The California Split

Matt Welch | January 31, 2005

I have long been proud of my hometown for having the stones to tell the NFL that its billionaires, and not L.A. taxpayers, would have to shell out the cash to bring pro football back to Southern California. Yet there's still a negative side effect on stadium welfare, as the L.A. Times illustrated yesterday -- Los Angeles has been used, repeatedly, as a threat to scare subsidies out of less confident burghers.

In cities across the nation -- Phoenix, Seattle, Indianapolis -- owners have used the absence of a Los Angeles franchise as leverage. They have extracted concessions worth hundreds of millions of dollars from taxpayers while threatening -- though it is rarely said explicitly, and doesn't have to be -- to move to L.A. [...]

The strategy has been a critical factor in the NFL's stunning building boom; since 1995, stadiums have been newly built or renovated for 19 of the league's 32 teams, including Jacksonville, the site of next Sunday's Super Bowl.

Comments

digamma|1.31.05 @ 12:54PM|#

Matt - Dodgers or Angels?

Matt Welch|1.31.05 @ 1:03PM|#

Oh, Angels all the way.

|1.31.05 @ 1:15PM|#

bring pro football back to Southern California

You know, the Chargers did make the playoffs this year.

|1.31.05 @ 2:47PM|#

*laugh* I think he meant besides the Chargers.

|1.31.05 @ 2:54PM|#

GO PATS!!!!!!!

|1.31.05 @ 3:11PM|#

Everyone I know in Southern California (if they care about sports at all) likes not having a football team and wouldn't want the Rams or Raiders back. The main reason is that residents now get to see more games (on local TV) than they could before -- they're not in any team's blackout zone any longer.

So if they threaten to leave your town, tell 'em to go fish!

|1.31.05 @ 4:49PM|#

It sure was sad the way Los Angeles dried and blew away when the football teams left.

I'm curious, does anyone still live there? I wonder what they do, now that no businesses will locate in the area.

|1.31.05 @ 6:26PM|#

How can LA be used as leverage when the previous teams left because of lack of support?

|1.31.05 @ 8:26PM|#

Ricky

LA being the largest market without an NFL franchise is an anomaly. Theoretically, LA should have significant fan support to carry a team even if only small part of the population is interested. Secondly, I don't think fan support was necessarily the biggest factor in why the Rams and the Raiders left. It had more to do with they were playing in facilities that were no longer up to current standards in the league, they could not get the local government build new stadiums and found better deals elsewhere.

rox_publius|2.1.05 @ 1:02PM|#

los angeles...

the new baltimore...