Report: The Rams and Chargers are moving to Los Angeles
The Rams and Chargers are moving in together - and moving to Los Angeles.
NFL owners have settled on a new proposal for the Rams and Chargers to relocate to Los Angeles and share a stadium in Inglewood, according to multiple reports.
The Rams are expected to move to LA next season and play at the LA Coliseum until 2019, when the Inglewood stadium is finished. The Chargers' timetable is still uncertain, but they will have the option to move to LA as soon as the 2016 season, too.
But based on the news of the Rams and Chargers will together be relocating in Inglewood, it appears that Kroenke and Chargers' owner Dean Spanos were ultimately more willing to partner in order to relocate both of their franchises to Los Angeles, rather than fighting and taking votes away from both proposals.
As Chargers and Rams fans mourn their departing teams, the fate of the Raiders remains uncertain. They are likely to stay in Oakland and will likely receive some of the money needed to build a new stadium in the Bay Area from the NFL and NFL ownership as a consolation prize.
The news of the Rams and Chargers sharing a stadium in Inglewood comes after reports earlier in the week suggested that Spanos was reluctant to partner with Kroenke unless Kroenke agreed to a 50-50 partnership on the Inglewood stadium. It's likely that during negotiations Kroenke leveraged the Raiders' desire to move to LA - even as the Rams' tenant - against Spanos in order to have Spanos partner with him. The financial specifics of the agreement are not yet known.
Along with illustrating Kroenke's power with the NFL ownership, the compromise between the Chargers and Rams also reveals that NFL owners likely did not want the notoriously eccentric Raiders owner Mark Davis at the helm of the second LA experiment.
Earlier on Tuesday, Sports Business Daily reported that the NFL's LA Committee officially recommended the Carson site to owners. As this was only a recommendation, the owners were evidently swayed by Kroenke.