Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
As St. Louis CITY SC prepares for its inaugural Major League Soccer season in 2023, its new stadium in Downtown West is undergoing a surprise name change.
The club announced Tuesday that the 22,500-seat facility will no longer be called Centene Stadium, effective immediately. The stadium will instead be known as CITYPARK. However, it may only be a matter of time before the $461 million building has a new corporate sponsor. Dennis Moore, CITY's chief revenue officer, said in a news release that the club is looking forward to once again shopping the stadium's naming rights eight months after it entered into a reported 15-year agreement with Centene.
Carolyn Kindle, the club's president and CEO, said in a statement that while Centene's name is coming off the building, the club and the Clayton-based healthcare giant will continue to work together on regional initiatives.
"After discussions with Centene, we have agreed to reshape the current partnership with them and the focus moving forward will be on developing community health and wellness programming throughout the region," Kindle says.
In a separate statement to St. Louis Magazine, a Centene spokesperson said the company is "re-aligning" its community sponsorships and charitable giving to "better support its mission of transforming community health."
"Centene’s decision to reshape our partnership with St. Louis CITY SC reflects our emphasis on improving public health and individual well-being in everything we do," the statement reads. "Moving forward, Centene’s partnerships – in St. Louis and across the country – will focus on programming that creates long-term, tangible value for local communities and helps families to live healthier lives. Centene and St. Louis CITY SC share a common goal of supporting the health and wellness of the St. Louis community that we are proud to call home."
CITYPARK and the surrounding stadium district, which includes team offices and a centralized training facility across Market, fills more than 30 acres of land in the heart of Downtown West.
