To long-time followers of stadium dramas in Minnesota, the arrival of the National Football League commissioner at the Capitol today is ho-hum predictable.
The grand entrance of Commissioner Roger Goodell and Art Rooney II, the owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers and chairman of the NFL’s stadium committee, is meant to convey a sense of urgency to the Legislature to act NOW on stadium legislation.
“It was very clear that they see the Vikings will be in play if this is not resolved, or unfavorably resolved, in this session,’’ Gov. Mark Dayton said Thursday after a phone conversation with the league.
There are some who will be all in a dither about Goodell’s meeting with the governor and legislative leaders. “The league must be serious,’’ will be the thought of the nervous types.
And perhaps the league is serious. Certainly, it is serious about getting the Legislature to take an action that most legislators are reluctant to take. A new stadium means more money for the Vikings and more money for the league.
But moving an NFL team, especially a team so beloved as the Vikings, is not so simple as backing up the moving trucks and heading out of town.
Relocation fees, 75 per cent support from other owners, a place to go all are real issues.
Owners' approval
Start with that 75 per cent figure. A franchise which wishes to move must receive the support of 24 of the 32 league owners. It’s far from a given that the Vikings’ owners, Zygi and Mark Wilf, could get that sort of support.
There are any number of reasons league owners would be reluctant to grant approval for the team to leave Minnesota.
There are other franchises – Buffalo, Jacksonville, San Diego and Oakland – all in the same stadium stew as the Vikings. Would Minnesota’s situation be deemed the most serious by other league owners?
Despite the fact that the Metrodome is unloved by virtually all, there are good reasons that league owners would think twice about leaving. The Twin Cities still has more corporate headquarters than most metros in the land. That matters to the corporate NFL. Corporations mean sponsorships and purchase of expensive stadium suites and brotherhood.
There is also this fact: The lifeblood of the NFL is television revenue. The dome may not generate the sort of gate receipt money as most NFL stadiums, but even in bad years, television ratings in Minnesota are always among the highest in the league.
Are 75 per cent of the owners ready to walk away from those sorts of long-term benefits for a couple of owners they don’t know all that well?
(Remember, the Wilfs’ didn’t buy the team until 2005. Despite their claims that the Vikings are somehow losing money, they haven’t done badly on their purchase. According to Forbes Magazine, which annually places values on sports teams, the Wilfs bought the team for $600 million. It’s now valued at $774 million, 30th in the league, ahead of only Oakland and Jacksonville. A new stadium likely would raise the value of the team closer to $1 billion, which is about mid-level in the league.)
Second, there is a multi-million dollar reason the Wilfs would be reluctant to hit the road. It’s called the league’s relocation fee. This is a sliding fee — seemingly plucked from the air — that brother owners charge the moving owner, presumably based on the escalating value of the team.
In the 1990s, the Los Angeles Rams moved to St. Louis (because LA wouldn’t build a stadium) and the Rams’ ownership paid $29 million. Houston’s franchise moved to Tennessee and coughed up $28 million in relocation charges.
Minnesota VikingsMinnesota legislators seem reluctant to fund a proposed new Vikings stadium, but would the funding be easy to come by in other cities?It’s generally assumed that if the Vikings (or Buffalo, et al), would move to Los Angeles, the fee could range anywhere from $200 million to $1 billion.
But that’s not the only stumbling block to an LA move.
The reason teams have left the second biggest market in the country is for want of a revenue-producing stadium. The Coliseum in LA and the Rose Bowl in Pasadena are massive, but, the Metrodome, by comparison, appears sleek and modern.
There long has been talk of a new football palace in LA and it actually appears that a privately funded $1 billion stadium, that would be called Farmer’s Field, could be constructed.
AEG ownership
But this brings on a whole new set of potential stumbling blocks. Farmer’s Field would be built by Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), with Farmer’s Insurance paying $700 million for naming rights.
AEG has one big condition to bringing an NFL team back to LA: It wants substantial ownership in the team.
Would Zygi Wilf really sell a substantial portion of the Vikes? This is, after all, a very wealthy man who clearly finds great gratification, beyond dollars, in owning a team. (Hey, the team owner actually gets to stand on the sideline and is a VIP in Minnesota.)
No question, Wilf could sell the Vikings to AEG or some other LA entity for huge dollars. (The Los Angeles Dodgers were just purchased for $2 billion.) But he would be giving up both a large portion of the team and prominence.
Understand, the politics of big time sports in LA are at least as dynamic as they are in Minnesota.
“I continue to do everything I can to bring an NFL team to Los Angeles,’’ LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa told the Orange County Register last month. “As I’ve said before, we’re closer than any time since the Rams and Raiders left but we still have a long way to go.’’
But again, there are many signs that Los Angeles would not be the destination of a re-location team such as the Vikings.
At the Super Bowl this year, Goodell announced that the only way the league would move into LA is via an expansion team. And if there was to be expansion, two teams would be added to the league.
There’s a reason expansion is so appealing to league owners. Expansion teams are forced to pay even a greater amount to the league than teams paying relocation fees.
But, of course, expansion reduces the number of options where existing teams, such as the Vikings, might move.
Certainly, there are other cities that would be happy to take the Vikings. Birmingham and Portland each are said to be potential sites; but those are locations far more problematic than proven Minnesota.
The Wilfs are the wild-card in this deal. Deep down, they must know that if they’re patient, they will get their new stadium in Minnesota and the value of his team will soar.
But over and over again, legislators say they don’t “trust’’ the Wilfs.
Long-time legislators say that over time, they learned to trust the Twins’ stadium negotiator, Jerry Bell.
“When he spoke,’’ said Sen. Doug Magnus, R-Slayton, “you knew he was speaking for the Pohlads.’’
MinnPost/James NordLester BagleyLegislators aren’t sure that Lester Bagley, the Vikings’ stadium negotiator, has that sort of voice for the Wilfs.
It should be recalled that even the hometown Pohlads pulled every negotiating trick in the book before resolving their stadium deal. (The final stumbling block in that deal was over whether the public or the team should cover construction over-runs. In the end, the Pohlads accepted the over-run obligation and ultimately put more money into the ballpark than was required.)
The question among sports fans is whether the Wilfs are more like Norm Green, the owner of the old Minnesota North Stars, or the Pohlads.
In stressing urgency, Dayton always uses Green and the North Stars as the example. Green moved the franchise to Dallas and the Twin Cities were without pro hockey until the Xcel Center was built.
In stressing there is time, Hennepin County commissioner Mike Opat and legislators talk of the Twins negotiations as the example. Those negotiations went on for a decade. Opat says he believes the region has “at least a year – probably more’’ -- before the stadium talks with the Vikings are at “crisis’’ point.
Meantime, since the House government operations committee rejected advancing the stadium bill on Monday night, there has been growing criticism of the funding plan itself. Both the state portion, to be paid with electronic pull tab receipts, and the Minneapolis portion, to be paid for by extending the convention center sales tax, appear “thin” to many legislators.
Republicans are also using the 9-6 no vote in the Government Operations Committee to blame DFLers for the failure. (Only one DFLer voted to advance the bill out of committee.) This has forced DFL legislative leaders to say that they will come up with more votes when needed.
Overall, however, few legislators believe that a stadium bill can pass on the floor of either body this session.
Goodell is arriving, presumably at the request of Dayton, to make skeptical pols believe that the clock is ticking. The problem for the NFL — and Viking stadium supporters — is that most Minnesotans have heard it all before.