By Ken Reed
The citizens of St. Louis not only found out that they lost their NFL team to Los Angeles this week, they also discovered they still owe $100 million in debt on the bonds used to finance the Edward Jones Dome, the stadium that was publicly-financed to bring the Rams to St. Louis in the first place. The stadium debt won’t be paid off until at least 2021, more than five years after the Rams left Missouri for California.
Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill is irate about the situation and is drafting a bill designed to retrieve public dollars from pro sports teams that dump their cities for greener pastures elsewhere. The goal of McCaskill’s bill is to help ensure that host cities are treated fairly if a professional sports franchise that benefits from public funds (such as a sports palace financed by taxpayer dollars) decides to relocate to another city. McCaskill called the NFL’s franchise relocation process “a very smelly onion.”
“I have a chance to make sure no other community will get treated like St. Louis,” she said of her bill.
— Ken Reed, Sports Policy Director, League of Fans
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