bay Area talk radio, supporters of the plan have dropped hints of having deep-pocket supporters who might come forward to minimize how much taxpayers would have to pay for the billion-dollar-plus new stadium the Raiders and the NFL want.

NFL officials who have criticized San Diego officials for their response to the Chargers’ stadium needs are offering praise for what’s happening in Oakland.

ESPN reported this week that the league told Oakland’s leaders to not worry about the threat the team would leave even though Nevada state leaders have committed to provide $750 million in public funds for a $1.9 billion NFL stadium in Las Vegas. The team would only have to pay $500 million toward the stadium, with the rest of the tab largely picked up by Las Vegas Sands chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson. One of the world’s richest persons, Adelson hopes to end up a minority or majority owner of the team.

The implication of the remarks by NFL executive Eric Grubman to ESPN is that the league very much wants the Raiders to stay in Oakland even if a better deal is available in Las Vegas. When allowed to comment anonymously, officials with other NFL teams have said that the league should be wary of having a team in the city that is the capital of American sports gambling.

Raiders may sue to leave if NFL owners say no

But optimism about Oakland keeping its team is less apparent on Pro Football Talk, a niche website now affiliated with NBC Sports that has broken dozens of stories in recent years because of its network of NFL insider sources. Site founder Mike Florio wrote this week that Adelson and Raiders owner Mark Davis were struggling to finalize a deal that would bring the team to Las Vegas.

But Florio has long depicted the Raiders’ exit as close to a done deal. On Nov. 22, he reported that Davis would sue the NFL to allow his team to move to Las Vegas if he could not get the support of three-quarters of the league’s 32 owners to relocate his team, as NFL bylaws require.

Davis’ father, NFL Hall of Famer Al Davis, successfully sued the league after it sought to block him from moving the team from Oakland to Los Angeles, where it played from 1982 to 1994 before moving back to Oakland.

Florio has interviewed Mark Davis dozens of times off the record. While he honors the rules and doesn’t quote Davis directly, the impression his coverage always gives is that the Raiders owner sees becoming the first major pro sports franchise to set up shop in Las Vegas — a tourist-centered metropolitan area with 2.1 million residents — as akin to a no-brainer.

Many reporters have also made the obvious point that the Raiders’ image as edgy, unconventional outsiders conforms with Las Vegas’ image.

Florio believes a final decision will be made by September.

After months of relative certainty that the National Football League wanted the Rams in Los Angeles and the Chargers in San Diego, expectations have been gradually upset, turning the other former L.A. team’s relocation back to the City of Angels all but a done deal.

The proximate cause of the shift, always a factor in the team’s fate, was the failure of a new stadium deal to pass muster with San Diego voters in November. In the ensuing weeks, the team has acted swiftly to put an executable plan in place for a timely move to L.A. The first step in making the scheme a reality was locking down a place to play, and “[t]he agreement with the Chargers to lease the as-yet-to-be-built Inglewood stadium has been executed and sources say, soon to be signed,” according to NBC Los Angeles. That deal itself was only possible because the groundwork had been laid back when the first pro team’s return to L.A. was finalized. “The Rams signed an agreement with the NFL before moving to Los Angeles agreeing to lease space to another team,” the network added. 

A need for fans

Still, potential obstacles to an expeditious relocation have captivated the sports press, especially online, where frustration with the Chargers’ recent poor play has been aired as a factor that could complicate the League’s calculus around an L.A. move. “Once again this past week, speculative media reports surfaced outside of San Diego expressing near-certainty that Dean Spanos will move the team to greater Los Angeles in 2017,” U-T San Diego observed.

“Once again, no one was identified as the source of the speculation. (Chargers spokesman Mark Fabiani again said Spanos hasn’t made up his mind.) The League may be overplaying its hand here. L.A. doesn’t want the Bolts.”

Anecdotal evidence of a sour mood among Angelenos has not been overwhelming, but it has been put under a spotlight. Steve Reed, sports writer for the Associated Press, recently quoted one L.A. fan on Twitter who implored the Chargers to “please stay in San Diego. One bad football team in L.A. is enough.”

A cloudy future

Even the risk of over-saturating L.A.’s market could provoke the League to grow more cautious, impose delays or otherwise allow the potential deal to drift. NFL ratings have tanked over the course of 2016, with potential culprits including the politicization of the game by players, the league’s punishment of on-field celebrations, the presidential campaign season and the health risks now more closely associated with players’ concussions. 

Evidence does suggest that the Clinton-Trump matchup put a real damper on fans’ enthusiasm. “Since the election, national NFL games across broadcast and cable are averaging an audience of 18 million viewers,” Fox Business reported, citing Nielsen data. “That’s a nearly 17 percent increase from the period from the start of the season up until the election, when national NFL games drew an average of 15.4 million viewers.”

In an internal memo this October, the network noted, executives Brian Rolapp and Howard Katz downplayed concern that the League faced a fundamentally changed business landscape. “Prime-time windows have clearly been affected the most, while declines during the Sunday afternoon window are more modest. While our partners, like us, would have liked to see higher ratings, they remain confident in the NFL and unconcerned about a long-term issue.”

Nevertheless, the League would suffer a potentially costly and high-profile embarrassment were the Chargers not to connect with L.A. and Orange County fans, who have a broad range of non-football pro teams to support and lack the recent traditions of stalwart support that many other cities with struggling NFL franchises and fewer sports options have nurtured for generations. 

“The game will be played at the soon-to-be built $2.6-billion Inglewood stadium, which is scheduled to open for the 2019 season,” the Los Angeles Times reported. 

In a joint statement with Inglewood Mayor James Butts, L.A.’s Eric Garcetti praised the deal. “The Los Angeles region is built to host the Super Bowl. We helped forge this great American tradition at the Coliseum when it began in 1967; and we’re thrilled to bring it back where it belongs for Super Bowl LV.”

Sinking San Diego

Until very recently, speculation had swirled that Los Angeles might lose favor to San Diego, where delicate League plans to sustain football in the city could wind up in jeopardy. “San Diego previously has hosted three Super Bowls, the last being Super Bowl XXXVII when the Buccaneers beat the Raiders to cap the 2002 season,” the Sporting News recalled. But with the franchise’s future still uncertain, “the NFL does not want to lose the San Diego market. The league wants to keep the Chargers in San Diego to have two Southern California markets and two future Super Bowls in a region that has a population of some 23 million,” the site added. 

But thorny city politics would have had to be swiftly surmounted. At the NFL owners’ quarterly meeting in Charlotte, ESPN reported, NFL owners heard “a progress report on the stadium issue in San Diego, which will include a summary on whether a citizens’ initiative ballot measure in November will require a simple majority or a two-thirds vote,” as required by California state law. 

That situation was complicated further by a court decision, under appeal, that could change the League’s calculus. The nearly $2 billion stadium the city has planned to build, according to stadium advisor Fred Mass, “remains on target to collect 100,000 signatures by the first week of June, creating a buffer in order to have enough signatures certified,” noted ESPN. Nevertheless, “a recent court decision involving the city of Upland ruled a citizens’ initiative is not a measure by the local government, but by the citizens. And therefore since the tax is imposed by the citizens, that constitutional provision does not apply. The city of Upland is appealing the decision to the state Supreme Court.” 

Rewarding the Rams

Los Angeles, meanwhile, had long anticipated that the League could reward it for luring back the Rams by handing it hosting duties. “Almost from the moment the Rams were given the green light, the wheels were in motion to secure hosting rights to the Super Bowl,” the Los Angeles Daily News observed. “Upon approving the Rams return home, the NFL immediately added Los Angeles to the host ballots for Super Bowl LIV an LV, along with Atlanta, South Florida and Tampa Bay.”

“To put in perspective what a Super Bowl means financially to the hosting city and state, a study completed by the Seidman Research Institute, W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University, determined that Super Bowl XLIX and related events two years ago in the Phoenix area produced a gross economic impact of $719.4 million for the entire state. L.A. wants a piece of that pie.”

Although L.A.’s success in landing the big event owed a great deal to the excitement and money surrounding Rams owner Stan Kronke’s huge Inglewood stadium development project, a rule tweak could have ultimately pushed the bid into the end zone. “The NFL appears to have changed a longstanding rule that requires stadiums to operate for two years before hosting a Super Bowl, with L.A.’s bid specifically in mind,” as Curbed Los Angeles reported. 

The Spanos family, owner of the Chargers, has until January 2017 to decide whether to serve as a tenant in a to-be-built mega-stadium in Inglewood owned by Stan Kroenke and the officially relocated Los Angeles Rams. If the Chargers don’t take the option, Raiders owner Mark Davis will then have a one-year option to join the Rams in Inglewood.

In the days after the Jan. 12 announcement that the NFL had given its blessing to the Rams leaving St. Louis for Inglewood, there was considerable cynicism in San Diego and the sports world in general about the Chargers’ one-year option. The assumption was the team was gone.

But in the past 10 days, there have been glimmers of hope that the Chargers may yet be able to work with the city and county of San Diego to build an NFL-worthy stadium with $350 million of public subsidies. The main reason is the emergence of Fred Maas — a high-profile developer and former leader of the Centre City Development Corp., which oversaw highly successful redevelopment efforts in downtown San Diego — as a special advisor to the Chargers helping get a stadium built. The Union-Tribune has more:

“(Maas) has been around San Diego a long time,” Chargers chairman Dean Spanos said on a video posted to the team’s web site. “… He’s very familiar with all the political aspects of what goes on in the city, how all that works. His knowledge of San Diego as a whole will help us.” …

 

Maas was the stadium point man for former Mayor Jerry Sanders, as well as the former director of the Centre City Development Corp.

 

The Chargers suggested to Faulconer that he consider Maas to head the city’s side of stadium negotiations in 2014.

 

After meetings with Faulconer, Maas withdrew from consideration, citing concerns about the commitment he would have to make considering all that the new mayor was working through. … It was around that time in late 2014 that many people close to Spanos began to indicate he had essentially given up on getting a stadium deal in San Diego.

The San Diego Reader offered this tart description of Maas: “a specialist in steering public money into private real estate ventures.”

Raiders owner blasts A’s over long lease

Meanwhile, in Oakland, no Maas-type figure has emerged to help owner Mark Davis deal with local governments. While the Raiders renewed their lease for another year at O.co Coliseum, Davis is sounding increasingly downbeat about the lack of progress toward a new stadium — especially because of the actions of the Oakland A’s, the other primary tenant at the Coliseum.

“There’s an elephant in the room, and that’s the Oakland A’s,” Davis told CSNBayArea.com … . “They signed a 10-year lease while we were negotiating with Oakland officials, and it kind of put somebody right in the middle of things. There isn’t much you can do. They’ve tied our hands behind our back. Now it’s up to the A’s to make a declaration of what they want to do. If they don’t do that, I don’t see how we can make a deal.”

That’s from coverage in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Leaders of Nevada’s largest city are wooing Davis. Their strongest argument is the prospect of the Raiders not having to pay much or anything toward construction of a new stadium that an NFL team could share with the University of Nevada-Las Vegas’ football team. Last month, the Review-Journal reported, Davis went to Vegas and …

… met with casino giants Sheldon Adelson and Steve Wynn, Ultimate Fighting Championship owner Lorenzo Fertitta, UNLV president Len Jessup and former school president Donald Snyder. Adelson’s Sands Corp. has proposed building a $1.2 billion domed stadium … .

Long-standing NFL concerns about having a team in America’s sports betting mecca remain intact, if not as prominent. Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft have come under fire for their early investments in DraftKings, a daily fantasy sports betting site that has exploded in popularity since 2014, and they may be forced to sell their shares.

“The Rams’ home will ultimately be on the site of the old Hollywood Park racetrack in Inglewood in what will be the league’s biggest stadium by square feet, a low-slung, glass-roofed football palace with a projected opening in 2019 and a price tag that could approach $3 billion,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

Unanswered questions

The Chargers effectively have months to decide their fate — enjoying “a yearlong option to join the Rams, followed by the Raiders if the San Diego franchise declines,” according to ESPN. But the Rams’ journey to Inglewood will begin immediately but take years to complete. “NFL owners in Houston voted 30-2 to ratify the Rams’ relocation application for an immediate move to L.A., where the team will eventually begin play at owner Stan Kroenke’s proposed stadium site in Inglewood in 2019,” NFL.com reported, calling the move “a seismic decision that returns the highest level of professional football to the country’s second-largest media market after a 21-year absence.”

“Per NFL Media Insider Ian Rapoport, the Chargers will have up until the conclusion of owners meetings (March 20-23) to decide if they’re playing in L.A. or San Diego in 2016. The window creates the possibility — however slight — that the Chargers could remain in San Diego. The city is hosting a June vote for $350 million in public funding toward a new facility to replace Qualcomm Stadium. It is possible that the Chargers put off a final decision until that vote takes place.”

Uncertainty in Oakland

The deal left the Oakland Raiders, L.A.’s third suitor, the odd team out. They had gambled big on a joint-stadium deal in Carson with the Chargers, hoping to ace out the Rams by granting the league’s wish to neatly usher in two, but not three, teams. “Oakland is still in debt from a renovation 20 years ago, when the Raiders moved back from Los Angeles,” ESPN noted. “City officials have said they won’t seek help from taxpayers with a new stadium, and they asked the NFL for more time to develop a project in response to the Raiders’ relocation plan. The NFL acquiesced.”

Oakland’s fans have retained the strongest loyalty and the greatest capacity for forgiveness among the three cities in peril of losing their franchises. But the fallout from the L.A. deal was far from over, as Oakland’s dismal financial situation with regard to the Raiders raised the sudden prospect that the storied East Bay team could pick up stakes for Texas. The team had previously considered a switch to San Antonio. “In 2014, the Raiders met with San Antonio officials about a potential move,” as Business Insider reported. “While many shrugged that off at the time, there is now a feeling that such a move is possible. According to Jason Cole of Bleacher Report, the Raiders have already secured land in the Austin/San Antonio area for a potential stadium. With the Alamodome already in place, this strongly suggests that the Raiders could be playing in Texas as soon as next season.”

Wary L.A.

In Los Angeles itself, reaction to the upheaval has been moderate, if not muted. Despite the league’s fierce interest in shifting at least one team to the city, Angelenos and Californians more broadly have not agitated for a new franchise, and expectations for the Rams have already been set high by city locals. “So understand first that you’re here because you want to be here and because you think you can make money here, not because anybody was dying to see you again. Consider yourself lucky to be back on our turf,” Bill Plaschke wrote at the Times. “You must win. You must entertain. You must do both with the sort of decency and integrity that makes us feel comfortable enduring long lines of traffic, long lines at bathrooms, and mosh pits in parking lots for a chance to watch you play.”

The Chargers were given a one-year option to move — an option that seemed far more like an unserious public-relations ploy to suggest that they hadn’t made their minds up than a sign they actually might not leave. Team owner Dean Spanos and his stadium point man, Mark Fabiani, have an awful relationship with the San Diego establishment, starting with Mayor Kevin Faulconer. If the Chargers choose not to leave San Diego, the Oakland Raiders would then have a one-year option to move.

This followed a wild day at the NFL owners’ meeting in Houston. The NFL relocation committee initially voted 5-1 to support the Chargers’ and the Raiders’ plan to build a stadium in Carson, move their teams and lay claim to the Los Angeles market. That was followed by subsequent votes of all 32 owners in which 20 backed requiring the Chargers to abandon their partnership with the Raiders and share a stadium in Inglewood with the St. Louis Rams, and 12 backed the Carson plan.

As the day wore on, support emerged for a third option: clearing the Rams to move to Inglewood and build a stadium there, while allowing the Chargers to join the Rams in a year or two after reviving talks with San Diego officials on how to fund and build a billion-dollar-plus NFL stadium. That morphed into the decision to give the Chargers an option to stay in San Diego with a one-year window to join the Rams in Inglewood.

Here’s more from the Los Angeles Times:

Until the stadium is complete, the Rams are expected to play temporarily at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum. If the Chargers join them, it’s unclear where they will play, though the NFL sees Angel Stadium, Dodger Stadium and even the Rose Bowl, which declined last year to bid on hosting a team, as potential options. …

 

The maneuvering between the projects included Disney Chairman and Chief Executive Robert Iger joining the Carson project pending its approval. In the weeks leading up to the vote, he vigorously lobbied for Carson, making phone calls to NFL owners, as did Carolina Panthers owner Jerry Richardson, who orchestrated Iger’s involvement. Iger presented Carson’s plan to owners Tuesday, along with Davis and Spanos.

Chargers assured they’ll share in Inglewood bonanza

According to many reports, the key to the NFL owners’ landslide vote was assuring the Chargers that they wouldn’t be in a completely subordinate position in sharing the Inglewood facilities with the Rams. Moving to Los Angeles would be much less of a bonanza for the Spanos family if it had to pay heavy rent and was shut out of many of the ancillary ways that stadiums and big mixed-use development projects make money. The Times put it this way:

In the last several days, fellow owners worked behind the scenes to bring Kroenke and Spanos together in an accord that allows them to be equitable partners in the Inglewood stadium. The only shared stadium in the NFL is in East Rutherford, N.J., which is home to the New York Giants and Jets.

So what’s next for the Raiders?

In an odd interview Tuesday night, owner Mark Davis suggested he might take his team to Great Britain or some other locale far from the western division of the American Football Conference; his team’s lease is up at what used to be known as the Oakland Coliseum.

But coverage in the Bay Area has focused on the likelihood of the NFL pressuring the Raiders to play in Santa Clara at the 49ers’ gleaming 2-year-old Levi’s Stadium — with the sort of subservient relationship to the 49ers that the Chargers hope to avoid in Inglewood.