It appears inevitable that at least one NFL owner will move his team to Los Angeles soon. One issue that remains unclear is how much that owner will have to pay the other owners for the privilege.
Amid reports that the relocation fee could be up to $500 million, NFL executive V.P. Eric Grubman said it’s just too soon to say how much it will cost a team to move.
“We are not very far along in that,” Grubman said, via ESPN. “They are just sort of designing the analysis, and we’re debating the different ways it can be looked at, and the different time frames it can be looked at. My best guess is that a relocation fee wouldn’t be defined until well toward the end of the process.”
But the NFL can’t wait until the very end of the process to determine the fee because it’s possible that the fee could become a sticking point: If it’s $500 million, that’s a cost that Rams owner Stan Kroenke can afford a lot more easily than Raiders owner Mark Davis or Chargers owner Dean Spanos. Which means that if the other owners prefer to see the Rams as the team that goes to Los Angeles, a good way to do it would be to set the fee at a level that would rule out the Chargers and Raiders.