LOS ANGELES - Baked into the political culture of Los Angeles and California is an aversion to using public money to subsidize entertainment and sports facilities.

That mantra framed negotiations between Anschutz Entertainment Group and L.A., which have partnered in an attempt to build a $1.4 billion downtown stadium and a new wing at the adjacent convention center. AEG wants to lure the NFL back to the country's second-largest city, which lost the Rams and Raiders in 1995.

In August, the city council unanimously approved a plan to issue $275 million in bonds to tear down the aging convention hall and build a modern facility next to Farmers Field, titled after the insurance giant that paid AEG $700 million for the football stadium's naming rights.

Half of the new tax and lease revenue would pay off $195 million of that debt. AEG would pay the $80 million balance through a specific tax on its surrounding L.A. Live property - a commercial and entertainment complex that includes the Nokia Theater, bars, restaurants and a pair of upscale hotels/condominiums.

"This is a deal that is good for taxpayers and the city because it doesn't put the city in any kind of financial jeopardy," said L.A. city administrative officer Miguel Santana.

The city could take or leave the NFL, Santana contends. Its priority with AEG was upgrading the 40-year-old convention center, which ranks 15th in the country in usable space.

"The city is not in the football business, it's in the convention business," Santana said.


"We have perfect weather 90 percent of the time, and we're competing against Omaha for conventions. Nothing against Omaha, but this is L.A, one of the primary destination points around the world. This will put us in the big leagues."

This is the second stadium project AEG has privately financed in Los Angeles. Next to L.A. Live is the Staples Center, which opened in 1999 and houses the NBA's Lakers and NHL's Kings.

Farmers Field is one of two competing projects vying for an NFL team. Real-estate mogul Ed Roski wants to build a stadium in suburban Industry, 20 miles east of downtown.

Business models and politics aside, measuring the appetite for pro football is elusive in a sprawling and transient metropolitan area of 9.8 million people.

Cleveland lost its team to Baltimore in 1995, was awarded an expansion team and built a new stadium in less than four years because the city could not tolerate life without football.

Los Angeles has been without the NFL since President Bill Clinton's first term and has not witnessed a similar uprising.

"There hasn't been this sense of urgency, this need to know by (a specific date), because it's L.A. and we move on to other things," said David Carter, director of the sports business institute at the University of Southern California.

"Football's always been important, but it hasn't risen to the level where fans are rallying and crying out for it. It also hasn't risen to the level where the NFL has taken it seriously because the NFL's always been concerned about other front-burner issues. And the NFL knows it cannot fail here."

It is too important for the league that everything be right this time, so it can take back the vaunted market. Carter says people in L.A. are understandably cynical because civic and business leaders argued to death every previous idea that involved spending public money for a stadium, and even stadium supporters couldn't coalesce around a single plan, corporation or owner.

"You didn't really have a champion to get it done. Now maybe that's changed as either of these deals come into focus," he said. "The financial plans make sense. The league's looking at 10 years of labor peace. So maybe now it's moving toward the front burner of the NFL.

"It's clearly on the front burner of both of these groups trying to get it done in this town. That timing hasn't been aligned really for a very long time."

Follow Brian Murphy at twitter.com/murph1171