Sources: Chargers plan to announce move from San Diego to Los Angeles

[JonLP24]

Source: ESPN

Almost one year to the day that the Rams moved to Los Angeles, the Chargers now are planning to do the same.

The Chargers plan to announce as early as Thursday that they are moving to Los Angeles, ending a 55-year stint with San Diego and returning to their birthplace, league sources said.

The Chargers played their inaugural season in Los Angeles in 1960 before moving to San Diego in 1961.

The Chargers have notified NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, and other league owners, of their intent to move to Los Angeles for the 2017 season, sources said.

Read more: http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/18455802/chargers-expected-announce-move-san-diego-los-angeles

[Gore1FL]

1. They should play their games simultainiously with the Rams' games in the same stadium

Then they might fill the stands.

[SteveABG]

3. I get why you'd be angry, but...

You do realize that the stadium the Rams were playing in this year holds 25,000 more people than the largest stadium in the NFL, yes?

And that the Rams were #7 in attendance this year?

[Gore1FL]

9. They are getting a new stadium in LA.

The Coliseum is just a temp venue until it's built.

I am not too concerned that they left. I would have happily helped them pack the trucks. They suck as a team. Their owner is self-serving gasbag. I just wish my city/state would have spent it's money better than trying to keep them here.

Give 'em time. LA will get sick and tired of them too once the newness of the return wears off and the play continues to be lackluster.

[BumRushDaShow]

16. "They should play their games simultainiously with the Rams' games in the same stadium"

[font size="1"](my visualization of this makes this hilarious )[/font]

[nycbos]

27. LMAO true

[C Moon]

2. I believe there's talk of building another stadium: in Carson, I think.

I hope not.
Too close to me.
We already have enough fireworks around here.

[SteveABG]

4. No

They will be the second tenant in the new stadium that the owner of the Rams is building in the old Hollywood Park site. There will not be another stadium.

[C Moon]

10. Okay. Thank you.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

8. There is lots of talk,

There is a proposal for one at L.A. Live and another at part of the redevelopment of the Forum. The Carson proposal is probably dead as proposed but would have been an arena shared by the San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders.

[C Moon]

11. Thanks.

Crazy. We went from no football team for decades, to almost having three in one year.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

14. We have MSG, Anschutz and others ready to spend a lot of money

Los Angeles City Council is also generally cooperative, the cancelled Farmers Field (L.A. Live) was approved 12-0. Although I do wonder if this would see it revived.

[SteveABG]

20. It's done

All proposals are dead except the Kronke stadium at Hollywood Park.

[DK504]

18. Carson??????

That is in NO WAY Los Angeles.

[Codeine]

22. Meh. The LA Galaxy play in Carson.

It's close enough.

[Zorro]

5. Good riddance

[Brother Buzz]

6. They would play at the StubHub Center, closer to their base, not at the Los Angeles Coliseum

The Chargers are expected to play at the StubHub Center in Carson, Calif., home of the Los Angeles Galaxy in MLS, instead of the Los Angeles Coliseum until the new stadium is completed, as it is easier to access from Orange County, where between a quarter and a third of the Chargers’ season ticket holders reside

[Auggie]

7. I guess that means the Raiders will go to Las Vegas

[Cha]

12. So LA Chargers? I guess San Diego fans will be bummed...

My son is one of the fans. Haven't talked to him about it.

[SDJay]

13. Buh Bye...

This San Diego County resident isn't upset. These clowns are willing to fork over half-a-billion to be renters in Kroenke's playground and always be second fiddle instead of ponying up anything to buy their own lot in SD County. Piss off. San Diego doesn't need the gigantic corporate money suckhole that is the NFL to still be San Diego. We'll be just fine without you, thank you though, NFL.

[pstokely]

15. another team LA won't care about

are they sharing space at the Kronkedome?

[Mister Midnight]

17. There's only ONE NFL Team that Belongs in L.A.

[haele]

19. We expected it. Spanos thinks all the San Diego fans will drive four hours for a Thursday game?

In Orange County rush hour traffic? Does he think with the Rams in LA already, he's going to get new fans?
The old LA Raiders fans - the only LA football fans rabid enough to travel down to San Diego when there was a Raiders/Chargers game - are not going to switch allegiance to the Chargers, and the old LA Rams fans will stick with to the Rams.

#OutOfTouchBillionaire

Spanos wanted to siphon money off the San Diego Tourist Board to pay for screwing the residents, generational businesses and light industry in East Village/Barrio Logan for decades with his pretty little ego-boo instead of manning up and re-building the freeway access-friendly Q (where there's already also two major trolley line stops planned) with help from other corporate sponsors and developers who could make lots of revenue developing and renting out properties on the open land that still surrounds the existing stadium - rather than tearing down the existing MTS transit and maintenance yards and old businesses in a very dense population area because "there's a nice view of Downtown and the Ocean" or something like that.

Traffic and parking Downtown is already a nightmare; add the Spanos "Constadium", and you'd have gridlock equivalent to I-5 in Downtown LA at 8:30 on a Monday morning - where it takes one hour to go 5 miles.

San Diegans voted already - most of us who live and work here wanted him to renovate the Q in Mission Valley - if he wanted the team to stay.

Haele

[maxrandb]

21. Did Trump take credit for

bringing those jobs to Los Angeles yet?

[mac56]

23. No matter whether they move from San Diego or Oakland,

to me they'll always be the Brooklyn Dodgers.

[Xolodno]

24. Please let the deal fall apart at the last minute.....

LA (and OC) cannot support two pro-NFL teams.

When you include two baseball teams, two hockey teams, two basket ball teams, two PAC 12 teams and a Soccer team.....the sports market is already pretty over saturated. When you throw in the Rams it gets dicey. I hope the Chargers suck monkey balls so that no one wants to go a game and ticket sales suck so bad it doesn't get televised.

LA got along without a pro NFL team for a long time....so much so, we even didn't give a shit about the Chargers, who were the closest team.

[Stuart G]

25. I got a question please....(hand raised)....

What was wrong with the stadium that the Chargers are/were playing in?..
Why rebuild?..Why build a new stadium at all?..
Why leave?.. Didn't the Chargers sell out??? What is the point of all this??

thank you for any answers....(although, from a distance, I think I have an idea, but I am not a football fan)

[MindPilot]

30. Basically we didn't want to screw the tourists

The current stadium is old and a little too small. The locker room and broadcast facilities are obsolete. No one really argues that we don't need a new stadium, but the question was who will pay for it?

Obviously the obscenely rich fuck who owns the team wants the taxpayers to foot the bill, but we pretty much said no. After many different plans that would all result in everyone but the obscenely rich fuck who owns the team paying for the stadium, there was a plan on the ballot called prop C. Prop C would raise the hotel tax and pay for the stadium with that, costing the residents of San Diego nothing. Um, yeah, no. Why should people who come here to attend ComicCon, a business conference or even just to enjoy the beach, be extorted into paying for our stadium?

So the obscenely rich fuck who owns the team said fuck you to the people of San Diego and the team's fans.

[Stuart G]

33. Thank You for your explanation

[haele]

31. Answers -

1) Nothing wrong with the old stadium the Chargers were in that a little renovation couldn't fix. Except perhaps there weren't enough expensive skyboxes and valet parking options to keep the rich folks from having to interact with the po'folks.
2) Taxpayer money/subsidies for the previous stadium renovation back in the late 1990's will be over soon if it hasn't already expired. I think in about two years or so? So the city won't be required to pony up guaranteed ticket sales money every time the Charger's games don't sell out, which is less money in the Spanos pockets.
- Also, the old stadium is in the middle of a river valley with lots of open space around (offered up to developers to create revenue to pay for a new stadium renovation) that can be easily accessed by at least two freeways. It also has one existing E/W line trolley stop and will be getting another one from a new N/S line that's being built coming, to cut down on any complaints about parking or traffic. It isn't pretty and covered with glass and architectural doo-dads and in the middle of a jumping night life, the waterfront "view" and high density new housing, where out of town rich folks can stay at a chi-chi hotel downtown and go to happening micro-brew bars after the game. The existing "Q" the Chargers currently play in is just a 70K+ seating stadium that's been on site from the 1970's that also hosts Tijuana Futbal teams, various college sports, concerts, and Monster Truck Rallies when the Chargers aren't playing.

The new planned Convadium, or ConStadium, (whatever they wanted to call the new Spanos mixed Stadium and convention area) would have uprooted the city's Trolley/Bus maintenance yard, the main trolley station (where the three trolley lines meet), several light industrial buildings associated with San Diego shipbuilding and/or ports, as well as most of the south-eastern parking for the current downtown convention area/East Village housing area.

It's also supposed to be located in a high density chokepoint area between I-5 and the bridge to Coronado, where if there's any expansion, you run into the freeway or start tearing up low-income housing and the several large homeless shelters in Barrio Logan. (Shades of Castro Hill/Dodger Stadium in L.A...they're only Hispanics, poor blacks and poor whites down there anyway...) Not only that, traffic to and from the Convadium on the surface streets in the older (1920's) neighborhoods in the area would be horrendous and potentially fatal for kids and the large number of homeless that are in the area.
Not only that, the long-term loss - up to a thousand or more - in local full time jobs within the community would offset any short-term gain the construction of the site would bring, not to mention the hundred or little more full time jobs a Convadium would bring. Sure, during the season, you'd get a large influx of part-time workers that might meet the level of jobs lost, but they're pretty much going to be low-paying concessions, set-up, or delivery jobs lasting only a dozen or so hours a week.

The Convadium would have been subsidized by an increase in the regional hotel tax, because supposedly the Chargers and the new stadium would be attracting more visitors. Better than a bond issue, but after the last time there was a stadium renovation, that really screwed the taxpayers, and no one in the city would fall for that bullshit anymore.

The point of this is that the Spanos empire wants to be subsidized for owning a Football team. And they didn't want to stay in Mission Valley, even though there is plenty of room to expand without affecting residents there, and the chance to maintain a revenue flow through rental properties they were offered land to develop on to stay in the area.
The environmental clean-up at both sites would be about the same. The cost to demolish existing structures to expand/renovate would be about the same.
But, they didn't want to be in the same old spot, where just average people could come to the games using the trolley, or spread out and tailgate if they drove in off either the I-8 or the 15 freeways. The Spanos and the NFL owners wanted something - special.

And the city and county of San Diego just didn't want to give up a major section of our port and our communities just to please a small group of out-of-town billionaires for maybe 10 weeks out of any given year.

Haele

[Stuart G]

32. Thank You...appreciate your explanation...and..

thank you for the time and effort you put in to post in...

Stuart..

[SHRED]

26. The billionaire Spanos family is done

They are done soaking the San Diego City taxpayers.

Now off to "greener" pastures in Los Angeles.


...

[scscholar]

28. LA was too wll educated to support NFL teams in the 90s...

so why do they think it will support even a single NFL team now? LA proved they don't.

[sdfernando]

29. I've been ready to help load up the van for a years now....just say where and when...

the sooner they leave the better! Sorry excuse for a team and owner.