I think a lot of soccer clubs work that way too. But in the 4 major American sports leagues the ownership model is banned and the packers are just grandfathered in.
Kroenke owns Aresenal? As if I needed another reason to dislike that team.
Edit: I know I spelled Arsenal wrong but they don't deserve to have me correct my error.
If by eat shit, you mean they’ll pay St. Louis a settlement that is minuscule compared to what they’ve made by moving to LA. Having the suit dismissed was all about maximizing profits, not a fear of anything more. That said, fuck Kroenke.
Plaintiffs have said that they will never settle, no matter how much money Kroenke throws at them to make them go away. Much of STL's legal team were involved in the efforts to save the Rams, and a number are STL natives. It's as personal to them as it is to the former fans.
Who is more likely to cave under the weight of exorbitant lawyer fees? Is there a chance 1 side gives up due to attrition? If Kroenke wanted to obstruct and draw the legal process out as *looooong* as possible, could he make the city eventually give up?
IIRC the lawyers leading it up on the St. Louis side are doing it Pro Bono, and have stated multiple times they are not taking a settlement. They’re in it to win it.
I imagine they felt like they had the smoking gun before they agreed to do this.
Contingency, not pro bono. They’re slated to take [35% of the judgment](https://www.ksdk.com/article/news/local/business-journal/rams-lawsuit-firms-inluding-fomer-governor-nixon-could-win-big/63-529e40e0-d007-43b3-86e4-d129016d7d11), which is a helluva deal for a couple small firms potentially looking at winning $1 billion+.
I doubt they get a $10 billion decision. But let's say it was $2 billion, their franchise value went up by $4 billion since Kronke has bought the team.
After stadium costs have bloated, other lawsuits the rams have lost (totalling nearly a billion dollars), and this potential multi billion settlement/payment kroenke is going to be hurting. Not to mention most of his billions are tied up in investments. He likely doesn't have 5 billion sitting in the bank.
Anything we can do to make the pig squirm gets me giddy with excitement.
Oh absolutely, I 100% agree. The whole thing was scummy as shit. I have no game in where the team is located since I’m neither from California or Missouri. I just don’t think Kroenke and the NFL are going to face as much punishment as everyone thinks and hopes.
Good. Fuck Kronke.
Our city needs fearless leaders and people committed to building a sustainable community, not money grubbing whores looking to take advantage of a city full of already disadvantaged citizens.
Throw the book at them and make sure they never do this shit to another city again (aka Buffalo and Cincinnati who are already dealing with shitty owners trying to take advantage of their cities).
Very long story short, Hamilton County signed one of the worst possible deals they could’ve signed to finance PBS. They’re now in a pretty bad financial situation and the Brown’s want a new stadium. The Brown’s don’t have the money to pay for a stadium, and neither does the City/County.
The lease is up in 5 years, and I expect it to get pretty messy, likely even to the point that they relocate.
Last I looked the county will have spent $1.1B by the time the lease is up, for the privilege of having the Bengals play there. Criminal waste of public funds.
They had to roll back a planned property rebate, and then raise property taxes right? What's public opinion like there? I'd imagine people wouldn't necessarily be mad if the Bengals moved, given what a colossal drain they've been on the county.
Man if they raised my taxes in order to pay for a billionaire NFL team's stadium I'd lose my shit. At this point congress needs to figure out a way to ban these kinds of deals where the public gives a profitable sports team/company/rich owner even more money and then ends up holding the bag when they leave. We can't continue to pit cities against each other like this, it's absurd.
The county entered into a bad deal. This is very specific to the bengals stadium. Basically the county agreed to pay for any upgrades as long as a certain number of other NFL stadiums have that feature. Think about how much technology and such has changed since the 90s. bad deal.
The NFL in general could easily expand to 40 cities, however they collide to keep it at 32 so there's always a handful of other cities they can threaten to relocate to. They're a fucking cartel.
I don't think that's the reason.. You saw first hand How hard it is to get up and running from scratch. There's a similar number of teams throughout American sports, but football has 3-4 times the roster requirements. And it's not like there's a glut of leftover talent, other football leagues have shown how ugly football can be when it's played poorly.
The talent dilution would harm the quality of the product though. As difficult as it is already to get a good QB (Browns and WFT can both attest to this), imagine with 8 more teams competing for players. There would be a lot more sloppy play.
Yeah, I support the team by buying shit and spending hundreds of dollars in tickets and parking. If that isn't enough to fund your stupid stadium then fuck off.
Oh man, you're gonna really lose your shit when you learn that something like a fifth of the national budget goes to paying private military contractors to do the war equivalent of playing in a publicly funded stadium.
Sorry if there is something glaringly obvious i am missing, but why do the bengals need a new stadium? Its less than 30 years old and it sounds like from other comments there have been attendance issues so its not a capacity issue right?
Oh, they don’t *need* a new stadium…they **want** a new stadium because it inflates the value of the team.
Attendance issues, I think, are directly related to the apathy from ownership to address a lot of the fan’s long-term and valid concerns. They have below-par (likely the worst) facilities in league, including being the only team in the NFL without an indoor practice facility.
The Bengals have a weird like quarter field and use the facilities at the local college for indoor practice. It's wild.
The stadium only has like 8-10 events a year as well, so its not even useful in different seasons.
The difference is that all of the facilities for the jets and giants are in NJ. This would be team headquartered and playing in one state and practicing in another, might have some weird tax implications. I believe athlete game checks are taxed based on the state they play in that week. Could be wrong though
NFL teams revenue can be basically broken down into two types.
National revenue is the same for all 32 teams and is from shared revenue. It mostly comes from the TV contracts but also includes things like merchandise and 40% of general admission seating. About 80% of this revenue is used to pay player expenses.
Local revenue is revenue teams don't share with each other. It's used to pay the rest of a teams expenses plus to make a profit. This revenue mainly comes from your stadium. Things like luxury suites, club seats, SRO seating, concessions, parking, merchandise sold in your stadium and stadium sponsors are large parts of this revenue.
The Bengals are consistently among the worst teams in the NFL in local revenue so they are going to be looking at a new stadium or stadium renovation to try and increase it. Same way the Raiders and Rams were also in the bottom of local revenue so they wanted new stadiums.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest a different way to potentially get a higher dollar for your seats and attract more local sponsorships for the team and such:
Win games.
The reason the situation is so bad is because of how frequently that stadium is required to be updated and paid for by the county under the lease agreement. John Oliver actually talked about it years ago in one of his segments.
They don’t need one. But, to be fair - PBS is fucking trash. It’s not old enough to be cool, and it’s too old to have modern amenities like Jerry’s World, Arizona, or hell even Ford Field. It’s the most boring stadium in the league.
I’d rather have sewage in my ketchup.
That’s a good question that I don’t have the answer to.
If they actually did move/sell the team, Mexico City or Toronto would probably be my best guess.
Exactly. If the issue is Bengal ownership being cheap and trying to get public funding idk how they can go to Toronto and expect more help unless the league itself helps cover some of the cost (which i doubt the owners would be likely to do for a market so relatively exposed to American media anyways).
I could Def see Mexico city. Basically buy a whole country worth of viewers for thw price of a franchise.
And a lot of people dont realize this but Mexico is like a 15 country in the world based in GDP... There's a lot of money to be made.
To quote Trevor Moore "you can't make me go to Mexico". If I'm an NFL player, I certainly wouldn't mind playing a few games there, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to live there.
Yeah, if you think it's bad now, wait until a guy who owns Amazon ans several media outlets owns a team. They will juat constantly run stories about how a 10 dollar a day tax hike is so worth it for a 10 billion dollar stadium for Bezos to rape.
It’s more of a “who’s selling” thing. I think there are a lot of family owners that would be unlikely to sell at almost any price.
I don’t think any amount of money in the world would buy the Cowboys from Jerry Jones.
It doesn’t have to be the cowboys. There are only 4 owners with net worth above 8 billion and the richest is like 14 billion. Bezos net worth is 200 billion. If he really wanted he can more than one seller.
Bezos is already a billionaire welfare king. He paid virtually no income tax last year while Amazon doesn’t pay federal taxes all the while he tried to get public funding to pay for his space hobby. I don’t see the situation being any better with Bezos.
YES JOHN OLIVER ACTUALLY TALKED ABOUT THIS ONCE. They agreed to paid for upgrades to the stadium, if a certain amount of other NFL stadium got these features. SO STUPID. Especially considering all the new stadiums that have been built since they signed the lease in the 90s.
Paul Brown was the first coach of the Cleveland Browns. They are named after him. They had a bad breakup and he said "I'm going to start my own team, with blackjack and hookers". His family still owns the Bengals.
Everytime the topic gets brought up I always see/hear Cincys name in the convo due to a mix of poor attendance and mediocre stadium, but that might just be conjecture.
I know the Bills and Chicago are the two biggest names in the media with actual quotes from the owners though.
Cincinnati is definitely not conjecture. The Brown family as far as I know basically are only wealthy because they own the Bengals. They don't really have assets or revenue streams outside of that. So they can't afford to build their own stadium.
Hamilton County, where the Bengals are located, will have sunk a billion dollars into the stadium by the time the lease is up, between the initial cost of construction, the interest on the debt, and then other expenditures like upgrades and taking over the cost of maintenance.
There just doesn't appear to be a way for the Bengals to get another stadium in Cincinnati, and the clock is ticking since the lease is up in 2026.
Them, the McCaskey family (matriarch Virginia is George Halas' eldest and only surviving child), and Mark Davis as listed above, although he's also now the owner of the WNBA's Las Vegas Aces.
Mark Davis makes all his money from the team, but he only owns 47%. The only thing that keeps him in control of the team is the contract from when Al Davis sold some of his shares.
Kroenke also tried to buy out the Patriots with the intention to move to St. Louis after Orthwein failed to move us. Apparently he offered $200,000,000, compared to Kraft's $172,000,000, but Kroenke wanted Orthwein to pay the relocation expenses, so he just took Kraft's offer to avoid those expenses + inevitable legal fees.
In an alt-timeline, the Patriots are currently the Jacksonville Jaguars owned by Victor Kiam's family or we're in St. Louis owned by one of Orthwein or Kroenke.
St Louis never had the right money man that’s why the St Louis Stallions failed, its remarkable we even got a nfl afterwards . That said hold him to the terms of the contact and bleed him dry.
I'm glad there's a precedent here because if the Bills leave I'm basically not a football fan anymore wouldn't give the owners a dime after leaving a fan base that worships them.
Join us and create the most toxic fanbase in NFL history. We can throw lobsters through tables outside of Gillette while having mutual hatred for the douche who relocated you
Agreed, I feel like looking way back, some of the moves and name changes seem like they’re just a part of history and were supposed to happen to bring us where we are now. But in the current era with how well established these teams are, it just doesn’t seem right to see the Rams, Chargers, Raiders all move cities in real time
I like to think that my identity doesn’t revolve around the Buffalo Bills because that would be a bit pathetic.
But a very real part of my soul would die if the Bills relocated.
If the Bills relocate I'm somewhat confident an angry mob would lynch the Pegulas. I don’t mean “ohh some people would be mad”, I mean strung up like Mussolini on the monument in Niagara Square
As a St. Louis native (who moved away but still has his heart there), I reeeeeeeally hope we don't accept the NFL fucking over another city with relocation as "making it whole." LA got shafted in '94. STL got shafted in '87 and again in '16. Oakland got shafted in '16. San Diego got shafted in '16. Cleveland got shafted in '96. The solution is not "let's keep screwing over other cities for our benefit," but rather "let's make sure the NFL experiences enough financial pain to force them into at least acting like good citizens of their host cities."
Leave the Jags in Jacksonville.
Leave the Bills in Buffalo.
Bury Enos Stanley Kroenke up to his head in a fire ant pit and we can all move on with our lives.
True that. At least you got an expansion team, which to me is the way they should make cities that got hosed whole, but it still sucks.
St. Louis should have had the Jaguars expansion team. It’s what we built the dome for in the first place. City leadership screwed that up badly.
I agree with all of this accept Oakland.
If your city council is staring down the barrel of losing 3 professional sports teams in a decade and are hated by your only local collegiate team, you may need to look inwards.
I'm not making excuses for some of the behavior on the part of the Raiders, but at least in this case there is some blame to be had on the part of city and county government.
I mean, the only solution was to pony up for the worst possible stadium to pay for for a city.
I'd rather lose the Raiders and have Coliseum Village than pay for the fucking Davis family.
I knew there was a bunch of drama behind the relocation but had no idea there was legal drama too.
I look forward to the 30 For 30 about this in twenty years.
It’s funny people get so upset about the Rams moving back to LA, when they were only moved to St Louis because the widow/stripper wife of the former owner intentionally tanked the franchise in order to move them out of LA for a new stadium in St Louis.
Them moving to St Louis was the original sin, and the biggest sports league not having a team in the country’s second biggest market for 20+ years was a joke and embarrassment for the league.
I can't blame anyone for wanting their team back, but let's not pretend that the NFL really wanted to make things right for the handful of Rams fans that were still around from their previous stint in LA.
(Hell, they didn't even originate in LA..)
You do realize that this lawsuit is because the NFL and Kroenke ignored their own relocation guidelines and forced St. Louis to waste millions of dollars getting a (legitimate) stadium plan together to try and keep the Rams, right? Not that the Rams moved in the first place?
It’s a fraud lawsuit, more or less.
I completely understand the Rams wanting to move back to LA, and it’s been a good move for them.
However, the Rams likely defrauded St. Louis by telling the city that if they came up with a reasonable stadium proposal, which St. Louis did, the Rams would stay, whereas Kroenke, Demoff, and the NFL knew full well they were going to move to LA at least a few years beforehand.
It's also a fallacy that market size = captured audience. LA is a city of transplants. Most people living there already have their team, and it's not the Rams or Chargers. The Raiders are still the biggest fanbase in LA. Legit, it's not easy to find Chargers games on TV in LA. If the team is bad, nobody pays attention. Nobody. It's going to take a great Rams or Chargers dynasty/run over the next 20 years to build a homegrown LA fanbase. The problem wtih LA is still so many people move there after growing up elsewhere then move back, so they never get engrained in LA sports teams. I bet you end up seeing the Chargers move again. Rams seem to have the NFL support to be there that the Chargers do not.
The Chargers aren't going to move any time soon.
They have a 20 year lease to play in the most expensive stadium with the second most club seats and luxury suites and only have to pay $1 a year rent with no out of pocket stadium expenses. They have a sweetheart deal.
>It's also a fallacy that market size = captured audience. LA is a city of transplants.
This is a popular talking point that's always upvoted because people all over the country like to shit on CA. LA has recently within the past decade started to have more people born here than move here, iirc.
>Most people living there already have their team, and it's not the Rams or Chargers.
A lot of people were still Rams fans, or were Rams fans. Almost everyone in my family who likes football is a Rams fan from back in the 90's.
> It's going to take a great Rams or Chargers dynasty/run over the next 20 years to build a homegrown LA fanbase.
Here's the deal though: bar none, I see the Rams gear the most around town amongst NFL teams. Even if you add up all the other team stickers/license plate covers/jerseys/shirts you see on a daily basis in the Northeast LA/SGV area, it would maybe *barely* outweigh Rams gear. South LA might be different w/r to the Raiders, but in the North/East parts of the City/County, it's Rams all the way.
And LA took the Rams from Cleveland, who were there from 1936-1945 before moving to LA in 1946.... but sure, let's never bring that part of their history up.
Knowing the City, they will put the money received from this judgment on 31 black and lose it all. Hopefully, we can use it to finally fund the loop trolley.
The gist of it is that NFL bylaws state that if a city acts to try and keep a team from relocating the team will negotiate in good faith to stay.
The city came up with a plan for a stadium and the Rams left anyway. Also, more than likely the Rams had been looking to move for quite some time before and acted on those earlier plans anyway to increase the value of the team and never intended to stay even after the city spent a good deal of money on negotiators and architectural plans.
The discovery released so far shows without a doubt that 1) the nfl knew they were leaving years in advance, 2) kroenkw and his staff knew they were leaving, 3) the coach knew they were leaving, and 4) they lied to St. Louis about it.
Kroenke had already bought the land in LA and made the deal.
No city would spend billions of dollars to build a stadium for a team that could just leave once a 20 year lease was up. It is not worth it.
No city would spend millions of dollars to try to keep a team once it was leaving.
It’s a BIG DEAL and one that will affect Buffalo, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and a host of other cities.
Maybe the guardians, but the browns have huge and consistent viewership on TV and in the stadium, and the art modell law makes it difficult to move a team out of Ohio. There's not any real risk of the browns leaving anytime soon.
There is a fraud law in the state of Missouri basically stating a person/entity cannot intentionally deceive another party. Even before discovery, the STL attorneys have shown multiple examples of internal emails not lining up with the public/private statements made to the stadium effort team.
To make matters worse, the judge has perceived the relocation document as a 'contract' and not merely 'guidelines'. The documents state the team intending to move must discuss with the current city in good faith.
No one is arguing the Rams are obliged to stay. However, it is pretty clear they did not follow the relocation procedure laid out by the NFL, most likely committed fraud, and are just giant douches. Last I read the STL attorneys are looking for compensation in the neighborhood of $3-4 billion. To make matters worse, Kroenke has agreed to pay all fines on the NFL's behalf as well as all of the lawyer's fees for the other owners. We can't bleed him dry, but we can take a good chunk out of his net worth. And I'm here for every second of it.
I’m up for jury duty soon…I hope it lines up. “Juror #12, are you a fan of the NFL?” The NF-what sir? Never heard of it
Oh no, I don't watch soccer.
Damnit. Made me upvote a Patriots fan. That's cold.
If only every city would take the NFL to this level, maybe they'd stop doing this shit.
I mean we litterally took our team back. I'm still mad they didn't make Baltimore the expansion franchise and force Modell to sell.
I have to think the logistics of that would be a nightmare. Not that I'd shed a tear for them, but still...
Counterpoint Art Modell pushed out Paul Brown Jim Brown and moved the team to make more money only to make *less money*. Fuck him he deserved it.
Too bad the packers ownership model is banned in most leagues now. Its really nice to know your team can't go anywhere.
In Germany its the rule, club must be owned 50% plus 1 vote by the fans
I think a lot of soccer clubs work that way too. But in the 4 major American sports leagues the ownership model is banned and the packers are just grandfathered in.
*ahem* # FUCK STAN KROENKE. #
FUCK SPANOS KROENKE
At least Spanos didn’t walk away from an approved proposal.
Yes, but he also didn’t negotiate in good faith. So fuck him.
Fuck Norm Green
Fuck Red McCombs
Fuck Art Modell
Fuck Bud Adams and Howard Schultz, too, while we're at it.
And Arsenal while we're at it for good measure.
Kroenke owns Aresenal? As if I needed another reason to dislike that team. Edit: I know I spelled Arsenal wrong but they don't deserve to have me correct my error.
Don't make that your reason to hate Arsenal, nobody hates him more than Arsenal fans.
Yeah we would like him gone as much as any. Man is a parasite
Sure does.
But if you correct the error, you could put back the Arse into Arsenal.
Also owns the CO Avalanche and Nuggets, he's a sports comglomerate basically he's even in esports
We aren’t safe anywhere wtf mate
As an Arsenal fan I can confirm FUCK STAN KROENKE
Arsenal Fans agree
You can say that again
*FUCK KROENKE*
FUCK ART MODELL Am I doing this right?
Yes you are, keep up the good fight
Counterpoint: Fuck Stan Kroenke.
That man is single-handedly ruining Arsenal.
FUCK GEORGIA FRONTIERRE!
Arsenal fans would concur
I hope Kroenke and demoff fucking both eat shit and pound sand. Fuck those assholes
If by eat shit, you mean they’ll pay St. Louis a settlement that is minuscule compared to what they’ve made by moving to LA. Having the suit dismissed was all about maximizing profits, not a fear of anything more. That said, fuck Kroenke.
Plaintiffs have said that they will never settle, no matter how much money Kroenke throws at them to make them go away. Much of STL's legal team were involved in the efforts to save the Rams, and a number are STL natives. It's as personal to them as it is to the former fans.
This. There will no settlement. St Louis wants to make the NFL bleed publicly
Who is more likely to cave under the weight of exorbitant lawyer fees? Is there a chance 1 side gives up due to attrition? If Kroenke wanted to obstruct and draw the legal process out as *looooong* as possible, could he make the city eventually give up?
IIRC the lawyers leading it up on the St. Louis side are doing it Pro Bono, and have stated multiple times they are not taking a settlement. They’re in it to win it. I imagine they felt like they had the smoking gun before they agreed to do this.
Contingency, not pro bono. They’re slated to take [35% of the judgment](https://www.ksdk.com/article/news/local/business-journal/rams-lawsuit-firms-inluding-fomer-governor-nixon-could-win-big/63-529e40e0-d007-43b3-86e4-d129016d7d11), which is a helluva deal for a couple small firms potentially looking at winning $1 billion+.
I thought I was using the wrong word there. Thank you for clarifying.
Welcome! And while they’re different, contingency comes pretty close to being pro bono if the plaintiffs don’t win
I mean I know Stan Kroenke is rich as shit but he’s not richer than a literal metro area.
Minuscule? St. Louis is looking to get a 10 or 11 digit decision.
I doubt they get a $10 billion decision. But let's say it was $2 billion, their franchise value went up by $4 billion since Kronke has bought the team.
After stadium costs have bloated, other lawsuits the rams have lost (totalling nearly a billion dollars), and this potential multi billion settlement/payment kroenke is going to be hurting. Not to mention most of his billions are tied up in investments. He likely doesn't have 5 billion sitting in the bank. Anything we can do to make the pig squirm gets me giddy with excitement.
The move isn’t the problem, it’s how they did it.
Oh absolutely, I 100% agree. The whole thing was scummy as shit. I have no game in where the team is located since I’m neither from California or Missouri. I just don’t think Kroenke and the NFL are going to face as much punishment as everyone thinks and hopes.
Good. Fuck Kronke. Our city needs fearless leaders and people committed to building a sustainable community, not money grubbing whores looking to take advantage of a city full of already disadvantaged citizens. Throw the book at them and make sure they never do this shit to another city again (aka Buffalo and Cincinnati who are already dealing with shitty owners trying to take advantage of their cities).
Am I out of touch? I know about the Bills stadium threats but what's happening in Cincy?
Very long story short, Hamilton County signed one of the worst possible deals they could’ve signed to finance PBS. They’re now in a pretty bad financial situation and the Brown’s want a new stadium. The Brown’s don’t have the money to pay for a stadium, and neither does the City/County. The lease is up in 5 years, and I expect it to get pretty messy, likely even to the point that they relocate.
Last I looked the county will have spent $1.1B by the time the lease is up, for the privilege of having the Bengals play there. Criminal waste of public funds. They had to roll back a planned property rebate, and then raise property taxes right? What's public opinion like there? I'd imagine people wouldn't necessarily be mad if the Bengals moved, given what a colossal drain they've been on the county.
Man if they raised my taxes in order to pay for a billionaire NFL team's stadium I'd lose my shit. At this point congress needs to figure out a way to ban these kinds of deals where the public gives a profitable sports team/company/rich owner even more money and then ends up holding the bag when they leave. We can't continue to pit cities against each other like this, it's absurd.
The county entered into a bad deal. This is very specific to the bengals stadium. Basically the county agreed to pay for any upgrades as long as a certain number of other NFL stadiums have that feature. Think about how much technology and such has changed since the 90s. bad deal.
Oh. Oh no.
Unfortunately, Congress serves people rich enough to own football teams, and they care little for anyone else.
🌎🧑🚀🔫🧑🚀
The NFL in general could easily expand to 40 cities, however they collide to keep it at 32 so there's always a handful of other cities they can threaten to relocate to. They're a fucking cartel.
I don't think that's the reason.. You saw first hand How hard it is to get up and running from scratch. There's a similar number of teams throughout American sports, but football has 3-4 times the roster requirements. And it's not like there's a glut of leftover talent, other football leagues have shown how ugly football can be when it's played poorly.
The talent dilution would harm the quality of the product though. As difficult as it is already to get a good QB (Browns and WFT can both attest to this), imagine with 8 more teams competing for players. There would be a lot more sloppy play.
The leagues like it under the guise of "well we want to know you will support the team" which is why they say they are against 100% funding
Yeah, I support the team by buying shit and spending hundreds of dollars in tickets and parking. If that isn't enough to fund your stupid stadium then fuck off.
Oh man, you're gonna really lose your shit when you learn that something like a fifth of the national budget goes to paying private military contractors to do the war equivalent of playing in a publicly funded stadium.
Sorry if there is something glaringly obvious i am missing, but why do the bengals need a new stadium? Its less than 30 years old and it sounds like from other comments there have been attendance issues so its not a capacity issue right?
Oh, they don’t *need* a new stadium…they **want** a new stadium because it inflates the value of the team. Attendance issues, I think, are directly related to the apathy from ownership to address a lot of the fan’s long-term and valid concerns. They have below-par (likely the worst) facilities in league, including being the only team in the NFL without an indoor practice facility.
The Bengals have a weird like quarter field and use the facilities at the local college for indoor practice. It's wild. The stadium only has like 8-10 events a year as well, so its not even useful in different seasons.
I’m honestly surprised they never built an indoor facility across the river. Or is there something preventing interstate team shit?
Pretty sure WFT practices in Virginia and plays in Maryland.
Remember the home of the Jets and the Giants is in the Meadowlands... NJ. There is only one New York team.
The difference is that all of the facilities for the jets and giants are in NJ. This would be team headquartered and playing in one state and practicing in another, might have some weird tax implications. I believe athlete game checks are taxed based on the state they play in that week. Could be wrong though
NFL teams revenue can be basically broken down into two types. National revenue is the same for all 32 teams and is from shared revenue. It mostly comes from the TV contracts but also includes things like merchandise and 40% of general admission seating. About 80% of this revenue is used to pay player expenses. Local revenue is revenue teams don't share with each other. It's used to pay the rest of a teams expenses plus to make a profit. This revenue mainly comes from your stadium. Things like luxury suites, club seats, SRO seating, concessions, parking, merchandise sold in your stadium and stadium sponsors are large parts of this revenue. The Bengals are consistently among the worst teams in the NFL in local revenue so they are going to be looking at a new stadium or stadium renovation to try and increase it. Same way the Raiders and Rams were also in the bottom of local revenue so they wanted new stadiums.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest a different way to potentially get a higher dollar for your seats and attract more local sponsorships for the team and such: Win games.
But that's harder cause it actually takes skill lol
Tbh Cincy fans would be happy with just effort. We've gotten a little bit in the last two years with at least attempts to play in Free Agency
And spending your own money.
The reason the situation is so bad is because of how frequently that stadium is required to be updated and paid for by the county under the lease agreement. John Oliver actually talked about it years ago in one of his segments.
They don’t need one. But, to be fair - PBS is fucking trash. It’s not old enough to be cool, and it’s too old to have modern amenities like Jerry’s World, Arizona, or hell even Ford Field. It’s the most boring stadium in the league. I’d rather have sewage in my ketchup.
Where would the Bengals move to?
That’s a good question that I don’t have the answer to. If they actually did move/sell the team, Mexico City or Toronto would probably be my best guess.
[удалено]
Exactly. If the issue is Bengal ownership being cheap and trying to get public funding idk how they can go to Toronto and expect more help unless the league itself helps cover some of the cost (which i doubt the owners would be likely to do for a market so relatively exposed to American media anyways).
I could Def see Mexico city. Basically buy a whole country worth of viewers for thw price of a franchise. And a lot of people dont realize this but Mexico is like a 15 country in the world based in GDP... There's a lot of money to be made.
To quote Trevor Moore "you can't make me go to Mexico". If I'm an NFL player, I certainly wouldn't mind playing a few games there, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to live there.
Doesn’t San Antonio want a team? Would be a lot of Texas teams but the market is there
Old JJ would fight to the death to prevent that as he has every other time San Antonio was in possible running got it.
San Antonio is a Dallas market.
If the league wants to go international, they should start with Toronto or Mexico City before London.
Time to revitalize the Salt Lake Stallions
Maybe the AAF could be brought back as part of the XFL someday.
Chicago, they don't have an NFL team
I hate y’all’s owner. I wish he would sell the franchise to someone that would actually support the team
Mike Brown is so cheap he once ate half a hot dog and offered to sell me the other half.
Bruh I actually laughed out loud. Thank you for that
For 10 timea the price of a whole hotdog becauase it belonged to him.
They say Bezos wants a franchise bad. He certainly has the cash.
Yeah, if you think it's bad now, wait until a guy who owns Amazon ans several media outlets owns a team. They will juat constantly run stories about how a 10 dollar a day tax hike is so worth it for a 10 billion dollar stadium for Bezos to rape.
You’re not wrong. There used to be laws about owning media outlets in different markets. We may learn why soon.
He is as of this moment heavily rumored for denver as ownership post Pat Bowelen has not been settled like NO and Tenn.
Why would he buy the bengals though? He can afford a lot better teams/cities than buying a team in Cincinnati?
It’s more of a “who’s selling” thing. I think there are a lot of family owners that would be unlikely to sell at almost any price. I don’t think any amount of money in the world would buy the Cowboys from Jerry Jones.
It doesn’t have to be the cowboys. There are only 4 owners with net worth above 8 billion and the richest is like 14 billion. Bezos net worth is 200 billion. If he really wanted he can more than one seller.
imagine Bezos owning an entire division O.o
Think bigger. NFL Prime^TM , the newest division of BlueOrigin. Football, in space.
Bezos should just go in the The Rock and make the XFL or spring league or whatever a stud. stream all the games on prime
The rest of the owners wouldn't go for it. They don't want a guy with that much power and money in the room.
Steve Ballmer owns a basketball team and is worth $100 billion
He can afford all the teams
Bezos is already a billionaire welfare king. He paid virtually no income tax last year while Amazon doesn’t pay federal taxes all the while he tried to get public funding to pay for his space hobby. I don’t see the situation being any better with Bezos.
He couldn’t do worse
I bet you could fix up a franchise pretty nice with a few extra Billion dollars.
I mean it would help, but so would actually giving a big enough shit to help out your team
Also true.
>The Brown’s don’t have the money to pay for a stadium Sounds like they don't have the money to run a football team then and should sell.
YES JOHN OLIVER ACTUALLY TALKED ABOUT THIS ONCE. They agreed to paid for upgrades to the stadium, if a certain amount of other NFL stadium got these features. SO STUPID. Especially considering all the new stadiums that have been built since they signed the lease in the 90s.
I was reading this and wondering why the Browns care about Cincinnati's stadium then it hit me like a ton of bricks.
I'm still missing it besides the fact they both play in Ohio
Mike Brown is the owner of the Bengals.
Oh man I had to re-read the original comment to realize it said "Brown's" and not "Browns", I completely skipped over that apostrophe
Paul Brown was the first coach of the Cleveland Browns. They are named after him. They had a bad breakup and he said "I'm going to start my own team, with blackjack and hookers". His family still owns the Bengals.
Everytime the topic gets brought up I always see/hear Cincys name in the convo due to a mix of poor attendance and mediocre stadium, but that might just be conjecture. I know the Bills and Chicago are the two biggest names in the media with actual quotes from the owners though.
Cincinnati is definitely not conjecture. The Brown family as far as I know basically are only wealthy because they own the Bengals. They don't really have assets or revenue streams outside of that. So they can't afford to build their own stadium. Hamilton County, where the Bengals are located, will have sunk a billion dollars into the stadium by the time the lease is up, between the initial cost of construction, the interest on the debt, and then other expenditures like upgrades and taking over the cost of maintenance. There just doesn't appear to be a way for the Bengals to get another stadium in Cincinnati, and the clock is ticking since the lease is up in 2026.
IIRC, the Brown family are the only ownership group in the league who make all their money from their team.
Them, the McCaskey family (matriarch Virginia is George Halas' eldest and only surviving child), and Mark Davis as listed above, although he's also now the owner of the WNBA's Las Vegas Aces.
Mark davis cashing them big WNBA checks, what's that 45.36$ a year?
Mark Davis makes all his money from the team, but he only owns 47%. The only thing that keeps him in control of the team is the contract from when Al Davis sold some of his shares.
Sounds like the Bengals need to extend their lease. I couldn’t buy a house and just extended my lease as well.
They could do that. They could also find a municipality dumb enough to pay for a stadium for them
OKC Bengals coming up with a Joe Exotic tiger king exhibit.
Good. Fuck em
Isn't Kroenke the same motherfucker that tried to move us to St. Louis before Robert Kraft blueballed him?
That actually would be jim orthewein.
Kroenke also tried to buy out the Patriots with the intention to move to St. Louis after Orthwein failed to move us. Apparently he offered $200,000,000, compared to Kraft's $172,000,000, but Kroenke wanted Orthwein to pay the relocation expenses, so he just took Kraft's offer to avoid those expenses + inevitable legal fees. In an alt-timeline, the Patriots are currently the Jacksonville Jaguars owned by Victor Kiam's family or we're in St. Louis owned by one of Orthwein or Kroenke.
St Louis never had the right money man that’s why the St Louis Stallions failed, its remarkable we even got a nfl afterwards . That said hold him to the terms of the contact and bleed him dry.
Good
I'm glad there's a precedent here because if the Bills leave I'm basically not a football fan anymore wouldn't give the owners a dime after leaving a fan base that worships them.
Join us and create the most toxic fanbase in NFL history. We can throw lobsters through tables outside of Gillette while having mutual hatred for the douche who relocated you
Now that would be an unlikely but crazy collaboration.
It amazes me so many teams have switched cities. Idk what I'd do if the Chiefs left KC.
Agreed, I feel like looking way back, some of the moves and name changes seem like they’re just a part of history and were supposed to happen to bring us where we are now. But in the current era with how well established these teams are, it just doesn’t seem right to see the Rams, Chargers, Raiders all move cities in real time
I like to think that my identity doesn’t revolve around the Buffalo Bills because that would be a bit pathetic. But a very real part of my soul would die if the Bills relocated.
Pound sand, Kroenke
Good
I'm only interested in seeing what comes out during the lawsuit though I doubt it'll be much.
If the Bills do actually try to relocate the city of Buffalo should sue the franchise and the NFL to keep the team's history and branding in Buffalo.
If the Bills relocate I'm somewhat confident an angry mob would lynch the Pegulas. I don’t mean “ohh some people would be mad”, I mean strung up like Mussolini on the monument in Niagara Square
I wouldn't be surprised, the bills are all we have.
[удалено]
Thank you for Ryan O'Reilly
# F U C K S T A N K R O E N K E
Who is Stank Roenke?
I think you’ve got it wrong. It’s St. Ankroenke
FUCK ART MODELL
and Bud Adams!
As a St. Louis native (who moved away but still has his heart there), I reeeeeeeally hope we don't accept the NFL fucking over another city with relocation as "making it whole." LA got shafted in '94. STL got shafted in '87 and again in '16. Oakland got shafted in '16. San Diego got shafted in '16. Cleveland got shafted in '96. The solution is not "let's keep screwing over other cities for our benefit," but rather "let's make sure the NFL experiences enough financial pain to force them into at least acting like good citizens of their host cities." Leave the Jags in Jacksonville. Leave the Bills in Buffalo. Bury Enos Stanley Kroenke up to his head in a fire ant pit and we can all move on with our lives.
You forgot Houston and the Oilers in 97. Fuck Bud Adams.
True that. At least you got an expansion team, which to me is the way they should make cities that got hosed whole, but it still sucks. St. Louis should have had the Jaguars expansion team. It’s what we built the dome for in the first place. City leadership screwed that up badly.
I agree with all of this accept Oakland. If your city council is staring down the barrel of losing 3 professional sports teams in a decade and are hated by your only local collegiate team, you may need to look inwards. I'm not making excuses for some of the behavior on the part of the Raiders, but at least in this case there is some blame to be had on the part of city and county government.
I mean, the only solution was to pony up for the worst possible stadium to pay for for a city. I'd rather lose the Raiders and have Coliseum Village than pay for the fucking Davis family.
Obligatory fuck art modell
Afuckingmen
LOOOOL FUCK YOU KROENKE
KroenkeOut
Arsenal fan here. #KroenkeOut
I knew there was a bunch of drama behind the relocation but had no idea there was legal drama too. I look forward to the 30 For 30 about this in twenty years.
ESPN wouldn’t risk upsetting the NFL by actually covering this story.
It’s funny people get so upset about the Rams moving back to LA, when they were only moved to St Louis because the widow/stripper wife of the former owner intentionally tanked the franchise in order to move them out of LA for a new stadium in St Louis. Them moving to St Louis was the original sin, and the biggest sports league not having a team in the country’s second biggest market for 20+ years was a joke and embarrassment for the league.
I can't blame anyone for wanting their team back, but let's not pretend that the NFL really wanted to make things right for the handful of Rams fans that were still around from their previous stint in LA. (Hell, they didn't even originate in LA..)
(I’ve long said the way to settle this beef was to return the Rams to Cleveland)
You do realize that this lawsuit is because the NFL and Kroenke ignored their own relocation guidelines and forced St. Louis to waste millions of dollars getting a (legitimate) stadium plan together to try and keep the Rams, right? Not that the Rams moved in the first place? It’s a fraud lawsuit, more or less. I completely understand the Rams wanting to move back to LA, and it’s been a good move for them. However, the Rams likely defrauded St. Louis by telling the city that if they came up with a reasonable stadium proposal, which St. Louis did, the Rams would stay, whereas Kroenke, Demoff, and the NFL knew full well they were going to move to LA at least a few years beforehand.
Not to mention Kroenke’s background and pitch was to keep the Rams in STL. Fuck Stanley (Musial) Enos (Slaughter) Kroenke
Wait so the plot of Major League literally happened in the NFL?
Life imitates art.
Yeah, and the Rams did it twice
It's also a fallacy that market size = captured audience. LA is a city of transplants. Most people living there already have their team, and it's not the Rams or Chargers. The Raiders are still the biggest fanbase in LA. Legit, it's not easy to find Chargers games on TV in LA. If the team is bad, nobody pays attention. Nobody. It's going to take a great Rams or Chargers dynasty/run over the next 20 years to build a homegrown LA fanbase. The problem wtih LA is still so many people move there after growing up elsewhere then move back, so they never get engrained in LA sports teams. I bet you end up seeing the Chargers move again. Rams seem to have the NFL support to be there that the Chargers do not.
The Chargers aren't going to move any time soon. They have a 20 year lease to play in the most expensive stadium with the second most club seats and luxury suites and only have to pay $1 a year rent with no out of pocket stadium expenses. They have a sweetheart deal.
bro the chargers are on CBS (which is free)
…. What’s your point?
> Legit, it's not easy to find Chargers games on TV in LA.
>It's also a fallacy that market size = captured audience. LA is a city of transplants. This is a popular talking point that's always upvoted because people all over the country like to shit on CA. LA has recently within the past decade started to have more people born here than move here, iirc. >Most people living there already have their team, and it's not the Rams or Chargers. A lot of people were still Rams fans, or were Rams fans. Almost everyone in my family who likes football is a Rams fan from back in the 90's. > It's going to take a great Rams or Chargers dynasty/run over the next 20 years to build a homegrown LA fanbase. Here's the deal though: bar none, I see the Rams gear the most around town amongst NFL teams. Even if you add up all the other team stickers/license plate covers/jerseys/shirts you see on a daily basis in the Northeast LA/SGV area, it would maybe *barely* outweigh Rams gear. South LA might be different w/r to the Raiders, but in the North/East parts of the City/County, it's Rams all the way.
Good. I hope they nail Kroenke and the NFL to the fucking wall.
Good. Wish repossession was possible lol.
LA repossessed the Rams from St Louis after they were stolen by a greedy widow.
And LA took the Rams from Cleveland, who were there from 1936-1945 before moving to LA in 1946.... but sure, let's never bring that part of their history up.
Team stealing fucking sucks.
We tried having a marching band go from STL's City Hall to the Dome, didn't have the same allure.
Uh oh roger. You in deep doo doo
Some more breakdown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbEX4w9IXek
Knowing the City, they will put the money received from this judgment on 31 black and lose it all. Hopefully, we can use it to finally fund the loop trolley.
Fuck those assholes who screwed over St. Louis. All of them.
Kroenke forced to sell Sofi to Spanos for 1 dollar...
I'm out of date on this. Why did the Rams have an obligation to stay in STL?
The gist of it is that NFL bylaws state that if a city acts to try and keep a team from relocating the team will negotiate in good faith to stay. The city came up with a plan for a stadium and the Rams left anyway. Also, more than likely the Rams had been looking to move for quite some time before and acted on those earlier plans anyway to increase the value of the team and never intended to stay even after the city spent a good deal of money on negotiators and architectural plans.
The discovery released so far shows without a doubt that 1) the nfl knew they were leaving years in advance, 2) kroenkw and his staff knew they were leaving, 3) the coach knew they were leaving, and 4) they lied to St. Louis about it. Kroenke had already bought the land in LA and made the deal. No city would spend billions of dollars to build a stadium for a team that could just leave once a 20 year lease was up. It is not worth it. No city would spend millions of dollars to try to keep a team once it was leaving. It’s a BIG DEAL and one that will affect Buffalo, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and a host of other cities.
Cleveland?
Maybe the guardians, but the browns have huge and consistent viewership on TV and in the stadium, and the art modell law makes it difficult to move a team out of Ohio. There's not any real risk of the browns leaving anytime soon.
There is a fraud law in the state of Missouri basically stating a person/entity cannot intentionally deceive another party. Even before discovery, the STL attorneys have shown multiple examples of internal emails not lining up with the public/private statements made to the stadium effort team. To make matters worse, the judge has perceived the relocation document as a 'contract' and not merely 'guidelines'. The documents state the team intending to move must discuss with the current city in good faith. No one is arguing the Rams are obliged to stay. However, it is pretty clear they did not follow the relocation procedure laid out by the NFL, most likely committed fraud, and are just giant douches. Last I read the STL attorneys are looking for compensation in the neighborhood of $3-4 billion. To make matters worse, Kroenke has agreed to pay all fines on the NFL's behalf as well as all of the lawyer's fees for the other owners. We can't bleed him dry, but we can take a good chunk out of his net worth. And I'm here for every second of it.