NFL team owners are expected Tuesday to approve a resolution that will have Rams Stan Kroenke, owner of the team, paid $571 million to St. Louis in settlement for relocation costs to Los Angeles. Multiple owners and league executives told ESPN.
NFL teams have already contributed $219 million to the $790million settlement with the city. Kroenke would handle the rest, according to the resolution which is expected to pass at Tuesday’s quarterly league meetings in New York.
According to sources, owners would also waive the league’s maximum allowable debt limit in order to make Kroenke a success, they said.
The settlement announced last year ended a 4½-year-old lawsuit filed in the wake of the Rams’ departure from St. Louis. Kroenke and NFL had failed to move the lawsuit out of St. Louis. Courts were supportive of the St. Louis side’s efforts to reveal financial information about team owners, rulings which hastened the drive for a settlement.
The lawsuit sought $1 billion. The suit claimed that the move by the team cost the St. Louis area millions in earnings, ticket and amusement tax revenue.
Georgia Frontiere, then-owner of the Rams, moved them from Los Angeles to St. Louis in 1995. They remained there for 21 seasons until Kroenke took them back.
Kroenke, a Missouri real-estate developer, was married to an heir to the Walmart fortune and became a minority owner of the team when it first arrived in St. Louis. Frontiere, a Missouri real estate developer, died in 2008. Her children left the team to Kroenke. Kroenke purchased the Rams in 2010.
The Rams started pushing for improvements to the stadium’s downtown dome shortly after the sale. It was constructed with taxpayer money in early 1990s in order to attract an NFL team.
St. Louis interest initially proposed a smaller upgrade. However, eventually, they suggested a $1Billion stadium along the Mississippi River. It would be shared by taxpayers, the NFL and the team. Kroenke, however, purchased land at Inglewood, California.
SoFi Stadium was opened in September 2020. It is now home to the Rams as well as the The Rams. Los Angeles ChargersShe moved to San Diego in 2017 from San Diego.