NFL team owners are expected to approve a resolution Tuesday that will have Rams owner Stan Kroenke reimbursing the league for the remaining $571 million paid to St. Louis over the team’s relocation to Los Angeles, multiple owner and league executive sources told ESPN.
The NFL has already paid the $790 million settlement to St. Louis, but how the payment was divided up between Kroenke and the league has been a contentious issue for months.
NFL teams already have contributed a total of $219 million toward the settlement reached with the city last year. Under the resolution expected to be approved at Tuesday’s quarterly league meeting in New York, Kroenke would be responsible for the remainder.
Owners would waive the league’s limit on allowable debt in order for Kroenke to do so, the sources said.
The settlement announced last year ended a 4½-year-old lawsuit filed in the wake of the Rams’ departure from St. Louis. Kroenke and the NFL had failed in bids to have the lawsuit dismissed or at least moved out of St. Louis, and courts were sympathetic to the St. Louis side’s effort to disclose financial information of team owners — rulings that hastened the push for a settlement.
The lawsuit sought more than $1 billion. It claimed the team’s move cost the St. Louis region millions of dollars in amusement, ticket and earnings tax revenue.