Keeping eye on L.A.
Chargers in contact with L.A. Coliseum to prepare for possible move from San Diego in 2017,
The San Diego Chargers have been in contact recently with representatives of Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum about possibly relocating there for the 2017 season, the Coliseum Commission’s president told USA TODAY Sports.
The team has been contemplating a move to Los Angeles after San Diego voters rejected a $1.8 billion stadium and convention center plan in downtown San Diego last month.
“In light of the vote of the people of San Diego, it’s back on the table in earnest,” Los Angeles Coliseum Commission President Mark Ridley-Thomas said. “So the appropriate amount of due diligence continues to be done, and we will see if in fact we can strike a deal.”
The team has until Jan. 15 to decide whether it wants to move to Los Angeles and share with the Los Angeles Rams a lucrative new stadium that isn’t scheduled to be ready until 2019.
If the Chargers decide to move, the Coliseum could serve as a temporary home for them and the Rams in 2017 and 2018. The much smaller StubHub Center in the Los Angeles suburb of Carson also is a possibility for the Chargers as a temporary home.
Officials with StubHub Center didn’t return messages seeking comments.
“They had to get ready,” Ridley-Thomas said of the Chargers. “There’s a lot on the line. The health of the franchise is literally on the line.”
To play at the Coliseum, the Chargers would need the Coliseum Commission to change its lease terms with the University of Southern California, which operates the facility. The lease allows only one NFL team to play there temporarily — the Rams. Adding a second NFL team to the Coliseum would require a lease amendment to be voted on by the commission, whose next regular meeting is Jan. 26.
Ridley-Thomas, an L.A. County Supervisor, said he empaneled a negotiating team to prepare for this possibility many months ago but the matter took on new urgency after the Nov. 8 election in San Diego.
“Earnest conversations are underway among the respective parties,” Ridley-Thomas said. “This is a matter that needs to be given very serious attention. The commission has the capacity to move quickly should it be required to do so.”
Chargers owner Dean Spanos said in a statement last month that no decision would be made until after the season in January.
“Over the coming weeks you may hear news about steps that we must take to preserve all of our options,” Spanos said then.
After trying to get a new stadium in San Diego for more than a decade, the Chargers have two certain paths at this point: They can move to L.A., where they have an optional deal with the Rams. Or they can play indefinitely at San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium, which opened in 1967 and is one of the worst stadiums in the league.
There is no other actionable new stadium plan on the table in San Diego after 56% of voters rejected the team’s bid to raise local hotel room taxes to help build one downtown.
The Chargers have played in San Diego since 1961.
In January, the team applied to relocate to Los Angeles with a different stadium plan, but it was rejected by NFL owners, who instead approved a plan that relocated the Rams from St. Louis. The NFL gave the Chargers the first option to join the Rams in their new stadium. If they don’t take it by Jan. 15, that option would go to the Oakland Raiders, who have been pursuing a new stadium in Las Vegas.
If the Chargers decide to move, they probably would want to do it as soon as possible to begin building a fan base in a new market and avoid staying in San Diego, where they would be a lame-duck franchise.
The Coliseum can hold more than 80,000, compared with 27,000 at StubHub Center. On one hand, StubHub Center could help the Chargers distinguish themselves in Los Angeles at a separate facility with a cozier atmosphere. On the other hand, Ridley-Thomas views StubHub Center’s size as a disadvantage.
“I do not think that is the most desirable option for them, because they are giving away substantial market share at that point, which they do not wish to do,” Ridley-Thomas said.
If it happens, L.A. would have two teams in the market for the first time since the Rams and Raiders left after the 1994 season. Los Angeles had no NFL team from 1995 until this year, when the Rams relocated to the Coliseum.
“This is a classic example of feast to famine back to feast again,” Ridley-Thomas said.