NFL-LA: Deal at Crossroads

28 August 2006 |permalink | email article

Last June several NFL owners and then-commissioner Paul Tagliabue smoozed and dined with an elite group of L.A. business, entertainment and sports leaders – and again in Anaheim – last June. The sense afterwards was that the league might soon formally commit to building a new stadium in one city and return the popular pro sport to the area after a 12-year absence.

Both Tagliabue, who retired last month, and Roger Goodell, the new commissioner, have each supported such a return. But putting a team back in Los Angeles, while on Goodell’s agenda, is not the owners’ immediate concern.

His daunting assignment from the 32 owners, the New York Times’ Judy Battista wrote in a recent analytical story, is to resolve complex money issues: a revenue-sharing solution and structure a new collective-bargaining agreement with the player’s union.

A revenue-sharing resolution involves prickly relations between officials of high-revenue teams, saddled with enormous debt to build new stadiums and low-revenue teams who believe their very existence may be threatened by not getting enough share of the pot. 

Ownership friction extends to unhappiness over the league’s labor deal, which they negotiated, with both Tagliabue and Goodell involved, five months ago. Some owners and team executives now complain it gave too much revenue to the players and there is talk about a right to opt out of the deal by November 2008.

That would force the owners and the players union back to the bargaining table to avert a season played without a salary cap, and a potential work stoppage.

The festering question confronting the Los Angeles and Anaheim groups is this: does it makes economic sense for NFL owners to spend up to $800 million to build a new stadium given the tension between the haves and the have-nots.

What encourages Los Angeles and Anaheim is the little publicized fact that the league has authorized several million dollars in expenditures for each city to develop ongoing stadium design concepts which, in one scenario, would feature fewer coveted luxury boxes but generate much higher revenue.

The owners next meet in October and sources have said that on any given day a two-thirds vote exists for re-entering the L.A. market. Failure to make a decision then will, many agree, basically end the marathon kabuki dance. 

Sports coverage of the effort to return pro football to Southern California after the Rams and Raiders remains minimal. Does this indicate a lack of public interest? A blog I posted last June 14 - ‘Can the NFL Crack L.A.?’- answers the question. It has been viewed, as of today, 225,714 times!  

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