The National Football League’s season ended last Sunday, but the economics of football never ends. Folks from Baltimore and a number of other cities know what it’s like to lose a professional football franchise to another city. One of those other cities is St. Louis, which watched the Cardinals bolt for Arizona in 1987. St. Louis officials managed to lure the Rams from Los Angeles in 1995. But St. Louis now faces the prospects of losing another team as a new 80,000 seat stadium is planned for LA’s suburbs.
While losing the St. Louis Rams would undoubtedly represent a severe psychological blow to a community that has also lost a Ford plant and two Chrysler plants in recent years, as well as the headquarters of companies like TWA, McDonnell Douglas, and Anheuser Busch, many analysts believe the economic impacts would be limited.
As reported by the New York Times, the St. Louis Rams employ about 200 people full-time, or less than 1% of the 26,000 plus employed by BJC HealthCare, the region’s largest employer. And because the National Football League is associated with only a few home games per year, the total economic impact of the National Hockey League’s St. Louis Blues and Major League Baseball’s St. Louis Cardinals is likely greater.
