What we know about Chargers’ move to L.A.
SAN DIEGO The owner of the Chargers once came to a startling conclusion about the future of his franchise in Los Angeles.
After one season in L.A. in 1960, he realized his team couldn’t draw crowds and couldn’t make money in the same market as the Rams.
So he left — for San Diego, in 1961. “We can’t compete in the same market with the Rams,” team owner Barron Hilton said then, according to the book The Way We Were in San Diego.
But now one of his successors has reached the opposite conclusion.
Chargers owner Dean Spanos announced Thursday that his team was moving back to Los Angeles because it couldn’t compete with the rest of the league financially at his stadium in San Diego.
Instead, he’s betting that he will not only compete with the Rams in L.A, but he’ll also be better off sharing a stadium with them in nearby Inglewood, scheduled to open in 2019.
“The Chargers are determined to fight for L.A., and we are excited to get started,” Spanos said in a statement. WHERE WILL THEY PLAY? Until the Inglewood stadium is ready, the team will play at StubHub Center in nearby Carson, which will be by far the smallest stadium in the league at 30,000 seats. The Chargers need to be cool in L.A., where they will be challenged to stand out in the crowd of many pro and college sports teams.
By playing in such an intimate, novel NFL setting, they hope to be a hot ticket.
“The experience for our fans at StubHub Center will be fun and entertaining, and every seat will feel close to the action,” said a statement from A.G. Spanos, Spanos’ son and a team executive.
By contrast, the Rams are temporarily playing in the much older and spacious L.A. Coliseum. HOW IS SAN DIEGO REACTING? Predictably, with anger and sad- ness. The team leaves behind 56 years of memories, with many great players, including Dan Fouts and Junior Seau. San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer said at a news conference Thursday that Spanos “made a bad decision, and he will regret it.”
“San Diego didn’t lose the Chargers,” he said. “The Chargers just lost San Diego.”
San Diego County supervisor Ron Roberts ripped the Chargers on Twitter and compared them to former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling, who moved the team from San Diego in 1984. Before that, San Diego lost another NBA team, the Rockets, who moved to Houston in 1971.
“The Chargers will stand next to Donald Sterling in the Hall of Shame,” Roberts wrote on Twitter. “It hurts, but we will move on.
Fans showed up at Chargers headquarters in San Diego to discard their jerseys and other Chargers gear. One started to burn a team flag before it was snuffed out by security. HOW DOES L.A. FEEL ABOUT THIS? Does it even know the Rams moved back last year? It’s hard to stand out in the entertainment capital of the world. And the Chargers have no history there, unless you count their invisible year there in 1960, when they sometimes drew 10,000 in a Coliseum that seated about 100,000, according to the aforementioned book by Richard Crawford.
The last time the Los Angeles market had two teams, in 1994, the Raiders and Rams ranked 24th and 28th out of 28 NFL teams in home attendance with 42,000 and 51,000 per game, according to STATS.
The bet is the market is so big now that two well-marketed, well-managed teams can take advantage of it.
Both franchises probably will need to improve. The Rams finished 4-12 this season and fired their coach. The Chargers finished 5-11, fired their coach and moved.
Knowing they have work to do, the Chargers unveiled a new website Thursday called Fight ForLA.com.
“This isn’t any city,” the team’s website said. “This is Los Angeles. L.A. is people and places and passion and pride. Any respect given, must be earned.”