The NFL is making a big mistake to allow these moves willy-nilly. I can see letting the Rams move back--they only left because the owner wanted to bring football back to her home town. I still say LA Rams. To a lesser extent, I can see letting the Raiders go back, they were there for a long time and developed a sizable following, although I wouldn't allow it myself, it is understandable. But to let the Chargers leave just because the owners want to increase the value of a franchise they bought for $50 million because it was a small market franchise, and destroy the relationship they have created with millions of fans is just wrong. It betrays a failure to understand what the product they are producing is.
The "product" that the NFL creates is a 7 months long reality TV series pitting teams and cities against each other. To create the drama, you require tens of thousands of screaming fans who buy into the notion that the team in their city represents them and their community. That it is not the uniform they are rooting for, as Seinfeld famously put it. Those fans are a lifelong labor of love. Their role is combined with the seasonal input of players and coaches. Their turnover is huge year over year, but for one season, they are all together, and their results become part of the drama that is the product.
If you take the cities and fans out of it, if it's not New England vs. The Giants, or San Diego v. Oakland, with 55 years of history in that game, then the games become uniforms, the fans become a backdrop like the fake fans at fake sports like the X-games. That will diminish the product that the NFL creates, and aid to the decrease in viewership and revenues that may have already started. The NFL is already fighting headwinds from the liberal side of the country, who don't like manliness to begin with. Alienating the fan base that still likes the product is not a good idea.
So, expansion into the LA market may be a good idea from a business standpoint. It makes no sense to do that expansion at the expense of longstanding franchises.
If two teams move to LA then there should be a 25,000 seat stadium they can use so it looks like a big crowd sellout. The NFL has capped its organic growth and has real problems with fan support in Jacksonville, Tampa Bay, and other sites. That is why they look lustfully at London, Mexico City, Tokyo etc but I don’t see that ever working. Maybe the NFL needs to downsize instead of upsize. As for Cleveland, Art Modell gave them a really raw deal, in part to settle his gambling debts as I have heard. Same with the old Baltimore Colts of Unitas fame. The effeminate media including the networks and ESPN are also degrading the NFL product. Many would turn it into touch football if they could.
They should never have been allowed to leave. Art Modell argued against expansion to Baltimore, then cut off stadium negotiations with Cleveland. Then he got a state-built, rent-free stadium from the people of Maryland.
to make it worse, when the Ravens arrived, Orioles owner Peter Angelos (a piece of human debris if there ever was one) invoked the "parity clause" in the Orioles lease at Camden Yards to get out of paying any more rent to the state.
I guess this was Parris Glendening's gift to Baltimore for stealing enough votes to get him elected.
The Chargers also originated in LA.
Actually, the Rams are originally from Cleveland — but that was a LONG time ago! (Just as the Redskins are originally from Boston.)