LOS ANGELES (CelebrityAccess MediaWire) — Philip Anschutz's failed bid to sell Anschutz Entertainment Group may have hampered the company's prospects of landing an NFL team for the proposed L.A. stadium, Farmers Field.
“No [team] owner, and certainly not the NFL, is going to go in and create something that has tremendous value for someone who's taking the capital and leaving," NFL executive vice president/business ventures Eric Grubman said at IMG World Congress of Sports this week.
AEG, led by the long-time public face of the company Tim Leiweke, finalized an agreement over the stadium with the city of Los Angeles in September, contingent upon AEG identifying an NFL team that was willing to move to the stadium by October, 2014. Then, company owner Phil Anshutz announced that AEG was for sale in September, a process that lingered on until last month when Anschutz unexpectedly terminated the sale, saying that Leiweke was leaving the company and that Anschutz would be taking a greater role in overseeing AEG.
The news has left some Los Angeles city officials frustrated and this week, the city announced that they would be exploring alternate plans to redevelop the convention center, a key component of the stadium deal, in the wake of AEG's management shakeup.
City Councilman Bill Rosendahl told the L.A. Times that he was "outraged" at Leiweke's exit. "I'm very disappointed to hear that AEG is playing some games with us," Rosendahl told The Times.
Both Anschutz and the NFL said that they were still working to find a way to bring an NFL franchise to the city but Grubman noted that currently competing stadium developers will have to alter current proposals in order to lure a team to the city, according to a report by Tripp Mickle of Street & Smith's SportsBusiness Daily. – CelebrityAccess Staff Writers
