Tim Sullivan

@TimSullivan714

The governor of Missouri has ruled out “state funding for stadiums” as “welfare for millionaires.”

This is obviously a mistake. The plural of stadium is stadia.

St. Louis leaders are of two minds on sports subsidies, resisting a proposal to spend $80 million toward a proposed $200 million soccer stadium while simultaneously embracing a call for $67.5 million in renovations to the arena that houses the town’s National Hockey League team.

The argument for those renovations is based, in part, on keeping pace with regional competition, including Louisville. St. Louis’ resistance to soccer spending, however, should not be read as a signal that it will be any easier for Louisville to keep pace in the race for Major League Soccer.

It’s more likely, in fact, that the converse is true; that the competition is growing keener and the spending more aggressive. With as many as 10 ownership groups preparing bids for MLS expansion in advance of a Jan. 31 deadline, Louisville City FC has been feeling the impact of USL rivals flexing their financial muscles as they jockey for MLS favor.

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Midfielder Aodhan Quinn, Louisville City’s 2016 captain, is leaving the team for a more lucrative deal with FC Cincinnati. That signing has not yet been announced, but LouCity coach James O’Connor says that matching Quinn’s new salary would have made it “hard to fill out the rest of the squad.”

Quinn is the second LouCity player to defect to Cincinnati since last season, joining Kadeem Dacres. Though O’Connor has been able to retain 13 players from last year’s team and has filled holes with four new signings, the degree of his difficulty is rising faster than are LouCity’s revenues.

With the Tampa Bay Rowdies and Ottawa Fury leaving the bigger-budget North American Soccer League for the USL this season, the league’s lack of a salary cap poses an ever-growing liability on the local level.

“I don’t want to be seen as someone who’s crying about the budget. . .” O’Connor said Thursday afternoon. “I think we’re competitive. (But) We run the risk of losing some good players.

“As a club, I don’t think we can compare ourselves to Cincinnati. If you look, they get crowds of 20,000. Their corporate sponsorship is through the roof.”

The Tampa Bay Rowdies, whose roster includes former Premier League star Joe Cole, are on a different payroll plateau. Owner Bill Edwards has funded renovations to Al Lang Stadium in St. Petersburg, including a new field and video board, and opened an adjacent Rowdies-branded bar.

If Louisville is going to continue to be competitive in the USL, it may need some sort of league cost controls or more revenue than it is currently reaping at Louisville Slugger Field.

“If it was a matter of here’s a million or here’s two million, that doesn’t’ necessarily bring success for the team,” O’Connor said. “You have to know what you’re doing as well. (But) We need to start seeing some momentum on our own stadium. We don’t want to be a team that pops up for two years or three years and then goes away.”

When U.S. Soccer bestowed provisional Division 2 status on the USL last week, league members were encouraged that they had taken a significant step. But that designation will mean different things in different markets.

For those franchises competing for inclusion as the MLS expands from 24 to 28 teams, Division 2 may be seen as an interim goal in a bigger game. For Louisville City FC, it is a building block toward a permanent home.

Recognizing that it can’t make a compelling case for MLS without a soccer-specific stadium, Louisville City will not be submitting a bid for this round of expansion. Progress on the stadium project continues to proceed on a need-to-know basis.

“The city is working together with Louisville City FC to see if a deal can be put together for the construction of a soccer-specific stadium,” said Chris Poynter, spokesman for Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer. "The details of any deal will be made public when and if an acceptable deal is finalized.”

Given the ongoing anxiety about how much the taxpayers are on the hook for the KFC Yum! Center, selling another sports subsidy in this town is bound to be tricky. Though Louisville City FC has attracted a devoted (and sometimes deafening) fan base, it has nowhere near the broad-based constituency that has helped get deals done for the University of Louisville.

The challenge will be to sell the public on a vision in which the MLS is attainable but by no means assured; to forge a partnership in which the heavy lifting is done by the private sector. And to avoid the perception of “welfare for millionaires.”

Tim Sullivan can be reached at (502) 582-4650, tsullivan@courier-journal.com or @TimSullivan714 on Twitter.