The NFL and the city of St. Louis have agreed to a $790 million settlement over a lawsuit filed in 2017 after the Rams relocated to Los Angeles, a source with direct knowledge of the agreement confirmed to ESPN.
The settlement does not include a promise from the NFL to grant St. Louis an expansion franchise in the future, but the idea wasn’t seriously discussed, the source told ESPN.
It wasn’t immediately known what portion of the settlement would be paid by Rams owner Stan Kroenke compared to the league’s share.
The Rams relocated to Los Angeles for a second time in franchise history in 2016 when Kroenke moved his team from St. Louis.
The lawsuit argued that the league broke its own relocation guidelines that were adopted in 1984, misled the public on its plans to leave the city and cost the city millions in revenue. The league had lost many of its motions and was denied a hearing in the U.S. Supreme Court.
The lawsuit, which was in discovery phase, was set for trial on Jan. 10 — weeks before Kroenke’s SoFi Stadium hosts Super Bowl LVI on Feb. 13.
The case had entangled all 32 teams and cost millions in legal fees, which were mostly covered by Kroenke under an indemnification agreement he signed as part of the relocation. For some teams, the bills had run to eight figures.
The Rams moved from Los Angeles to St. Louis before the 1995 season, lured in part by a new taxpayer-built domed stadium. Kroenke, a real estate billionaire and Missouri native, was minority owner of the team until purchasing it outright in 2010, two years after the death of longtime majority owner Georgia Frontiere.
The Rams first moved to Los Angeles, from Cleveland, in 1946.
The news of the settlement was first reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
ESPN’s Seth Wickersham and The Associated Press contributed to this report.