Who Wants Football Back in Los Angeles?

June 15, 2011 By admin 3 Comments (Edit)

Lets get right to the point, Los Angeles needs a football team more than anything. Not only for its financial benefits, but for the appeal and joy it will bring to the city. There has not been football in Los Angeles since 1995, when the Rams left town to St. Louis. Everyone in Los Angeles has been dying to see an NFL team. No matter how many different developers have tried to bring a team to LA, their plans have constantly been shut down or abandoned because it was too difficult of a task to bring a team to Los Angeles.

But, I believe that this time is going to be different because of the company that is trying to bring a team to Los Angeles. You might be wondering whom that company might be, its Anschutz Entertainment Group better known as AEG. They are well known for the many projects that they have done in Los Angeles, such as the Staples Center, Home Depot Center, and L.A. Live. All these ventures have all turned out to be quite successful.

By having such an impressive track record I really do believe that AEG and the success of Tim Leiweke, CEO of AEG really do have the power and the capability of bringing football back to Los Angeles.

AEG is currently in the in-between phase where they have spoken to five football teams (Raiders, Chargers, Jaguars, Vikings, and Rams) who have expressed interest in moving to Los Angeles. These teams are just waiting approval from the NFL.

AEG currently has to deal with the Los Angeles City Council who has been known to be very shy to accept any sort of deal. AEG also must finish an environmental study to prove to the city council that this project will be very beneficial.

Many critics of this project have said that this stadium will cause a madness of traffic, and could do more damage than good. One of the most intriguing parts of this project is that AEG has expressed numerous times that this project will be funded privately, and that there will be no need for any money to be contributed by the taxpayers. AEG believes that it is unfair to make the taxpayers contribute any money towards this project, when the entire state is bleeding financially out of their pockets.

AEG being the smooth and suave company that they are have already been able to convince Farmer’s insurance to pay $650 million of the billion-dollar stadium to be known as Farmer’s field.  AEG plans on tearing down the West Hall of the convention center and making it able to connect the stadium to the current convention center. With this project it will help the appeal of the convention center, moving it from fifteenth currently all the way up to fifth for convention centers.

This proposed stadium deal would potentially add 18,000 jobs and create a whole new economy in the downtown area by making Los Angeles a much more appealing and attractive city to travel to. The NFL is a 9.2 billion dollar moneymaking machine that brings in too much revenue for an idea like this to be shot down.

Not only as a sports fan, but as a native of Los Angeles I know that the people would want nothing more than to be able to attend an NFL game and know that professional football is back, and here to stay. Los Angeles is the second biggest market in the country, and has too much potential for it not to be given a chance to be rewarded with a NFL team.