Saturday, May 25, 2002
San Diego ponders whether it can afford to keep Chargers
By BERNIE WILSON
AP Sports Writer
SAN DIEGO — This city's checkered relationship with pro sports is getting tested again.
San Diego has lost two NBA franchises, almost said goodbye to big league baseball and had a lucrative Super Bowl and a new downtown ballpark threatened by lawsuits.
Now the Chargers, Southern California's only NFL team, say they need a new stadium to keep up financially with other franchises. If they don't get one here, they might get one in Los Angeles, where they played the 1960 season before moving south.
If the Chargers leave, so does San Diego's chance of getting future Super Bowls and the millions of dollars they bring in.
The Super Bowl returns in January for the third time, but it certainly will be the last in the current stadium. Brilliant sunshine in late January only goes so far; the NFL says 35-year-old Qualcomm Stadium has fallen below league standards for Super Bowls. There are 2,500 partial-view seats the league won't sell and the locker rooms have been called the worst in the NFL.
So what's a city to do?
Locals don't seem to be in a mood to further subsidize Chargers owner Alex Spanos, who's worth almost $1 billion. And it was just five years ago that Qualcomm was expanded at a cost of $78 million — with all but $18 million of that publicly financed — ostensibly to keep the team here through 2020 and attract future Super Bowls.
The Spanos family — son Dean runs the team as president — says its first choice is to stay in San Diego, if it gets an acceptable deal.
The Chargers say they've fallen behind because teams that have gotten new stadiums make more money from luxury boxes, other premium seating, naming rights and advertising.
Civic and political leaders knew they'd have to address the Chargers' future, but not this soon.
“We were thinking this would be a nice, quiet summer focused on the Super Bowl and the Padres,” said Ron Fowler, chairman of the San Diego Super Bowl Host Committee. “L.A. issues have accelerated that.”
A group led by Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz wants to build a new stadium in downtown Los Angeles to lure an NFL team back to the nation's second-largest TV market. Los Angeles been without the NFL since the Raiders and Rams left before the 1995 season.
The Chargers are prime candidates because of an “out” clause in their lease that allows them to shop for a deal with other cities and leave after the 2003 season, if certain conditions are met.
The Chargers announced May 9 that they'll move training camp in 2003 from San Diego to a complex being built by Anschutz in the Los Angeles suburb of Carson.
The team has hired Mark Fabiani, a former special counsel in the Clinton White House, to expedite efforts to get a new stadium here or elsewhere.
Even before those developments, a group of business and sports leaders headed by Fowler quietly hired a consultant last month to begin looking at ways to keep the Chargers. The consultant, whom Fowler did not want to identify, is looking at the best combination of funding that would be acceptable to a leery public, as well as possible stadium sites throughout the county. The group hopes to offer some recommendations by late June.
Fowler fears losing the Chargers would mark San Diego as a place where things don't get done. And if the city ever decided it wanted another NFL team, it would cost millions to get one.
“It can be a negative, and I don't think we need that if we want to be a world-class community, and I think we are,” Fowler said. “We think professional sports, as well as arts such as the opera and the symphony, are major elements of major communities, and we're trying to keep all of them.”
San Diego is a two-time NBA loser. The Rockets were sold to a Houston group in 1971 and the Clippers left for L.A. in 1984.
The Padres were packed and ready to move to Washington, D.C., when McDonald's founder Ray Kroc bought them on Jan. 25, 1974.
In 1997, the city had to fight off a legal challenge to the stadium expansion to keep from losing the 1998 Super Bowl.
And now the Chargers, who've experienced the highs of Air Coryell and the lows of Ryan Leaf, are in danger of bolting to hated L.A.
“I'm an optimist, and I've asked Dean the question directly, "If we can get close to what you might get elsewhere, would you stay in San Diego?' He answered "Yes' to that question,” Fowler said.
“I sincerely feel they do want to stay here, but it's not going to be easy. But nothing good is very easy.”
Especially in San Diego's current political and economic climate.
The city recently got the Padres' new ballpark back on track after fending off 16 lawsuits against the $450 million project, a joint public-private venture. The fight set back the project two years.
The Chargers have angered many San Diegans with poor play — they've missed the playoffs six straight seasons and lost 26 of their last 32 games — and a refusal to renegotiate a controversial ticket guarantee they got as part of a sweetheart deal in 1995.
From 1997-2006, the city will guarantee the team revenue equal to the sale of 60,000 general admission seats per game. In the last five seasons, the city has had to credit the Chargers more than $25 million, reducing the team's net rent to $3.5 million. During that span, the Chargers are an NFL-worst 23-57.
“I believe San Diegans would be disappointed if the Chargers left San Diego,” mayor Dick Murphy said. “On the other hand, I do not think they want to use public money to build a new stadium. Obviously, this presents a challenging dilemma.”
Fabiani said the Spanos' contribution to a new stadium in San Diego would be “significant” but would depend on a number of factors yet to be determined.
Last year, Forbes magazine estimated Alex Spanos' net worth at $870 million, and the Chargers' at $416 million. In his new autobiography, Spanos said he paid $40 million cash for the team in 1984.
Spanos' construction company does more than $1 billion in sales annually, according to its Web site.
The Chargers, however, are in the bottom quarter of the NFL in revenue “and falling,” Fabiani said. The team knows it will have leverage if it gets an offer from the Anschutz group. San Diego has the right to match any offer the Chargers receive.
“It's no secret that the further you go north, the more wealth you run into, the more corporate headquarters you run into, and you can no question charge more for things in Los Angeles than you can in San Diego,” Fabiani said.
“Having said all that, we're not trying to squeeze every last dime out of this deal. We're just trying to stay in San Diego with a deal that protects the team over the long term.”
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San Diego ponders whether it can afford to keep Chargers
