NFL hits up players for LA $tadium help
The National Football League is asking its players to help finance any new stadium in Los Angeles, a prerequisite to putting a team in the No. 2 US media market for the first time since the Raiders and Rams bolted in 1994.
The NFL players union, which confirmed the talks, typically assumes some of the cost of stadium financing through what are called stadium credits, negotiated in the collective bargaining agreement. However, team owners have exhausted the credits approved in the existing contract, which runs through 2020. Any additional money from players — as for a proposed stadium in LA — must be approved on a oneoff basis.
Both the NFL and the city are eager to bring a team back to LA. Officials in Carson, Calif., about 17 miles south of downtown Los Angeles, approved a $1.65 bil lion stadium project earlier this year to lure the San Diego Chargers, owned by billionaire real estate developer Alex Spanos, and the Oakland Raiders, owned by Mark Davis.
The city council voted 30 to authorize the stadium without a vote of the people.
As Carson courts those two teams, Inglewood, a city about 13 miles to the northwest, is wooing the Rams, who are owned by billionaire Stan Kroenke. He bought the team in 2010 for about $750 million, and has bought land for an 80,000seat stadium, the plans for which were approved by the Inglewood City Council.
How much the players would pay for either stadium is unclear. The ultimate amount of a stadium credit is affected by several things, including how much projected revenue the proposed facility would generate.