According to a report, the NFL believes the Oakland Raiders could fetch $2 billion or more if sold.
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CBSSports.com’s Jason La Canfora, citing league sources, reported that—with the sale of the Buffalo Bills for $1.4 billion pending league approval—the NFL is paying a lot of attention to the Raiders situation.
With an uncertain stadium situation—the Raiders’ lease at O.co Coliseum expires at the end of the season—the Raiders could be a prime candidate to move back to Los Angeles.
According to La Canfora, league officials believe selling the Raiders is the most likely avenue for moving the team back to Los Angeles, where the Raiders played from 1982-94.
Current Raiders owner Mark Davis has little experience in real estate, marketing, business expertise or much else in the way of skills beyond being the offspring of a guy who owned an NFL franchise.
If the NFL could convince Davis to take $2 billion or more to sell the team to someone on the league’s short list of potential owners, such as Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, that could put the NFL on the fast track back into the nation’s second-largest television market.
There isn’t a lot of hope the Raiders can get a new facility in the Bay Area (that window closed when the Raiders turned down a chance to co-op with the San Francisco 49ers on Levi’s Stadium) and San Antonio isn’t an option that excites very many people outside of San Antonio and nobody at the NFL’s 345 Park Avenue offices.
But the X-factor in the situation is the St. Louis Rams, the other team that called Los Angeles home. The Rams’ lease is also up at the end of the season and Rams owner Stan Kroenke happens to own a piece of Los Angeles real estate that would be just about the perfect size and shape for something that could resemble a football stadium.
The Rams played in Los Angeles from 1946-79 and in Anaheim from 1980-94 before the team was moved to the Midwest.
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