Nearly a year ago, the NFL reached a $790 million settlement with the city of St. Louis over the Rams’ relocation to Los Angeles. Now the league is on the verge of reaching an agreement on the cost settlement. Rams owner Stan Kroenke will have to pay for most of the settlement amount.

Munich / New York – The move to Los Angeles will have an expensive aftermath for the Rams.

The NFL’s franchise owners, currently holding their annual fall meeting, are expected to agree to a deal that would see Rams owner Stan Kroenke pay $571 million in compensation to the city of St. Louis for the team’s relocation. This is reported by “ESPN”.

The other owners of NFL teams have already contributed a total of $219 million to the settlement reached with the city last year for the total amount of $790 million.

According to the agreement, in order for Kroenke to meet his obligation, the owners would waive the league’s cap on allowable debt.

NFL: Team owners wouldn’t pay for Rams purchase

According to “CBS”, the NFL deducted $7.5 million from each team’s revenue share in May to pay for the settlement reached last November.

According to the report, the teams were surprised by the move, as most of them had expected Kroenke to come up with the entire settlement amount.

However, since the City of St. Louis’ lawsuit was against all 32 NFL teams, Kroenke had threatened the other team owners to reach their own settlement with the city, which would have left the other franchises out in the cold, according to the report.

Kroenke and the NFL had previously tried unsuccessfully to get the lawsuit dismissed or at least to move the venue out of St. Louis.

But the relevant courts were more sympathetic to the St. Louis side’s efforts to disclose the team owners’ financial records – which can be seen as a decision to expedite efforts to reach a settlement.

NFL: St. Louis legal battle nears end

The settlement reached last year ended a four-and-a-half-year legal battle that arose after the Rams left St. Louis.

The lawsuit originally sought more than $1 billion. It was alleged that the team’s move had cost the St Louis region millions of dollars in entertainment, ticket and tax revenue.

Then-owner Georgia Frontiere moved the Rams from Los Angeles to their hometown of St Louis in 1995, where they stayed for 21 seasons before Kroenke brought them back to the “City of Angels” in 2016.

Kroenke, a Missouri real estate developer married to an heiress to the Walmart fortune, became a minority owner when the team first came to St. Louis. Frontiere died in 2008, leaving the franchise to her children, who sold the Rams to Kroenke for $750 million in 2010, according to “ESPN”.

According to information from the media company “Bloomberg”, the 75-year-old currently has a net worth of 12.5 billion dollars, which makes him the 125th richest person in the world.