The Morning Report
Get the news and information you need to take on the day.
In nearly every news story, you can’t fit in everything you’d like to. Here are a couple of tidbits that didn’t make it into today’s story on the Chargers stadium financing, but are interesting:
- David Carter, executive director of the USC Sports Business Institute, said he didn’t believe the NFL would be the first major professional sport to put a team in Las Vegas. (Sin City has tried to talk stadium with the Chargers.)
He said the risk aversion of the different commissioners will play a role in who first decides to toss aside the sports-gambling concerns related to Las Vegas. NFL Commission Roger Goodell just took over the top post last fall — meaning he would be less likely to take a chance on Las Vegas as, say, the more established NBA or NHL commissioners, Carter said.
Plus, the city would have an easier time filling a basketball or hockey arena with other events such as concerns or special events than it would a football stadium, he said.
Carter also offered a theory as to why California is less inclined to offer taxpayer subsidies: sports franchises mean less to cities’ identities here than they do elsewhere.
- Real estate advisor Gary London still thinks the city of San Diego is in the best position to keep the Chargers.
“Honestly, I believe … the city has to revisit the Qualcomm proposal. Because at the end of the day Qualcomm has to be redeveloped whether it involves a stadium or not,” he said.
London added: “It’s just pure politics that they don’t look at it again.”
- Port Commissioner Steve Cushman said the port would lease land at market rate for whatever stadium deal it would be involved with.
“We are trustees of the state of California,” he said. “Everything we would do would have to be market rent whether it be National City or Chula Vista.”
- The Chargers have planned on using a $70 million loan from the NFL to help finance the stadium through the league’s G-3 program. However, those funds dried up last month when team owners granted a total of $300 million in loans to both the Giants and the Jets to help finance a new shared stadium in New Jersey.
The team is hoping the program gets reauthorized as part of a new revenue-sharing agreement — and it’s hoping it will be entitled to more than the $70 million it was entitled to under the G-3 program.