NFL's market assessment complete for St. Louis
• By Jim Thomas
http://www.stltoday.com/sports/foot...cle_a711820c-0506-5c61-9179-b5e6ecb9c363.html
The results are in. But the St. Louis task force has yet to see them.
A couple of months ago, the NFL began market assessment studies of Los Angeles, as well as the three markets trying to prevent their teams from moving to LA: St. Louis, Oakland, and San Diego.
In St. Louis, this meant tens of thousands of e-mail questionnaires sent to past and present season-ticket holders — a process that apparently wasn’t an exact science since dozens of fans told the Post-Dispatch they did not receive a survey despite having been season-ticket holders for years.
In early April, things got more in depth with several focus groups of 15 to 20 fans interviewed about the Rams, their ticket preferences, their feelings about owner Stan Kroenke, their interest in buying PSLs and premium seats, and even how they’d feel about supporting a different team — such as the Raiders.
At the same time, CEOs and high-level executives of local companies were interviewed over the phone, presumably to test their feelings about purchasing club seats, luxury suites, and participating in things such as sponsorships in the proposed $985 million riverfront stadium planned for the north edge of downtown.
The St. Louis stadium task force headed by Dave Peacock and Bob Blitz has been eagerly awaiting the survey results for several weeks. They won’t have to wait much longer according to Eric Grubman, the NFL executive overseeing the potential Los Angeles relocation as well as the stadium projects in the current home markets of the St. Louis Rams, Oakland Raiders and San Diego Chargers.
“The basic studies have been completed,” Grubman said earlier this week at the NFL owners meetings in San Francisco. “The information we’ve gotten, we’ve shared it with the clubs. We’re getting ready to share it with representatives from the markets. We wanted the clubs to be able to digest it before we gave it to the markets.”
Grubman didn’t specify exactly when the markets would receive the market assessment results, but it could be as early as next week. Similarly, he didn’t reveal what the survey results would entail.
(Reached via text message Thursday, Peacock said the task force was not sure what kind of information they would be receiving.)
It is anticipated that the task force will share the results publicly; Grubman said the league had no problem with them doing so.
Elaborating on the market assessments, Grubman said: “We’ve used the third-party firm of CSL Legends to do market assessments and site assessments of multiple sites in the Los Angeles market and also in each of the home markets — Oakland, San Diego and St. Louis.”
The assessments were done at league expense.
“The information that will come out of that is PSL potential, ticket potential, geographical preference for stadiums,” Grubman said. “How fans feel about certain elements of the brand resonance, and so forth and so on.
“These are professionally done. They’re done without bias. The information is available to us and our (Los Angeles) committee. It’s available to each of the three clubs.”
A summary of that information will be made available to representatives in the local markets; in St. Louis that’s the Peacock and Blitz group.
“And we will be providing that information to them shortly,” he said.
Grubman said the next step after studying the market assessment data is to refine any judgments based on that data.
“Then you have to design a marketing plan and go test the assumptions around that marketing plan,” Grubman said. “That step has not been done because you need to know where you’re marketing and who you’re marketing.”
And at this time, it’s not known if that step will wait until the league decides on LA relocation and on which of the three markets will keep their teams.
Grubman has traveled to each of the so-called home markets numerous times in recent years, and in general has come away with a sense of significant fan support.
“I’ve got to tell you, in each of these three markets there is not a time when I’m there that I don’t sense the tremendous support and appreciation of the fans for the team,” Grubman said.
But how that translates into the actual purchase of PSLs or premium seats could vary from market to market.
Two months ago at the NFL March meetings in Phoenix, Grubman provided more detail on what the league was looking for in the market assessments.
“The market assessment puts a data-driven estimate on the PSL potential,” he said at the time. “The number of tickets you can sell to season-ticket holders. The pricing of those tickets. The number of suites and club seats that are desired by the market. The likely pricing that will work.”
If the stadium plan here becomes a reality, St. Louis football fans will become the first to be asked to participate in a PSL — or personal-seat license — program twice. They did so in 1995 as part of the effort to lure the Rams to St. Louis from Los Angeles.
The level of business support in the community has also been gauged, an important component in an overall measurement of support for the team. Besides premium seats, that support also entails sponsorship, advertisement, naming rights, etc.
A lukewarm response will not help the local effort to keep the Rams.
