urbanSTL

To me the attendance (or lack there of) is NOT a knock on the fan base. It's not validation for the Rams moving.

But it IS something the city has to consider, and it could be validation for allowing them to move (more accurately, for not investing the money to build them a new stadium). St. Louis has had NFL football for nearly 50 years, and the only thing anybody seems to really be able to point to as far as how this could be great for us is "remember what it was like during the Greatest Show On Turf era?"

If you think it's unfair to include the St. Louis Cardinals history in there, ok. I think it's fair, but let's drop it. That's still 20 years with 3-5 years of real true excitement.

The truth is, we stopped coming close to capacity in 2008. Yes, they were bad that year. They went 3-13 the year before, and would go 2-14 that year. But St. Louis was already off the bandwagon.

Probably because the squandering of the GSOT personnel was so demoralizing, but nonetheless it didn't take much losing for the attendance woes to begin. And that's fine.

But how can we invest this much money in something that needs sellouts to come close to breaking even (when ignoring maintenance and operation), when there is no history to suggest the situation needed for sellouts will be there with any consistency?

This is just such a bad idea.

The Board of Aldermen were emailed a new financing plan around 11:30 PM tonight.

Proponents hope for a vote tomorrow.

This is wild.

Check out our own Andrew Arkills' Twitter Timeline for some details: http://twitter.com/andrewarkills

According to David Hunn of the Post-Dispatch, the NFL came to St. Louis and offered to up the NFL's G4 contribution by $100 million in exchange for St. Louis waiving St. Louis's amusement tax.

I agree, "wild" is definitely what I'd use to describe what's going on here.

This is final-hour negotiations

Here's the P-D article.

The best unintentionally funny/sad statement:

Moreover, as of now, no team is interested in the St. Louis proposal. Kroenke, though he has met with Nixon at least once, isn't interested in staying in St. Louis, team and league executives have said.

rbeedee wrote:Here's the P-D article.

The best unintentionally funny/sad statement:

Moreover, as of now, no team is interested in the St. Louis proposal. Kroenke, though he has met with Nixon at least once, isn't interested in staying in St. Louis, team and league executives have said.

"The proposed changes, he said, limit the city's financial risk, clarify ambiguous bill language, and boost the NFL's promised commitment from $200 million to $300 million.

The NFL team -- if one commits to the project -- would add another $250 million, as previously envisioned.

"The changes reflected in the floor substitute do not increase the City's contribution to this project," Coatar continued.

Task force co-chairman Dave Peacock said the new bill also requires the NFL team to pay for any cost overruns.

"If the team wants more, great," he said early Tuesday morning. "But they have to pay for it now. This is a fully-funded project.""

By the way, expect a "Yes" vote from Antonio French; he's got his #ComprehensivePlan:

Dweebe, to answer your previous question, I sat in section 114.

roger wyoming II wrote:^ The problem as well is it's not just a STL Rams issue; heck, fan fissures are starting to crack the 49ers foundation in the new Levi's Stadium. I think Gary is right, NFL used to be actual sell-outs or at least nearly, but that isn't really the case these days in those stadiums where a premiere product is not on the field. And as downtown2007 says, the tv experience and fantasy football is in large part to blame.... ironically, NFL is a bit too successful. Great ratings, but not necessarily great attendance.

Folks in Seattle were saying almost exactly the same thing a few years ago when the almost moved to LA. But rich guy Paul Allen of Microsoft made a deal to buy the team if the city OK'd a new stadium in place of the King Dome. So ask them now if they are glad the team stayed.

As expected....

http://stlouis.cbslocal.com/2015/12/15/ ... oks-loans/

I think it is kind of interesting that the fans are almost never the ones demanding new stadiums. It is always the owner or the league. Fans only want a team to come or to stay, and an existing stadium would be fine. But when others set conditions that the team will only come or stay with a new stadium, then the fans push for whatever it takes to keep the team.

In the end, the fans are the ones who end up paying for nearly the entire stadium. NFL, team owner, city, and state are completely, or nearly completely, reimbursed by fans watching in the stadium or watching on TV eventually.

^Uh-huh.

I'm gonna be paying for this stadium and there's no question about it. I'm so disgusted by the Board of Aldermen this week.

The path that saves you the most money is - Rams stay and keep playing in the dome. And saves fans the most too since they won't need to shell out for new PSLs. This vote may take us down that path.

gary kreie wrote:The path that saves you the most money is - Rams stay and keep playing in the dome. And saves fans the most too since they won't need to shell out for new PSLs. This vote may take us down that path.

I don't know about that. What about increased revenue from opening dome up for more conventions?

I'm going by Darlene Green's spreadsheet that showed status quo letting the Rams leave will cost the city $29M vs Rams continuing to play in the dome. Page 2, lower right number of the first table in 2015 dollars.

http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/ ... 112015.pdf

According to the article, it appears as if the mystery $100 million to STL will come from the expansion fees paid by the other teams moving to LA. I think the concern of the Task Force, has to be the fact that this money was not officially offered in writing, yet it was included in the finance financing package signed off on by the BOA. That would leave a $100 million gap in the plan. Obviously, that concern was expressed before the vote.

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/20 ... s-stadium/

Mike Florio wrote about a franchise swap, to solve this issue. I'd much rather have Dean Spanos, over Kroenke. However, I would prefer he sell a large part of the team to a local owner and of course, keep the Rams name. Likely, fantasy relocation stuff, but a good idea nonetheless. . .

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/20 ... -l-a-maze/

The #STLNFL Task Force has officially submitted its actionable proposal to build an NFL stadium in northern Downtown St. Louis on the river:

Aside from the stuff that's all ready been discussed, I've got two major issues with the above.

1. What is a "Capital Reserve Fund?" That sure makes it sound like the public will be on the hook for cost overruns. Of which there will be plenty. That's garbage.

2. Jack Coatar insisted that the $1.5 million rent payment was just a starting point in negotiations but that he hoped for higher. More sensible aldermen called him on that and told him it'd likely be what we got and that we needed to put ourselves in a better position. (Coatar knew this is all we'd get too, he was just lying through his teeth to get it to pass.) Indeed now this term sheet shows that $1.5m isn't strictly a minimum, it's in fact all St. Louis is asking for.

Maybe we should wait for the negotiations to actually occur, assuming the Rams are blocked from L.A., before we decide that's all they wind up asking for from the Rams.

The NFL is a behemoth. Even when they don't have leverage, they ensure that they have leverage.

This is the term sheet St. Louis has submitted pleading to remain a part of their exclusive club. And in it we don't ask for "at least" $1.5 million in rent, we ask for $1.5 million in rent (with escalation).

In doing so, St. Louis gave up any ground it had to stand on to ask for any more in rent. The only way that number goes up is if the total cost of the whole thing increases a ton. But as far as relative value goes, St. Louis won't get any more than that $1.5 million in rent, and that's horrendous.

jstriebel wrote:The NFL is a behemoth. Even when they don't have leverage, they ensure that they have leverage...St. Louis won't get any more than that $1.5 million in rent, and that's horrendous.

Yup. Generally negotiations follow the following formula:
The party trying to get paid (here, the RSA) lays down the high marker, usually starting higher than they know they are likely to get.
The party doing the paying (here, the NFL team) lays down the low marker, usually starting lower than they are actually willing to pay.
Negotiations proceed from there and end somewhere in the middle.

By inserting language in the bill saying we would accept no less than $1.5M in rent per year, and then making that our opening marker, we have handed the NFL team we would be negotiating with all the leverage, gift-wrapped with a bow and everything. No sane negotiator for an NFL team is going to voluntarily offer more than what we have expressed that we want.
We just showed our hand, that's just bad negotiating.

If the NFL goes for this proposal as-is, then yeah, that's all we'll be charging in rent. I suspect there are negotiations on the horizon, though. If the NFL wants the RSA to give in certain other ways ways, they can always offer to do so in exchange for higher rent.