Everything s not okay with the Los Angeles Chargers and we’re not even talking about the franchise qualifying for the postseason just twice in the last 10 years.
Dea Spanos Berberian, a co-owner of the Los Angeles Chargers, is desperately trying to get a court to force the team to be sold.
Berberian is the sister of Dean Spanos, who owns 15 percent of the franchise. Berberian says the trust is deeply in debt and can’t afford the charitable contributions it has pledged, and the only way to pay off that debt is to sell the team.
“Dean refuses to consider a sale of the Trust’s Interest of the Chargers, insisting that the Co-Trustees continue to borrow more and more, and to force the charities and beneficiaries to wait for years and to ‘hope’ while Dean speculates further on a football team,” Berberian’s court filing said, according to the Los Angeles Times. “Dean has failed to present any plan to address the Trust’s bleak financial picture, because there is no other plan than the one urged by [Berberian]. Dean simply refuses to discuss it. . . . His plan is hope.”
The Spanos family has had majority ownership of the Chargers since 1984.
“Every day that passes increases the risks that the charitable beneficiaries and the Spanos family legacy will suffer irreparable financial and reputational damage” the petition said.
Back in 2020, Forbes valued the team at $2.6 billion, but the petition noted that “the price a buyer is willing to pay is often not dictated by any economic metric.”
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The petition also notes that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is interested in becoming an NFL owner and said “the Chargers could be a perfect opportunity.”
Berberian says the trust’s debts and expenses exceed $353 million.
Dean Spanos responded to the court filing by saying that none of the other siblings are interested in selling the team despite the current financial difficulties that the franchise is facing.
“If Dea no longer wishes to be part of this family legacy, the three of us stand ready to purchase her share of the franchise, as our agreements give us the right to do,” the three other Spanos siblings said in a statement. “In the meanwhile, the operations of the Chargers will be entirely unaffected by this matter, which relates only to the 36 percent share of the team that was owned by our parents. The three of us are entitled to three-fourths of that 36 percent share in any event, and under no circumstances will this situation impact control of the franchise.”
