The short list of St. Louis Rams potential buyers

June 22, 1:21 AMSports Business ExaminerJosh Lobdell

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The Rams are for sale, but who is buying? AP Photo/Jim Roberson

It is not news that the St. Louis Rams are for sale. However there may be a few developments that cold keep the team in St. Louis, which of course is bad news for Minnesota Vikings fans since a stadium will be built in Los Angeles and some team will take the city up on the offer to have a new stadium.

For the moment though let us focus n on the Rams. Stan Kroenke, who also happens to own the Denver Nuggets of the NBA, and the Colorado Avalanche of the NHL, owns a 40% stake of the St. Louis Rams. He would like to buy the team outright, but the NFL has rules against their owners owning franchises in other sports.

Of course that rule was bent to allow NFL owners to own and help promote Arena Football teams in specific markets. However the NFL is unlikely to change this rule for Kroenke. Since Kroenke is unwilling to part with his Denver area teams, he is likely off the short list of people who will buy the team outright.

However, there is some good news for the fans of St. Louis Ram football. Fred Smith, the Chairman of Fed Ex is reportedly interested in buying the team. Since he is from Memphis Tennessee, it seems unlikely that he would move the team west. Smith also has adequate holdings and salary that a quick approval process by the Ownership committee would be assured.

The owner of the St. Louis Blues, Dave Checkets, is also reportedly as being interested but he lacks the financial resources necessary to pull of the purchase alone. He would have to build a group on investors for any potential purchase.

Smith, who is worth over a billion dollars, does not have such restrictions. Smith could easily pull of the purchase based solely on his holdings and salary. Let us not forget that it is Smith who built Fed Ex into the global powerhouse.

There is one potential dark horse ownership pick out there, and that would be Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh. Rush is from the area, and is known as an avid fan of the NFL. Since Rush has been a popular radio host for some time, and has written two best selling books we have to assume that he would have the financial resources to pull of a purchase of this size.

Forbes currently has the value of the St. Louis Rams listed at 929 Million dollars, or the 23rd most valuable NFL franchise. However if we take a close look at those numbers we see that the Rams have been mismanaged over the past few years.

Forbes has broken down the 929 million dollar value by category. A full 67% of their value comes from the way the NFL does its business. Meaning a large portion of this clubs value is based on revenue sharing with the other 31 NFL teams.

However it is the other three categories that Forbes uses in it’s evaluations that are significant. The Rams stadium, which was built in 1995 for 248 million dollars, only amount to 11% of the team’s value. Last year gate receipts were just 43 million dollars. Part of that is due to the team’s poor overall record, but part of it is due to their ownership.

Forbes has determined that the Rams brand management is only amounts to 7% of the overall value. That is entirely too low and any new owner would like to increase that number by moving the team to the densely populated area of greater LA. On top of that the lure of a state of the art facility may be too much temptation for a new Rams owner to keep the team in St. Louis.

Of course Smith, whose Memphis home is but an hour flight away from St. Louis, and who has already made enough money for one lifetime may not be swayed by such arguments.

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