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Bill Bidwill dead at 88


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26 minutes ago, Pistol said:

Disagree. STL was idiotic in the way it panicked after letting Bidwill go and signed up for one of the worst stadium deals of all time. That doesn't mean it should've caved to Bidwill, though.

I live in a city with a bad football team and morale around it is as low as ever. The publicly financed stadium is mostly empty for home games. Whatever economic boom was promised as taxpayers were bilked hasn't happened and was never going to happen. Even if they were good, it's not like it would be a net economic positive because of how expensive it's been and the fact the stadium is used for 10 home games a year. There's just no point to having them or the stadium. I wish they would leave and we could do something more useful with the land the stadium sits on.

I keep hoping the stadium scam trend is dying but they keep happening: the new Texas Rangers stadium, Las Vegas football stadium, etc. I hope STL at least knows enough by now not to fall for it again.

I obviously don't agree. Having a football team is important for a region. Bidwill's requests were not unreasonable. Politics drove him away. Some of us still went to Billiken games when all we did was lose . I didn't give up my tickets and start going to Wash U games. The Cards were my team just like the Bills. There is always hope for the future. Who knows someday Cincy may have a good sports team. 

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6 minutes ago, Cowboy said:

-Mr Bidwill donated a lot of football equipment to the ESL high schools

To add to that, his son and SLU alum Michael Bidwill continues to donate $10k to the high school football awards here each year which was left without a big donor when the Rams left.  When BenFred try to interview him about it, he turned down the request because he didn't want the attention.  

I do also just want to add that when the discussions of the Rams moving were happening, Michael Bidwill was basically the only owner who tried to defend St. Louis.  Apparently he got yelled at by Jerry Jones during the relocation meetings for saying football shouldn't just be about making the owners rich.  

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1 hour ago, willie said:

I obviously don't agree. Having a football team is important for a region. Bidwill's requests were not unreasonable. Politics drove him away. Some of us still went to Billiken games when all we did was lose . I didn't give up my tickets and start going to Wash U games. The Cards were my team just like the Bills. There is always hope for the future. Who knows someday Cincy may have a good sports team. 

What a country to live in, where the wealthiest people can demand that everyone else pay for a new stadium and cite "politics" for leaving when they don't get their way. The case against publicly funded stadiums is truly bipartisan, one of the rare things we can all agree about, because it involves both higher taxes and a gross misuse of the funds created by them. I genuinely don't understand how someone - other than the team owner(s) in question - could support it.

This also isn't about winning or losing. I've always been a fan of the Bills, Cards, and Blues, no matter how well they're doing in a given season. I don't care if the Cincy teams are good or not. I was merely pointing out that morale around the Bengals has been low for years and getting worse, and that even if they were good, the stadium deal is still a massive ripoff for Hamilton County.

Having a football team is not important for a region. The fastest growing regions in the US have to do with job growth and quality of life. Many of these places don't have football teams and certainly don't need them.

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2 hours ago, Pistol said:

What a country to live in, where the wealthiest people can demand that everyone else pay for a new stadium and cite "politics" for leaving when they don't get their way. The case against publicly funded stadiums is truly bipartisan, one of the rare things we can all agree about, because it involves both higher taxes and a gross misuse of the funds created by them. I genuinely don't understand how someone - other than the team owner(s) in question - could support it.

This also isn't about winning or losing. I've always been a fan of the Bills, Cards, and Blues, no matter how well they're doing in a given season. I don't care if the Cincy teams are good or not. I was merely pointing out that morale around the Bengals has been low for years and getting worse, and that even if they were good, the stadium deal is still a massive ripoff for Hamilton County.

Having a football team is not important for a region. The fastest growing regions in the US have to do with job growth and quality of life. Many of these places don't have football teams and certainly don't need them.

I had such a connection to pro football because of the big red so I was willing to give mine and others money to the rich to keep a pro football team in town, my thinking was wrong.

St.Louis still owes 100 million on the dome.  There was a net loss with the Rams with exception of StanK and the NFL.

With the exception of Hockey pro sports is a turn off, I am a college sports fan.

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2 hours ago, Pistol said:

What a country to live in, where the wealthiest people can demand that everyone else pay for a new stadium and cite "politics" for leaving when they don't get their way. The case against publicly funded stadiums is truly bipartisan, one of the rare things we can all agree about, because it involves both higher taxes and a gross misuse of the funds created by them. I genuinely don't understand how someone - other than the team owner(s) in question - could support it.

This also isn't about winning or losing. I've always been a fan of the Bills, Cards, and Blues, no matter how well they're doing in a given season. I don't care if the Cincy teams are good or not. I was merely pointing out that morale around the Bengals has been low for years and getting worse, and that even if they were good, the stadium deal is still a massive ripoff for Hamilton County.

Having a football team is not important for a region. The fastest growing regions in the US have to do with job growth and quality of life. Many of these places don't have football teams and certainly don't need them.

Here, here. 

The financial breakdown of it is almost insulting - especially when it comes to the NFL. The average revenue of an NFL team is around $432MM per year,  the tab for a new NFL stadium is around $1BB, and that goes on the city's books. Obviously the financial breakdown between revenues, costs, earnings, and economic impact for the city are more complicated then two figures, but you don't have to run any models to eyeball those two numbers and know that NFL Owner's should be footing a larger portion, if not all, of the bill. 

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3 hours ago, Bills_06 said:

To add to that, his son and SLU alum Michael Bidwill continues to donate $10k to the high school football awards here each year which was left without a big donor when the Rams left.  When BenFred try to interview him about it, he turned down the request because he didn't want the attention.  

I do also just want to add that when the discussions of the Rams moving were happening, Michael Bidwill was basically the only owner who tried to defend St. Louis.  Apparently he got yelled at by Jerry Jones during the relocation meetings for saying football shouldn't just be about making the owners rich.  

Jerrah is pure scum. No surprise that he had a hand in the bogus relocation process.

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6 hours ago, Bills_06 said:

To add to that, his son and SLU alum Michael Bidwill continues to donate $10k to the high school football awards here each year which was left without a big donor when the Rams left.  When BenFred try to interview him about it, he turned down the request because he didn't want the attention.  

I do also just want to add that when the discussions of the Rams moving were happening, Michael Bidwill was basically the only owner who tried to defend St. Louis.  Apparently he got yelled at by Jerry Jones during the relocation meetings for saying football shouldn't just be about making the owners rich.  

I'm glad you brought that up. I wanted to post that he (Michael) had stepped up with no fanfare to help out something after the Rams left. I just couldn't remember what it was. And that's very interesting about the "discussion" with Jerrah.

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We always hear that pro sports teams fuel economic growth and are a boost for a region but that is just fake news.  Pro sports team affect on local economies are miniscule.  The amount that they are subsidized is not.  Franchise values in the NBA and NFL have doubled, triple or quadrupled and more in the past 20 years all from taxpayer subsidies.  St. Louis economically is much better off without football.  

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12 minutes ago, thetorch said:

We always hear that pro sports teams fuel economic growth and are a boost for a region but that is just fake news.  Pro sports team affect on local economies are miniscule.  The amount that they are subsidized is not.  Franchise values in the NBA and NFL have doubled, triple or quadrupled and more in the past 20 years all from taxpayer subsidies.  St. Louis economically is much better off without football.  

Socialism is good if it helps you ( generic you) I guess

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3 minutes ago, thetorch said:

We always hear that pro sports teams fuel economic growth and are a boost for a region but that is just fake news.  Pro sports team affect on local economies are miniscule.  The amount that they are subsidized is not.  Franchise values in the NBA and NFL have doubled, triple or quadrupled and more in the past 20 years all from taxpayer subsidies.  St. Louis economically is much better off without football.  

I know we are talking football here but the broad statement about all pro sports is just not true. The summer weekend impact for Cardinal games is huge. Something like 30% of weekend cardinal games are from out of town staying in our hotels going to City Museum and eating at restaurants. People who go to sporting events are big spenders. We can argue about public spending but the economic impact is not minuscule. 

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2 hours ago, willie said:

I know we are talking football here but the broad statement about all pro sports is just not true. The summer weekend impact for Cardinal games is huge. Something like 30% of weekend cardinal games are from out of town staying in our hotels going to City Museum and eating at restaurants. People who go to sporting events are big spenders. We can argue about public spending but the economic impact is not minuscule. 

Great post all true about the Cardinals plus the Cardinals built their own stadium and created ball park village.  81 home games brings in a lot of people.

The NFL is a different story 9 to 12 home games depending if the team makes the playoffs or play one home game abroad.  The owners make the tax payers pay for their very expensive stadiums.  Can anyone imagine if the Rams stayed the Billion dollars the tax payers would have to pay off.  I would not live long enough to ever see that stadium on the river paid off.

Good riddance NFL

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2 hours ago, willie said:

I know we are talking football here but the broad statement about all pro sports is just not true. The summer weekend impact for Cardinal games is huge. Something like 30% of weekend cardinal games are from out of town staying in our hotels going to City Museum and eating at restaurants. People who go to sporting events are big spenders. We can argue about public spending but the economic impact is not minuscule. 

Just not true, multiple studies and pretty much every economist disagrees with you.  A baseball teams economic impact is about the same as a Kohls department store.  Sports teams rarely spur growth in an area or are a boon for local businesses,  They actually repel more customers who stay away from the crowds.  Most sports revenue goes to a relatively few players, managers, coaches, and executives who earn extremely high salaries. Most stadium employees work part time at very low wages and earn a small fraction of team revenues. Substituting spending on sports for other recreational spending concentrates income, reduces the total number of jobs, and replaces full-time jobs with low-wage, part-time jobs.

Go downtown on a Sunday, I've worked downtown for a few years now.  It is much more vibrant since the Rams left.  During Football season most restaurants and bars downtown didn't even open.  The Cardinals destroy all activity downtown while they play, and now with Ballpark village they keep most of the aftergame discretionary spending in house.  Do you know how many downtown bars and restaurants were forced to close because of ballpark village?  Once again a subsidized development with tons of low cost labor shutting down small businesses and local entrepreneurs.

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28 minutes ago, thetorch said:

Just not true, multiple studies and pretty much every economist disagrees with you.  A baseball teams economic impact is about the same as a Kohls department store.  Sports teams rarely spur growth in an area or are a boon for local businesses,  They actually repel more customers who stay away from the crowds.  Most sports revenue goes to a relatively few players, managers, coaches, and executives who earn extremely high salaries. Most stadium employees work part time at very low wages and earn a small fraction of team revenues. Substituting spending on sports for other recreational spending concentrates income, reduces the total number of jobs, and replaces full-time jobs with low-wage, part-time jobs.

Go downtown on a Sunday, I've worked downtown for a few years now.  It is much more vibrant since the Rams left.  During Football season most restaurants and bars downtown didn't even open.  The Cardinals destroy all activity downtown while they play, and now with Ballpark village they keep most of the aftergame discretionary spending in house.  Do you know how many downtown bars and restaurants were forced to close because of ballpark village?  Once again a subsidized development with tons of low cost labor shutting down small businesses and local entrepreneurs.

Torch I don’t know who your economist are but you are dead wrong on baseball. In the city of Denver a whole community grew up around their downtown ballpark. I have heard Fran Vivarito from the sports commission go on about the positive economic effect of all sporting events. Don’t forget those athletes are paying earnings taxes. Those beer vendors are making a living off those events. Also Shannon’s is the only place that I know has closed locally. I am not arguing so much about the Rams as your broad inclusion of other sports. Our new soccer stadium is a great investment even if it has some public money. 

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Usually the studies that claim that sports teams do not bring economic benefits to a city are based on the concept that people in a community have a finite amount of disposable income.  Therefore, they will either spend it eating out, going to movies, buying things, etc.  If they spend this disposable income on sporting events then they simply will have less to spend on the other things.  In some regard, this does have a certain logic to it except that people do not always spend wisely and often spend money on things that perhaps they really can not afford.  People get caught up in the moment and do things they normally would not.  For example, how many people went out and bought Blues jerseys and Gloria shirts who would not have spent that money unless the team won the Stanley Cup.  I understand that all of this is not easy to know what is an absolute but I have come to think that those studies have a certain truth to them but they are not 100% accurate either.  I guess what it comes down to is that people ultimately do what makes them happy and that may have little connection to what is sensible.  I agree that paying for stadiums with public money for wealthy team owners makes no sense.  By the way, while the Cardinals did build their own stadium they also got millions in State and Local tax money for infrastructure improvements around the stadium which would not have been spent if the new stadium was not built.  I should also note that SLU got the same for our arena.

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7 hours ago, cheeseman said:

Usually the studies that claim that sports teams do not bring economic benefits to a city are based on the concept that people in a community have a finite amount of disposable income.  Therefore, they will either spend it eating out, going to movies, buying things, etc.  If they spend this disposable income on sporting events then they simply will have less to spend on the other things.  In some regard, this does have a certain logic to it except that people do not always spend wisely and often spend money on things that perhaps they really can not afford.  People get caught up in the moment and do things they normally would not.  For example, how many people went out and bought Blues jerseys and Gloria shirts who would not have spent that money unless the team won the Stanley Cup.  I understand that all of this is not easy to know what is an absolute but I have come to think that those studies have a certain truth to them but they are not 100% accurate either.  I guess what it comes down to is that people ultimately do what makes them happy and that may have little connection to what is sensible.  I agree that paying for stadiums with public money for wealthy team owners makes no sense.  By the way, while the Cardinals did build their own stadium they also got millions in State and Local tax money for infrastructure improvements around the stadium which would not have been spent if the new stadium was not built.  I should also note that SLU got the same for our arena.

Mostly agree.

 The extreme arguments on both sides is simply wrong. Yes, public stadiums do not have quite the economic benefit which their supporters advance. Frankly, this should not come as a surprise. And yes much of the community’s Disposable income is finite as Cheese mentions   But to say that the NFL has zero economic benefit and is, in fact, a negative loss is also extreme – and wrong. Public amenities such as parks museums the zoo etc. are true and absolute money losers. I go to the  The museums, the zoo less than 10 times per year and yet I do not complain. Why does no one make an argument that these facilities?   Because they offer a public benefit which is good for the region and cannot be quantified monetarily?  Guess what: that is the same answer for the NFL.

But to act as if the loss of 60 millionaires, many of them multi millionaires, together with all of the supporting personnel, supporting industry and jobs does not affect our economy is wrong.  And to suggest that the image of our city is not affected by the number of professional sports teams and that this image does not affect future growth, retention and attraction of other private industries and companies is wrong. And to suggest that no outside economic benefit occurs  to our finite disposable income is also wrong.

 Should we spend an unlimited amount of money on public amenities? No.   Did we overspend with respect to the Rams? Were we about to again overspend for the Rams?   Fair questions.

 

 

 

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11 hours ago, thetorch said:

Just not true, multiple studies and pretty much every economist disagrees with you.  A baseball teams economic impact is about the same as a Kohls department store.

I find this really hard to believe for the Cardinals.  Do you have any info that states this just for the Cardinals or are the studies done by grouping cities together?  I would believe that New York gains almost no economic impact from their teams because it is the center of business for the United States so doesn't need sports to get visitors.  Same with LA, already an enormous city that doesn't need a sports team to get people to visit.  Does a party city next to the beach like Miami gain a bunch from having about 800k people go to their games?  I highly doubt it and think that was a terrible deal for the tax payers there.  

When looking at St. Louis, they almost always break over 3 million attendance for the season which means 3 million people that go downtown to attend these games.  That puts the Cardinals in the top 2 or 3 of attendance every year, right by New York and LA which we are nowhere close to population size.  So a city of 300k people gets about 10x the amount of people downtown for games.  Is there any other city that comes close to that?  New York is a city of 8 million so getting 4 to 5 million for their combined teams wouldn't have the impact for them as it does here.  

I have also read that they estimate 40% of the 3 million are visitors from out of town which means businesses for hotels.  A Kohls department store downtown would bring in 1.2 million people each summer?  I just find it hard to believe.  Plus with St. Louis being an independent city which Baltimore would be the only MLB team that is similar, how much of the disposable income that the studies say would be spent anyways would stay in the county without the Cardinals that goes to the City because of the Cardinals?  You can say bars closed because of ballpark village but can you say they would have even been there before BPV without the Cardinals?  I just don't see that many people from the county going downtown for dinner without them.  

I am not saying St. Louis City should increase sales taxes and property taxes on the 300k residents to pay 100% for a stadium because that would clearly hurt a lot of people that are struggling already.  But I do think you are underselling the impact of the Cardinals on St. Louis.  Or maybe you can expound upon Cardinals killing all downtown activity because I just don't see it.  I lived downtown for about 5 years after graduating from SLU and it was night and day difference when I went to bars and restaurants with the amount of people during game days.  

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2 hours ago, Bills_06 said:

I find this really hard to believe for the Cardinals.  Do you have any info that states this just for the Cardinals or are the studies done by grouping cities together?  I would believe that New York gains almost no economic impact from their teams because it is the center of business for the United States so doesn't need sports to get visitors.  Same with LA, already an enormous city that doesn't need a sports team to get people to visit.  Does a party city next to the beach like Miami gain a bunch from having about 800k people go to their games?  I highly doubt it and think that was a terrible deal for the tax payers there.  

When looking at St. Louis, they almost always break over 3 million attendance for the season which means 3 million people that go downtown to attend these games.  That puts the Cardinals in the top 2 or 3 of attendance every year, right by New York and LA which we are nowhere close to population size.  So a city of 300k people gets about 10x the amount of people downtown for games.  Is there any other city that comes close to that?  New York is a city of 8 million so getting 4 to 5 million for their combined teams wouldn't have the impact for them as it does here.  

I have also read that they estimate 40% of the 3 million are visitors from out of town which means businesses for hotels.  A Kohls department store downtown would bring in 1.2 million people each summer?  I just find it hard to believe.  Plus with St. Louis being an independent city which Baltimore would be the only MLB team that is similar, how much of the disposable income that the studies say would be spent anyways would stay in the county without the Cardinals that goes to the City because of the Cardinals?  You can say bars closed because of ballpark village but can you say they would have even been there before BPV without the Cardinals?  I just don't see that many people from the county going downtown for dinner without them.  

I am not saying St. Louis City should increase sales taxes and property taxes on the 300k residents to pay 100% for a stadium because that would clearly hurt a lot of people that are struggling already.  But I do think you are underselling the impact of the Cardinals on St. Louis.  Or maybe you can expound upon Cardinals killing all downtown activity because I just don't see it.  I lived downtown for about 5 years after graduating from SLU and it was night and day difference when I went to bars and restaurants with the amount of people during game days.  

These studies are generally focused on a broad brush stroke not on an individual city.  As far as StL is concerned trying to separate the City from the County and even the surrounding counties that are part of the region both in MO and IL is not appropriate.  People who come in from out of town do not only stay in the City nor do they only spend money in the City.  These studies are about regions not  some discreet boundary like the City of StL.  

The Cardinals may be an exception as you point out because the fan base is from a much broader geographic area - TN, KY, IA, OK AR NE, IL - I am sure I am missing other areas but you get my point.  Most teams draw from a much smaller geographic area so the local money is mostly what is fueling the spending on the team.  Here is another example - have you ever been to Jupiter FL for Spring Training? - if so you would be able to see the huge impact that the Cardinals have in that area - yes the Marlins are there also but their impact is much less.  I bought tix once on line and the Cardinals were playing the Astros and two days later the Marlins.  It was a home game for Miami so you had to buy the tix from their website - what I found was the the tix were much cheaper for the same seats then on the Cardinals website.  Also, you can take your tix before or after to practically any bar or eatery and get a discount. This tells you that the they all know that the Cardinals are a big economic draw.  Now I guess it would be fair to say that the locals are not Cardinals fans but I think more are then you might think given that many moved or bought there to be around Cardinals for Spring Training.

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11 hours ago, Bills_06 said:

When looking at St. Louis, they almost always break over 3 million attendance for the season which means 3 million people that go downtown to attend these games. 

“Attendance” just means tickets sales, not how many showed up. I’ll bet the true attendance number is closer to half that. 

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38 minutes ago, QUAILMAN said:

“Attendance” just means tickets sales, not how many showed up. I’ll bet the true attendance number is closer to half that. 

I go to a lot of games. The poorly attended games are about 75% full. The weekend and big games are close to 100%. Yes ticket sold and attendance are not the same but nowhere close to 50%. 

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On 10/2/2019 at 9:02 PM, dlarry said:

When it comes to the football side they made a lot of bone headed decisions.

I remember when they drafted Kelly Stouffer one of the STL talking radio heads said “Oh my God they drafted a girl” funny stuff.

Stouffer was a top 10 pick and never played a down for the Cards. He sat out a year then was traded. He never amounted to much anyway but that draft was the Cardinals in a nutshell.

The Cards took Stouffer with the sixth pick in the first round.

"And with the tenth pick in the 1987 NFL Draft, the Pittsburgh Steelers select...Rod Woodson, cornerback, Purdue."

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20 minutes ago, Box and Won said:

The Cards took Stouffer with the sixth pick in the first round.

"And with the tenth pick in the 1987 NFL Draft, the Pittsburgh Steelers select...Rod Woodson, cornerback, Purdue."

The next three pick in the draft were Shane Conlon, Jerome Brown and then Rod Woodson. 13 All Pro teams between those three players.  Would have been more if Brown wouldn't have died in a car accident. 

They did recover a little in the second round when they took Tim McDonald.

Suge Knight went undrafted that year, but the Rams signed him as a free agent.

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