Re: Edward Jones Dome/St. Louis Rams
 

My thoughts on the NFL and Kroenke leaving St. Louis is: Good riddance. I don't ever want the NFL back in St. Louis because they don't care about the fans. Hell, they don't even care about the players. If ever a team needs a new stadium, the NFL just uses an empty city as the bargaining chip. It's quite ridiculous. It's only about how much money they can put in their pockets.

Furthermore, Kroenke has 3 teams in the 4 "major" American sports: the Nuggets in the NBA, the Avs in the NHL, and the aforementioned Rams. The Nuggets were 30th out of 30 in attendance because he hasn't shown interest in actually building a team. The Avs were 19th out of 30 in league attendance because the team somehow managed to stay in the playoff hunt. And lastly, the Rams were 32nd out of 32 teams in attendance because he has not fielded a winning team since 2003, or a team that reached .500 since 2006. He also owns Arsenal, a professional Soccer team in England, and the fans recently started a petition to remove him as controlling owner because of his comments that he didn't invest to win trophies. Kroenke is not fit to be an owner of any sports teams because he is a self-centered, worthless, POS that doesn't actually care about the performance of his teams because it puts money in his pockets no matter what.

Re: Edward Jones Dome/St. Louis Rams
 

Couldn't have said it better myself - nailed it.

St. Louis is also larger than just the area around the dome... just an FYI to those who think the place is going to turn into a wasteland or something.

Re: Edward Jones Dome/St. Louis Rams
 

Exactly this. There are lots of people that can pay lots of money for those seats and most of that money goes into the owners and NFL pockets, very little of it comes back to the people that financed the stadium.

Class, this is one of the most important things you will learn today. You need to take a good look at where your government dollars go. State have given companies huge tax incentives and cash to bring jobs. In some cases it works out. Other places are holding their breath (1 billion to Tesla for the factory in Nevada) and others are looking at clawing back some of the incentives when companies move. Companies are now treated like people for donation purposes to elections. Do you think that Koch Industries will spend 889 million on this year's elections because they think democracy is cool? Today's phrase is "quid pro quo" (this for that). You can assume that the $889 million investment in 2016 will pay of 3-5 times across the next few years.

Umm, not quite. This story about stadium tax breaks shows the area will pay for the infrastructure developments to the tune of $60 million and another $40 million not collecting taxes and fees. So that's a $100 million in tax money to support the building of the stadium. But the ink isn't dry on the $2.6 billion dollar project, so that number will go up. (By the way the city of Inglewood where this thing is going has a budget of $86 million, so the $100 million is a bigger deal than people think.

[ Sorry about steering a robotics forum so far off topic. ]

Re: Edward Jones Dome/St. Louis Rams
 

A tax break is not the same as using tax money to pay for a stadium, and public infrastructure is not the same thing as a private stadium.

According to the article you linked, the NFL is loaning $60 million to Inglewood to fund public roads, utility improvements and parks. After Inglewood is receiving an extra $25 million in tax money each year, the town will begin to pay that back. (After all, roads, utilities and parks are all the city's responsibility, not the NFL's). As I said earlier, the taxpayers are not paying for a new stadium.

Now unless you're suggesting that the NFL should pay for public roads, utilities and parks, I don't see anything remotely objectionable about this agreement. In either case, I think we can both agree that's what's happening in Inglewood is a lot better than what happened in St. Louis when the Rams moved there.

Re: Edward Jones Dome/St. Louis Rams
 

This is a little unfair to him considering he purchased the team in 2010 (when they were 30th in attendance)...

Re: Edward Jones Dome/St. Louis Rams
 

As I noted, sometimes tax breaks work (I won't charge you property tax on your building if you bring jobs. Thats assuming the money I get from new jobs offsets the money that I'm not charging you) and sometimes they don't. If they don't, then the taxpayers are up for the difference.

Ok, lets see NFL loans $60 million and the money gets used to build roads and stuff there. Then the loan needs to get paid back with interest. They don't pay it back until they are $25 million ahead. Wonder if that loan is interest free until then? If the Stadium was not there they wouldn't need to build the roads for it.

Lots of places make developers pay for the improvements. There is a new development going in near me, the developer is paying 1.2 million in road improvements. Granted the state did say "Ok, we'll put that on the 2021 project list, maybe we'll fund it then." Just a side note, 60 million in a 2.6 billion project is rounding errors assuming the normal cost overruns.

Also Inglewood has agreed to not charge services like police, Fire and EMS to the stadium. Ask a FRC event person how much they spend on those items. (They are often a line item in the venue contract). So that's more expenses the NFL and the Rams are not paying. (And as I recall the Raiders want to come their also (may be old news) so rather than 9 weeks it might be 18 weeks a year.

Bottom line is will the overall tax money flowing into Inglewood exceed the $100 million that is flowing out (60 million for infrastructure and 40 million in lost revenue)

We do agree, St Louis, and other NFL cities paid a fortune for their teams. Inglewood isn't paying that much. And I can imagine the discussion: "So, we aren't robbing you as much as we robbed St. Louis, ya shoulda feel good about that." :rolleyes:

Re: Edward Jones Dome/St. Louis Rams
 

Is the quality of the St. Louis Dome in 2017 going to approach the quality of the Astrodome when the Championship was there?

All things being equal, hands down voting for the Detroit Event if I have the option for which Championship to attend, the quality of the venue will deteriorate fast unless they can find something to fill up the space.

The real downfall to the Rams tenure in St Louis was probably the contract they had with the Dome. I hope the city of STL sue the NFL for part of that $550M relocation fee, it could cover the stadium debt.

Re: Edward Jones Dome/St. Louis Rams
 

Yes, he gained FULL ownership in 2010, but he bought 30% of the team in order to help move the team to St. Louis in 1995.