Stadium Tension Rising Between Rams and Chargers Owners

According to a recent report, Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kroenke is upset about a lack of financial contribution by the Los Angeles Chargers for their shared Inglewood stadium, which is set to open next summer.

Longtime Los Angeles sportscaster Fred Roggin from KABC said Kroenke was anticipating the Chargers would generate close to $400 million from the sale of Personal Seat Licenses (PSLs). Instead, the real figure is turning out to be tens or even hundreds of millions short of the target, and Kroenke is the one responsible for making up the difference.

Costs for the Inglewood stadium, which will be called SoFi Stadium after a sponsorship deal was announced earlier this month, are skyrocketing to almost $5 billion.

The facility was initially expected to cost $1.9 billion. Kroenke is responsible for everything but the money the Chargers generate in PSL sales and a $200 million NFL G-6 loan. The Chargers, though, get to keep all of their gameday revenues when they play in the new building.

Roggin calls it a sweetheart deal for Chargers owner Dean Spanos. Speaking on his radio program on AM 570 in L.A., Roggin said the Chargers “are under no obligation to do anything but give the PSL money” and there’s “nothing in writing about how much it should be.”

Sources tell Roggin that Kroenke has very little way of recouping the money from Spanos, because it was all part of the original deal allowing the Chargers to move from San Diego to Los Angeles.

Kroenke and the Rams would love nothing more than to completely remove the Chargers from the equation and have the Inglewood stadium all to themselves. They were forced into the lease agreement by the NFL and would love to be rid of it. Meanwhile, the Chargers have struggled to make any dent in an LA market that didn’t even want them and would essentially be homeless.

We’ll see how this plays out, but if this is true, it’s yet another sign that the Chargers are and always have been a bad fit in Los Angeles. The NFL has to be questioning why it ever allowed Spanos to move in the first place, perhaps Spanos played the NFL as well.

At this point, you almost have to give Spanos credit for getting “his” new stadium built for him for pennies on the dollar. But there are a lot of folks out there that feel Spanos is just a poor and dumb NFL owner. Most of this sentiment is found on Twitter, but there is a lot of it out there regardless. Perhaps the NFL really did feel sorry for team Spanos. Maybe they really should have given him a puppy. If there is not much Kroenke can do about the PSL agreement legally, then team Spanos really did do a number on Kroenke. As others will tell Deano to “Pay your rent”, remember, the Chargers rent is only a dollar per year! Another win for team Spanos.

So all the Chargers really have to do is concentrate on getting new fans in Los Angeles. (This is a story for another day) In other words, from the Chargers perspective, getting more fans is their real problem, while Kroenke’s new stadium construction costs are his problem. What do you think? Please comment below.