Football is back in St. Louis, but will it last long term?
By: Jacob Politte, Online Editor
On Feb. 23, the St. Louis Battlehawks will play their debut home game at The Dome at America’s Center. The establishment of The Battlehawks marks the triumphant return of the sport of football to the city of St. Louis for the first time since 2015.
I’m not much of a sports fan, but even I was a bit upset at the departure of the Rams. Enos Stanley Kroenke, the Missouri-born owner of the Rams, clearly had no intentions of keeping the team in St. Louis, and trash talked the city on his way out. Years later, that bitterness from many Rams fans still remains.
The 2018 announcement that the XFL, a long-defunct football league that was created by pro wrestling promoter Vince McMahon, would be returning certainly drew a lot of attention. The initial XFL was a flop of epic proportions; pro-wrestling tactics were mixed in far too much with the sport, ratings plummeted and eventually the league went defunct after less than 3 months worth of games and two years of operation. McMahon lost $35 million of his own money on the league, as did their then television partner NBC. This time, however, McMahon seems to be aware of his previous mistakes, and is doing his best to avoid making them. This includes putting competent people like Oliver Luck in charge, and doing everything in his power to legitimize the league outright; this includes airing on prominent networks such as ABC, ESPN, and FOX.
St. Louis was among the first of the cities to have been reported in Nov. 2018 to have gotten an XFL team, and this was later confirmed at a press conference in New Jersey the following month.
While a ball hasn’t been thrown and a play hasn’t been called, the XFL’s involvement with the city appears to have already proven to be far more beneficial to the city than the relationship with the Rams ever was. The XFL will pay The Dome at America’s Center $100,000 per game, 4 times more than the Rams’ $25,000 per game; this is in addition to a $300,000 flat fee that the XFL will pay to host games there. The league sounds enthusiastic to have a team in the city, and the Dome officials matched that enthusiasm. While The Dome has been used for many events since the departure of the Rams, it finally feels like it has a real purpose again, at least until the new MLS stadium is built.
I don’t know if the XFL will be a long-term success. It’ll be difficult to shake the feeling that this yet another Vince McMahon vanity project (he’s had a lot of those). But the XFL is a good thing for a city that had a football team ripped away from them. For the first time in nearly half a decade, St. Louis has a nationally recognized football team. Win or lose, it’s a good time to be a St. Louisan right now.
