Rams owner Stan Kroenke presented a letter to the NFL's committee for relocation to Los Angeles during last week's league meeting outlining an offer to incorporate a second team to his Inglewood locale, but numerous league sources said that overture was in no way enticing to the Chargers or Raiders. Those franchises are battling Kroenke for the right to the potentially lucrative LA market and at this point have far greater support for their Carson (Calif.) site among NFL owners, though not the 24 votes required to move.
A vote on relocation could take place at the meeting the NFL has scheduled for Jan. 12-13 in Houston, and there remains considerable support within the league office and among key owners groups to initiate the move to LA in 2016. Some owners, according to sources, would prefer the Chargers be going alone to Carson -- and such a proposal may have already had sufficient support -- with the inclusion of the Raiders viewed as a hindrance, but Kroenke's proposal did nothing to weaken the bond between those franchises, sources said, and they remain united in their intent to move to Carson together.
Kroenke's letter proposed a second team would incur half of the cost for the Inglewood stadium but would not have control over the design and construction of the stadium and surrounding area. Furthermore, sources said the second team would have no right to any of the non-football revenue generated by the stadium, or any of the revenue generated by the surrounding development. That's quite a different arrangement to the one the Raiders and Chargers have orchestrated, and both of those teams remain fully committed to their plan in Carson.
There remains uncertainty about whether or not a vote will be held in January, and failure to do so would be an obvious short-term setback to the Carson bid. The league continues to see if the current markets of San Diego, Oakland and St. Louis can meet requirements to prevent relocation as well, though league sources view the ongoing stadium project in St. Louis as the only group poised to possibly do so by next month.
