Written by Scott Weinberger
The Los Angeles Rams haven’t played a football game since 1994 and not a single player on the active roster was drafted to play in L.A. Nevertheless, the team, whose stadium is currently nothing but a grandiose 3D model, is valued at $2.9 billion.
All too often do fans forget that a professional sports team’s first goal is to generate revenue. Sure, every now and again you’ll hear a disgruntled few gripe about a single player’s max deal worth over $100 million, but the overall worth of a team tends to be either disregarded or simply overlooked. Perhaps this is because the average fan can’t fathom why 17 Sundays of controlled-chaos could be worth $2.9 billion, or in the Dallas Cowboys’ case, $4 billion.
It is estimated that the NFL made roughly $12 billion over the course of the 2014-2015 season. That number, which will surely be eclipsed this summer when the league’s annual reports are released, tells the story of the NFL today. Stan Kroenke, owner of the L.A. Rams and former owner of the St. Louis Rams, decided to relocate his team for no other reason than dollar signs. In the small market of St. Louis, the team’s value was estimated at $1.45 billion. Thus, simply by moving assets that he already owned to the United States’ second largest market, Kroenke doubled his team’s value. From an economic perspective, no one can fault Kroenke for his actions.
But to most fans, sports aren’t purely a matter of economics. To a non-sports fan, paying $100 for a single ticket might seem like a poor investment because there’s no palpable return. To oversimplify things, best case scenario, a fan’s team wins and that person is filled with joy. To most diehard sports fans, the joy that comes from seeing their team win in person is worth more than whatever else that $100 could have been spent on. However, most sports fans don’t rationalize their spending like this. The joy that I just explained isn’t as tangible as a non-sports fan would like it to be. This is because fandom is complex and circumstantial.
Numerically, a win for the L.A. Rams is worth the same amount as a win for the St. Louis Rams, but the emotional return for each fan base is different because the players on the current roster played for the city of St. Louis just as much as they played for Kroenke. When new Rams fans cheer for a Todd Gurley touchdown, they will be cheering for a player who is not their own in some way. Instead, they’ll be citizens of Los Angeles cheering for a St. Louis Ram, at least for the foreseeable future. Yes, there will be a significant number of Angelenos who followed the Rams before they moved away in 1994, but as a native Clevelander who has experienced a similar rebirth, albeit circumstantially different, I have trouble accepting the west-coast version of Rams fans as just that, Rams fans.
All of this being said, what I don’t know is how long it takes for the L.A. Rams to be their own franchise once again. When the Baltimore Ravens won the Super Bowl in 2000, Browns fans reacted somewhat surprisingly. Although it would have been taboo to root for the Ravens that year, many Cleveland fans were able to cope with the win because a new Browns team had already returned in Cleveland. The NFL’s business had begun to rebuild in a market that was willing to support BIG FOOTBALL. Whether or not the same will be said of St. Louis is only a matter of time and money.