The city is excited for its new downtown sports venue.

It has been years since the city has been home to a team in each of the four major sports, but the time for that to change may be fast approaching. Anschutz Entertainment Group, with public assistance, is building a state-of-the-art facility that any team would be lucky to call home.

With so many franchises in aging venues in other cities, AEG President Tim Leiweke is certain that one team will move to the new digs, maybe even two. The new place is hailed as the potential centerpiece for the downtown entertainment district, and locals are excited about the possible teams that will occupy it.

This is Los Angeles in 2011. It was also Kansas City in 2004.

The $267-million Sprint Center opened in The Kansas City Power & Light District in 2007 to sold-out concerts and other events, but did not feature the expected NHL or NBA team.

Around the time of the arena’s opening, AEG flirted publicly with the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Seattle SuperSonics. In the end, Mario Lemieux and his Pens got a new arena in Pittsburgh, and owner Clay Bennett moved the Sonics to his hometown of Oklahoma City.

The Nashville Predators, New York Islanders, Sacramento Kings and New Orleans Hornets have all come up as teams that are potentially moving to Kansas City, but nothing is imminent and the Sprint Center enters its fourth year of operation. Though AEG has attracted numerous shows and concerts to the arena, and has actually maintained an operational profit, the city is stuck paying $13.8 million per year in arena bond payments, with no new team to take pride in.

AEG and Leiweke may have extorted quite a lease from Missouri taxpayers in the Sprint Center deal, but they would do well to learn from their missteps as they take on the project of a football stadium in downtown Los Angeles.

One main reason AEG failed to attract a major league tenant to Sprint Center was the lack of benefits and revenue streams that teams have come to expect from arena deals. Leiweke offered the Penguins free rent and an “equal managing [partnership]” in Sprint Center. That deal was apparently not a large enough cut of the vig for the Pens, who are pulling in roughly $6 million a year from naming rights partnerships, all before selling a single seat.

Deals like these are becoming the rule, not the exception, in stadium negotiations. It seems that an arena or stadium deal can’t get done for American teams unless it includes both public subsidies and lease concessions, even for stadiums that have already been built.

That’s where the trouble comes in for AEG and Farmers Field. Not only is the company promising to pay for the $1.5 billion  stadium completely with private funds, but also guarantee $350 million in bonds to replace the West Hall of the convention Center. To pay off these massive investments, AEG would need to make $50-60 million per year from the stadium and surrounding L.A. Live complex.

It’s no wonder that Leiweke has talked up the idea of two teams moving to Los Angeles, as it may be the only way for Farmers Field to attract NFL franchises without massive concessions from AEG.

According to Forbes, only the Cowboys and Redskins made an operating income of over $70 million in 2009. The main obstacle to overcome will be determining how much of that profit teams will be willing to fork over for the right to play in SoCal. AEG made off like bandits in keeping much of the sponsorship and suite revenue from Sprint Center, but it may have to share a good portion of its $700 million Farmers Insurance naming rights deal with potential teams if it wants a tenant on Sundays.

Just as basketball and hockey teams have used the vacant Kansas City arena as a threat to their municipal governments to get a favorable venue deal, baseball teams like the White Sox and Giants threatened to move to Tampa Bay’s dome in the 1990s if they didn’t get a favorable hometown agreement. Now football teams are employing the same gambit with Los Angeles as the “other city.”

Names like the Chargers, 49ers, Vikings, Rams and Jaguars have all been thrown around, but if these teams can get sweeter deals from their local governments than AEG is willing to offer, they’ll stay put. An NFL franchise’s slice of the $4 billion TV rights pie, which provides a great deal of the team's annual revenue, is the same whether it is headquartered in Los Angeles or Jacksonville.

Getting Farmers Field built is just the beginning. In Kansas City, AEG has maintained a profit off taxpayer-subsidized Sprint Center almost solely from the concert business, but that’s simply not possible for a privately funded, multi-billion dollar football stadium. It needs a team.

“I can assure you, there is going to be an anchor tenant,” Leiweke told the Kansas City Star in 2004 regarding Sprint Center. Seven years later, the city still lacks the promised team.

For the NFL to return to Los Angeles, Tim Leiweke must prove himself to be a better dealmaker for L.A. than he was for KC.

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James Santelli is also a contributor for Pittsburgh Sports Report. To reach James, click here. Follow him on Twitter, @JamesSantelli.