City vs Rams Lawsuit

gary kreie · PostOct 24, 2017#39262017-10-24T19:22+00:00

bprop wrote: ↑
Oct 24, 2017

urban_dilettante wrote: ↑
Oct 23, 2017

gary kreie wrote: ↑
Oct 23, 2017
This could have been St. Louis. From tonight's NBC Nightly News.

https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/vi ... 9058499919
no disrespect intended at all, Gary, but

$15M in community agreements (that are notoriously difficult to quantify in terms of return) vs. how many tens of $M in subsidies?

how long are we going to continue speculating about this?

Exactly, how many times have we heard so-and-so "hopes [insert mega project here] will be the spark that transforms the community."

Rather than get down with hard work and make the city more efficient and easy for businesses to set-up and function, and good places to live, our leaders go looking for the next silver bullet.

I look at it a little differently. Things like baseball, football, and MLS stadiums, hotels, convention centers, etc. all bring millions from the suburbs and surrounding areas for construction and events. Most of that money turns into jobs in the core of our metro.

In fact, we pay for Atlanta's and Minneapolis's stadiums every time we visit there through rental car rental, restaurant, and hotel taxes. They don't pay for ours.

chaifetz10 · PostOct 24, 2017#39272017-10-24T19:32+00:00

Well, the loss of the Rams has equated to more conventions so if anything more people area actually downtown now than when the Rams played. So in that regard, we're getting better use out of the convention center than if they had stayed. PLUS we don't have to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for a new stadium for the lack of or loss of ROI that would result.

I'm a sports guy myself, but the tax dollars given to NFL owners for new stadiums is not a net positive to the tax base.

jstriebel · PostOct 24, 2017#39282017-10-24T19:55+00:00

Not sure I understand the tone of the argument happening here. Though many of us disagreed with the subsidy, the bottomline is St. Louis passed a massive public subsidy and proposal to build a new Rams stadium.

They left anyways.

We didn't lose the Rams over an unwillingness to spend tax dollars on them. We lost them to a giant market, because they're owned by a colossal piece of garbage and play in a greedy corrupt league.

I'm fine with the outcome, not the least of which is because of the tax dollars, but we lost them for those reasons not because of anybody who spoke out against subsidy.

framer · PostOct 25, 2017#39292017-10-25T01:39+00:00

I wonder how much the loss of the Rams hurts us in the Amazon Sweepstakes. Having major-league sports is one of those things recruiters like to brag about when trying to lure employees.

kipfilet · PostOct 30, 2017#39302017-10-30T01:04+00:00

framer wrote: ↑
Oct 25, 2017
I wonder how much the loss of the Rams hurts us in the Amazon Sweepstakes. Having major-league sports is one of those things recruiters like to brag about when trying to lure employees.

I would guess that there is not a lot of overlap between the set of people who would work at Amazon HQ and the set of people who watch NFL.

gary kreie · PostOct 30, 2017#39312017-10-30T14:16+00:00

kipfilet wrote: ↑
Oct 30, 2017

framer wrote: ↑
Oct 25, 2017
I wonder how much the loss of the Rams hurts us in the Amazon Sweepstakes. Having major-league sports is one of those things recruiters like to brag about when trying to lure employees.
I would guess that there is not a lot of overlap between the set of people who would work at Amazon HQ and the set of people who watch NFL.

So you don't think young people in Seattle follow the Seahawks? How about MLS Seattle Sounders? The are still mad that their NBA team left, so we have that in common. But we do have hockey.

PostOct 30, 2017#39322017-10-30T14:16+00:00

kipfilet wrote: ↑
Oct 30, 2017

framer wrote: ↑
Oct 25, 2017
I wonder how much the loss of the Rams hurts us in the Amazon Sweepstakes. Having major-league sports is one of those things recruiters like to brag about when trying to lure employees.
I would guess that there is not a lot of overlap between the set of people who would work at Amazon HQ and the set of people who watch NFL.

So you don't think young people in Seattle follow the Seahawks? How about MLS Seattle Sounders? They are still mad that their NBA team left, so we have that in common. But we do have hockey.

FoghornLeghorn · PostOct 30, 2017#39332017-10-30T15:50+00:00

Sports fans for some reason have always had trouble understanding the fact that they are in the minority. Most people in the world do not follow sports. In this country, the concept of a pro sports team as an important civic institution was something that was invented by the owners to line their pockets. Thinking of sports as something more that just silly irrelevant entertainment is crazy.

dmelsh · PostOct 30, 2017#39342017-10-30T16:17+00:00

FoghornLeghorn wrote: ↑
Oct 30, 2017
Sports fans for some reason have always had trouble understanding the fact that they are in the minority. Most people in the world do not follow sports. In this country, the concept of a pro sports team as an important civic institution was something that was invented by the owners to line their pockets. Thinking of sports as something more that just silly irrelevant entertainment is crazy.

Could you provide a source or is that just your opinion? Real data shows the opposite.

From a Gallup poll back in JUNE 17, 2015.

PRINCETON, N.J. -- Although the sports industry is continuing its impressive growth, the percentage of Americans who describe themselves as sports fans has stayed relatively stable over time. Currently, 59% of Americans say they are sports fans, one percentage point less than the average in Gallup's trend dating back to 2000.

http://news.gallup.com/poll/183689/indu ... teady.aspx

chaifetz10 · PostOct 30, 2017#39352017-10-30T16:28+00:00

There's also a difference between people who like sports and those who are willing to pay the taxes to build billion dollar stadiums. I'm a sports fan but was 100% against money going towards a new Rams stadium and MLS stadium. Especially if it was going to be the city alone carrying the burden. I can see how people who live in Jeff Co, St. Charles County, St. Clair County, etc etc are all for new stadiums when they don't have to pay their share.

kipfilet · PostOct 30, 2017#39362017-10-30T16:39+00:00

gary kreie wrote: ↑
Oct 30, 2017

kipfilet wrote: ↑
Oct 30, 2017

framer wrote: ↑
Oct 25, 2017
I wonder how much the loss of the Rams hurts us in the Amazon Sweepstakes. Having major-league sports is one of those things recruiters like to brag about when trying to lure employees.
I would guess that there is not a lot of overlap between the set of people who would work at Amazon HQ and the set of people who watch NFL.
So you don't think young people in Seattle follow the Seahawks? How about MLS Seattle Sounders? The are still mad that their NBA team left, so we have that in common. But we do have hockey.

Amazon's (HQ, not warehouse) workforce tends to be (i) more educated, (ii) more international, and (iii) younger. All of these are demo characteristics that have a negative correlation with sports (at least traditional American sports like NFL, MLS is a different story as it has much broader international appeal).

goat314 · PostOct 30, 2017#39372017-10-30T16:55+00:00

kipfilet wrote: ↑
Oct 30, 2017

gary kreie wrote: ↑
Oct 30, 2017

kipfilet wrote: ↑
Oct 30, 2017

I would guess that there is not a lot of overlap between the set of people who would work at Amazon HQ and the set of people who watch NFL.
So you don't think young people in Seattle follow the Seahawks? How about MLS Seattle Sounders? The are still mad that their NBA team left, so we have that in common. But we do have hockey.
Amazon's (HQ, not warehouse) workforce tends to be (i) more educated, (ii) more international, and (iii) younger. All of these are demo characteristics that have a negative correlation with sports (at least traditional American sports like NFL, MLS is a different story as it has much broader international appeal).

I have lived in a few cities with professional sports and the stadium is packed with young professionals and upper middle class families (that I assume are educated). I think saying young educated professionals don't like pro sports is a weak argument and kind of stereotypical. I will agree that most are probably not hardcore sports fans (e.g. playing fantasy sports, glued to ESPN, can tell you every player on the team etc.), but that probably has more to do with them having a busy work schedule and priorities than lack of interest. Ask one of these people if they want to go to a NFL game and they will ask you what time and how much are you planning on drinking. Also, NBA and MLB are pretty big overseas, NFL less so, but MLS is a weak league because soccer has never really caught mainstream success in America.

dmelsh · PostOct 30, 2017#39382017-10-30T17:28+00:00

kipfilet wrote: ↑
Oct 30, 2017

gary kreie wrote: ↑
Oct 30, 2017

kipfilet wrote: ↑
Oct 30, 2017

I would guess that there is not a lot of overlap between the set of people who would work at Amazon HQ and the set of people who watch NFL.
So you don't think young people in Seattle follow the Seahawks? How about MLS Seattle Sounders? The are still mad that their NBA team left, so we have that in common. But we do have hockey.
Amazon's (HQ, not warehouse) workforce tends to be (i) more educated, (ii) more international, and (iii) younger. All of these are demo characteristics that have a negative correlation with sports (at least traditional American sports like NFL, MLS is a different story as it has much broader international appeal).

Once again, this is your opinion and not fact. From same poll. http://news.gallup.com/poll/183689/indu ... teady.aspx

i. Post Grads = 64%
ii Non - white = 62%
iii 18-29 = 61%
30-49 = 62%

PostOct 30, 2017#39392017-10-30T17:33+00:00

chaifetz10 wrote: ↑
Oct 30, 2017
There's also a difference between people who like sports and those who are willing to pay the taxes to build billion dollar stadiums. I'm a sports fan but was 100% against money going towards a new Rams stadium and MLS stadium. Especially if it was going to be the city alone carrying the burden. I can see how people who live in Jeff Co, St. Charles County, St. Clair County, etc etc are all for new stadiums when they don't have to pay their share.

That is a different question all together. I could easily ask if people like helping the homeless and everyone would say yes. Ask same group if they would pay a tax to help, most will say no. It has nothing to do with the homeless or sports. It has everything to do with paying extra taxes which most people would say no not matter what it was for.

gary kreie · PostOct 30, 2017#39402017-10-30T20:43+00:00

FoghornLeghorn wrote:Sports fans for some reason have always had trouble understanding the fact that they are in the minority. Most people in the world do not follow sports. In this country, the concept of a pro sports team as an important civic institution was something that was invented by the owners to line their pockets. Thinking of sports as something more that just silly irrelevant entertainment is crazy.

I imagine folks who go the Art Museum are in the minority. So should we get rid of it? Same with the Zoo, Botanical Gardens, Symphony, etc. But an attractive big city has a mosaic of all these elements to entertain a number of different entertainment tastes.

Have you ever been to a hockey game in San Jose Silicon Valley? I did once and that crowd was the most fanatical I’ve ever seen. It was wild.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

STLEnginerd · PostOct 31, 2017#39412017-10-31T02:45+00:00

kipfilet wrote: ↑
Oct 30, 2017
I would guess that there is not a lot of overlap between the set of people who would work at Amazon HQ and the set of people who watch NFL.

I would guess you are wrong. Knowing a few amazon employees who are shockingly unhsterish. One happens to be an international who happen to enjoy both forms of football. Not that I think selling ourselves down the river would have been wise, and I doubt it could be viewed as the deciding factor in the great amazon hq race,

wabash · PostOct 31, 2017#39422017-10-31T04:36+00:00

Funny seeing this thread pop back up. Thanks God there isn't a $1.1. billion albatross being built around St. Louis' neck right now. Sure some conflict has cropped up around the arena renovation and/or MLS stadium, but it's good to have nonsense on the NFL's scale behind us.

symphonicpoet · PostOct 31, 2017#39432017-10-31T04:56+00:00

I think there's a lot of hyperbole here. And some statistics, but I'd be interested in more. Are there sports fans who travel to other towns to watch their team play? Absolutely. Is that anything like a majority of sports fans? Probably not. The real question here isn't how many people casually enjoy sports, but whether public funding of stadia is a wise use of tax dollars; whether it creates a return to the public coffers greater than the expense. And the expense should be understood to include the other uses that are displaced: the other events that could use a space, the other investments that the money could make. Public art and public entertainment have always been with us. And they probably always will be. But it's worth measuring them every now and then. It's fair to ask how much bread our circuses would buy. And which is the better investment. Anyway . . . let's play nice. Not that I always follow that rule, myself mind. No judgment. Just observation.

(For the record: I regard myself as a pretty solid baseball fan. I can define the infield fly rule. (Like all of us locally now.) But I've never gone to watch a baseball game anywhere other than my home town. And I would not have voted in favor of public funding for Busch III. That said . . . I'm happy to watch a game there.)

gary kreie · PostOct 31, 2017#39442017-10-31T13:11+00:00

symphonicpoet wrote: ↑
Oct 31, 2017
I think there's a lot of hyperbole here. And some statistics, but I'd be interested in more. Are there sports fans who travel to other towns to watch their team play? Absolutely. Is that anything like a majority of sports fans? Probably not. The real question here isn't how many people casually enjoy sports, but whether public funding of stadia is a wise use of tax dollars; whether it creates a return to the public coffers greater than the expense. And the expense should be understood to include the other uses that are displaced: the other events that could use a space, the other investments that the money could make. Public art and public entertainment have always been with us. And they probably always will be. But it's worth measuring them every now and then. It's fair to ask how much bread our circuses would buy. And which is the better investment. Anyway . . . let's play nice. Not that I always follow that rule, myself mind. No judgment. Just observation.

(For the record: I regard myself as a pretty solid baseball fan. I can define the infield fly rule. (Like all of us locally now.) But I've never gone to watch a baseball game anywhere other than my home town. And I would not have voted in favor of public funding for Busch III. That said . . . I'm happy to watch a game there.)

I agree, but I would caution against measuring everything in terms of "whether it creates a return to the public coffers greater than the expense." Return over what time period? It's a tricky thing to figure out what subsidies will pay off in the long run in economic terms as well as quality of life.

But when a giant metro like ours stops having the things that similar size metro areas have, folks start thinking we are a place that can't get it done. Who would want to live there, they ask. That's what Kroenke said in his parting shot. Is he wrong?

jshank83 · PostOct 31, 2017#39452017-10-31T14:00+00:00

My opinion on it has always been, will it bring in more tax money than we spend on it? If the numbers play out then I have no problem building it. As a sports fan I would even be fine being a little in the red because I know there will be some indirect money also being spent at local businesses/some city unity. I mean we throw TIF money around like it doesn't matter so if we want to put it towards a stadium I don't see that as any different then any other building.

I do travel a lot to sporting events. One argument I really have disagreed with that was said was "The money people spend on the Rams will stay locally anyways and will just be spent on something else in the community". I am sure that is the case for some people but I now spend more money out state than I did when they were here. I had season tickets and went to bars before the games. Now that I don't have 10 dates a year I feel the need to be here, I travel. I go to games in other cities or just go away for a weekend. For me it has probably taken more money out even more money out of STL than just what I was spending on the Rams/pregame. Now it is a whole weekend of money it is taking away, it isn't just the money I spent on that one day, being spent somewhere else.

This doesn't include the outsiders that came in for games here. Not that it was a big number but it still probably was 5-10,000? fans a game.

I don't think there is any way for you to figure out the actual impact of having/not having a team. I also realize it is different for different sports.

chaifetz10 · PostOct 31, 2017#39462017-10-31T14:02+00:00

Maybe on smaller scale items we can let the ROI slip a bit... but an NFL stadium is millions (if not close to a billion) of dollars. Let's not associate apples with oranges here. NFL stadiums (and sports stadiums in general) do not generate the economic benefits that owners and leagues claim.

gary kreie · PostOct 31, 2017#39472017-10-31T14:53+00:00

jshank83 wrote: ↑
Oct 31, 2017
My opinion on it has always been, will it bring in more tax money than we spend on it? If the numbers play out then I have no problem building it. As a sports fan I would even be fine being a little in the red because I know there will be some indirect money also being spent at local businesses/some city unity. I mean we throw TIF money around like it doesn't matter so if we want to put it towards a stadium I don't see that as any different then any other building.

I do travel a lot to sporting events. One argument I really have disagreed with that was said was "The money people spend on the Rams will stay locally anyways and will just be spent on something else in the community". I am sure that is the case for some people but I now spend more money out state than I did when they were here. I had season tickets and went to bars before the games. Now that I don't have 10 dates a year I feel the need to be here, I travel. I go to games in other cities or just go away for a weekend. For me it has probably taken more money out even more money out of STL than just what I was spending on the Rams/pregame. Now it is a whole weekend of money it is taking away, it isn't just the money I spent on that one day, being spent somewhere else.

This doesn't include the outsiders that came in for games here. Not that it was a big number but it still probably was 5-10,000? fans a game.

I don't think there is any way for you to figure out the actual impact of having/not having a team. I also realize it is different for different sports.

Same here on not spending my former Rams money locally, as Show-Me claimed would happen and we would all break even. I spent my fall and former Rams season ticket/restaurant/parking money on a trip to Europe. I don't think I could find enough things downtown to spend that kind of money on in the winter. Almost all other cities pay for most of their stadia cost with hotel and rental car visitor taxes and user taxes. If you visit Atlanta, you built their stadium.

whitherSTL · PostOct 31, 2017#39482017-10-31T15:09+00:00

On the other hand, I wonder if lack of entertainment options in STL contributes to the increased originating traffic out of Lambert. I too was a season ticket holder (4 seats 100 section) and that $10k-$15K is now spent on vacations.

chaifetz10 · PostOct 31, 2017#39492017-10-31T15:09+00:00

You're applying a single, anecdotal piece of evidence to the bigger picture though. Sure you may not be spending your money locally, but I could also counter by saying that I actually spend more money downtown... instead of paying for my Rams ticket, going to the game, and then leaving right after, my fiance and I tend to spend more time at local restaurants instead.

This honestly feels like you're just upset that the team left and you want to argue that St. Louis screwed up by letting it happen. Not sure what else you are trying to say here.

whitherSTL · PostOct 31, 2017#39502017-10-31T15:10+00:00

I'll also say, seeing these magnificent structures being built in other cities makes St. Louis feel like it's in the Stone Age. Progress is good, folks.

City vs Rams Lawsuit

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