The last thing the NFL in Los Angeles was ever about was the fans [View all]

[pstokely]

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2016/jan/13/the-last-thing-the-nfl-in-los-angeles-was-ever-about-was-the-fans

"No league in the US uses leverage quite like the NFL. They didn’t get to $10bn in revenue by being nice. They have played their broadcast rights brilliantly in recently decades, leading terrified networks to spend outlandish amounts of money out of the fear they might lose their tiny platter of games guaranteed to be ratings winners. But the league’s best trick has been getting cities and counties and states to spend taxpayers’ money on stadiums to be used for just eight regular-season games.

An LA without football has always been worth more to the league than a LA with a team. As the nation’s second-largest city sat without a team, every billionaire owner yearning for a new stadium equipped with executive lounges the price of small homes merely had to breathe the words “Los Angeles” to make local politicians crumble.

LA was the gift that kept on giving to the owners who saw their own franchises jump in value every time another member of the club got their own downtown trophy. Since the Rams and Raiders left LA following the 1994 season, 22 of the league’s 32 teams have built new stadiums or completely overhauled the ones they had. The public contribution to these projects was more than $4.7bn in free money for some of the richest people in the country.

No way does this happen without a vacant Los Angeles. The city was the ballast against desperate politicians who vowed there would be no public funds for local football teams, only to cave when the thought of moving vans at the team’s headquarters seemed all too real. The threat of a move to LA lured citizens of other cities to voting booths where they confessed that four months of football Sundays were more important than putting new roofs on schools. They all closed their eyes, held their noses and endorsed checks to some of the wealthiest men in the world to take their taxes and build sports playpens."