The NFL recently sent a memo to all its teams that the St. Louis market is open for business now that the Rams have moved to Los Angeles. Chiefs president Mark Donovan explained on the Chiefs website what that memo said and what it means for the Chiefs, who plan to begin looking more at St. Louis.
“The memo said that because the Rams are playing in Los Angeles, St. Louis is now an open television market,” Donovan said via Chiefs.com. “For preseason television, we basically put our own networks together. So a couple of teams, including us, have lobbied the league and said we’re going to put our preseason games in St. Louis because it makes sense. We have fans there and we’re going to get in front of them now and develop that relationship.”
I’d be curious how many fans they really do have there. From my own experience, I know plenty of younger folks go to college there. Who are the others fans? Transplants? Or Chiefs fans born there? Their Super Bowl run wasn’t that long ago
“The league has decided that they’re going to allow any team in the NFL that can put together an adjacent network, which is really confusing and very complicated, but basically means that if you can make a chain link of networks—broadcast partners, to get you to St. Louis, then you can broadcast your games there,” Donovan said.
“We knew that was coming and we have been working on this for the past few months. (Vice president of business development) Tyler Epp and his team have already negotiated deals, so our preseason games will be broadcasted in St. Louis. The plan is to have our shoulder programming, which is all the programming you see on our network, in St. Louis this season as well.”
Very interesting. The Chiefs have to be pretty happy with this because how often can you have a whole new market open to you one day?