For 36 years, the St. Louis Sports Commission has worked to bring major athletic events to St. Louis—hosting everything from NCAA hockey to the U.S. Olympic trials for gymnastics. Those events fill hotel rooms and create positive impressions of St. Louis, creating a ripple effect for decades to come, says commission president Marc Schreiber.
The commission has done that work without public funding, making St. Louis an anomaly among its peers. But increasingly, Schreiber says, relying solely on corporate and philanthropic support is starting to feel unsustainable. Cities are no longer just competing for jobs or residents; they’re also competing to land events, with the idea that a little outlay on the front end can yield dividends for local tax coffers. Other cities are sweetening their bids with incentives or guarantees for event organizers.
Are you a CITY SC fan?
Subscribe to the CITY Scene newsletter to get a fan’s guide to the pro soccer scene in St. Louis.
Speaking on a new episode of The 314 Podcast, Schreiber believes St. Louis will have to figure out how to do so as well.
“We’ll go up against communities that either their state, their city or their convention and visitor bureau or some other entity will be providing funding,” he says. “If they’re approaching the Olympic marathon trials, they can tap into funds to help get them to a place where they’re going to break even or even guarantee additional dollars for the rights holder. And we’re at a disadvantage because we don’t have that.”
To that end, the Sports Commission has quietly been pitching the City of St. Louis on the idea of using a small portion of the city’s Rams settlement funds to create a new fund for sporting events. Schreiber says the commission believes a relatively small infusion—he specifies in the range of $5–20 million—could yield dividends.
The idea is that the commission could draw on the fund to offer incentives that make St. Louis competitive with other cities wooing sporting events. If they win the bid, the city would create a mechanism by which the Sports Commission gets a portion of the tax revenue being generated by the event, replenishing the fund and allowing it to offer incentives to the next one.
Schreiber paints it as a win-win, suggesting the city could then land more events, increasing the overall pot of revenue instead of cannibalizing it. ”The beauty of that is, if we don’t land it, we don’t get any of it,” he says. “But not only does the city come out ahead, but we have this self-sustaining mechanism that can help us.”
Even so, Schreiber knows asking for public money is a hard sell in a city dealing with the ravages of a recent major tornado, and the entrenched challenges of a shrinking population and disinvestment.
“ I’m the first one to acknowledge we have so many needs as a community, so many neighborhoods that that need help, and we have to be really smart and strategic with how that all those settlement funds are spent,” he says. “But just taking that small portion of it, there’s just such a fabulous opportunity for us to do stuff that has a great legacy and has such tremendous impact.”
Last year, he says, the St. Louis Development Corporation created a fund for the first time that the commission can use as a backstop: If one of the sporting events it hosts through 2027 leads to a shortfall of $500,000 or less, it can draw on the fund to make sure it breaks even. That’s different from the more ambitious fund Schreiber is now pitching, but he’s hopeful it heralds more collaboration to come.
He believes city leaders increasingly understand the benefit of bringing sporting events to town: “I think there’s more and more awareness and understanding of it, and it’s something we’re going to try to push and see if we can make it happen.”
The mayor’s office and the office of Aldermanic President Megan Green didn’t respond to messages seeking comment to Schreiber’s remarks yesterday.
On The 314 Podcast, Schreiber also discussed some of the side benefits of bringing sporting events to St. Louis and his own personal story. A graduate of Northwestern University’s journalism program, he once dreamt of being Bob Costas. An internship led him to the Sports Commission, and he’s been there for more than 27 years, taking the top job in 2023 after the retirement of his mentor, longtime commission president Frank Viverito.
Last year, Schreiber was there as Costas was honored with the Sports Commission’s Stan Musial Lifetime Achievement Award for Sportsmanship in 2024. Basking in that full circle moment the next morning, Schreiber realized he’d missed a call from his former idol.
“I got this wonderful message from Bob, saying how great, how pitch-perfect, of a night,” he recalls. “And it’s one of those things where I was glad I didn’t answer the phone, because now I’ve got this voicemail message from Bob.”
Hear the full interview with Schreiber on The 314 Podcast.
