Which NFL Owner/Oligarch is The Biggest A-Hole? PART II
Dean Spanos and the San Diego/Los Angeles Chargers/ Clippers
Dean Spanos owns the San Diego Chargers.
But to explain how he made his money you have to discuss his father Alex Spanos.
Dean inherited the team and his money. I try to discuss the owners professional career before football, but for the life of me I can’t seem to find much on him professionally until 1994 when his dad let him become president.
Alex Spanos left college during WW2 to serve his country - Dean didn’t.
Alex trained as a pilot but became a tail gunner — Dean didn’t.
Alex earned a letter in swimming and diving in college — Dean didnt.
Alex invested his earnings in real estate and at the suggestion of his tax accountants, started to build apartments. In 1960, he founded A.G. Spanos Companies, which by 1977 had become the largest apartment builder in the United States
Dean didn’t.
However, Dean did have a rich dad. So he now owns a football team.
The Chargers were an AFL original team in 1960 and when the merger happened they moved over to the NFL. Barron Hilton was the first owner and didnt name the team after an electrical storm, he wanted to promote his new business, Master Card.
The Barron Hilton thing really does put the NFL’s faux integrity in context, doesn’t it? They dont want to look like soccer players or Nascar Drivers but one team was a promotional vehicle for a credit card and now Walmart owns another team. Yet 70,000 people per game pay upwards of $500 a ticket after paying in excess of a $100,000 Personal Seat License to go to a game and drink 10oz of beer for $18.00.
That’s what it cost to go to a Rams game (Dean Spanos and the Chargers landlord) but we’ll come back to that.
The Tradition of Excellence Under the Spanos Ownership
To be fair, the Chargers have always been a shit show even before Spanos purchased the team. Since the “modern era” (1967) there have been 52 Super Bowls. And with only 32 NFL (only 30 prior to 2002, 28 prior to 1995, and 26 prior to 1976) almost every team has won at least one Super Bowl. Heck, the three teams considered rivals of the Chargers (Chiefs — 2, Broncos-3, Raiders-3) all have at least 2 championships.
In fact, of the 12 teams to never win one, 4 of those teams formed in 1995 or more recent, 2 of the teams have been to and lost 4 Super Bowls, 1 team has lost 3 Super Bowls, with 2 teams losing 2.
Three teams have lost 1 super bowl from the original merger, with only one team (Detroit Lions) having been here since the beginning and never going to the big dance. In the Super Bowl the Chargers did play in, they were absolutely destroyed 49–26 by the San Francisco 49ers. And that score makes it seem far closer than it actually was.
Despite the incompetance, the fans in San Diego loved them. Even in the 4–12 seasons, people could be heard blasting the theme song from the 1970s, “SAN DIEGO — SUPERCHAGERES” in the parking lots before games. These people were committed and loyal.
During this run of abject futility, the Chargers enjoyed sell-out after sell-out in San Diego Ca. Loyal fans, a beautiful city to live in, yet with all these advantages they could not pull enough quality players to assemble a winning team. I mean, Detroit, I get it, you pay guys double to move there, but San Diego is perhaps the nicest city in the United States, how do you fuck that up?
Becasue Alex and later Dean were cheap bastards. Decades of letting great players leave and replacing them with cheaper ones is how you lose to this magnitude.
But through all this, San Diego embraced them, no matter what a shit show was on the field, the community loved and supported them.
How did Dean reward the years of blind loyalty, he wanted to build them a brand new stadium….. er… my bad…. He wanted them to build him a brand new stadium.
Unable to get the city to just bend over, Dean pulled the “relocation” card in December of 2014.
From Wikipedia
In August 2015, San Diego city officials announced their new plan for a new $1.1 billion Chargers stadium at the Mission Valley site of the existing stadium, which included a $350 million contribution of public funds without raising taxes, but Chargers officials scoffed at the proposal and refused to negotiate with the city on any proposal that was not located at the team’s preferred downtown location
By “officials” they mean Dean Spanos. Dean wanted to move the team to Los Angeles.
About that time the NFL gave the green light to the Rams to move to LA from St Louis (the owner went out of pocket for a $6 billion dollar stadium) and told the Chargers they had one season to work out a deal with the Rams to be their tenant or make something happen with San Diego.
That season started out with the support of the fans as a November Ballot initiative to put the Chargers in an ultra-modern (ultra-expensive) downtown San Diego stadium was on the ballot. Dean who refused to discuss the Mission Valley stadium strong-armed the city with threats to get the measure that would increase taxes to pay for this asshole’s stadium.
When the measure was voted down (57% to 43%) the city of San Diego adopted a new team chant. No longer would you hear, “San Diego — SUPERCHARGERS!” instead, “FUCK YOU DEAN SPANOS”.
However, there was one miscalculation. San Diego wanted no part of the team or the asshole who owned it from that moment on. LA didn’t exactly have a place for them to play yet, as LA could care less about the NFL version of the LA CLIPPERS. They were the ultimate after thought.
So while the Rams played to massive crowds in the 80,000-plus seat LA Collesium, the Chargers played in a Soccer stadium in Carson California that held a little over 30,000. That was only sold out if the opposing team had a big fan base in LA. This went on for two very amusing years.
But finally, Dean got into his dream rental in 2021. It’s an amazing stadium, generating lots of income, but there was another problem.
The previous 3 years’ operating costs killed the chargers and they were in a big hole.
Dean isn’t the worst NFL owner, but he may be the stupidest. I refer to Donald Trump as “The guy who was too stupid to make money with a casino”, but Dean does Trump one better, he’s the guy too stupid to make money with an NFL team.
Owning/running an NFL team is so easy that you never thought about the possible ancillary results from burning your fan base to the ground and moving to a new city that not only isn't excited to have you, but is completely indifferent to your existence.
The finachial issues incurred by moving from a stadium that was servicable to soccer stadium with half the seats shouldn't have caught Spanos completely by surprise. So when what happened next, happened, it feels obvious and a little predictable. Well, predictable to everyone but Dean Spanos.
Generally when you “own” an NFL franchise you own about 65% of the multibillion dollar enterprise. That’s fairly common. Even when your family owns it and its inherited, there is a trust or siblings who expect to be involved or sue each other to gain a greater piece of the pie, force a sale etc. The Denver Bronco’s sale to Walmert was the result of such a power struggle.
The other possibility when someone takes over a team as Dean did, is the others with ownership don’t really care about the team and are happy to receive their massive checks every year as part owner and let you do what you want. Unless, you are the .00001% of humanity too stupid to run an NFL team profitably. Then the people who also own part of the team start to realise you are an idiot.
And what do rich people love to do? They love to sue people.
FROM CELEBRITYNETWORTH.COM
With the (2021) season in the rearview mirror, Chargers owner Dean Spanos and his family have kept up the drama.
First, he was sued by his nephews while the playoffs were still going on. Then, in June, his sister (and mother of those nephews) filed a lawsuit that could lead to the potential sale of the Chargers.
The parents of Spanos and his sister, Dea Spanos Berberian, died in 2018. That moved more than a third of the Chargers into a family trust, one that controls 36% of the team. The family children of Spanos, Berberian, team vice chairman Michael Spanos and Alexis Spanos Ruhl each have a 15% ownership stake, as well, with the remaining 4% owned by outside parties.
Spanos’ nephews, Dimitri and Lex Economou, sued Spanos on the grounds of improperly redirecting money away from the trust. A few months after that lawsuit, Berberian declared the trust has debts and expenses north of $358 million, plus $22 million in charitable donations that it still owes.
Berberian believes the only way to cover those debts is to sell the team. That belief could be a major reason behind her lawsuit, which she filed in June. In the lawsuit, Berberian alleged that Dean and Michael acted against their parents’ wishes “out of their deeply-held misogynistic attitudes and sense of entitlement as the men in the family.” Berberian cited frivolous spending, too, including moving more than $60 million from the trust to buy a private airplane that has no business purpose.
So on behalf of whatever charity you stiffed, your family, and the city of San Diego…
Fuck You, Dean Spanos.
