Goodell to St. Louis: NFL won’t spend more than $200m on stadiums

The NFL makes a ton of money, but has made it clear time and again that it expects tax money for its brand new stadiums, or else.

On Friday, the St. Louis Board of Aldermen planned to vote on financing for a $1.1 billion stadium plan to keep the St. Louis Rams. That plan included $300 million in NFL money. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell made sure that the city knew the NFL had no plans to give that much, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Goodell sent a letter to Gov. Jay Nixon and the stadium task force saying the NFL provides a maximum of $200 million for new stadiums. The NFL made an estimated $12 billion in revenue in 2014.

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Goodell said the $300 million estimate “is fundamentally inconsistent with the NFL’s program of stadium financing.” The NFL is at least consistent on this issue. The league that made about $12 billion last year expects taxpayers to fund its new stadiums. As the cities are being extorted, the league threatens through media leaks to move its team to Los Angeles, which hasn’t had a team since 1994. Once the tax money comes in and the stadiums are built, those cities generally get to host a Super Bowl, weather permitting. The league has been running some version of this game for 21 years since the Rams and Oakland Raiders left Los Angeles.

This time the NFL might actually need to follow through on the threat. The three cities that are being shaken down — San Diego, Oakland and St. Louis — haven’t come through with acceptable plans to build new stadiums to keep their teams. The NFL clearly hasn’t wanted to put a team in Los Angeles for the past two decades, because the threat of relocation is worth more than actually having a team in L.A. If the NFL wanted a team in Los Angeles, it would have happened long ago. Remember: $12 billion in revenue last year. But look at how many new stadiums have been built in the 21 years the NFL has been away from Los Angeles.

Now the league is letting St. Louis know that it will not give more than $200 million to a new stadium. Given the league’s M.O. when it comes to new stadiums, it’s surprising they’d even give that much.

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Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @YahooSchwab