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Report: NFL makes Raiders Las Vegas relocation fee more workable

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For all the talk from Roger Goodell and the NFL about wanting to keep teams from relocating, their actions sure seem to tell another story. We already saw them throw out the supposed rules regarding relocation to pave the way for the Rams to leave St Louis for Los Angeles with the Chargers now joining them. Now it looks like they’re doing their part to help the Raiders skip town as well.

Rams owner Stan Kroenke and Chargers owner Dean Spanos are both quite wealthy. So paying the $650 million relocation fee wasn’t a major issue for them. For Mark Davis it would be. He isn’t rich by means outside of the Raiders.

If Goodell had any intention of trying to keep the Raiders in Oakland, he wouldn’t have to do anything but simply keep the relocation fee at the same figure as Kroenke and Spanos were given.

Instead, he is lowering the relocation fee to between $325 and $375 million according to an MMQB report. That $100 million extra in G4 loan for the Raiders to stay in Oakland pales in comparison to saving as much as $325 million — literally cutting the relocation fee in half.

The report is a preview of a longer one which will be published on Thursday, which should promise to be one worth reading. As of the preview, the outlook coming from Peter King was “Looks like they won’t be the Oakland Raiders much longer.”

The relocation vote is scheduled for next Monday, March 27 at the owners meeting in Arizona. Three quarters of the owners (24 of 32) must vote yes to approve it.