All this time the NFL still doesn’t have a football team in the major TV market of Los Angeles. Now billionaire entrepreneur Philip Anschutz hasn’t given up on his plans to build a football stadium in Downtown LA to lure an NFL team (or 2) back to town, according to Bloomberg. The prospects of his AEG Worldwide proceeding with the long-discussed Farmers Stadium seemed to dim earlier this week when an investment team lead by former LA Lakers’ star Magic Johnson bought the LA Dodgers, Dodger Stadium and the surrounding parking lots. The Bloomberg report says Johnson and Guggenheim Partners Chief Executive Officer Mark Walter, whose company funded the Dodgers purchase, have spoken to the NFL about redeveloping part of the lots to build an NFL Stadium. Reportedly, there are also concerns within the NFL about the terms AEG is proposing for Farmers Field
Related: LA Closer To NFL Team But Is It Good Deal For Local TV Fans?
Anschutz holds significant stakes in the Lakers, the LA Kings, the LA Galaxy, as well as the Staples Center in Downtown LA and the adjacent LA Live entertainment and commercial complex adjacent to Staples. He owns a majority stake in Regal Entertainment Group, which controls nearly 6,000 movie screens worldwide. He also is chief executive of Walden Media, which produces the Chronicles of Narnia films, among others.
Let’s face it…the NFL is hell bent on getting a team to the #2 market in the country and they want this guy to start playing nice with them but he’s making it difficult on the NFL with this stadium plan. No reason for expansion here but finding a team that has a bad stadium issue like in Minnesota to lure them out there and start building upon the foundation for a new team. Two teams are too many. One is just fine. Of course he wants to build it…to make sure he still gets that money from the naming rights.
What is left out of this missive is that Johnson and Anschutz are partners in a variety of ventures…Including the Downtown Stadium. IF Magic and his crew wanted to use the land to build a stadium near Dodger Stadium, Anschutz would definately be involved. MJ’s sale of his Starbucks and 24 Hour Fitness was done to buy into the AEG downtown dream. They were and are partners in that dream.
There is a major power play in this LA NFL Stadium situation. But lets face it, Anschutz has the best deal for an NFL Stadium. A Stadium in Downtown LA. To think that’s its taken this many years to get an NFL team in the #2 market in the Country!?? Something/Someone, or some people are just to greedy and have Napoleonic egos!!!!
I personaly would like to have the CHARGERS back in LA. it seems to be the perfect choice, but then again, greed and egos seem to get in the way. It seems to me that this people think they are going to live forever. Just remember the saying: “He who dies with the most toys?….Is still dead”….just sayin’
Illiterate ex-cons on steroids, taking bounty money under the table to injure opposing players. What’s not to like about that, L.A.?
Are you referring to the players or the developers?
Anschutz is getting a stadium in downtown LA and an NFL team will follow him. The NFL may claim his terms aren’t ideal, but do you honestly think any NFL owner is going to get into bed with McCourt, which is exactly what they would have to do if they wanted to build something on Chavez Ravine? Hell no. The sooner the NFL stops pretending it’s interested in the City of Industry or in McCourt, the quicker we can get a team to LA. My money is still on the Jags moving.
This may seem OT but as a Toronto resident in Ontario Canada and an NFL fan I say to LA citizens, don’t be seduced. You have the best of all worlds; no black outs, you get to pick the teams YOU want to support, and football is way better on my big plasma screen television than it ever is live. Stadiums in the middle of a city just plain suck if you live in said city.
In Los Angeles, the term “downtown” is loosely applied. Draw a plus sign and label the vertical line “110 Freeway” and the horizontal line “10 freeway.” The downtown of very tall buildings is in the upper right quadrant and the area where the stadium would go is in the lower left.
As there is already the LA Convention Center and the Staples Center (where the Lakers play) in the neighborhood, I don’t think it’s quite the change you saw in Toronto.
What irritates me about the football in LA argument — and mind you, the last time there was football in LA, it was sixty miles down the road in Anaheim — is the way it becomes a civic necessity to bring and keep these things in town, and so there are tax benefits and infrastructure support made possible by eminent domain. The people who buy the tickets don’t magically get more money because the team is in town: if they are spending it at the football stadium, they must not be spending their money somewhere else. Jobs are not created, merely displaced.
I just can’t wait to find out how many of my tax dollars are going to be spent on a free stadium for these billionaires. There’s never been an NFL stadium which wasn’t subsidized with tax dollars, and NONE of them have ever resulted in the fabulous jobs and revenues that the NFL promises. It’s welfare for billionaires.
The NFL does not want a privately-financed stadium in LA. Should such a stadium be built in LA, tax payers all over the nation would ask: “Why not here?” MN is close to getting a new stadium with significant public assistance, the NFL does not to mess that up. Remember when a number of teams (e.g., Cowboys & Cardinals)were negotiating for new stadiums & Tagliabue promised a new, NFL-financed stadium in LA? Notice how that promise disappeared after those teams secured their new stadiums?
get Ari Gold on it.