As expected, NFL owners meeting at a Phoenix resort have given their blessing to Raiders owner Mark Davis’ plan to move the team from Oakland to Las Vegas on a 31-1 vote.

The Monday decision came after NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell rejected Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf’s last-minute appeal to delay the relocation vote and consider a new stadium proposal unveiled last week. The plan called for building a $1.3 billion football stadium on a 55-acre parcel south of the Oakland Coliseum, where the Raiders now play – a proposal that Schaaf described as a “fully financed, shovel-ready project.” It was structured around a $600 million commitment from the Fortress Investment Group, a New York hedge fund.

But in a lengthy letter released by the NFL, Goodell made clear the league didn’t buy the idea the proposal was either fully financed or shovel-ready. It stated that none of the various proposals offered by the city and its potential development partners at any point had ever come close to meeting the league’s basic requirements to retain the Raiders.

“We have been prepared for nearly two years to work on finding a solution based on access to land at a certain cost, without constraints on the location of the stadium or timing of construction, and clarity on overall development,” Goodell wrote. “However, at this date, there remains no certainty regarding how the site will be fully developed.”

The Nevada Legislature’s October decision to commit to providing $750 million in public dollars to a new Raiders stadium proved decisive, as many NFL insiders had predicted.

Raiders will keep playing in Oakland for at least two years

The pain of losing a team with one of pro sports’ most fanatical fan bases will be particularly acute for Oakland. That’s because unlike the last two NFL team relocations – the San Diego Chargers in January to Los Angeles and the St. Louis Rams a year ago to Los Angeles – Oakland will continue to be the Raiders’ base for two or even three more seasons as a $1.9 billion, 65,000-seat stadium complex is built in Las Vegas. The 35,500-seat Sam Boyd Stadium in Las Vegas used by UNLV’s college football team is not up to NFL standards.

This extended goodbye doesn’t sit well with some in the Bay Area. “Mark Davis didn’t deserve the fans he had. Get out of here, right now,” one columnist wrote Monday afternoon.

In a Phoenix news conference, Davis acknowledged fans’ pain and said he would “use the coming days [to] try to explain to them what went into making this difficult decision.”

Now Schaaf and other Oakland leaders will need to make big decisions about whether to pursue another NFL team – similar to decisions still to be made in San Diego, where a Major League Soccer team has its eyes on the Qualcomm Stadium site.

But Goodell’s letter – while polite – offered clear hints about the chilly reception Oakland might get if it seeks another team without having fully established and vetted funding to pay for most or nearly all of a stadium project. Goodell noted Schaaf’s acknowledgment that substantial direct taxpayer funding is very unlikely.

Oakland’s hope for future NFL team: Benevolent billionaire

Unless one (or more) deep-pockets billionaires emerge who is willing to mostly or entirely fund a new stadium – like Rams owner Stan Kroenke is doing in Inglewood – this creates a bad dynamic for Oakland. The city will never be considered a serious contender to get a relocated team without a stadium in place. But building a stadium without first getting an NFL commitment is a billion-dollar-plus gamble.

The NFL owners’ decision adds to what has been a rough year for Oakland. The Raiders’ delayed exit adds to the angst stemming from the Ghost Fire blaze that killed 36 people in January and the pending departure of the Golden State Warriors from the Oracle arena in Oakland for new digs by the ocean across the bay in San Francisco.

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.

The St. Louis Rams may have once again become the Los Angeles Rams, capping off the biggest suspense story in the National Football League, but the controversy over the city’s final lineup of teams has flared up yet again.

Chargers ’16

In San Diego, where the Chargers have gone down to the wire with city officials on a possible move that once looked like a done deal, the next twist depends on voters. Although analysts and fans have cautioned that one NFL team may be plenty for Los Angeles, especially so soon on the heels of the Rams’ return, the stadium deal holding the Chargers’ future in the balance has failed to rally popular support. According to a YouGov poll conducted late last month, only “a quarter of San Diego adults strongly or somewhat support the proposal for a new, taxpayer-funded $1.8 billion stadium and convention center downtown,” as USA Today recalled. “The poll showed more than half — 52 percent — strongly or somewhat opposed the measure, with the other 23 percent not stating a preference.” 

“To win the vote, the team needs two-thirds of voters to approve the project because it’s a tax hike for a special purpose in California. If the vote fails, the Chargers have until Jan. 15 to decide whether to move to Los Angeles, where they have an optional deal to share a lucrative new stadium with the Los Angeles Rams.”

If the push to use the ballot to keep the Chargers in San Diego has been a slog, however, city officials’ backup plan has emerged as a potentially dramatic Hail Mary pass — to the judiciary. City Attorney Jan Goldsmith told radio host Darren Smith “he would ask the state’s high court to ‘take jurisdiction’ over the city’s November election as it pertains to two stadium-related ballot initiatives: the Chargers plan to raise the city’s hotel tax to build a stadium and convention center, and the Citizens’ Plan, which would increase the tax to help pay for tourism marketing and an off-the-waterfront convention center,” according to U-T San Diego. Although “no public money could go toward stadium construction,” the city’s inquiry “could come as early as next week, if county officials examining signatures declare that either or both initiatives have qualified for the ballot,” the paper added. 

Vegas or bust?

Oakland’s Raiders, the other California team caught up in the L.A. relocation game, have struggled to strike a deal with their own home town. According to NBC Sports, League Commissioner Roger Goodell appeared to discourage another move to L.A., suggesting “you never want to see a community lose their franchise once, much less twice,” making reference to the Raiders’ ping-ponging over the decades between L.A. and Oakland. “I think there’s a solution there, but it takes the community to help identify it,” he said. In the wake of the Rams deal, and unable to count on the Chargers to come through on the stadium-sharing deal that had briefly given the duo a bettor’s edge against the Rams, the Raiders have shifted their attentions from L.A. to Las Vegas.

“Of course, the NFL has allowed communities to lose franchises twice: St. Louis lost both the Cardinals and the Rams,” NBC Sports noted. “So it wouldn’t be unprecedented for the Raiders to vacate Oakland twice. But Goodell said the recent authorization of a new stadium in Las Vegas isn’t enough to bring the Raiders to town.”

Nevertheless, Las Vegas has thrown its considerable weight behind serious plans to lure the team in. The Southern Nevada Tourism Infrastructure Committee recently cast a unanimous vote “to recommend $750 million in public funding for a $1.9 billion stadium,” ESPN reported, drawn from hotel taxes. That sum would be added to $500 million from owner Mark Davis, “which includes a loan from the NFL for a new stadium, to the project,” the network added. “The family of Sheldon Adelson — chairman of casino and resort outfit Las Vegas Sands Corporation — has pledged another $650 million for the proposed 65,000-seat, domed venue, which would be shared with the UNLV football team.”

charamelody / flickr

The NFL’s ungainly effort to determine the fate of three potential Los Angeles teams will drag on into 2016. A mid-January meeting in Houston will give owners their next opportunity to opt for or against the competing relocation plans, which would shift the St. Louis Rams to Inglewood in the first instance and the San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders to a shared Carson stadium in the second. 

The slow-motion scramble for L.A. has arisen because each of the three teams wants newer and better stadium facilities, which would increase team revenues. “According to Forbes 2015 NFL franchise valuations, the median team revenue is $322 million. However, the Chargers ($304 M), Rams ($290 M) and Raiders ($285 M) rank among the league’s bottom third, with the Rams and Raiders among the worst three revenue-earners in the league,” as Patrick Rishe observed at Forbes.

St. Louis reaches

So far, neither plan has mustered adequate support, reported the Los Angeles Times, which added that the city of St. Louis has banked on a counterproposal that depends on a loan package far in excess of what the NFL has been historically willing to provide. “The plan is predicated on the league providing a $300 million loan — $100 million more than has been approved by owners,” according to the Times. “In a recent letter to the task force, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said the premise that $300 million will be available is ‘fundamentally inconsistent’ with the league’s program of stadium financing.”

According to Rishe, Rams owner Stan Kroenke has “indicated to the NFL’s relocation committee that he would be willing to take on an equity partner — a reluctant move made when Kroenke concluded he wouldn’t get the necessary 24 votes of support without it. 

Acrimony in San Diego

Wednesday marked the league deadline for the three teams’ current cities to submit proposals that would keep them local. San Diego’s offer, in excess of $1 billion, “outlined a previously released plan that calls for the city and county to contribute $350 million toward a new stadium, contingent on a public vote next year,” the Times reported separately. But the team itself reiterated their opposition to the deal. “The Chargers don’t believe voters will approve the plan based on polling the team conducted in August,” noted the Times. “They also believe an environmental-impact report for the potential stadium was rushed and leaves the concept vulnerable to litigation.”

That calculus was partly reinforced by remarks from League Commissioner Roger Goodell. As ABC News reported, Goodell “said earlier this month that the league wants certainty in proposals from San Diego, Oakland and St. Louis, which means no time for letting cities have voters decide the fate of stadium projects.”

Cash strapped Oakland

The huge sums flying back and forth in San Diego and St. Louis discussions have dwarfed what’s on the table for the Raiders, although the stakes for the NFL — and local fans — remained just as high. In contrast to the two cities’ schemes, “Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf has no such lavish plan to keep the Raiders in town,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported, “but says she hasn’t given up trying to persuade the team to stay. Schaaf says Oakland needs more time to iron out a deal with the Raiders, negotiations that are made complicated by the Oakland A’s 10-year lease on the Coliseum.”

Although Schaaf’s Tuesday letter to the league offered “no plan for replacing the crumbling, 50-year-old Coliseum,” the Chronicle added, it promised “a new stadium through a lease agreement with the Raiders or from property tax revenue generated by future development around the site.” Ironically, cash-poor Oakland may prevail in its bid to keep the Raiders because the team is on a budget as well. “If the St. Louis Rams and the San Diego Chargers stay put, then Raiders owner Mark Davis could lose his chance to move to a $1.7 billion stadium in the Los Angeles suburb of Carson,” the Chronicle added. “He has planned to share the space and the financing with the Chargers.”

The attorney for the Spanos family, which owns the team — former Clinton administration media aide Mark Fabiani — depicts the city of San Diego as disorganized, unrealistic and “unsophisticated” with its plan to have city voters weigh in via a Dec. 15 special election on whether the city and San Diego County should help the team pay for a new $1.2 billion stadium in Mission Valley. Fabiani points to the unlikelihood that the stadium can readily win necessary environmental approvals and questions the soundness of the funding plan, among several concerns.

City leaders, meanwhile, have gone from quietly seething over what they see as bad-faith negotiating by the team to open displays of disappointment and anger. In a recent radio interview, Mayor Kevin Faulconer accused the team of trying to “run out the clock” by delaying meaningful negotiations while pursuing a stadium project in Carson in southwest Los Angeles County.

Faulconer’s arguments appear to be winning the public-relations war in San Diego County, where social media, letters to the editor and online comments largely reflect the view that the Chargers are going through the motions in their talks with local officials while yearning for a chance to play in the far bigger Los Angeles metro market in a stadium they would jointly own with the Raiders, who want to leave Oakland for L.A.

‘Do you want to be in business with them?’

If that local perception becomes a national perception, that could hurt the Chargers’ chances of winning support for relocation from three-quarters of the 32 teams, as is required by league rules. The likelihood that this does become conventional wisdom recently got a big boost from an unexpected source: prominent, popular L.A. sportscaster Fred Roggin.

The longtime KNBC Los Angeles broadcaster made big waves recently by denouncing the Chargers and suggesting that they might not be welcome in Los Angeles if they left San Diego in ugly fashion.

“Given the way they’re conducting business, do you want to be in business with them? If you could pick, would you want to be in business with somebody who is spinning out of control, telling everybody a different story, trying to manipulate?” he said in an interview with 1090 AM San Diego. “We’re not stupid people, and would you want to be in business with someone that you couldn’t trust, that every 35 seconds changes his mind, or you are sitting across talking from him comes up with a reason to walk out of the room? I think that’s going to hurt the Chargers in Los Angeles.”

This isn’t the norm for cities which are being eyed by NFL teams for relocation. In the mid-1990s in Nashville, Tennessee, for example, the rumblings of interest from the Houston Oilers in relocating led to an intense campaign meant to show local enthusiasm, capped by bus-loads of fans showing up at the NFL owners’ meeting where the relocation was approved  — with the minimum number of votes.

On Monday, Faulconer had a 45-minute phone conversation with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell about the stadium situation. Details of the conversation weren’t divulged, but the city’s position — that the Chargers don’t want to give San Diego a chance — has been plain since Fabiani ridiculed the proposal for a Dec. 15 stadium vote earlier this month.

For their part, the Chargers have repeatedly made the case to Goodell and other owners that San Diego has been on notice for more than a decade that the team urgently needs a new stadium if it were to remain competitive in a league where new stadiums with lucrative luxury boxes and first-rate facilities have become common. Fabiani says the idea that San Diego never was given a chance is a historical fiction manufactured by city leaders who can’t get their act together.