Stadium Watch: Who will move to Los Angeles?

SAN DIEGO (KUSI) – The three football teams looking to possibly move to L.A., including the Chargers, updated NFL owners on what’s been happening in their home markets at a meeting in San Francisco Wednesday.

But outside the meeting, reporters were interested in Los Angeles and spent 20 minutes grilling the league’s vice president for re-location.

Eric Grubman was grilled about how and when a team or teams will be moving to Los Angeles.

Right now, the competition to get there first is between the Chargers and Stan Kroenke’s St. Louis Rams.

One has a single club which is Kronke’s sponsorship and the other has two clubs:which is the sponsorships of the raiders and the Chargers. I view them as entitled sites where the stadiums are being designed but we are not yet at that point, no one had made a specific proposal with a specific stadium design,” Grubman said.

A move will need the support of 24 owners and the league may soon decide to move up it’s window for teams to file for relocation to this fall.

The question is can teams that want to move fit into that timeline? It’s possible that owners could approve a move to L.A. as soon as October.

“For better or worse, time frame is not perfectly defined but pretty much defined of the amount of work, the entitlement that’s been done on the two sites by multiple clubs has brought it to the point where we think there could be at least one and maybe two relocation proposals available to act on in time for the 2016 season,” Grubman added.

While the league sort of dictates what franchises can do, there are variables to its control.

“The most important of which I’d identify is what the home markets do, whether there’s an attractive proposal or proposals that comes out of those markets that will define to a great extent what each of the clubs wants to do and what the membership thinks should be done,” he added.

The NFL continues to say its preference to keep teams in their home markets, but this is a business, a mutli-million dollar business.

“Sometimes things just don’t get done, and its incumbent on all of us to provide help and assistance to a club that doesn’t continually fall behind the rest of the league,” Grubman said.

But there are exceptions to every rule, including relocation.

“Clubs that believe that they’ve exhausted the possibilities in their market and are exploring alternatives elsewhere still want to keep their fans.to the extent that fan interest is strong in their home market something will be able to get worked out,” Grubman added.

Grubman also said during his visit to San Diego last month, he sense the tremendous support and appreciation of Chargers fans to their team.