Owners uncertain when Los Angeles gets NFL francise

Only God knows if LA can even get a team.

ESPN.com

Twelve years have passed since the NFL was planted in the Los Angeles area. It could be another four years -- at least -- before Los Angeles gets another team.

But NFL owners have assembled in Denver on Monday and Tuesday to move the process of getting a place for an NFL team to land. Outgoing commissioner Paul Tagliabue has made it a priority to pick a stadium site soon and start the building process.

Unfortunately, it's not that easy, and owners will leave Denver by Tuesday night without voting on a stadium project. What they will leave with, though, is a better idea of where the process is heading.

Owners call this the "due diligence" stage of the process. The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum renovation appears to have a huge lead, but the idea of a football stadium next to Angel Stadium can't be dismissed. Though the city of Anaheim isn't expected to send representatives to this meeting, politicians have an offer on the table.

Anaheim is offering to sell the NFL a 53-acre site next to Angel Stadium for $50 million. There, the NFL could build and own a stadium. The land development around there could interest an NFL team and an owner. But the deal may not work financially because whichever owner gets an Anaheim franchise would have to pay for the team and for the stadium, a package that would easily exceed $1 billion.

One problem is that Anaheim is asking for a decision on its proposal by the end of the month. NFL owners are scheduling trips to Anaheim and Los Angeles next month to further look at the sites and the plans.

The Coliseum project would involve an $800 million stadium built inside the frame of the current Coliseum, and this project is considered far ahead of Anaheim plan. Unlike Anaheim, the NFL wouldn't own the land, it would only lease it. The city has added signage rights if an NFL team moves to the Coliseum.

While there is progress after 12 years of no NFL presence in the Los Angeles, the timetable for getting a stadium remains uncertain. The reason is simple. So far, under the current deals, the NFL and the owner who would be buying into the market would have to come up with most of the money.

No one understands that better than Houston Texans owner Bob McNair. McNair said he invested $900 million to buy the expansion team along with the stadium deal at Reliant Park and working capital.

"You have to know what those numbers are before you can do your own economic forecast to determine if you can make it work or not," McNair said.

Those numbers are just starting to be explored at the Denver meeting. McNair has made it work at $900 million after he figured out the numbers more than five years ago.

"It makes a big difference whether the stadium is going to cost $500 million or $1 billion," McNair said. "There are limitations to what a team can generate. There has to be some level of community support. You have to determine how much support is needed. The business community has to show their level of support for the club seats or the PSLs. Until you can give them a number, how are you going to know?"

That's why McNair believes the process of picking a stadium site is several months away.

That's why the idea of having two NFL teams in the Los Angeles area seems so far-fetched at the moment. Figuring a number for what will be a commitment of more than $1 billion for one stadium project is hard enough. Figuring two $1 billion-plus stadium projects is that much more difficult.

"Until you know what the stadium is going to cost, you have no idea how much capital is going to be required to put a team in there," McNair said.

New Orleans to host 2008 NBA All-Star Game

Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS -- The NBA confirmed Monday that its 2008 All-Star Game will be played in this beleaguered but rebuilding city, an announcement local officials seized upon as a sign the Hornets also will be playing here full-time in the 2007-08 season.

"The NBA would not want to award an All-Star Game to a city [that was losing its team], so it certainly bodes well for us in that respect," said Doug Thornton, regional vice president of SMG, the company that manages the state-owned New Orleans Arena and the Louisiana Superdome.

Thornton, along with convention bureau officials, helped negotiate the deal with the NBA to bring the game here. He said the city had to prove it could secure massive blocks of hotel rooms as well as convention space for All-Star weekend events.

The game is one of the biggest national events to be booked in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina laid waste to large swaths of the metro area. Flooding that was catastrophic in many neighborhoods caused only minor damage to the New Orleans arena, which has been repaired and hosted three well-attended Hornets games last March.

"The award of NBA All-Star 2008 is our vote of confidence in the progress that is being made in the reopening and rebuilding of New Orleans' tourism infrastructure," commissioner David Stern said in a statement. "New Orleans will become the basketball capital of the world in February 2008, and demonstrate to a global audience that New Orleans is very much open for business."

The game will be played at New Orleans Arena on Feb. 17, 2008. There will also be a week of events leading up to the game, including the skills competitions the night before the game.

Jay Cicero, president of the Greater New Orleans Sports Foundation, predicted All-Star events would generate between $70 million and $100 million in spending in the city, with corporate-sponsored parties filling up the city's night clubs throughout the weekend.

The New Orleans Hornets played most their home games in Oklahoma City this season because of the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina.

The Hornets are scheduled to play 35 games in Oklahoma City next season and six in New Orleans. Their lease, unless the Hornets or the NBA maneuver to break it, calls for the Hornets to return full-time for the 2007-08 season. Hornets owner George Shinn has said he intends to return but that he does not believe it would be wise to come back if selling tickets, suites and corporate sponsorships proves problematic in the city's post-Katrina economy.

Shinn is looking for minority investors in the Hornets and has meet with prospects in both New Orleans and Oklahoma City. Ticket sales in Oklahoma are on pace to exceed last season, when about half the games where were sellouts and the rest were near capacity.

"NBA All-Star 2008 will be a wonderful opportunity to showcase not only the greatest athletes in the world, but one of the greatest cities in the world in New Orleans," Shinn said. "I cant think of a better way to show people that our city is back and revitalized than by hosting the NBA's signature event.

"We plan to be back in New Orleans for the 2007-08 season and will be working closely with government officials, business leaders and the NBA to ensure that our return is successful for everyone involved," Shinn added.

With insurance settlements and federal aid beginning to pour in, parts of the New Orleans area resemble a boomtown, with bustling construction activity and heavy traffic. But in many poor neighborhoods and more heavily damaged communities to the southeast, gutted buildings, empty neighborhoods and countless piles of debris paint a vivid picture of the widespread devastation Katrina caused more than eight months ago.

There is no apparent loophole that would allow the Hornets out of their lease in New Orleans, which runs through 2012, said Tim Coulon, chairman of the Louisiana Stadium and Exposition District Commission, that state agency that oversees the Superdome and arena.

The commission wanted the Hornets to play a second season in Oklahoma city as part of a strategy to save both the NFL's Saints and the Hornets by phasing them back into a rebuilding market one season apart.

The Saints, now entering their fourth decade in New Orleans, already have broken an all-time season ticket-sales record (about 55,000) with the 2006 regular season still more than three months away.

Coulon said the state's intention is to work closely with the Hornets to help them become successful in New Orleans and to heavily market pro sports as an entertainment option both for local business executives as well as tourists and convention visitors.

"We're looking for the team to live up to the terms of their lease, which remains that they return in 2007," Coulon said. "There may be a scenario where they try to break it, and that's why we have courts."