On the same week that negotiations to bring pro football’s next franchise to Los Angeles seemed to fall apart, people in Cleveland were celebrating the return of the NFL.
Feelings were running so high there that on the day of the newly minted Browns’ first game, a Cleveland TV station broadcast a three-hour pre-game show for an exhibition game.
Feelings have been pretty high about football in Los Angeles, too, but in a much different vein. When the National Football League announced that L.A.’s chances for a new franchise were all but dead without more public money, it unified local opinion into a single message:
Bye, bye, NFL.
In many ways, this indifferent, even hostile attitude is extraordinary considering how other metropolitan areas in recent years have ponied up hundreds of millions of dollars for the privilege of having a football team.
But L.A. is different. The question is why.
David M. Carter, principal of Sports Business Group, an L.A.-based sports marketing firm, says a lot of it comes down to Angelenos being more sophisticated than taxpayers and community leaders in other regions.
“(The argument for public funds) doesn’t work because the competition for entertainment dollars is more fierce than just about anywhere else in the country,” he said.
Unlike Cleveland, L.A. doesn’t need the supposed status and media exposure that comes from having a pro football team. The area already has two baseball teams, two basketball teams and two hockey teams (even if none of them are doing very well).
L.A. also has a women’s basketball team and a professional soccer team. As for football? Watch USC and UCLA.
In cities like Jacksonville, Fla., or Nashville, Tenn., “whether you have a football team is very, very important because you don’t have other things to distinguish your city as a major-league city,” said William Fulton, an urban planner and author of “The Reluctant Metropolis.”
But there are other factors, too. Recent use of public funds for high-profile projects hasn’t reaped impressive results. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority had huge cost overruns and some well-publicized accidents in building its subway. And the Los Angeles Unified School District has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on building the Belmont Learning Center on a site that, thanks to its proximity to oil wells, may be uninhabitable.
“We’re living in a time of misspent money on the MTA, misspent money on Belmont, and we have potential (football team) owners who are billionaires,” said Joel Fox, past president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. His group recently released a poll showing almost 80 percent of California taxpayers are opposed to using public subsidies to bring a team here.
Anger over public funding is compounded by the pique felt by many when both the Raiders and Rams left Southern California in 1995.
The Rams wanted public funds to improve the Coliseum in the ’80s, then moved south to Anaheim, which gave the team a sweeter deal than could be found here. Then, when Anaheim was unwilling to build a new football stadium, the Rams left for St. Louis.
Raiders owner Al Davis first brought his team to L.A. when Oakland wouldn’t give him concessions on a stadium deal, then hauled his team back to the Bay Area after feuding with the Coliseum Commission.
“We’ve been burned twice before,” said Carter. “We’ve been through this, we know how it works, and we’re not going to subsidize another carpetbagging owner.”
The city’s changing demographics also play a role. The last time L.A.’s large and expanding Latino population paid attention to football was when the Raiders were in town. But for Spanish-speaking residents, futbol (soccer) clearly is more important.
And unlike soccer, pro football games are expensive to attend often outside the price range of low-income immigrant families who aren’t especially passionate about the sport to begin with.
“If you remember, (the Raiders) had significant attraction in the black and Latino community,” said Fernando Oaxaca, chairman of Oaxaca & Associates, an L.A. marketing and communications firm that focuses on the Latino community. “The Raiders did a lot of advertising in Spanish. (But) if you look at the median income of Latinos, and I don’t know what a new team would charge, that could be a deterrent.”
High prices aren’t just a problem for immigrants. The current focus on luxury boxes, and escalating player salaries that forces team owners to jack up ticket prices, have priced the average fan out of the market. For many, watching on television is the only way to see a game.
“Since we don’t have a team here, the networks can show the best game of the week,” said Steve Carbone, senior producer at talk-radio station KXTA-AM 1150. “(Prior to 1995), we could be missing a Minnesota-Green Bay game because we’d be forced to watch the Rams.”
Of course, many argue that with a city as big as Los Angeles, it should be fairly easy to fill a stadium.
“You only need 1 percent of the population,” said Rick Jaffe, executive sports editor at the Los Angeles Times. “But we’re not like other cities clamoring for a team to come to town.”
He said the majority of letters coming to the paper on the issue are vehemently against the use of public funds.
The media itself has played a part in the general skepticism about a new team. In cities like Charlotte, N.C., and Jacksonville, Fla., the local papers saw expansion franchises as a way of generating more revenue. But here, the Times, Daily News and Business Journal all have run editorials opposing the use of public funds for a team.
The lack of public groundswell hasn’t stopped the effort to salvage L.A.’s bid. Last week, Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, in whose district the Coliseum lies, spoke of L.A.’s “intense public interest” in bringing back professional football. By his side was Edward Roski Jr., a principal in one of the groups vying to own the NFL expansion team.
Yet even Roski, who has labored as much as anyone to get an NFL team back here, and who has a huge personal stake in the issue, remained realistic and echoed the general public sentiment. “NFL football is not the most important thing to Los Angeles,” Roski conceded.
