The NFL’s battle for Los Angeles

Los Angeles is a force on the American cultural, entertainment and sporting scenes. The City of Angels itself held 3,831,868 people in 2009, with the metropolitan area containing 15,250,000. Two NBA teams, one MLB team and one NHL team make their homes in the city, with another MLB and NHL team in nearby Anaheim and two MLS teams playing close by at the Home Depot Center.

However, the NFL, the biggest sporting behemoth on the American landscape, hasn’t had a franchise in the LA area since the Rams and Raiders both departed in 1995. There have been plenty of efforts to try and bring a team back since then, including two current competing proposals from Majestic Realty Group chairman and CEO Ed Roski and Anschutz Entertainment Group president Tim Leiweke, but none have come to fruition just yet.

The real battle of Los Angeles may not be either the famed Rage Against The Machine album or the 2011 film, but the struggle to put an NFL team back in the city, and its most notable front may be the quieter attempts to win over fans rather than the prominent public clashes over stadium sites.

Those public skirmishes advanced notably this year, with AEG’s as-yet-unbuilt downtown stadium receiving a $700 million naming rights deal with Farmers Insurance, the largest-such sponsorship ever announced, according to the LA Times. Meanwhile, Majestic Realty vice president John Semcken told Bloomberg his group is optimistic of having a deal with a NFL team as early as 2012, even if their proposed stadium won’t be ready quite that soon and the new team might have to play in the aging Rose Bowl for a season or two.

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“I am hopeful we will have an agreement with a team to come here for the 2012 season,” Semcken has said. AEG’s billion-dollar proposal could involve everything from a convention center expansion to extra bars and restaurants and the Industry group is aiming big, too. As Semcken told Bloomberg, the plan is to design their $800 million LEED-certified stadium so it could accommodate two home teams, complete with separate locker rooms. When it comes to the potential return of the NFL in LA, no one’s trying to do it on a small scale.

When you look at the population numbers in the Los Angeles area and the amounts of money involved in the proposals put forward by both Leiweke and Roski, it seems evident everyone involved is sure the NFL will be a smash hit in the City of Angels this time around. Is that really a safe bet to make, though? The stadium proponents are certainly counting on there being a substantial void in the city that can only be filled by the NFL, as both Leiweke and Roski appear to be reading from the Field of Dreams mantra, “If you build it, they will come.”

At first glance, that would appear to make some sense given the massive size of the LA area and the tremendous nationwide interest in the NFL, but on further examination, the situation may not be quite so clear.

Sarah Sprague is an independent writer based out of Los Angeles who loves to combine her passion for sports, entertaining and the female fan experience. She’s contributed to a variety of sites ranging from Deadspin to With Leather and has been featured on ABC News, theYahoo! Sports Blogs, The Sporting News Blog and ESPN The Magazine.

Sprague, a diehard Steelers’ fan, has lived in LA for nine years and has spent the last two decades refusing to replace her ratty old Terrible Towel with a new fancy version. She said despite the size of the city, the interest in the NFL might not be as substantial as many outsiders would think.

“In a city of nearly 20 million people, you would think there would be more football fans here than anywhere else but in my experience, sports takes a backseat to everything else going on around town—except during the NBA playoffs, and even then, it’s a rather limited core of fans,” Sprague said. “Los Angeles isn’t like a Minneapolis, Pittsburgh or Cleveland, where even if you don’t like sports you have a passing knowledge of what the local teams are doing just so you have something to talk about at the water cooler. The city’s sense of community isn’t tied to one single team or experience, it’s based in a shared location and a mindset.”

Sprague said that diversity of interests and broader sense of community makes it so that many Los Angeles residents aren’t necessarily pining for the return of the NFL.

“I wouldn’t say that the city is better off without an NFL team, but it really doesn’t seem like it’s missing one,” she said. “Watching what happened around Cleveland when the Browns were moved to Baltimore, that was painful for an entire community. Los Angeles doesn’t have that same hole in its heart without the NFL.”

NFL owners, stadium proponents and even politicians have argued that having a NFL franchise is a necessary ingredient for a North American city to be world-class. On some levels, that makes sense, as NFL teams are key parts of notable cities like New York and Chicago, but few would describe Jacksonville as a more world-renowned center than Los Angeles. That idea of the NFL as validation doesn’t really apply to LA, as Sprague said many in the city don’t feel like they need a local NFL team; they’ve got local NCAA teams to watch, and there’s still plenty of NFL interest without a team in the area.

“To be honest, it doesn’t feel weird to live in a large city without an NFL team because USC and UCLA football fills a huge void to Angelenos when it comes to game attendance,” she said. “On Sundays, local bars are filled with Raider and Charger fans and the non-natives rooting for their former-hometown team. It never really feels like there isn’t football in Los Angeles.”

That doesn’t mean these proposals will fail, though. Sprague said Los Angeles may not need the NFL, but the combination of a variety of NFL teams struggling to get new stadiums and the league’s desire to re-establish a presence in the LA market means the city probably will get at least one team within the next 10 years.

“The league considers it an embarrassment not to have a franchise in one of the largest markets in the country,” she said. “When you’ve got teams like the Jaguars, Vikings and Chargers crying poor and looking for new stadia, the time seems to be right for a team to move to LA since expansion bids have been for naught.”

There are still plenty of potential twists and turns in the stadium battle, but Sprague thinks the downtown site currently has the edge.

“AEG’s Farmer’s Field plan has jumped ahead in the process as of late,” she said. “It’s sold as a plan that will continue the downtown revitalization and will expand the LA convention center, although there is a strong local sentiment that a large downtown stadium will make for a traffic nightmare. Roski has long sold his City of Industry location as the spot that is convenient to Los Angeles, the Inland Empire and Orange County, although aside of an east-west Metrolink train, it’s hampered by having to traverse either the 10 or 60 freeways, neither of which are fun even at the best of times.”

With widespread stadium issues and few other viable NFL cities on the horizon, though, Sprague said relocating an existing franchise seems more likely than giving LA a new expansion team. That could have a substantial impact on how the new team does, as existing fan loyalties aren’t simply going to evaporate.

“Fan support is going to depend on which team comes to LA,” she said. “If the Chargers come to LA, then current local and Orange County season ticket holders will have a shorter drive. Convincing people to cheer for say, the Jaguars, that’s a tougher sale. If you’re an NFL fan and have already built an allegiance to a team in another city, there is not a lot of incentive to become a fan of a squad you might already have a bias against. And let’s not forget how big Raider Nation continues to be in Los Angeles; it would be quite a feat to get them to follow multiple teams, much less win them over to be local fans.”

Sprague said she thinks the NFL could work in LA from a business standpoint with the right stadium deal, but that shouldn’t be conflated with the popular impression of a city longing for the return of the league.

“I’m sure there are more than enough people interested in going to NFL games in Los Angeles and money never seems to be in short supply for die-hard fans, but how far the spending will reach beyond attendance (travel, sports bars, cable package purchases), I just don’t know,” she said. “A core group of fans shouldn’t be mistaken for the passion of the entire city though. The Kings draw and yet I can only point to a handful of friends and associates who actually follow the team.”

In the end, the real battle for Los Angeles may not be a clash over a stadium site or a skirmish to get a team to move, but rather a campaign for the hearts, minds and wallets of fans. The NFL may be favored in that struggle, but its victory isn’t as assured as many believe.

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