USA TODAY International Edition
Two teams: Too much for L. A.?
Sometime early next year, the NFL finally hopes to solve its sudden supply problem in Los Angeles.
There are three teams pursuing two new stadium proposals in the L. A. area — even though the league will support only two teams there sharing one stadium.
Only tough negotiations or a league vote might decide how many teams, if any, move next year. And it might partially depend on a supply- and- demand issue of a different sort: After 21 years without an NFL team, is there enough demand from fans in Los Angeles to suddenly support two at the same time?
“It’s not like the entire Southern California market couldn’t handle three teams ( based on population), but L. A. has shown it has trouble even handling one,” said Marc Ganis, a sports consultant who helped the Rams and Raiders leave the L. A. market for St. Louis and Oakland, respectively, in 1995.
The Rams and Raiders had struggled to draw crowds in the notoriously fickle L. A. market. During their final season in L. A. 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, respectively, according to STATS. The season before, the Raiders drew even fewer fans at home in the regular season despite fielding a playoff team with a 10- 6 record and two future Hall of Famers.
Yet both franchises are considering moving back to L. A. as soon as next season, along with the Chargers, who left L. A. for San Diego in 1961.
The owners of these teams are putting up big money in pursuit of the market, betting that it’s too big to fail. And they’re probably right. The financial risk is low and the potential returns are high, especially if two teams share costs on building a stadium, according to research by investment banking firm Goldman Sachs, which is involved in one of the stadium projects there.
On the other hand, there are enough concerns about the nature of the L. A. market that it has set up a tough debate among NFL owners about the best way to reenter it after a 21- year absence:
Should they start slowing by adding one team at first, or splash back into it next year with two?
“When you go from none to two ( teams) after 20 years, I think the league views that as risk, and that’s why they’ve taken so much time to see how this will play out both politically and economically,” said David Carter, executive director of the Sports Business Institute at the University of Southern California. FICKLE MEGAMARKET While the population of the Southern California megamarket has grown to about 20 million, big- time events still struggle to attract sellout crowds unless the teams are flying high.
On Oct. 3, the UCLA football team drew 80,113 for a home game vs. Arizona State. The Bruins were undefeated but lost that game and the next one before bouncing back. On Oct. 31, they were still a top- 25 team when they hosted Pac- 12 Conference foe Colorado at the iconic Rose Bowl on a warm, sunny afternoon in Pasadena.
It just wasn’t compelling enough for L. A. fans. Despite having the biggest football game in the Los Angeles area that weekend, the stadium appeared nearly half empty with an announced attendance of 51,508.
And that’s how it often goes in the L. A. market, where the com- petition for entertainment includes beaches, mountains, concerts, two NBA teams, two Major League Baseball teams, two NHL teams and lots of traffic gridlock on the freeways.
“You can say they have a large market over there ( in Los Angeles), but if the Rams or whoever moves over there is not winning in the next few years, if they go 412, 5- 11 and they’re not winning, watch what happens,” former Los Angeles Rams defensive end Fred Stokes told USA TODAY Sports. “Nobody is going to sit in that stadium just to watch teams lose.”
Stokes played for the L. A. Rams in 1993 and ’ 94, when both the Rams and Raiders played in substandard facilities — the Rams at a baseball stadium in Anaheim, the Raiders at the Coliseum. The Rams also failed to deliver a captivating product, posting five consecutive losing seasons before they left. Both teams finished among the league’s bottom 10 teams in attendance during each of their final three seasons in L. A, according to STATS.
To make sure the league is more successful there this time, the NFL is carefully considering its return. That includes looking for stadiums in L. A. to house one or two NFL teams on a temporary basis while a stadium is being constructed.
But even that hasn’t been easy. The Rose Bowl seemed like the best choice as a temporary home — at least until the stadium’s governing board rejected the NFL, saying it wanted to host a musical and arts festival instead. Only the Coliseum has publicly stated an interest in temporarily hosting an NFL team next year, though the league still thinks it can come up with a solution if two teams move at the same time.
“It was clear to the board of the Rose Bowl Operating Company that the music festival was a better long- term fit for Pasadena for a variety of reasons,” Pasadena councilman Victor Gordo told USA TODAY Sports.
Such fickle reaction has fueled debate among owners. Some have questioned whether it would be better to take a more wait- andsee approach, starting with one franchise in L. A. and adding another team in later years in the same stadium.
Others think that a one- teamfirst approach could be bad for business, too. That’s because starting with one team and waiting to add another might disadvantage the second team as a second- fiddle franchise. CORPORATE PUSH FOR L. A. It’s a critical theme in this saga: None of the three teams wants to be disadvantaged or lose out. After so many years of false starts and unsubstantiated rumors about the NFL’s return, such fear is driving the race to L. A. this time in the absence of grass- roots demand from the ticket- buying public.
The owners of the Rams, Raiders and Chargers are unhappy with their stadiums and able to leave their current leases without prohibitive penalty. But with three teams vying for two spots in L. A., one team could be left in a bad spot — with no new stadium in L. A., lost leverage and an uncertain future in its current city.
To avoid this scenario, these owners are pushing two compet- ing stadium plans near L. A. — a project in Inglewood, backed by Rams owner Stan Kroenke, and a proposed stadium in Carson, jointly backed by the Chargers and Raiders. Both plans are entitled and approved by those cities, unlike proposed stadium projects in their current cities. But only one likely will survive, and even if it’s Kroenke’s stadium plan, a second team could join the Rams in Inglewood.
“It’s more of a corporatedriven event than a grass- roots kind of thing,” Ganis said of the NFL’s push back to L. A.
To some extent, that’s OK. The teams can survive lackluster crowds when the NFL business model is largely built on television and corporate revenue. After studying the market, Goldman Sachs said it agreed to finance the Carson project with more than $ 1 billion.
“There’s been a lot of thought, a lot of analyses, not just by us, but outside third parties who are experts in the sports world, and that gives us the comfort level we have that the loans will be re- paid,” Tim Romer of Goldman Sachs told USA TODAY Sports.
From a stadium loan lender’s standpoint, two teams is better than one because it means double revenue opportunities and shared costs in construction.
It still could be ugly from a public relations perspective if half the stadium seats are empty in L. A, especially after these teams abandoned fan bases in other cities.
In the long term, the teams might have to work harder at ticket sales than in other markets, Carter said. NFL fans in the nation’s second- largest TV market have grown accustomed to watching games on TV. Getting them to suddenly start paying for tickets could be challenging, even after the initial sticker shock wears off.
“It’s going to boil down to, ‘ What is the game- day experience like?’ ” Carter said. “Is it going to be the optimal blend of sports and entertainment, the place to see and be seen? Because that’s important in L. A. It’s going to be critical.”