Rams Stiff St. Louis, Leave City with $144 Million Bill
7th February 2016
St. Louis residents no longer have a football team, but that doesn’t mean they will get to stop paying for one. While the Rams won a vote in mid-January to relocate to Los Angeles, St. Louis taxpayers will still be responsible for making $144 million in debt and maintenance payments for the Edward Jones Dome.
Lewis Reed, the St. Louis Board of Alderman president, has asked the NFL for money to help pay off the debt, but he seems unaware of how the multi-billion dollar league operates.
As Reason has reported in the past, stadium financing is one way the NFL holds cities hostage—either pay for a state-of-the-art facility or lose the prestige of having a professional football team. This has resulted in often lopsided stadium deals that leave cities (and their taxpayers) burdened with much of the debt.
Not that taxpayers got all that much to say about it; politicians just LOVE major league teams.