Illustration by Daniel Elchert
This month marks the 17th anniversary of a special moment in the love affair between the city of St. Louis and the National Football League.
St. Louis had lost its Big Red seven years earlier, when owner Bill Bidwill was essentially told he could go sit on a cactus if he thought taxpayers were going to build a new stadium for his lousy team. So with the NFL’s blessing, he moved to Phoenix, leaving behind many broken hearts.
When the NFL decided to select expansion teams in 1993, our heavily favored city got snubbed not once, but twice by the owners in favor of smaller markets (Charlotte, N.C., and Jacksonville, Fla.). Our representatives railed angrily at the league, making matters less amicable.
So our town decided to get a team the old-fashioned way—by stealing one from another city—and we cobbled together a few hundred million dollars that we arguably didn’t have to lure Los Angeles Rams owner Georgia Frontiere, a St. Louis native who decided to come home (albeit after being rejected for a new stadium in Anaheim and then failing to get permission to go to Baltimore).
Its deal cut with the Rams, St. Louis went to ask the NFL for a team. In March 1995, meeting in Phoenix of all places, the league’s owners voted 21–3 (with six abstentions) against allowing the Los Angeles Rams to move to St. Louis. Bidwill voted no.
Frontiere threatened a lawsuit. So did state Attorney General Jay Nixon and some local business leaders. But it turns out this was just about money, greed, and more greed—for both sides—and within a couple of months, the Rams and NFL had patched things up enough for the team to eke out the bare-minimum 23 votes needed to approve relocation (with Bidwill still opposed).
So champagne corks popped in St. Louis, and the Rams made their move, leaving behind many broken hearts.
St. Louis and the Rams (meaning St. Louis) did have to pay a $29 million relocation fee—about four times what Bidwill paid for his move—and cough up $17 million of the $74 million raised here in personal-seat-license (PSL) sales, wherein we the people paid for the privilege of buying season tickets.
(St. Louis would go on to sue the NFL over the relocation fee, only to lose the federal suit a couple of years later, no doubt further endearing itself to the league’s egomaniacal owners.)
This, of course, wasn’t the only hardball negotiation involved in the move. The Rams had driven a pretty hard bargain with St. Louis because our side was publicly and privately desperate for a team.
And their side? It had a team. So the Rams got pretty much everything they wanted and more.
I’m told that St. Louis wanted a 30-year stadium commitment from the Rams, and the team wanted to commit to only 10 years. Effectively, the sides compromised on a 20-year deal, expiring in 2014, that included intentionally vague language requiring St. Louis to keep the dome in the “top tier” of NFL facilities.
It was an escape hatch, but probably not one that the team contemplated using. On the other hand, good luck trying to force the Rams to stay another 10 years. This lease is no hammer.
It seemed OK way back when. I was among those who bought the basic notion of spending money we shouldn’t be spending in the name of a greater good, which was to keep St. Louis’ “major-league” status.
I remember arguing (in print and on TV) that even if socking taxpayers for this was a repulsive concept—and it was—we needed to do it anyway since the “major league” thing heavily swayed rich white guys who made key corporate-relocation decisions. Smarter colleagues were appalled.
It also seemed to make sense that St. Louis needed to expand its convention center with a stadium-size exhibit hall for giant conferences, so at least $100 million of the cost could be ascribed to that.
(Funny thing: It turns out that an unintended consequence of this is that, because of NFL scheduling considerations, the dome can only be sold as a convention exhibit hall during one stretch of the year, between August and January. But that’s another story.)
Well, we’ve had some fun. We made it to two Super Bowls, winning one. And while we haven’t been to the playoffs since 2004 and have had only four winning seasons out of 17, we’ve had our moments. Plus, the Rams have been great corporate citizens (with the late Frontiere having been especially giving).
As for the major-league status, that hasn’t worked out so well, and I won’t be buying such an argument again. In fact, there’s been such a steady exodus of major corporations that it’s a good thing we don’t have to work on selling St. Louis again as a suitable home for an NFL franchise. Uh-oh.
Just like that, it’s 2012 and the lease is almost up. The top-tier thing is a not-so-funny joke. Owner Stan Kroenke’s customary silence is anything but warm and fuzzy.
True, Kroenke originally hailed from Columbia, Mo., and he tried hard to bring St. Louis a franchise in 1993, and he no doubt was a big part of bringing the Rams here in 1995. But he doesn’t live in St. Louis and never has. In a rare public appearance not long ago, he was annoyed when asked about the team’s future.
Most important, Kroenke is a multibillionaire who’s very good at making money. And in the world of NFL owners, St. Louis isn’t much of a place to do that.
The most authoritative source on this subject is Forbes magazine, which ranks the value of sports franchises annually. The report isn’t good.
In 2011, the Rams ranked 30th out of 32 teams, with a franchise value of $775 million and annual revenues of $228 million. For perspective, the top-ranked Dallas Cowboys were valued at
$1.85 billion, with $406 million in revenues. Kroenke can’t love this.
Notably, the New York Giants and Jets ranked fourth and fifth with franchise values of $1.3 billion and $1.22 billion, respectively, despite the fact that they share a new stadium. These teams represent the new stadium math of the NFL. By sharing a facility, they bring 20 games to it, rather than 10. Each of those events represents a tidal wave of revenue, which makes the megafacility work.
There’s only one other market in the nation that could support two teams in this manner—Los Angeles—and there has been much movement there in recent months, with key political hurdles cleared at the city and state, to get a new megastadium. That’s potentially not good news for St. Louis fans of the former Los Angeles Rams.
Los Angeles wants a team (or probably two) there, and at the top of its wish list would be getting its old team back—the team did play there for 49 years.
The Rams were publicly mentioned as one of five teams contacted by AEG Enterprises, a sports juggernaut in Los Angeles and the leading candidate to lure a team. The company is owned by Philip Anschutz, a friend, business partner, and “fellow Denver billionaire” of none other than Kroenke.
Anschutz sold Kroenke his first pro-soccer franchise, and as recently as three years ago, the two partnered on a major joint venture for a performing-arts venue outside of Denver. They are not casual acquaintances.
The local sports press doesn’t think this relationship is a big deal and has virtually ignored it. The local sports press also has suggested that Kroenke’s dome lease is binding and relevant through 2014, as if he couldn’t buy out of it in about five minutes.
The local sports press should stick to covering the games.
The only good news for St. Louis is that Anschutz doesn’t have a deal done with the NFL, and he might never get one. He has significant competition from another NFL aspirant in
Los Angeles. If this were a slam-dunk, it would have been accomplished by now. Time will tell.
That said, if Kroenke can pull off a move to L.A.—potentially doubling his franchise’s value—he’s out of here. You can take that to the bank, and if you don’t want to, Kroenke will.
The question isn’t why he’d move; it’s why he’d stay. In the new era of NFL $1 billion–plus stadium economics, what sets the wealthy franchises apart from the others is the corporate-based luxury-suite and advertising revenues (among other revenue sources). Unlike ticket sales, they’re not shared with the league and visiting teams.
Even if St. Louis could hand Kroenke a new, state-of-the-art stadium—and it cannot—it’s highly doubtful that there would be enough local corporate dollars to fill the suites and buy the ads. The baseball Cardinals don’t even sell all of theirs.
So St. Louis needs to get lucky. It needs the Los Angeles situation to not open up, or for one or (better yet) two franchises to beat the Rams to the punch (Oakland, San Diego, Tampa Bay, Minnesota, Cincinnati, Buffalo, and Jacksonville are among possible candidates). That could happen.
In the meantime, the present negotiations over improvements to tinker with the existing dome are legal and proper, but their most important function is to show Kroenke enough good faith that he doesn’t feel the need to make some lateral move to a market other than Los Angeles. Don’t expect a Hail Mary pass. The funny money has long since dried up.
Kroenke doesn’t need leverage in this situation. He holds all of the cards in his hand, just like the team did in 1995. If Los Angeles becomes a viable option, it’s game over. If not, the team would likely stay in St. Louis, but probably on a year-to-year or other short-run basis.
And I wouldn’t bet against Los Angeles for the long haul. While one can’t be sure whether the NFL owners’ attitudes toward St. Louis remain unchanged, it wasn’t a good sign in late January when St. Louis received the “honor” of giving up a home game to play in London during each of the next three seasons. And at press time, Kroenke was among the finalists bidding on the L.A. Dodgers. If he were to win that competition, a move of the Rams to California is so likely that the team might have played its last game here.
It’s hard to imagine Kroenke having as much trouble moving west as the team had moving east 17 years ago. All he would need to move is a relocation fee and the agreement of three-fourths of the owners to leave behind some city’s broken hearts.
Happy anniversary, fellows.
SLM co-owner Ray Hartmann is a panelist on KETC Channel 9’s Donnybrook, which airs Thursdays at 7 p.m.
Commentary by Ray Hartmann
