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The NFL was barely out of town before St. Louis leaders began considering another sports option for the city.
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES
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ST. LOUIS
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Income profile (annual):
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■ Household median: $56,483
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■ Household, 60th percentile: $70,816
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■ Household, 80th percentile: $110,987
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■ Median, family of four: $90,711
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■ Discretionary, family of four (rank): $21,266 (25th)
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■ MSA population (rank): 2.81 million (20th)
■ Since 2010: +1 percent
■ Major pro team: Cardinals, Blues
■ Nearest teams: NFL: Kansas City Chiefs (247 miles); MLS: Sporting Kansas City (247 miles); NBA: Memphis Grizzlies (283 miles) Canucks (315 miles)
■ TV teams: Grizzlies, Indiana Pacers
■ TV households (rank): 1.22 million (21st)
■ Metro GDP (rank): $155.1 billion (21st)
■ Fortune 1000 HQs (rank): 18 (14th)
■ Employment profile: The MSA has 1.3 million jobs, with only health care practitioners/technicians over-indexing by more than 15 percent and only life, physical and social sciences under-indexing by more than 15 percent.
■ Places to play: With renovations on tap for 22-year-old Scottrade Center, St. Louis will have an arena that could be a nice home to an NBA franchise. To attract an MLS expansion franchise, the city almost certainly will have to commit to a soccer facility. There appears to be an appetite, which has led to discussions, but thus far nothing is in the pipeline or on the docket for a vote.
— Bill King
Appraisal
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Within weeks of the NFL owners’ vote to approve the Rams’ return to Los Angeles, MLS Commissioner Don Garber was in St. Louis to meet with Dave Peacock, the former Anheuser-Busch president who chaired both the governor’s NFL stadium task force and the St. Louis Sports Commission.
Bucked from the NFL twice, St. Louis appears to be ready to find a new horse.
The early-line favorite is MLS, largely because the city, widely viewed as the cradle of U.S. soccer, has turned out to see international matches for years. With a group of business and sports leaders working to corral ownership and develop a stadium plan, there appears to be momentum.
The metrics of the market indicate that St. Louis is, indeed, sufficient to host three teams, as it did for all but six of the last 48 years. The MSA population and metro GDP
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both are squarely in the column with other three-team markets. The TV market is slightly smaller than the three-team median, but it’s a bit larger than Pittsburgh and far larger than Kansas City. Though St. Louis often is painted as a city in decline, discretionary income for a family of four in the metro area remains solid.
While soccer is the sport most often associated with the area, the possibility of an NBA franchise making a go of it there is worth at least consideration. Those same metrics cited above do indicate promise. St. Louis has a history as a basketball town. And there is a viable arena in place.
But then there is this disconcerting fact: While other smaller three-team markets host either an NBA or NHL team, none of them have both. The only comp in St. Louis’ weight class would be Denver — which has shown itself to be an overachieving outlier as a sports market for years.
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