Fast NFL Bid Made by Ovitz

A motivated, but impatient, Michael Ovitz, supported by a high-powered collection of who’s who in Los Angeles, including Magic Johnson, Tom Cruise and Kevin Costner, put the NFL on notice this week that he’s ready to build a stadium, own an expansion franchise and begin play in 2002.

Ovitz unveiled his financial and stadium plans for a 160-acre site at the southwest corner of where the 405 and 110 freeways merge to NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue and other league officials in a Tuesday night meeting at his home.

At first blush, the NFL, still preferring to go slowly four years after the departure of the Rams and Raiders, might have difficulty keeping up with Ovitz’s enthusiasm. Ovitz, the former agent and Disney executive who runs a Toronto-based entertainment company, knows that he will need the vote of at least 24 of the NFL’s 31 owners to win the day in Los Angeles. He is expected to take his plan directly to each of them in the coming months after failing to receive what he considered promised assurances from the NFL.

At that four-hour meeting Tuesday night, a frustrated Ovitz learned that a promise made last month to endorse his project this June would not be fulfilled. He is pressing for an announcement that he has been authorized by the NFL to build a stadium for an expansion franchise here before the end of the year, though he understands the league has a more immediate concern about expansion in Cleveland.

“We expect to have the Cleveland situation resolved by September and then will focus on Los Angeles and Houston,” said Tagliabue. “We will set a specific year for the start of a new team and then work back from that date in establishing a timeline for what needs to be done in Los Angeles and Houston. By our October meeting, I think we might very well be in position to be more definitive about a timetable.”

Tagliabue would not comment specifically about any of the efforts being organized in Los Angeles, but NFL insiders left the city after two days of meetings with former Dodger owner Peter O’Malley, Disney chief Michael Eisner, Hollywood Park, the New Coliseum Partners and the Rose Bowl, more impressed with Ovitz’s gung-ho presentation.

Ovitz told the NFL he will be the principal owner of the $750-million, predominantly privately funded project, which potentially will include investors such as grocery tycoon Ron Burkle, Northwest Airlines executive Gary Wilson, prominent financier Ted Forstmann and Gabriel Brenner, whose family has business interests here as well as in Mexico.

Ovitz’s proposed stadium, modeled after the Carolina Panthers’ 75,000-seat Ericsson Stadium in Charlotte, N.C., but dressed up in Southern California fashion, will be adjacent to the freeway and include an entertainment zone of shops and restaurants.

Potential investors, obviously, will want to know the price of the new Cleveland franchise before committing to any project in Los Angeles. NFL owners will meet in Miami on May 19 to set that price, which is expected to hit $400 million.

The NFL, which came to town intending to inform everyone that it was not ready to discuss the return of football, had given Ovitz a wish list last month in New York, expecting that it would take some time for a reply.

To its surprise, Ovitz answered each demand, although his enthusiasm and expectations for success might not constitute precise information.

“Michael’s very good at not worrying about problems and pushing forward while details are still being worked out,” said an NFL official. “But here’s the thing: his project offers a lot of promise, and he’s the king deal-maker, so this is obviously the guy who can make it happen.”

An important element of Ovitz’s deal is achieving cooperation from the city of Carson. Ovitz has been given assurances that Carson will make a significant contribution to the project, “north of 100 million,” according to someone familiar with Tuesday’s discussions with the NFL. Officials in Carson, who have been tight-lipped about talks with Ovitz, said there have been no formal requests for funds to date, but the city remains very interested in his project.

If Carson contributes to Ovitz’s project, the NFL will be able to publicize the contribution nationally to help owners elsewhere, such as Denver’s Pat Bowlen, who awaits a November referendum to raise funds for a new stadium, in their pitch for public funds. At the same time, the stadium project here would involve no public money from Los Angeles.

While Ovitz, the new kid on the block, has caught the NFL’s attention, it appears O’Malley, South Park and Hollywood Park are about to disappear. O’Malley told the NFL that his interest has waned, in part because he no longer owns the land on which to build a new stadium.

South Park passed on the opportunity to meet with NFL officials, and Hollywood Park’s R.D. Hubbard told the league a part of his property will be developed by businesses that are moving because of LAX’s proposed expansion.

“We still have a site for a stadium,” Hubbard said, “but I don’t get the feeling there’s any strong interest on the part of the NFL. I’m not optimistic at all about any place in L.A., and for that matter anything happening at Hollywood Park.”

NFL officials met with Eisner, who indicated modest interest in joining the league, and surprisingly not in Orange County, but Los Angeles. League officials, however, do not consider him a serious player because of his corporate ties and Disney’s TV interests, which present a conflict.

The Rose Bowl talked about its proposed stadium renovations, but does not have the firepower to talk the kind of money the NFL will be wanting to hear. The NFL also took a look at the El Toro air base in Irvine, but believes the site is too far south of Los Angeles to merit serious consideration at this time.

The New Coliseum Partners took Tagliabue on a helicopter tour of the Coliseum and USC and received a ringing and surprising endorsement from NFL President Neil Austrian at ceremonies honoring Pete Rozelle.

“Let’s bring a team back, but let’s only do it when we make the Coliseum the state-of-the-art stadium for all of football in the National Football League,” Austrian said.

But Austrian appears to be in the minority in favoring the Coliseum within NFL circles. NFL officials told several groups on their visit to Los Angeles that they remain uninterested in returning to the Coliseum.

“The NFL is concerned that one incident there will bring back all the bad memories of when the Raiders were there,” a representative of a competing project said.

The NFL’s enthusiasm for Ovitz, in part, lies in its interest in bypassing Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, whose political toehold has helped strangle any competing efforts for NFL attention. Ridley-Thomas was already busy criticizing Ovitz’s project before it was presented to the NFL, and now there are problems in his own ranks.

Ridley-Thomas has been unhappy with the time and energy prospective New Coliseum owner Edward Roski has been putting in on the new downtown sports arena, claiming it has been at the expense of the football project. The NFL, needing no more excuses to downgrade its interest in the Coliseum, has taken note.