Oakland to tell NFL it needs more time on Raiders
The three teams have said they want to move to the Los Angeles market, and the NFL has asked each city to present a stadium financing plan by Wednesday before league owners decide in January which team or teams will get to move.
Schaaf says Oakland needs more time to iron out a deal with the Raiders and will send the league a letter to that effect by Wednesday.
“The NFL understands Oakland is operating in a uniquely complex situation and that we can’t rush what needs to be a transparent public process,” Schaaf said last week.
“The gut for a lot of people is that $400 million is the difference in long-run revenue streams between Los Angeles and these smaller markets,” said Victor Matheson, a sports economist at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts.
If the St. Louis Rams and the San Diego Chargers stay put, then Raiders owner Mark Davis could lose his chance to move to a $1.7 billion stadium in the Los Angeles suburb of Carson.
Rodney Fort, a sports management professor at the University of Michigan, said the league will gain little by allowing any team to move to the Los Angeles market, which has been vacant since 1995, when the Raiders returned to Oakland and the Rams left Anaheim for St. Louis.
For years, teams have used the threat of moving to the Los Angeles area to extract heaping subsidies from their home towns.
Fort said the NFL would benefit most by creating two new teams to fill the Los Angeles market, which would generate about $2 billion for the league.