The Kroenke St. Louis settlement is a $790 million payment that Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kroenke and the NFL agreed on November 24, 2021, to resolve a lawsuit brought by the city of St. Louis, St. Louis County, and the St. Louis Regional Convention and Sports Complex Authority over the Rams’ 2016 relocation to Los Angeles. Kroenke was ultimately required to pay $571 million of the total, with the remaining $219 million split among the league’s 32 franchises through roughly $7.5 million deductions per team from revenue sharing. The deal was reached weeks before a January 10, 2022 jury trial and after a judge had cleared the way for punitive damages.
What St. Louis Sued Over
The three plaintiffs filed suit on April 12, 2017, in St. Louis Circuit Court, case number 1722-CC00976, naming the NFL, all 32 teams, and their owners. The petition contained five counts: breach of contract, unjust enrichment, tortious interference with a business relationship, and two counts of fraudulent misrepresentation.
The core allegation turned on the NFL’s own relocation policy, adopted in 1984, which required teams to negotiate in good faith with their home communities before seeking to move. St. Louis argued the Rams never did so, and that Kroenke and team executives had privately decided to leave years before publicly saying they wanted to stay. The relocation application itself cited population decline and questioned whether the region could support professional sports. The NFL responded that its relocation guidelines were not iron-clad and that approving the move fell within the league’s authority.
Two earlier events gave the dispute its legal shape. An arbitration panel ruled in February 2013 that the dome authority had failed to maintain the Edward Jones Dome at the contractual standard, giving the Rams a basis to leave. In early 2015, Kroenke’s stake in a roughly 300-acre Inglewood, California, stadium site became public, and the Rams shifted their dome lease to a year-to-year arrangement. The team filed its relocation application on January 4, 2016, and NFL owners voted 30–2 later that month to approve it.
Why the NFL Settled
Judge Christopher McGraugh issued a series of pretrial rulings that pushed the case toward trial on terms favorable to St. Louis. He denied the NFL’s attempts to force the dispute into arbitration and rejected a request to move the trial out of St. Louis. He fined four NFL owners roughly $44,000 for failing to produce financial documents on time and later ordered the league to pay $250,000 in sanctions for missing a separate document deadline.
The decisive ruling came in July 2021, when McGraugh found sufficient evidence of fraud to let the jury consider punitive damages and ordered Kroenke and other NFL executives to turn over extensive financial records, including those tied to Kroenke’s other sports franchises, business entities, and the financial dealings of his wife, Ann Walton Kroenke. The Missouri Supreme Court upheld that order in September 2021. With punitive damages on the table and personal financial discovery underway, the league and Kroenke reached the $790 million deal in mediation two months later, avoiding what could have been a verdict exceeding a billion dollars.
Who Paid What
Although the settlement was initially paid by the league, who ultimately bore the cost became a contentious internal NFL matter. Kroenke had signed an indemnification agreement on the morning of the January 2016 relocation vote, promising to cover legal expenses related to the move. New York Giants co-owner John Mara publicly stated that owners would not have approved the relocation without full indemnification.
By October 2021, Kroenke was challenging the scope of that agreement, arguing he should not bear the entire burden. His side pointed to an email from an official involved in a competing Carson, California, stadium proposal that essentially provided St. Louis a roadmap for its lawsuit, making the legal exposure partly the league’s own doing. The dispute dragged on until October 2022, when NFL owners approved a resolution requiring Kroenke to pay $571 million of the $790 million total. The remaining $219 million came from the 32 teams through revenue-sharing deductions. To make the payment workable, owners waived the league’s standard limit on allowable debt for Kroenke.
How the Settlement Was Divided in St. Louis
The plaintiffs’ attorneys at Dowd Bennett LLP and Blitz Bardgett & Deutsch received $276.5 million under a 35% contingency fee arrangement, plus litigation costs on top of that amount. After legal fees, approximately $512 million remained for the three St. Louis entities, growing to roughly $519.5 million with accrued interest by the time distribution terms were finalized in late 2022.
Under a November 2022 agreement, the net proceeds were divided this way:
- City of St. Louis: approximately $250 million, with an additional $30 million earmarked specifically for the America’s Center convention center expansion.
- St. Louis County: $169 million.
- Regional Convention and Sports Complex Authority: $70 million.
How the Money Has Been Spent
City of St. Louis
The city parked its roughly $280 million share in the Missouri Securities Investment Program to earn interest while a spending plan took shape. In February 2023, the Board of Aldermen appropriated $30 million for the America’s Center convention center expansion, meeting a settlement-imposed deadline of June 30, 2023. Phase one of that expansion, including a 72,000-square-foot exhibit hall, moved forward with this funding, though officials have said additional money is needed for later phases.
The remaining $230 million sat untouched for years. In 2026, a proposed allocation reached the Board of Aldermen: $110 million for recovery from an EF3 tornado that struck north St. Louis on May 16, 2025, damaging an estimated 5,000 homes and buildings; $65 million for the city’s aging water system; and $55 million for downtown revitalization. A city survey of roughly 1,400 residents found that tornado recovery was the top priority, followed by water infrastructure.
Community groups including Action St. Louis and the People’s Response pushed for the tornado allocation to be increased to $150 million, citing the scale of demolition, sidewalk repair, tree removal, and home restoration still needed. Board President Megan Green signaled that amendments were likely, saying that even $250 million would not be enough. As of mid-2026, the Board of Aldermen’s Housing, Urban Development and Zoning Committee was still reviewing the proposal and had not held a final vote.
St. Louis County
The county took a rolling approach. By August 2025, the county council had approved $56.2 million across five projects: $40 million for street and sidewalk repairs, $9.9 million for cybersecurity upgrades, $5.2 million for maintenance across 49 county facilities, $765,000 for greenhouse gas reduction planning, and $340,000 for a development study of the Spanish Lake area.
Missouri State Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick gave the county a “fair” rating for its handling of the funds, the second-lowest grade possible. The audit found the county council lacked formal criteria for selecting projects and had no restrictions on how the money could be used, instead approving spending on a case-by-case basis. The auditor recommended the county establish a strategic process for evaluating proposals. County Executive Sam Page defended the approach, pointing to four public town halls held in 2023 to gather resident input on priorities such as public safety and infrastructure.
Regional Convention and Sports Complex Authority
The RSA, which owns the domed stadium where the Rams played, received $70 million. The August 2025 state audit flagged significant problems with how the authority had handled related spending, particularly $19.4 million on a failed riverfront stadium project. Auditors found “essentially no procurement process” for that project, with normal approval procedures overridden. Testing of 30 invoices worth $2.1 million found that 20% lacked documentation of what was provided, and one consultant was paid over $525,000 across invoices that lacked adequate supporting records. The audit noted the current commission had begun working to address these issues.
A Separate Kroenke Dispute in Inglewood
The St. Louis settlement is closed, but Kroenke faces a separate $400 million legal fight with Inglewood, California, where SoFi Stadium was built. His development group, Hollywood Park, is demanding reimbursement for infrastructure improvements including roads, sewer lines, and streetlights under a 2015 development agreement with the city. Inglewood argues the 2015 agreement is void based on a later California state court decision that invalidated development agreements adopted by voter initiative rather than by a local legislative body. That matter is unrelated to the St. Louis payment and remained unresolved as of June 2026.