 However, on February 28, 1985, Anheuser-Busch announced that Sports Time would go dark on March 31.It had 42,000 subscribers at closure—including 15,000 in St. Louis, 9,000 in Kansas City, and 3,000 in Cincinnati—when the network had said at launch that it needed 200,000.The timing of the closure allowed the venture to avoid paying rights fees to the Cardinals and Royals for the coming baseball season.