Rams Moving to Los Angeles Area, and Chargers Could Join Them

HOUSTON — After more than two decades, the N.F.L. has found its way back to Los Angeles.

The St. Louis Rams will move to the Los Angeles area, where they intend to build a new, nearly $3 billion stadium in an entertainment complex in Inglewood, Calif., just over 10 miles from downtown. TheSan Diego Chargers will have the option to join them as soon as next season, and if they decline, the Oakland Raiders could make the move.

The Rams, who played in the Los Angeles area for decades, will give the area its first N.F.L. team since 1995, when they moved to St. Louis, followed by the Raiders, who left Los Angeles a few months later that year for Oakland. Owners for both teams could not agree with civic leaders on new or refurbished stadiums.

The announcement came on Tuesday after a series of private meetings spread over 12 hours here among some of the biggest titans of industry, including Robert A. Iger, the chairman of Disney; Paul Allen, the Microsoft co-founder and now owner of the Seattle Seahawks; and E. Stanley Kroenke, the owner of the Rams, whose fortune derives in part from the Walton family of Wal-Mart fame, hashed out the move that had eluded the league for two decades.

“We have the return of the Los Angeles Rams to their home,” the N.F.L. commissioner, Roger Goodell, said in a news conference, looking tired after a day of marathon meetings and deliberations. “We have a facility that is going to be absolutely extraordinary, and that is going to set a new bar.”

Flanked by the chairmen of the Los Angeles Opportunities committee, Bob McNair of the Houston Texans and Art Rooney of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Goodell said that the facility in Inglewood was “more than just a stadium” and would be a “signature product.”

Moving two N.F.L. teams at once to the same city is unprecedented, and if the Chargers join the Rams, they will be the second current pair to share a stadium, after the Jets and the Giants, who moved to MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., in 2010.

The return to Los Angeles fills a void for the nation’s most popular sport, which has enjoyed explosive growth over the past two decades even without a team there.

Over the years, some of Los Angeles’s biggest power brokers, including the entertainment mogul Michael Ovitz, the philanthropist and developer Eli Broad and the supermarket magnate Ron Burkle, had made overtures to the league for a team, to no avail.

The decision, in a 30-2 vote among the league’s 32 team owners, comes after more than a year of often acrimonious lobbying by the Chargers, the Raiders and the Rams, who each applied to move to the Los Angeles area last month because, they said, they were unable to get enough public support to build new stadiums in their markets.

At least 24 owners had to vote in favor of the move for it to gain approval.

St. Louis fans reacted with anger, and civic leaders said the N.F.L. disregarded their efforts to keep the team.

“It is troubling that the league would allow for the relocation of a team when a home market has worked in good faith and presented a strong and viable proposal,” Gov. Jay Nixon of Missouri said in a statement. “This sets a terrible precedent not only for St. Louis, but for all commLos Angeles leaders exulted.

“The water drought is still with us, but the Los Angeles football drought is over,” Mayor Eric Garcetti said in an interview.

He added, “I think there is tremendous excitement in L.A. I can feel it in the streets.”

That remains to be seen.

With Los Angeles the nation’s second-largest television market, the N.F.L. has longed for a return to the area, where several Super Bowls have been played. But taxpayers’ apprehension on financing stadiums or difficulties acquiring suitable sites have stymied previous efforts to put a team there.

Los Angeles football fans also have a reputation for being among the most blasé about following their teams; although civic leaders have chafed at the absence of a team, there has never been a strong outcry from the populace, in part because games from every other N.F.L. city are readily available on television.

Some owners favored letting only one team move to Los Angeles because they did not believe two teams could be successful there right away. Still, three teams were willing to bet the attraction was strong and applied to move to Los Angeles, with the teams’ owners planning to foot all or most of the bill for stadiums.

The Rams will build a glass-roofed stadium that could cost nearly $3 billion, easily the most expensive building in sports.

If an agreement is reached between the Rams and the Chargers, the Rams will play temporarily at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum — previously the home to the Rams, the Chargers and the Raiders and the site of two Super Bowls, including the first, in 1967 — starting in August 2016.

Where the Chargers would play temporarily is unclear.

“My goal from the start of this process was to create the options necessary to safeguard the future of the Chargers franchise while respecting the will of my fellow N.F.L. owners,” Dean Spanos, the chairman of the Chargers, said in a statement. “I will be working over the next several weeks to explore the options that we have now created for ourselves to determine the best path forward for the Chargers.”

Kroenke — who also owns the Colorado Avalanche of the N.H.L., the Denver Nuggets of the N.B.A. and Arsenal of the English Premier League — has already acquired the land and rights to build in Inglewood.

Los Angeles leaders exulted.

“The water drought is still with us, but the Los Angeles football drought is over,” Mayor Eric Garcetti said in an interview.

He added, “I think there is tremendous excitement in L.A. I can feel it in the streets.”

That remains to be seen.

With Los Angeles the nation’s second-largest television market, the N.F.L. has longed for a return to the area, where several Super Bowls have been played. But taxpayers’ apprehension on financing stadiums or difficulties acquiring suitable sites have stymied previous efforts to put a team there.

Los Angeles football fans also have a reputation for being among the most blasé about following their teams; although civic leaders have chafed at the absence of a team, there has never been a strong outcry from the populace, in part because games from every other N.F.L. city are readily available on television.

Some owners favored letting only one team move to Los Angeles because they did not believe two teams could be successful there right away. Still, three teams were willing to bet the attraction was strong and applied to move to Los Angeles, with the teams’ owners planning to foot all or most of the bill for stadiums.

The Rams will build a glass-roofed stadium that could cost nearly $3 billion, easily the most expensive building in sports.

If an agreement is reached between the Rams and the Chargers, the Rams will play temporarily at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum — previously the home to the Rams, the Chargers and the Raiders and the site of two Super Bowls, including the first, in 1967 — starting in August 2016.

Where the Chargers would play temporarily is unclear.

“My goal from the start of this process was to create the options necessary to safeguard the future of the Chargers franchise while respecting the will of my fellow N.F.L. owners,” Dean Spanos, the chairman of the Chargers, said in a statement. “I will be working over the next several weeks to explore the options that we have now created for ourselves to determine the best path forward for the Chargers.”

Kroenke — who also owns the Colorado Avalanche of the N.H.L., the Denver Nuggets of the N.B.A. and Arsenal of the English Premier League — has already acquired the land and rights to build in Inglewood.

The Rams are expected to pay the league a relocation fee of $650 million, stretched out over about 20 years.

The Chargers originally teamed with the Raiders, but that partnership fell apart when the Rams’ proposal won 20 votes at a ballot earlier Tuesday. At that point, the other owners pressured the Chargers to work out a deal with the Rams in Inglewood.

In 2014, Kroenke bought a 60-acre tract in Inglewood, and he later added land where the old Hollywood Park Racetrack stood. Last January, he announced plans to build a domed stadium surrounded by an entertainment district.

Weeks later, the Chargers, who say that a quarter of their fans come from Los Angeles and Orange County, said they would build an outdoor stadium in Carson with the Raiders.

The Chargers and the Raiders also recruited Iger, the chairman of Disney, to serve as an honorary executive and help plan the stadium. In the end, Iger’s expertise and connections in the entertainment business were not enough to reassure other owners that the stadium in Carson could outdo the proposal in Inglewood.

The Raiders will presumably begin fresh negotiations with the city of Oakland over a new stadium. Libby Schaaf, the mayor, has said the city cannot afford to help build a stadium, but it could provide the land and infrastructure improvements needed for one. On Tuesday, she welcomed the chance to restart talks with the team.

Los Angeles has had professional teams for decades, and the Chargers, the Raiders and the Rams have all played in the city at some point. The Chargers, a charter member of the A.F.L., left Los Angeles for San Diego after one season.

Los Angeles has long been a favorite of the league, and the league has been eager to have such a marquee city again on its map.

In 1996, the Seahawks toyed with moving to Southern California, but the team was sold to Allen, who helped build a new stadium for the team in Seattle. Three years later, the league wanted to add a 32nd team, but when Los Angeles and the N.F.L. could not agree on a stadium site, the owners awarded the franchise to Houston.

In the years afterward, proposals were offered to build stadiums in downtown Los Angeles, in nearby City of Industry and elsewhere. But none of the investors were able to persuade an N.F.L. team to move into a stadium that it did not control.

Nevertheless, the absence of a team in Los Angeles was used as a bargaining chip by teams trying to build stadiums in their home markets. The Minnesota Vikings, among other teams, have floated the idea of moving to Los Angeles as a way to win public funding for a stadium.

Although the N.F.L. has not had a team in Los Angeles in recent years, it has kept a foothold in that region. NFL Network is headquartered in Culver City, the owners have held meetings in the area, and the Dallas Cowboys hold their training camp in Oxnard. Television ratings for N.F.L. games are also strong in the region.

The N.F.L. has expanded rapidly in the two decades since the Raiders and the Rams left, which has led some to posit that the league did not need to return to Los Angeles. The city has two big college teams, and fans from all over the country have moved to the region and root for an array of teams from elsewhere. Some sports business experts have suggested that placing a team in Los Angeles does not guarantee success.

Los Angeles is merely the latest return destination for the N.F.L.; the league has put a team back in every city it has left in the past few decades, including Baltimore, Cleveland, Houston, Oakland and St. Louis, and generally succeeded.