Seg. 5: Bill McClellan

Longtime St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Bill McClellan came on The Press Box Tuesday and cautioned soccer fans in St. Louis on being too eager for an MLS expansion team. Being a Cubs fan, he also gave his thoughts on the Cardinals signing Dexter Fowler. P-D’s Frederickson talks publicly-financed MLS stadium, Blues’ struggles, Edwin Encarnacion Read some excerpts from his comments about MLS expansion and listen to the complete interview below. Why do you think people should be hesitant to go all-in on bringing an MLS team to St. Louis? “When you lose somebody…get dumped like we were dumped by Stan Kroenke, there’s a tendency to grab out at the next shiny object. I’m afraid an MLS team is the next shiny object. It would be a mistake for St. Louis to leap at this by putting all that public money into a soccer stadium. I hear nice things about the ownership group…but I think they’ve made a number of missteps. When the franchise fee went down this past week from $200 million to $150 million, (the soccer guys said it wouldn’t be mean they’d need $50 million less for the stadium). If all of a sudden they don’t have to spend $200 million for a franchise fee…you’d think that’d be $50 they’d put towards the stadium. I think that hurts their case.” “Another thing I don’t like about it…it seems like if it’s going to really help the region, there should be a regional effort, trying to get money from the county, instead of putting it all on the backs of the city’s taxpayers when the city has so many problems. I was leery of this. But things don’t seem to be breaking in the way of the soccer owners right now. It’s not looking good. I’m kind of sad, because I’d like to see an MLS team. But not with all this public money involved.” If the group is putting up two-thirds of the estimated $360 million it’ll take to build a stadium and bring a team here, are they really being that unreasonable? “I would say…they are trying to get rich. I think the way these sports franchises go…you don’t make money off the year-to-year operations…Where they make all the money is on the back end. These things tend to appreciate so much. If you can get on the ground floor of getting a franchise, when you sell that franchise in five or 10 years, that’s where you make the money. I don’t think they’re doing this because they love soccer or because Bain (Capital wants to help the St. Louis area). I think they’re look at this as a terrific investment for the future appreciation.”