NFL Rams

Everybody's getting all excited about Stan Kroenke buying 60 acres in LA. ESPN, FOX Sports, CBS Sports, The Sporting News, etc., etc., etc. think he's going to move the team back to LA "where they belong." Kroenke wants a new stadium in St. Louis. He doesn't want his team in LA. Buying 60 acres in LA is supposed to make St. Louis area governments nervous, nothing more. He's putting a supposed "option" on the table that he doesn't want to exercise. It's leverage to get a new stadium built somewhere in the St. Louis area.

Kroenke is a Missouri boy. He lives in Columbia, a stone's throw from Memorial Stadium and Don Faurot Field, home of the Missouri Tigers football dynasty. He isn't moving his club out of Missouri. He owns the Denver Nuggets, the Colorado Avalanche, the Colorado Rapids (MLS) and the Colorado Mammoth of the National LaCrosse League (yes, there really is such a thing, though why, I couldn't tell you). He doesn't want to move the NFL team, and while any sort of stadium agreement is probably still years away, the combination of increased league revenues (much of which is generated by lucrative television deals), the continued league use of a defined salary cap and the promise of an upgraded stadium with added revenue streams would seem to leave the door open for continued growth for the Rams in the near future -- in St. Louis.

So what will he do with the land he bought in LA? Good possibility there's room in the LA market for another NHL team (move the Avalanche?) or another MLS team -- not move the Rapids but expand the league again. Last year, the MLS reached the revenue and popularity points its marketing plan two years ago projected for 2017, so the outlook is good.

 

The Rams belong in St Louis. I say this as a long time Viking fan that used to love to watch the LA Rams lose to the Vikings in the playoffs outside in the frigid cold. It's obvious that LA is being used as leverage to get a new stadium built in St Louis, just as the Vikings did. Reminds me of how baseball teams would use Tampa Bay as a possible relocation site in order to get a new ballpark built.

What's wrong with the Edward Jones dome?

 

Kroenke wants a stadium with more "skyboxes" and there isn't any way to expand the Dome, which only seats 66,000. He looks across the state at Kansas City's Arrowhead (78,000) and sees work beginning on Memorial Stadium to expand it to 80,000 right down the street from him in Columbia, and he's jealous.

 

I'm from the St. Louis area and I say let them go back to LA as long as the Cardinals return to ST. Louis. Hope I hope I hope.