Filed under: Chargers, Raiders, Rams, Sports Business and Media
LOS ANGELES -- It's now been 15 years since the Rams and Raiders left town, a fruitless decade-and-a-half of pontificating about the National Football League's return to Los Angeles. In that span, just about every Southern California billionaire, power broker or wannabe - from real estate and art mogul Eli Broad to former Hollywood super-agent Michael Ovitz to troubled Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt - has been involved in talks to bring an NFL franchise back to L.A., all to no avail. Meanwhile, the NFL has done just fine without L.A. It has added teams in Houston and Cleveland, national TV ratings have soared, franchise values have skyrocketed and the league even beat Al Davis in court to acquire the "relocation rights" to the L.A. market, so any club that wants to move here will have to pay fellow NFL owners a tidy sum for the privilege. And those scorned L.A. fans? They've managed to survive - and get to watch more games than ever before without a hometown NFL club.
But here's the unlikely newsflash: the stars appear to be aligning - no, really -- for a pro football's return to Hollywood. A confluence of developments, ranging from aging owners in several NFL markets to real estate gentrification in L.A., has changed the landscape and reinvigorated discussions about pro football's future in the country's No. 2 media market. The biggest momentum boost: a recently-unveiled plan by Anschutz Entertainment Group to erect a privately-financed, $725 million stadium in downtown L.A. next to Staples Center, the wildly successful arena it built and opened a decade ago.
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Source: http://nfl.fanhouse.com/2010/11/15/aeg-jumps-into-race-for-nfl-team-in-l-a/
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