The St. Louis Board of Aldermen yesterday approved a stadium package that includes the possibility of $100M of NFL funding toward a proposed stadium in the city, but the league still must guarantee the contribution, which is a key element of the $1B stadium package. St. Louis stadium task force co-head Dave Peacock said, “We are not saying there is guaranteed $100 million coming from the NFL. They are going to have to go through their various committee approvals and league approval to determine if that is something they are going to do relative to the things that we are willing to do on the public side.” Peacock is referring to letting the team playing in the stadium keep ticket taxes, an element not part of the previous proposal. A final vote is set for Friday. NFL Exec VP/Business Ventures Eric Grubman declined to comment. There appears to be no precedent for the NFL to go above and beyond the normal stadium financing pools it makes available to teams, which in this case is already $200M. Peacock said he has had discussions with many league sources, including owners, about the idea of more money for the stadium. Peacock: “We have done as much probing as we can with different people before we put something out. We were in a position where we wanted to put something in legislative form that we felt was going to pass and was going to put our best proposal forward" (Daniel Kaplan, Staff Writer).
DOLLARS & SENSE: In St. Louis, Hunn & Pistor in a front-page piece report Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon's stadium task force has "agreed to rebate city ticket taxes back to the team -- a tax projected to produce" more than $3M a year. The task force is "correspondingly seeking to boost stadium rent paid by the football team," from about $700,000 a year to $1.5M, the promise of which "will back construction bonds." Peacock said that the new bill "required the NFL team to pay for any cost overruns." Peacock: “If the team wants more, great. But they have to pay for it now. This is a fully funded project.” He added that the revisions "amount to another effort at addressing nagging NFL worries about the local plan" (ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, 12/15).
MCNAIR TIPPING HIS HAND? The NFL will meet next month in Houston and could potentially vote on which team, or teams, will relocate to L.A., and Texans Owner Bob McNair said that the league "needs 'certainty' before any decision is made." However, McNair, one of six owners on the league's L.A. relocation committee, indicated that as things "currently stand, the Rams are more likely to remain in St. Louis." McNair said, "St. Louis, they have come up with a proposal that is getting pretty close, in my opinion, to being an attractive proposal. And if they do come up with an attractive proposal, then in my view, my personal opinion, I don’t think the Rams will receive the approval to relocate. So that would mean then you’d have two teams, San Diego and Oakland, that would be going into Carson, (Calif.). They have a partnership to build a stadium.” He noted the Chargers have been "trying for about 15 years" to get a new stadium in San Diego, but they have had "all kinds of political problems there." McNair: "They’re saying they’re going to do something now. But in order to do it, they’d have to have a referendum and the referendum isn’t until next June. ... You need to have certainty and you don’t know if the referendum would pass or fail. We can’t take what they’re saying very seriously.” He continued, “Oakland is basically saying, ‘We don’t have any money. We’re going to take care of the baseball team and we’re not going to do anything for the football team’" (CHRON.com, 12/16).
