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The St. Louis Rams will relocate to Los Angeles after a vote from NFL owners approved the move Tuesday. They could share a stadium in Inglewood with the San Diego Chargers, who reportedly have the option to join them as soon as this year, or in subsequent years.
Whether the Chargers move is still unclear. Tuesday's vote leaves the option that they will try, once more, to broker a solution with the city of San Diego. The team has one year to decide whether it will relocate. If it decides to stay put or move elsewhere, the Raiders would then have the option to move to Los Angeles.
The Rams have offered another team either a partnership in the new stadium as an owner, or a lease agreement.
There was not much support for the Raiders and their stadium proposal with the Chargers in Carson, and they will remain in Oakland for the time being. They dropped their relocation request late in the proceedings. Dolphins owner Stephen Ross told reporters that the Raiders an Chargers will receive $100 millions towards a new stadium if they remain in their current cities.
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In the first round of votes, the Inglewood project involving the Rams and a team to be determined received the most votes, but it fell four votes shy of the required 75 percent among owners, according to Sam Farmer of the LA Times.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell then met with the owners to discuss a new proposal. Owners reconvened for another hour before reports trickled out that a deal was likely done. The final proposal reportedly passed after a 30-2 vote.
The Inglewood stadium is not expected to be finished until at least 2018. In the mean time, the Rams will likely play at the Los Angeles Coliseum, which has reportedly agreed to host two NFL teams while Inglewood is being built.
In a brief press conference after the vote, commissioner Roger Goodell laid out the details of the proposal that was passed, and expressed his sympathies towards the affected fanbases. He also said that the NFL took "a big step" Tuesday.
"Relocation is a painful process. It's painful for the fans, for communities, for the teams, for the league in general. Stability is something that we taken a great deal of pride in, and in some ways, a bittersweet moment because we were unsuccessful in being able to get the kind of facilities we wanted to get done in their home markets.
So the excitement that we feel about being able to return the Rams to Los Angeles is balanced with a disappointment that we weren't able to get it done for our fans in St. Louis, San Diego and Oakland."
Rams players were reportedly notified before the move had officially been announced.
I'm told @STLouisRams players were just texted by the team to be prepared for news tonight from NFL owners meeting in Houston re: team move
— Alex Marvez (@alexmarvez) January 13, 2016
A placeholder web site for the Los Angeles Rams that had been blank until Tuesday was filled in quickly after the decision was made.
Rams owner Stan Kroenke said that Tuesday's outcome was "bittersweet."
Stan Kroenke: "we worked hard and we got a little bit lucky." calls it "bittersweet." that's not going to play in St Louis
— Jason La Canfora (@JasonLaCanfora) January 13, 2016
Kroenke: "we're excited and I want to thank all of my partners in the NFL." notes big economic boost to Inglewood and "lower income" folks
— Jason La Canfora (@JasonLaCanfora) January 13, 2016
Chargers owner Dean Spanos did not tip his hand either way regarding what he will we do with his franchise in the coming year.
Spanos - "I'm going to look at all of our options... it's very difficult to say -i'm going to do this, I'm going to do that."
— Jason La Canfora (@JasonLaCanfora) January 13, 2016
The St. Louis NFL Stadium Task Force, which came up with a proposal to keep the Rams in St. Louis, was understandably upset at the result of Tuesday's vote.
Today's decision by the NFL concludes a flawed process that ends with the unthinkable result of St. Louis losing the Rams. Over the past 15 months, our stadium task force has delivered in every respect to what the NFL demanded of St. Louis to keep our team. More important, over the past 21 seasons, most of them dire, St. Louis has been remarkably supportive of and faithful to the Rams. We will leave it to the NFL to explain how this could happen and hope the next city that may experience what St. Louis has endured will enjoy a happier and more appropriate outcome.
The NFL has a lengthy history in LA and the city even hosted Super Bowl I at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the current home of the USC Trojans. The Rose Bowl in Pasadena hosted five Super Bowls, but there hasn't been a Super Bowl or a team in the region in over two decades.
Los Angeles first received the Rams in 1946 when the franchise relocated from Cleveland and began playing in the Memorial Coliseum. They stayed for more than three decades before moving to Anaheim Stadium in 1980, before leaving to go to St. Louis after the 1994 season.
The Raiders also left LA after the 1994 season, although its history in the city didn't begin until the team moved from Oakland in 1982. The team spent 13 seasons in the Memorial Coliseum before moving back to Oakland.
Since the departure of both franchises, there have been consistent efforts to bring the NFL back to LA, and there was even a resolution to give the city an expansion team in 1999, but a stadium deal and ownership group couldn't come together and the franchise was awarded to Houston instead.
Los Angeles is the nation's second-biggest media market, behind only New York, and has over 5.4 million television homes. A relocation to Los Angeles means a more than $1 billion boost to the value of the Rams and Chargers, sports marketing consultant Marc Ganis told CNN.