Dean Spanos forced to sell Chargers?
 

This is amazing.

Imagine owning a company that prints money for every other owner, in a stadium you didn't even build and still you bounce charity checks.


Watch Jeff Bezos buy this team and move it back to San Diego where he doesn't have to rent out a stadium to a competitor. This is all over the radio in LA right now.


<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">I don&#39;t think Fredo would have done worse in the family business ..it&#39;s about time we quit insulting Fredo by using his name to refer to Dean<a href="https://twitter.com/sdutCanepa?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@sdutCanepa</a> <a href="https://t.co/Vnh7LcPJFc">pic.twitter.com/Vnh7LcPJFc</a></p>&mdash; Burt Grossman (@burt_grossman) <a href="https://twitter.com/burt_grossman/status/1396992222202007559?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 25, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

SD is logical.

It could also go to Canada or London.

Lulz **** Dean Spanos.

The Chargers are one of the up and coming teams with a promising young QB and nobody cares here. There are Rams fans but nobody wants the Chargers here.

They're building a new stadium already in place of the old one in Qualcomm. It seems like a no-brainer to get someone with actual money involved, upgrade that stadium to NFL level and just play there.

That ship has sailed.

Qualcomm is a pile of sand and we're well in motion to build a 40K seat stadium in place of it for the SDSU Aztecs.

Jesus. This is definitely one instance where I'm pulling for Bezos to make the move.

How have the other owners not forced this turd out before now? Surely they have been aware of the Chargers' financials? Mark Davis thinks Dean Spanos is terrible at money, lol.

Yet they all fully supported the move to L.A.

Right I knew that, I don't actually know if it is too late to just make that stadium NFL ready?

New stadiums may only need 40k moving forward. I know that if someone like Bezos was involved he'd probably not want to have a landlord like the Chargers do now.

Basically I just really want the Chargers to go back to SD so it's more hope than actual logic

Very true. They got greedy thinking about that LA market.

I mean part of it was not wanting the Raiders here to pollute the property values in Inglewood.



At least that's my biased opinion

If new ownership bought the Chargers and moved them to San Diego they'd have an instant fan base again. Chargers fans get a bad rep that is undeserved. In the early 2000s I lived there and they were loud and proud with respectable tailgating before games. Gave me good-natured hell every year when I went to watch the Chiefs. Spanos destroyed that by making clear he would be moving the team, which led to fans saying "screw it then" and disappearing. But they'd come back in droves.

I want them back in SD too. The city is better when the NFL is in it. Though im not sure how much of that fan base still exists, or how many will return. I know several who've jumped shipped and found new teams to root for.

As far as Aztec Stadium goes, it's suppose to be built in a way to allow seat expansion. But with SDSU's plans to basically turn the surrounding areas into, essentially, an extension of a college campus, im not sure how suitable it will be for an NFL team and an owner like Bezos.

I'd guess SDSU might be willing to negotiate faced with the prospect of Bezos level money but I'm just speculating.

That's dumb

I can't imagine San Diego not welcoming back the Chargers if they showed back up without any Spanos influence connected to them. The Chargers ARE San Diego.

My bad, 35,000 seats: https://aztecstadium.com/

Wow that link has a live camera at the dig site.


It is not at all too late to make modifications in my opinion. Of course this whole mess could take years to play out so that's probably a pipe dream

The sdsu stadium thing is a pipe dream unless they could sell the team and agree to shit really ****ing fast. They will be a toronto expansion team. Orrrr Mexico City.

Elon Musk would be an interesting owner. Too bad California ran him out of there. Maybe he could buy the Texans for cheap.

The Jets and Giants have shared a Stadium since the 1980's.

SoFi Stadium was built with field turf playing surface. Even if the team is sold, the Chargers will play their games there.

I don't see mexico ever being viable long term. Too much safety issues for players, fans let alone quality issues with the fields.
Then imagine what some of the gangs would try doing.

I low-key want to see all these cities say **** off to billionaires. Build your own shit, taxpayers see no benefit s, that money cities dole out could be better used. Or let cities bid and own the teams.

The Chargers have a 20 year lease with two 10 year options and owe $200 million for the construction of the stadium on top of the $650 million dollar relocation fee.

San Diego has already destroyed The Murph and the residents will not, under any circumstances, allow additional hotel and car taxes to be implemented towards funding a new football stadium.

Jeff Bezos would be the absolute worst possible owner for the NFL, as his net worth and income literally dwarf the entire NFL's yearly revenues. It would take nearly 20 years of the NFL's total revenues to match Bezos' net worth at this point in time and the other 31 owners would become his puppets, so I just cannot see that happening. Those owners enjoy the spotlight and treasure being one of 32 of the most powerful men in all of sports. All of that would disappear if Bezos bought the Chargers.

Maybe the NFL can find another person willing to eat almost $1.5 billion in relocation fees while spending another $2 billion on a stadium and at least $2.5 billion on the team itself but I find that to be unlikely as well.

The bottom line is that the Chargers franchise is royally ****ed for the foreseeable future.

No offense but if you are a billionaire you are buying it because of them being in Los Angeles. Chargers would have been better served to be in Orange County and market themselves as SoCal team but stadium cost issues wouldn't allow that.

Amen.

And yet they had no problem allowing Paul Allen to buy the Seahawks.

Chargers will find a buyer and are better positioned to be successful than many NFL franchises.

They have decent scouting department, Justin Herbert looks like a keeper. game attendance might be a bit of a mystery, but they should just set prices that will get tickets sold and make money with TV money. If they put good teams on the field, they will grow their fan base and there are not that many NFL games a year. Chargers fans in San Diego can sign back up if the team becomes a team that fans would want to root for.

Having a new owner will be a re-branding opportunity.

Off topic but your mention of the Aztecs reminded me of how badly I wanted the Chiefs to draft Kirk Morrison when he came out...

It should have been Rams/Raiders in LA and Chargers to Las Vegas.

If the Raiders fan base weren't ****tards this is what should have happened.

Paul Allen and Jeff Bezos are polar opposites.

Paul Allen had a net worth of $20 billion at his death, not at the time of his purchase.

Bezos is not only worth nearly $200 billion, his influence is absolutely everywhere, especially since he owns the Washington Post, Amazon Prime and now MGM studios.

His ownership would overshadow the other 31 owners, something their egos just could not handle.

No one wanted the Raiders in Los Angeles. Not the mayor, not the business owners, not the police - no one, outside of maybe their core fans from the early 80's.

Plus, their fans could barely fill 35,000 cheap seats in Oakland and they're not the type of fans that could afford $5k lower level seats each week, let alone, the licensing fees.

Hope it doesn’t happen, he’s a solid reason why they stink.

I hope the Chargers stay in LA so we can keep getting an extra home every year out there. The only thing that would be better is if they moved to St Louis.

Paul Allen bought the Seahawks for just $194 million at the time. He was a multi-billionaire that had revenues that dwarfed the NFL at the time he purchased, just like Jeff Bezos would now. I don't particularly like Bezos and agree with you that he wouldn't be good for the NFL, but they are not polar opposites.

I know people who own property in Inglewood that had legitimate fears their property values would go down if the Raiders moved there.

I don’t think LA should have gotten two teams again... it should have been just the Rams, but the Raiders would have been a better option there than the Chargers.

At least the Raiders have a fanbase there.

Where would you put the Chargers then? Spanos pretty much torpedoed them staying in San Diego. Jerry wouldn't want a team in the Austin-San Antonio area. Raleigh-Durham would fit but it would require division shuffling.

Like Dane said, nobody wanted the Raiders back. We have enough stabbings at Dodger Stadium as is.

St. Louis is actually the best and biggest available market. The only major downside is it now considered the Chiefs market. KC and STL together gives the Chiefs a top 10 tv market.

He would drive any team he bought into the ground, even the Texans

Jeff Bezos' ex will buy the Chargers out of spite and try to run them into the ground by hiring Ted Lasso who inexplicably keeps winning

Allen was a very quiet, behind the scenes owner, something that would be impossible for Bezos.

But agree to disagree, even though I'm right and you're wrong.

:D

Give a franchise back to St. Louis. Would be hella fun to have an in-state division rival.

Other possibilities: A second Chicago team, Oakland (lulz), or Toronto.

The whole LA thing was bizarre from the beginning. We went from decades of having zero franchises in the area, which followed with it a perceived lack of demand from the citizens in the area. Now all of a sudden we have two freakin teams in a city with supposed lackluster NFL fan support.

But in any case, yeah, Dean Spanos was an asshole for forcing his way to LA. Any idiot could have known they wouldn't get fans.

He didn't want fans. He needed cash. It hasn't worked out yet

Agreed. It should have been the Rams and the Rams only.

The Raiders would have been a better option in terms of fans at the stadium but no one else wanted them in town, especially when their first several seasons were played at the Coliseum, which is an area that's already dangerous enough.

The city of San Diego was willing to build a new stadium on the same site as the Murph but the Spanos family wanted it downtown or nothing. The people of San Diego voted down a proposition to fund a new downtown stadium via a car rental and hotel tax. But due to the fact that tourism is their #1 revenue generator, they were afraid that higher taxes would force some people to go elsewhere while vacationing.

The Spanos family's net worth is tied up in the Chargers. They don't have a dime to pay for a stadium so much like Mark Davis, they're at the mercy of people who will build a stadium for them.

Both owners should have been booted before these moves were made, IMO, because they're unsustainable.

My only argument is Steve Ballmer. When Ballmer bought the Clippers, he was (and still is) the richest owner in the world. The NFL has a solid salary cap, and long-standing TV contracts. I just don’t see why Bezos would be able to intimidate anyone into bowing down to his authority, unless you mean some behind the scenes stuff.

I still think the best use of the Vegas stadium is to not have a specific team affiliated with it; use it as the weekly Sunday night venue. Stuff Spanos in a cannon and shoot his ass into a brick wall, return the Chargers to San Diego under new ownership, and the Raiders to slums of Oakland where they belong. The league makes enough money to foot the cost of a new stadium in San Diego as an apology for ****ing over the fan base.

Of course, none of this will ever happen.

The plan I saw for SDSU included an expansion option to ~55k to support an NFL team.

sorry, in the future....


I do not know of a city in the US that can handle an NFL team

St. Louis

They can move here and play in Sporting Park. They're used to a stadium of that size.

You can't do Canada or London. Players are not going to do that.

Does that mean BUCK will come back?

I’M SURE WAS APRIL 28TH YESTERDAY HOLY **** THIS MONTH WILL NEVER END

I can't think of a single good reason the Rams would let them out of that deal.

It's extra money for them and the Chargers are 0 threat to their market.

LA is going to have 2 teams for a long while.

Is Portland a viable option?

Only reason would be if the St. Louis lawsuit is worse and they can make a compromise by sending the Chargers to St. Louis

I thought the St. Louis dome was in bad shape and needed to be torn down/replaced

Only about 2 and half to three hour drive to Seattle.

It needs to be replaced but its viable for short term use.

I don't think STL wants to deal with the NFL again.

I'm not sure if Portland even has a stadium. Also somehow finding the one place in the country in greater danger of an earthquake than LA would be impressive.

No he wouldn't. But if the other owners want an instant success with a full stadium and eyeballs on TVs that's the place to put 'em.

Maybe somebody needs to put some arsenic in his coffee. He's not getting any younger you know.

Why don't we use a blindfold and either throw a dart at a map or play pin the tail on the donkey and let's just pick the nearest town to the mark the blindfolded kid puts on the map and talk about it as a possible destination for a team that ain't going to relocate?

They spent $5 billion dollars to build SoFi Stadium, how much did SoFi spent for the naming rights?

The Chargers are not playing anywhere else after the team is sold.

San Antonio/Austin region could not support an NFL team...

The best thing for that team is to force a sale.

I still nominate the nomad approach. They a home game in a different city every week. Smaller venues. Lincoln, New Mexico, Salt Lake City, Alabama, Mississippi, Fargo, Boise etc. Places that do not see Pro games.

And what leads you to this conclusion?

I'm not sure they have the fanbase.

Jerry is fighting tooth and nail to not have another team in Texas.

I'd love to see Spanos out of the NFL, he's a cancer. I never understood how the NFL thought the move to LA was a great idea. They're stuck there now at least short-term until the rest of the owners figure out what to do with them. I don't see St. Louis as a viable option, nor do I foresee San Antonio until Jerry is gone. My best guess is they'd use any wiggle as an excuse to put a team in London.

I hope that 5 billion dollar stadium buries both owners.

Even if every penny of that came out of Stan Kroenke's pocket and he never made another dime he'd still be worth 3.2 billion

Not gonna happen.

Still too many viable cities in the US.
Too much travel.
Not viable due to time differences.

The moment the NFL goes to London, they've jumped the shark.

If they set up a full NFL league in Europe, all in same time zone and easy travel that could work years from now.

I could see a division, that'd cut the travel down.

Texas is just about the most football crazy part of the country. And depending on what you define as a separate media market, San Antonio is certainly one of the biggest without it's own NFL teams.

Successfully so far. But nothing is forever including Jerry being the owner.

Yea, Chargers were foolish were tying themselves to that long term lease. I don't think LA can support two teams. But if LA had a chance for two teams, they would have been better off building two, 2.5 billion dollar stadiums in different parts of the city.

NYC has the density and transportation to put two teams in the same stadium. But people can't get around LA that easily. If the Chargers had their own stadium in a different part of the city so a different fan base could identify with the team and had an easier time actually getting to the stadium, they would stand a little better of a chance. And the franchise would be worth more if they owned a stadium instead of paying rent.

Overall, they are probably screwed.

According to this article in LA Times. Chargers rent is $1 annual to the company owned by Kroenke.

https://www.latimes.com/sports/story...0the%20stadium.

The only teams that own their stadiums and land are the Patriots, Panthers, Dolphins and Washington football team.

Even the Cowboys pay rent to City of Arlington. Only 2 million dollars a year but that is more than the Chargers pay, which is $1 a year.

Why not Salt Lake City?

There's a huge Charger's following in Utah and Oregon.

Almost double the size of Green Bay with a much larger metro area.

First off, Kroenke, who spent $5.8 billion to build the stadium, which includes new studios for the NFL Network, apartments, condos and shopping facilities, put this plan in place a decade before the Chargers even considered moving to Los Angeles. His facility will not only be used for the NFL but for Final Fours, the Olympics, World Cup, concerts and so on. The Chargers are a tiny component to his overall revenue stream.

Secondly, the city of Los Angeles had no problems supporting the Rams from 1950-1980 and haven't had any problems supporting them since their return. Their first preseason game in 2015 broke all preseason attendance records with more than 100,000 people.

Transportation is no issue, either. JFC, the Great Western Forum, which is adjacent to SoFi, was jammed packed during the 70's, 80's and early 90's before Staples Center was built and it's still jammed packed with concert events. I have no idea why you're conflating traffic and transportation to the area, which is near LAX for ****'s Sake, but that is absolutely no issue, whatsoever. Could public transportation be better? Sure, but that could be said about the city as a whole.

And if the location is so "bad", as you state, why is Steve Ballmer breaking ground on a new facility for the Clippers and why did he purchase The Forum?

:facepalm:

And finally, no one gives a flying **** about the Chargers. No one in Los Angeles cared about them when they were in San Diego and no one gives a **** about them in Los Angeles. That should have been absolutely clear before the Spanos family decided to put their fate in the hands of the man who made his fortune by running Walmart but they're so desperate and so ****ing stupid that they've completely devalued their franchise in terms of fan interest. The only fans that care about them live 90 minutes south.

And very few NFL owners own their stadiums, with the Rams being one of the few.