Staying or Going, St. Louis Should Limits Its Losses in Rams Deal

Jim Nagourney, who spent three decades negotiating stadium deals on behalf of government agencies and team owners, describes how he helped snooker city officials as a consultant to the Los Angeles Rams, who were then negotiating a move to a new stadium in St. Louis. “We had a whiteboard, and we’re putting stuff down” to demand in a stadium lease, he recalls. “I said, ‘Guys, some of this is crazy.’ And John Shaw, who was president of the Rams at the time—brilliant, brilliant guy—said, ‘They can always say no. Let’s ask for it.’” The result, which Nagourney calls “probably the most scandalous deal in the country,” included a clause requiring the new stadium to remain “state-of-the-art,” or else the team could break its lease and leave. “The city was poorly represented—the city is always poorly represented…. We put in all of these ridiculous things, and the city didn’t have the sense to say no to any of them.” - The Nation

That's just ugly. There couldn't be a much more searing condemnation of the process that saw St. Louis commit many millions of dollars to lure an NFL team. The Rams moving to St. Louis is often cited as a point of civic pride (or the healing of a civic bruise). We're a big city because we have the NFL, people say. Of course there's zero evidence that any professional sports franchise provides a city a net financial gain. The above quote is from a story in The Nation titled, "Why Do Mayors Love Sports Stadiums?", which looks at the increasingly expensive, and creative, deals to build stadiums.