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The St. Louis Rams are no more, and therefore the city has become a land without a team. The Kansas City Chiefs plan on remedying that by reminding the spurned Rams fans that they do still have another team in Missouri that they could route for.
There are actually several different teams somewhat nearby that could benefit from the St. Louis Rams moving to Los Angeles. The Chicago Bears are 296.8 miles away, the Tennessee Titans are 309.5 miles away, the Colts are 242.6 miles away while the Chiefs are 247.7 miles away. Any one of those teams could conceivably try to woo the St. Louis tv market and gain a whole new fanbase.
Only one of those teams are actually in Missouri though, and that is the Kansas City Chiefs who are already starting the process of calling dibs on the market. It does make sense too, the area surely had plenty of Chiefs fans while the Rams were toiling in obscurity before they became the Greatest Show on Turf in the 90's. Now it is time for them to try to reel them back in their time of pain from seeing the Rams hightail it to Cali.
One way with which the Chiefs are attempting to stake their claim on the St. Louis market is by airing their preseason games there and getting football fans there to latch on to a new favorite team. The NFL had put out a memo already announcing that the market was up for the taking after the Rams left town, but it was up to the teams themselves to come up with a viable network in the area.
"The memo said that because the Rams are playing in Los Angeles, St. Louis is now an open television market," said Chiefs President Mark Donovan. "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."
It isn't a bad play by the Chiefs at all, they do make the most sense for the area. I wouldn't expect the other nearby franchises to just lay over for them though, they'd still like a piece of the pie as well. Even farther away teams that are still Midwesterners like the Vikings and Packers could conceivably make a play yet, it will be interesting to watch how it all shakes out.
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