In 2017, an ownership group wanted to bring an MLS team to St. Louis. But they also wanted $60 million from taxpayers. It went to a vote and failed, as most residents wanted nothing to do with it. But then the following year, in 2018, St. Louis residents were told that new owners of a future MLS team (a local family connected to Enterprise) were “prepared to pay for a $250 million downtown stadium in cash.” This came from the leader of the ownership group. What about debt from building the stadium? Give me a break. These owners were not going to borrow money for the stadium.None.
The owners then proceeded to make sure that everyone knew how little taxpayers were giving them at this moment. You can find many articles from all types of media that praise these owners for their lack of taxpayer demands. The St. Louis Dispatch wrote that these owners were different and that their stadium financing “set this effort apart” from other MLS owners. One of the owners openly discussed how this ownership group wanted to pay for almost everything since they did “not want to take resources away from the city.”
Washington University in St. Louis wrote a piece titled “Stadiums don’t have to be a drain on taxpayer dollars − 4 lessons from St. Louis”. This article was pushed to any outlet willing to publish it. Here it is retitled “St. Louis MLS Stadium Offers Alternative to Taxpayer-Funded Sports Venues.” Here are the authors pushing the article in local newspaper comment sections titled “How to build a stadium and keep taxpayers happy.” I have to read this article and understand how these Saints owners did the financially impossible. The article makes sure to include just how much money professional teams demand from taxpayers (almost $35 billion since 2000) while also writing that rarely do these new venues create jobs, boost local businesses, or attract substantial new tourists.
But then we move to what has and is happening at St. Louis FC SC. According to this article, the owners came in with their own “financial backing.” I am not sure what that means exactly, but I take it to mean that the owners had or have a lot of money to spend? This means that these owners ignored “broader public subsidies” to take out of their own wallet! Want proof? These owners “privately financed the construction” of the current stadium. These owners clearly “value nonfinancial objectives as well as pure profit,” which is why the stadium was built in the “form of private development” that was never “fully dependent on public funding.”
How could you not love this ownership group? They allow St. Louis to not “bear the costs of this (stadium) project.” Listen, does the article basically admit that almost all truly independent research shows no impact on local economies? Or that most sports “deals result in financial losses”? Sure. But the article also points out how sports teams can “invest in their local economies.” Pay the players a lot of money! This somehow means the team is investing in the local economy? Wait, what? One more thing. The article claims that people should not overlook the “intangible benefits of having a big sports arena.” It then gives absolutely zero information or evidence about this point and moves on.
These owners must be paying every bill that the MLS team gets. Right? No, not even close. Let’s first start with the fact that when the owners first wanted the city to sign onto their MLS bid in 2018-2019, they demanded and got numerous financial breaks:
The owners were given significant tax breaks on ticket taxes,The owners were given a 100% tax exemption on stadium construction materials,The owners saved close to $35 million dollars thanks to a partial property tax abatement and other tax incentives,The owners were given several pieces of land that were right next to the stadium for $0,The owners will never pay a single dollar in property taxes,The owners were granted a 3% sales tax on needed stadium goods (this is really three separate 1% taxes that were collected from special districts).
Next, the cost of the stadium? Who knows? As FieldOfSchemes.com wrote at the time, local media couldn’t agree on the cost of a new soccer stadium. KMOV reported that a new stadium would cost more than $200 million. KSDK stated that the total cost of a new stadium was $461 million. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch said that the cost of a new stadium ranged from $350 million to $400 million. Confused yet?
In 2020, the owners applied for $30 million in state tax credits for the 2019 and 2020 tax years to the Missouri Department of Economic Development. This request came out of nowhere and made no sense for several reasons. First, the Missouri Department of Economic Development is only allowed to issue no more than $10 million a year. Second, the owners had in the past claimed that expenses such as these would be “largely privately funded” by themselves. What happened to that? In the following year, as the world battled the coronavirus, the owners thought it would be a good time to ask for and receive $5.7 million worth of additional tax credits.
In 2021, the owners suddenly wanted a new parking garage to be built for them by taxpayers. Why? Because this allows the stadium to “have a magnetic quality that draws people to the district 365 days a year”…
Because this building would be near the stadium, it allows the owners to claim that this is just another plan that will “reinvigorate” the area. Like most business deals with sports teams, when the team announced this move, it gave no additional information about the timeline or costs.
In 2024, the ownership group began to complain about how much it had cost them to build the stadium and to keep it well kept during the year. Suddenly, the owners demanded to be reimbursed for “undisclosed extraordinary costs the team ownership had to pay during construction of the 22,500-seat stadium.” Therefore, the lapdog city of St. Louis claimed that it was time to raise the sales tax by an “increase…(of) another 1%.” City documents show that the owners dealt with contaminated groundwater, causing them to need “specialized equipment and infrastructure” to fix it. But will this 1% rise in sales tax pay for these insane stadium expenses? We have no idea, as the actual costs of cleaning up the groundwater have never been substantiated, and the owners will “not say…how much money the 1% sales tax” would raise for them. But brace yourself, as these owners can demand two more 1% raises in sales taxes around the stadium.
Listen, did these owners give St. Louis a better deal than previous groups trying to bring MLS to the area? Absolutely. But I continue to see articles written that act as if these owners paid for almost everything related to the stadium and/or expenses in general with the team. When these owners first got city approval for their MLS bid, they were given a significant amount of public incentives that added up to roughly $40 million. The owners also got the city to buy the land where the future stadium would be built and get the city to pay every dime in future property taxes.
