Los Angeles Doesn’t Need Two NFL Teams

With talk of the NFL returning to Los Angeles, all eyes are focused on the San Diego Chargers, Minnesota Vikings, Buffalo Bills, St. Louis Rams and even the San Francisco 49ers. But suddenly, the city has turned from a deprived group of citizens hungry for America’s most popular game, to a metropolis so proud and demanding of the league to return, that most are now asking for two teams. What changed from 1994 to now, that’s enabled the city to handle two teams, and most importantly, why are two teams a good thing for city, even if two could reasonably co-exist?

The whole notion that Los Angeles could have the Chargers and Rams, for a lack of a better example, as AFC and NFC teams rekindling a rivalry from the 1960s, is idealistic. The belief has always been that the typical LA fan is a pre-occupied fan, causing the mentions of fair-weather fandom and the whole showing up late/leaving early phenomenon. Regardless of the attempts at curbing the stigma, it’s predominantly true, just look at the attendance of Dodgers and Clippers games over the last five years, as the numbers fluctuate with NLCS births and Blake Griffin.

Los Angeles is a city of transplants. Go to a Kings game when an Eastern Conference team is in town, and it becomes evident just how many Angelinos hail from cities like Philadelphia, New York, and even Detroit. In the 18 years since the Rams and Raiders left, the number of non-Californians has skyrocketed in LA, turning away from being a city that has had always had strong pulls to the Raiders, Cowboys and Steelers, to a city that has legions of fans across the league, as there are seemingly more Packers and Bears bars in LA, than microbreweries. So this is clearly not Chicago, where each Wrigleyville bar is dedicated to a Big Ten university, while all being indebted to the Cubs and Bears.

In addition to transplants, you have to factor in the younger generation that have never seen NFL games in Los Angeles. You could be 17 years old, and have never lived at time when Jerome Bettis was in the Rams’ backfield. So what are these kids doing for teams? It’s simple, they’re following the NBA model of fandom, choosing a team for a superstar and sticking with them. You see kids that are Cowboys fans because they remember the idea of Emmitt Smith, Colts fans for Manning and Patriots fans because they can’t imagine that there was a time when they were easily one of the league’s worst teams.

So with a limited potential fan base as it is, due to so many preexisting opposing fans, the trouble of building a fan base would be hard enough for one NFL franchise. Two teams? Not so easy. Economically, having two teams requires a ton of corporate seating. Considering that the Lakers, Kings and Clippers premier seat holders combined wouldn’t be enough to fill the premier seating of  a stadium like Farmers Field, having two teams could easily leave the stadium with empty seats just like the Yankees have experienced. Of course, there would be a great amount of overlap, just like there is at Staples Center, but Farmers Field has an incredible amount of premier seating.

Lastly, consider that having two teams in the same building would be bound for failure and it would be hard pressed for there to be equality. The Meadowlands was known as Giants Stadium not Jets Stadium, and New York never had the problem of overcoming a pre-existing fan base. Then, look at the Lakers and Clippers, who have played in the same building for 13 years now, without equality. That might be an extreme example, but the truth is that the only way two teams would work in the Greater LA area, is in two stadiums and in counties, with two separate fan bases. Wait, that’s been done before?

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