NFL compensates the city of Saint Louis for ‘taking’ the Rams

The NFL and the city of Saint Louis (Missouri) settled their legal dispute over the transfer of the franchise of the Rams a The Angels with a deal worth $ 790 millionlocal authorities reported on Wednesday.

According to the statement, the mayor and county of Saint Louis signed on Wednesday the conciliation agreement with the NFL and the owner of the Rams, Stan Kroenke.

“This historic agreement close a long chapter for our region, ensuring hundreds of millions of dollars for our communities while avoiding the uncertainty of the trial and appeal process, “said the joint statement from the mayor of Saint Louis, Tishaura Jones, and County Executive Sam Page.

The pact ends a lawsuit filed four years ago by the authorities of Saint Louis against the Rams, the NFL and their owners.

The lawsuit alleged that the league had breached its own relocation rules when Kroenke moved the franchise to The Angels (California), a city located almost 3,000 kilometers to the west.

The rules of the NFL require the team and the league to make all reasonable efforts to maintain a franchise in your host city.

Back then, local and regional institutions had spent $ 18 million in a working group that proposed to keep the Rams in a new city stadium, instead of investing billions in the construction of the SoFi Stadium, your new luxurious home in the suburbs of The Angels.

In 2017, the spokesperson for the NFL Brian McCarthy stated that there was “no legitimate basis for this litigation,” noting that the league had worked “diligently” with state and local officials in a process that was “honest and fair at all times. ”

According to the local newspaper St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the commissioner of the NFL, Roger Goodell, approved the agreement this Wednesday and the league is expected to make the payment “within a month“.

The newspaper noted that the league “will determine internally“what percentage of the payment will be paid by the NFL and which for Kroenke and the owners of the other teams.

Thus Kroenke you will not have to appear before a jury in Saint Louis in December, in the prelude to host the Super Bowl in February in the SoFi Stadium from Los Angeles.