Earlier today, Chargers special counsel Mark Fabiani issued remarks for San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer’s Stadium Task Force and the text has been republished on the Chargers’ site. On its face, the statements don’t seem encouraging for the Chargers’ odds of staying in San Diego, but Dan McSwain of U-T San Diego sees it more as a sign that the team wants to keep things honest and transparent.
“Simply put, it would not be fair to the Chargers – a team that has worked for 14 years to find a stadium solution in San Diego County – to allow other teams that themselves abandoned the LA market to now return and gut the Chargers’ local revenue stream,” Fabiani told the Task Force in Monday’s address. In short, the Chargers are saying that if anyone is going to move to Los Angeles, it should be the Chargers and not the Rams or Raiders who have squandered their opportunities in the nation’s second-largest media market before.
The Chargers also made it known that they want concrete evidence that a new stadium is coming and not just empty promises. That stadium, they say, can not be built on the cheap. “Looking around the country, new stadium costs are coming in at $1.2 (billion) to $1.5 billion. … We have heard commentators say that the stadium could be built for $700MM, or even less,” the statements read.
The Chargers also want a significant slice of the new revenue that comes from the stadium. Furthermore, the Bolts will be extremely reliant on public funding and Fabiani clearly stated that personal seat licenses are not a viable option for the team. While Jerry Jones was able to raise $470MM off of PSLs in Dallas, the Chargers cited feasibility studies which demonstrate that they cannot raise anything close to that.
Love my bolts, but this public funding and demands here are bs.
Chargers want to much from the city, I say let them go to LA. However I don’t know if LA will meet their demands either. Best case scenario is the owner selling the team to someone willing to invest in a new stadium.