Friday roundup: Team owners rework tax bills and leases, Twins CEO claims team is winning (?) thanks to new stadium, and other privileges of the very rich

Posted on October 11, 2019 by Neil deMause

Tons more stadium and arena news to get to this week, so let’s dive right in without preamble:

Minnesota Twins CEO Dave St. Peter told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that revenue from the team’s new stadium is what allowed the team to build a winning ballclub. The Twins actually made the postseason more times in their last decade in the Metrodome (five times) than in their first decade in Target Field (three times), and skimped on adding expensive players at the trade deadline this summer before running its postseason winless streak to 16 games across 15 seasons, but one of the nice things about being a CEO is that you can say things in the newspaper without getting fact-checked.
The Carolina Panthers got a break on their property tax assessment from county officials that will cut their annual tax bill from $5.7 million to $4.7 million, though team execs still want it cut to closer to the $1.8 million they paid last year before it was reappraised this year, and also they already don’t pay any taxes on the land under the stadium because they lease that from the city. The rich really are different from you and me: They can get their taxes lowered just by asking, that is when they don’t get to avoid paying taxes at all.
Also, a clause in Nashville’s lease with Nashville S.C. requiring the soon-to-be MLS team to play at least one game in Nashville in any 24-month period has the team’s financiers balking at loaning money for the stadium — presumably because they’re afraid MLS will up and disappear for a couple of seasons, maybe as part of a labor stoppage, who knows — so the city may just delete that clause. Seriously, lord grant me the negotiating powers of a mediocre rich man.
Golden State Warriors fans are pleased to discover that their team’s new arena isn’t just in the middle of the San Francisco Giants infield, plus it has a really really big scoreboard. But maybe it won’t be as loud as their old arena in Oakland? Or maybe this was just because it was an exhibition game? At least you can enter a lottery to win the right to buy one of 250 tickets per game priced at $25, without which the cheapest opening day seat would be $188, which taken together is the most 2019 factoid I can imagine.
Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer and New York Knicks owner James Dolan are still fighting over Ballmer’s plans for a new arena in Inglewood, and they will fight eternally.
The U.S. Supreme Court has given a final dismissal to a case charging that the car rental tax used by Arizona to fund sports facilities was unconstitutional because the money wasn’t being used for transportation projects.
There are 52 pro sports stadiums located in the new Trump-created Opportunity Zones, according to research by Billionaire Boondoggle author Pat Garofalo, which means they’re eligible for some kind of future tax breaks on appreciated value, though still nobody seems quite sure exactly how that works no matter how many FAQs the IRS adds about Opportunity Zones.
The Tampa Bay Rays weren’t the only team to play a postseason game before a less-than-capacity crowd: The Washington Nationals and St. Louis Cardinals did too, though in the latter case maybe partly because of games that started in the afternoon, though games have started in the afternoon before and still sold out, so draw your own conclusions about the death of baseball or whatever.
The Halifax CFL stadium proposal isn’t dead yet, but it’s close, with city councillors readying a motion to kill the $110 million plan because its funding plan is too hazy, which it really is.
The Boston Bruins‘ and Celtics‘ arena may have to replace all its seats again after installing new ones that eliminated any leg room to add more padding. This seems like the sort of thing that somebody should have tested out before ordering all new seats, but hey, that’s just me!
The Pimlico renovation subsidy battle has now entered into the former owner suing his own daughter phase.
The city of Santa Clara has voted again to remove the San Francisco 49ers as manager of their stadium, after the first vote might have been illegal because it took place in closed session. Glad we worked that out!
The Hamilton County Commission approved a plan that will involve spending $30 million to relocate a concrete plant so the county can build a music venue next to the Cincinnati Bengals stadium, with the Bengals helping out by forgoing $30 million in future payments from the county, though the team will also now get free parking space on the land. The music venue is reportedly needed because the waterfront is “an area starved for attention outside of Bengals and Reds games,” which maybe is something to keep in mind the next time you hear that a sports stadium will be enough to revitalize an underused area.
In completely unrelated news, here’s an article about a Columbus bar owner who is hoping that the new Crew soccer stadium being built nearby will be a windfall for her business.

Friday roundup: New sports venues, new sports venue threats, and our dwindling journalistic resources

Posted on September 13, 2019 by Neil deMause

Deadspin’s Albert Burneko is a national treasure whether he’s writing about sports or movies or punctuation, and his takedown this week of a Fivethirtyeight article that asserts there are too many minor-league baseball teams is very much no exception. Drop whatever you’re doing — which is reading this post, so okay, drop whatever you were going to do after that — and read it now, whether you care about the purpose of sports as entertainment or the role of the media in management-labor relations or the increasing propensity to reduce human beings to measures of technocratic efficiency. With the demise of the alt-weeklies, there are fewer and fewer outlets eager to combine tenacious reporting and big-picture analysis and engaging writing toward the end of helping us understand the world we live in beyond “here are some potentially viral things that happened today,” so we need to cherish those that remain while we can.

And with that, here are some potentially viral (in the not especially infectious sense) things that happened this week:

The Arizona Diamondbacks signed a nondisclosure agreement with the city of Las Vegas in 2018, which the Las Vegas Review-Journal takes as enough evidence to run a headline saying that the D-Backs were talking with Vegas about relocation, so long as they add the word “apparently.” This is truly a new breakthrough in relocation threats, as team owners no longer even have to go through the trouble of hopping on a plane to get news outlets reporting that their team could move; now, you just have to sign some paperwork and wait until reporters notice. Why, this way, you don’t even have to answer any embarrassing questions like “Why would you want to move to a much smaller market?” or “Are you worried that D-Backs fans will burn you in effigy on Opening Day?” Truly a sign of disruptive efficiencies at work.
Sacramento is supposedly finalizing a deal to bring an MLS expansion franchise to town in 2022, and though there are no details yet, it’s only a matter of time before it happens, mostly because it’s only a matter of time before every census tract in America and maybe a few other countries gets its own MLS team.
The Voice of O.C. has calculated that the city of Anaheim has turned a $1.6 million profit on running the Los Angeles Angels‘ Angel Stadium over the past nine years, which isn’t much, but at least it’s not a sea of red ink. Though as sports economist Victor Matheson points out, “What are 155 acres of prime real estate worth in the LA metro area? That’s a gigantic opportunity” that’s being lost by using the land for a stadium instead. All food for thought in those upcoming public forums on the proposed stadium land deal that the city won’t tell the public basic facts about like how much the land is worth.
The Kansas City Star really can’t stop writing about that new downtown Royals stadium that nobody with the Royals has actually asked for. The latest is a column explaining how laws on the books could be used to hold a referendum on using tax money for a new stadium, maybe, if some tax money also went to arts organizations, and if a referendum on a new Royals stadium could even pass, which maybe it couldn’t. This is all a very informative investigation of a process that nobody at all has actually proposed for a stadium plan that likewise only seems to exist in the minds of Star writers and some downtown business interests, so maybe not the absolute best use of our dwindling few journalists’ dwindling available time?
And here’s an column talking about how poverty is down and out-of-town visitors are up since Arlington spent a billion dollars on new sports facilities, which should make a nice addition to Wikipedia’s “correlation is not causation” page.
The Atlanta Hawks are kicking the Atlanta Dream WNBA team out of their arena, I think? That’s how I read this Atlanta Journal-Constitution article, anyway; you tell me if you conclude otherwise.
Oklahoma City is definitely going to be voting this December on imposing a 1% sales tax hike to fund a bunch of stuff including a new soccer stadium. OKC Energy co-owner Tim McLaughlin would like you to know that “it’s more than just a soccer facility” because right now “Jimmy Buffet concerts happen down in Frisco in Dallas.” (Jimmy Buffet is a Jimmy Buffett tribute act that features an all-you-can-eat salad bar, I am really really hoping.)
A lawsuit filed this week charges that the city of Nashville created a conflict of interest when it assigned three Nashville S.C. owners or employees to the panel evaluating construction bids for the team’s new stadium, which, yeah, that does seem bad, though whether it’s illegal is above my pay grade.
The Rolling Stones and San Francisco 49ers execs are mad that the city of Santa Clara told the Stones at the last minute not to set off fireworks on stage, and Mayor Lisa Gillmor has responded that it’s really the 49ers’ fault: “The 49ers should spend less time criticizing others and more time learning how to follow the laws like those governing workers wages and the curfew, which they agreed to when they opened the stadium in 2014.” Remember that hot minute when the Santa Clara stadium was supposed to be a beacon of how to successfully arrange a sports venue deal? Those were such simpler times.
Here’s a video report on Austin F.C.‘s stadium groundbreaking that mostly features clapping fans and Matthew McConaughey with a shovel, and remember what I said above about the death of alt-weeklies? (Austin still has one, actually, and its report on the groundbreaking is short but still way more instructive.)
Here are three options presented for Honolulu’s $350 million replacement of Aloha Stadium, none of which, weirdly, are “Keep the $350 million and spend it on something else, you do realize that you don’t have a pro football team and even the ~~Aloha~~ Pro Bowl moved to Orlando three years ago, right?”
Airline that owns naming rights to two arenas in two different cities won’t own the naming rights to one soon. You know, guys, we don’t have to use these names just because somebody signed a contract to put a big ad on the side of the building. Just a thought.

Friday roundup: What time is the Super Bowl article rush going to be over?

Posted on February 1, 2019 by Neil deMause

It’s too cold to type an intro! I miss the Earth before we broke it. But anyway:

It’s Super Bowl week, so we get articles on how Atlanta spent a lot of money on sports stadiums and NFL stadiums cost a lot of public dollars and the Los Angeles Rams‘ new stadium will be “transformative,” and Roger Goodell is “hopeful” the Oakland Raiders will decide “soon” where they’ll play this fall, none of which really provide in the way of much new information, but the Atlanta one has some good quotes from economist J.C. Bradbury, at least.
And if you thought you could avoid the Super Bowl just by not living in the city hosting it and studiously ignoring the NFL — okay, maybe that’s only me — know that an unspecified amount of your federal tax dollars will be going to provide security help for the event, including flyovers by U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Defense Department aircraft. Somebody tell the feds that the Atlanta stadium has a roof, so should already be safe from blimp attacks.
Some D.C. officials don’t want Washington’s NFL team to move to the RFK stadium site, and some do. Also, audio clip of me for some reason!
Newballpark.org blogger Marine Layer has calculated that the cost of building a gondola to any new Oakland A’s ballpark at Howard Terminal will amount to $12.60 per each round-trip ride, which either means fans are going to have a huge extra cost or local government is going to end up subsidizing the rides, neither of which is a great solution.
Tottenham Hotspur stadium opening date update: nope, nothing yet.
Nashville S.C. will begin play in the MLS in 2020, initially making the Tennessee Titans‘ stadium their home, because NFL stadiums are totally fine for hosting MLS matches so long as they’re not standing in the way of an owner trying to demand a soccer-only stadium.
The Detroit Pistons still can’t get anyone to go to their new arena, though one local sportswriter says the building has been a success because a 13-year-old won a figure skating championship there, and how can you put a price on that?
The Texas Rangers owners’ decision to install fake turf at their new stadium that they built to replace their old stadium because the old one didn’t have air conditioning may be unpopular, but rest assured that it’ll be fine because “technology and data are changing baseball — and the world around us — at an unbelievably fast rate.” I am not sure Tug McGraw would be assuaged.

Friday roundup: Election Day could have big consequences for Rays, Blue Jackets, Clippers

Posted on November 2, 2018 by Neil deMause

Happy last week before Election Day! Unsurprisingly, we lead off with a bunch of vote-related news:

Tampa Bay Rays president Brian Auld says he’s confident team execs will be able to meet a December 31 deadline for stadium funding without having to ask for an extension, even though right now there’s currently a $300 million funding gap. Frequent FoS commenter Scott Myers has theorized that the Rays ownership is hoping Hillsborough County voters will pass a 1% sales tax hike for transportation on Tuesday, which would free up other public money to pay for transportation improvements for a Rays stadium; that doesn’t seem like it’d provide $300 million, but every hundred million dollars counts, so everybody watch the ballot results carefully. (Which you should be doing anyway. And voting!)
The Columbus Blue Jackets owners, who have been criticized for being the main beneficiaries of a proposed 7% ticket tax in the city because their arena would get the lion’s share of the proceeds, surprised everybody this week by coming out against the tax, saying it “would materially harm our business.” Maybe this is reverse psychology to get residents to vote for the bill, since they’ll no longer think it’s a sop to the hockey team? Okay, probably not.
Madison Square Garden has given $700,000 to the campaign of the chief challenger to Inglewood Mayor James Butts in an effort to block plans for a new Los Angeles Clippers arena that could compete for concerts with MSG’s Forum, and the Clippers have fought back with $375,000 in spending to support Butts’ campaign. Poor grass.
In non-electoral news, the University of Connecticut is building a $45 million hockey arena on campus even though its team will continue to play most of its games in Hartford’s XL Center, just because its new NCAA conference requires an on-campus arena. (It also requires that the arena have at least 4,000 seats, but UConn got a waiver to only build 2,500 seats.) Since UConn is a public university, this technically means that public money will go into the project (though the university says it can pay for it from its own reserves), but mostly it’s bizarre to see an entire arena being built just to meet a technicality — what do you think the carbon footprint will be for this?
Transit experts are worried that the 2020 Olympics will overwhelm Tokyo’s already-crowded subway system, though they may not be anticipating how much the Olympics tend to cause anyone not interested in the Olympics to stay the hell out of town. The government has been encouraging local businesses to stagger work hours and open satellite offices to accommodate Games traffic, since “everybody call in sick for three weeks” would be anathema to Japanese work culture.
Opponents to Nashville SC‘s stadium plans are seeking a court injunction to block construction of a new expo center to replace the one that would be torn down to make way for the soccer stadium on the grounds that it would interfere with parking for a flea market, which is a first in my book.
Louisville is officially not bidding for an MLS franchise (yet), which unofficially makes it the only city in the whole U.S. of A. that isn’t. How is MLS ever going to meet its dream of a franchise for every individual person in North America if these keeps up?

That’s all for this week — go vote! And try to fight your way past the journalism extinction event to educate yourself about all those downballot races and initiatives and such, since as we cover here every week, they can have huge consequences.

Friday roundup: Vegas MLB rumors, North American soccer superleague rumors, and everything just costs untold billions of dollars now, get used to it

Posted on October 12, 2018 by Neil deMause

I published two long articles yesterday — one on sports stadium and arena deals that haven’t sucked too badly, one on a particular non-sports subsidy deal that looks to be sucking pretty hard — so I wasn’t able to post anything here, despite a couple of news items that might have warranted their own FoS posts. But as the saying goes, Thursday omissions bring a shower of Friday news briefs (please don’t tell me that’s not a saying, because it is now), so let’s dig in:

A Las Vegas blogger has tweeted that the Rio hotel-casino could be demolished and replaced by a Major League Baseball stadium, so now everybody’s talking about Las Vegas getting an expansion team, along with Portland and Montreal and I forget who else. (San Antonio? Charlotte? Half of Mexico?) Just imagine how frenzied this would be if commissioner Rob Manfred were talking about expansion on a faster timetable than “in my lifetime,” or if he were older than 60 or suffering from a terminal illness or something.
Columbus is still considering a 7% ticket tax hike, but all residents can focus on is that 30% of the proceeds will go to bail out the Blue Jackets‘ already bailed-out arena, I can’t imagine why.
New York Islanders co-owner Jon Ledecky says he expects construction to begin on a new arena at Belmont Park next May. That would be a pretty quick timetable since the state’s environmental impact report isn’t even scheduled to be completed until early in 2019, and presumably there will be some kind of public comment period after that. But then again, maybe this will just be rammed through with no debate despite the land being provided by the state at as much as a $300 million discount. I don’t think this has to go through the state legislature, just the state-run Empire State Development corporation, so you should probably bet the under on public oversight.
The Carolina Panthers stadium was built on the site of Charlotte’s first known lynching. (The linked article manages to mention both Colin Kaepernick and Donald Trump, because of course it does.)
Speaking of ticket taxes, a Nashville councilmember is proposing raising them at the new MLS stadium there and using the proceeds to help pay off the city’s share of construction costs. Nashville S.C. ownership is opposed, saying “this kind of after-the-fact tinkering would make the deal worse for soccer fans and set a bad precedent for the city,” neither of which is true (pssst sports teams already set prices as high as they can regardless of ticket taxes) but it’s totally what you’d expect them to say.
The projected cost of the Tokyo Olympics has now risen from $7.3 billion to $25 billion over the past five years .“It’s the most amazing thing that the Olympic games are the only type of megaproject to always exceed their budget,” Olympic finance expert Bent Flyvberg told the Associated Press. I would say that the fact that cities keep bidding for the Olympics despite this fact is even slightly more amazing, but they’re both pretty incredible.
The Oakland Raiders promised that their stadium project in Las Vegas would provide 18,700 construction jobs, but right now only about 650 workers are involved in construction at the site, and over its first year the project has employed the full-time equivalent of just 195 workers. Nevada really should have gotten that promise in writing.
The head of Mexico’s La Liga MX says that after the 2026 World Cup jointly hosted by the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, maybe the three nations’ pro soccer leagues will merge to form one mammoth soccer league. This isn’t a terrible idea on the face of it — Mexico has the soccer talent, the U.S. has the fan spending money, and Canada has, I guess, donuts — but as it would require MLS owners to share their league with a bunch of other team owners who didn’t pay the $150 million expansion fee, and probably accept some kind of tiered promotion/relegation system as well to avoid having a 50-team league, I wouldn’t hold my breath.
“David Beckham scores a court win on a Miami stadium deal he no longer wants” is easily one of the most David Beckham headlines ever.
F.C. Cincinnati‘s owners have finally explained how its new stadium will glow orange, and the answer is: customizable LED lights. And I was so hoping for it to be bioluminescent beetles.
The new Texas Rangers stadium being built next door to the old one that is only 24 years old because the old one didn’t have air conditioning will now cost $1.2 billion, up from $1 billion. Yes, historians from the distant future, every one of those words is true. (Ha ha, like we’re going to have a distant future!)

Nashville approves stadium at last minute in exchange for affordable housing, soccer balls

Posted on September 5, 2018 by Neil deMause

The simmering Nashville S.C. existential crisis — MLS had approved an expansion franchise after the city council approved a new stadium with $75 million in public subsidies (plus free land), but it turned out they hadn’t actually approved approved it yet — was taken off the burner last night, as the council voted 31-8 to demolish existing buildings at the city’s fairgrounds to clear the way for the stadium, while also approving bills to rezone the land, approve the team’s ground lease, and sell $50 million in bonds to help fund construction. The council also voted 25-12 to reject a proposal for a public referendum on the stadium bonds.

All this happened by the skin of the council’s teeth, as even earlier in the day, it wasn’t clear if the stadium plan would must the necessary 27 votes for passage. But when the team and the community group Stand Up Nashville announced a community benefits agreement earlier in the day, that was enough to shake loose the deciding swing votes.

So what did Nashville get in the CBA? A minimum wage of $15.50 for stadium workers, a requirement that at least 20% of the new residential units be “affordable” or “workforce” housing (no details available on what income band this would need to be affordable to), the inclusion of a day care center, some soccer equipment for Metro schools, and a few other things. It’s not nothing, but it’s also going to cost the team owners a drop in the bucket compared to the $75 million (plus free land!) that the city is gifting to the team owners. So, classify it under “better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick,” which is where the vast majority of stadium deals end up.

Nashville S.C. is now all set to enter MLS in 2020 along with David Beckham’s Miami team, which will bring the number of teams in the league to an even 28. This is not large for a U.S. sports league, but is mammoth for a soccer league, which usually top out at 20; it remains to be seen whether the league’s policy of endless expansion will ever hit a wall, but for now, the owners can keep on cashing those $150 million expansion fee checks.

Friday roundup: Leaky fountains, cheap stadium beer, and the magic of computers

Posted on August 31, 2018 by Neil deMause

The world may be on vacation this week, but the stadium news decidedly is not:

The Nashville S.C. stadium squabble continues, months after the city council supposedly approved a $75 million public subsidy (plus free land), and it’s way more than I can recap right now, so please go read the Tennessean’s summary instead while we wait for a final vote next Tuesday.
The Kansas City Royals had a game delayed by leaky fountains, and the Los Angeles Dodgers had a game delayed when the lights went out. Clearly those stadiums are both outmoded, tear ’em down and build new ones!
The city council of Mobile, Alabama, decided not to build a new $72 million stadium for the University of South Alabama, and the mayor is worried this will send a message to the NFL that Mobile doesn’t care about the Senior Bowl college football exhibition game, which is put on by a local nonprofit and not the NFL, so I don’t even know, man.
Tampa Bay Rays designers say they can keep flyballs from hitting the roof at a new stadium, because computers! (Actually because new statistics-keeping, but everybody likes a “because computers” story and statistics are for guys who live in their parents’ basements, so.)
Did you know that the Indianapolis Colts‘ stadium was built atop the remnants of a once-integrated neighborhood largely demolished for a new interstate? If not, here’s a great, sad Indianapolis Star article all about it.
The Miami Marlins are experimenting with lower ticket prices to lure back fans, and some NFL teams are experimenting with $5 beers. We could call this the natural order of price-setting in a free-market economy after owners went too far with price increases, or we could get all excited about how forward-thinking owners are, ha ha, it’s Derek Jeter, no one will ever accuse him of that.
Jason Notte is writing his new Forbes column way too frequently for me to link to them all, but here’s a nice one about how Phoenix should drive a hard bargain with the Arizona Diamondbacks, Arizona Coyotes, and Phoenix Suns to get you started.
Speaking of other sites you should read regularly, here’s some lovely historical stadium vaportecture from Uni-Watch.
The Pittsburgh Pirates and Steelers owners want $1.16 million in public money for stadium upgrades, because it never hurts to ask.
Perpetually injured professional baseball player says Wrigley Field and Fenway Park “suck” because his dressing room isn’t palatial enough, film at 11.
A former Sacramento Kings exec is suspected of embezzling $13.4 million from the team to spend on beach houses, which has nothing to do with stadiums except that the Kings got hundreds of millions of dollars in public arena funding because they said they needed to improve their bottom line, so actually it has a lot to do with it.
King County councilmember Rod Dembrokski is proposing putting the Seattle Mariners owner’s proposed $180 million lease subsidy up to a public vote in February. This really doesn’t seem to be going the Mariners owners’ way, does it?

Friday roundup: Trump tariff construction cost hikes, Beckham lawsuit tossed, Elon Musk inserts himself into headlines yet again

Posted on August 17, 2018 by Neil deMause

Lots of news to report this week, and that’s even without items that I can’t read because of Tronc Troncing:

Oak View Group’s costs on Seattle’s arena renovation are up about $100 million or 16%, and OVG CEO Tim Leiweke says Donald Trump’s tariffs on construction materials are partly to blame. Leiweke didn’t put a price tag on it, but it’s something to keep an eye on for future stadium and arena projects, at least through 2020.
Two members of the Nashville Metro Council are trying to get that city’s proposed MLS stadium subsidy put to a public vote in November, which, good luck with closing that particular barn door.
Tottenham Hotspur‘s new stadium still isn’t ready, and their temporary home at Wembley is hosting an NFL game the same day as Tottenham’s scheduled home match against Manchester City, and it’s all a giant mess.
It’s hot at San Francisco 49ers games, and nobody knows what to do about it. This is going around, apparently.
Forbes’ Mike Ozanian reports that “sources familiar with the [Arizona Coyotes’] situation” say the team lost a staggering $50 million last year, which seems to be partly debt that owner Andrew Barroway took out to buy the team? I dunno, you read the article and try to make sense of it, beyond “the Coyotes are a wreck,” which presumably you already knew.
The lawsuit to block David Beckham’s Miami MLS stadium on the grounds that it was an illegal no-bid contract has been dismissed by a judge. I’m pretty sure this means the project is due to next be held up by a plague of locusts, or maybe a rain of toads.
Here’s a USA Today article on how Elon Musk is going to make it easier for Los Angeles Dodgers fans to get to the game by building a tunnel to carry giant electric roller skates under Dodger Stadium, and here’s a Deadspin response pointing out that since Musk hasn’t yet built any actual transit under L.A. despite digging lots of tunnels, and “has been on a seemingly life-long mission to brand himself as a real-life Tony Stark, but he’s really just a guy who made an electric car that rich people like to drive,” maybe it’s best not to get too excited about this one just yet. Back to the gondolas!

Friday roundup: Untangling NYCFC’s stadium plan, fighting over the Crew’s future, and what to do with a luxury suite

Posted on August 3, 2018 by Neil deMause

Sorry for the radio silence the last couple of days — it was a combination of not much super-urgent breaking news and a busy work schedule on my end — but let’s remedy that with a heaping helping of Friday links:

Part of that busy schedule was wrapping up work on my Village Voice article trying to unravel NYCFC’s latest stadium plan, and while the upshot remains what it was a month ago — this is a Rube Goldberg–style proposal with so many moving parts that it’s hard to say yet if it would involve public subsidies — it also involves city parks land that isn’t really parkland but is really controlled by another city agency that isn’t really a city agency and denies having control over it … go read it, you’ll either be entertained or confused or both!
The state of Maryland has luxury suites at the Baltimore Ravens and Orioles stadiums, and Gov. Larry Hogan mostly uses them for family members and political cronies. This should come as a surprise to no one, but it’s a reminder that getting government use of a suite as part of a stadium deal is less a public benefit than a, what do you call those things?
Based on questions asked at a Monday hearing, The Stranger concludes that most King County council members aren’t opposed to the Seattle Mariners‘ demand for $180 million in future county upgrade spending on Safeco Field, in exchange for the team signing a new lease. That could still change, obviously, but only if all of you readers turn toward Seattle and shout this post in unison. Three, two, one, go!
MLS commissioner Don Garber says talks are “ongoing” with the city of Columbus about replacing the Crew if they move to Austin, and by “with the city of Columbus” he apparently means the local business council the Columbus Partnership. And even their CEO, Alex Fischer, doesn’t sound too in the mood to talk, noting that Garber has called for a new downtown stadium in Columbus while not requiring the same of Austin: “I find it extremely ironic that the commissioner wants a downtown stadium at the same time that the McKalla site is the equivalent of building a stadium in Buckeye Lake.” MLS deputy commissioner Mark Abbott retorted that Fischer’s remarks are “certainly a strange way to demonstrate an interest in working with us.” The lines of communication are open!
The owners of Nashville S.C. would have to pay $200,000 a year in city rent on their new stadium, which is … something, at least. Except, reports the Tennessean, “Parking revenue collected from non-soccer events at the new MLS stadium, such as concerts or football games, would go toward the annual base rent and could potentially cover the entire amount.” So maybe not really something.
Glendale has extended its arena management deal with AEG through 2026, which will mean continuing to pay $5.6 million annual management fees, but also collecting about $1.6 million a year in shared arena revenues. That’s not good, but it is significantly better than the lease that had the city paying the owners of the Arizona Coyotes more than $7 million a year after revenue shares, so yay Glendale for tearing up that lease and bidding out the contract to at least cut their losses.
Here’s Austin’s lead negotiator with Crew owner Anthony Precourt over a new stadium, Chris Dunlavey of Brailsford and Dunlavey. on whether the deal is fair to taxpayers: “All around, I don’t know how it could get characterized as favorable to [Precourt Sports Ventures]. I think the city of Austin has negotiated this to as favorable for a city as PSV could stand to do.” Uh, Chris, you do know that “good for the public” and “as least awful for the public as we could get” aren’t the same thing, right?
Former U.S. senator Barbara Boxer has thrown her weight behind Inglewood residents opposing a new Los Angeles Clippers arena because it could cause gentrification and displacement. Which, not all arenas do, but in hot urban areas like L.A. it doesn’t take much to cause gentrification and displacement, so I can certainly see why there’s concern.
An otherwise unidentified group calling itself Protect Oakland’s Shoreline Economy has issued flyers opposing the A’s building a stadium at Howard Terminal because, among other things, it could displace homeless encampments to make way for parking lots. This is getting David Beckham–level silly, but also it’s getting harder and harder not to feel like the A’s owners should just give in and build a stadium at the Coliseum site, since at least nobody seems to mind if they do that. Yet.

Friday roundup: Bad spring training math, Beckham’s curse, and the opening of Megatron’s Butthole

Posted on July 27, 2018 by Neil deMause

No time for quips today, just the news:

A study by Arizona State University found that spring-training baseball was worth $373 million to the Arizona economy in 2018. I can’t find the actual report itself, but it looks like they came up with this number by interviewing a sample of out-of-town visitors at spring training games about how much they were spending on their trips — which would be a perfectly good methodology if not for the fact that lots of people travel to Arizona and then think “I’ll go see a baseball game while I’m there,” instead of traveling there just for baseball and thinking, “Sure, I’ll check out that big canyon, too.” Which is why when spring-training games have been canceled for labor conflicts, the observed impact on local economies has been pretty much zero. I wonder if the people who wrote this Arizona State report are actual economists, at least.
Nashville is getting an MLS franchise because it promised to build a soccer stadium, but it still might change its mind and not build a soccer stadium, and this is going to be great fun to watch if it does. (Not if you’re a Nashville MLS fan, I guess. But [insert requisite jibe about anything being more fun to watch than MLS soccer].)
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said last week that he hopes MLB expands by two more teams during his lifetime (or during his tenure as commissioner — he wasn’t exactly clear), specifically mentioning “Portland, Las Vegas, Charlotte, Nashville in the United States, certainly Montreal, maybe Vancouver, in Canada. We think there’s places in Mexico we could go over the long haul.” That got people in those cities all excited, which is presumably the point in saying such things — of course, none of those cities have MLB-ready stadiums (unless you count Olympic Stadium in Montreal), so prepare for a stadium arms race sometime before Manfred dies.
Megatron’s Butthole is now fully operational.
The estimated cost of renovating Key Arena has risen from $600 million to $700 million, but the city won’t have to pay any of that because their deal with the developers says those guys have to pay any cost overruns. Kids, when signing your next arena deal, do that.
A Florida man was arrested for setting fire to golf carts at the golf course where David Beckham wants to build his soccer stadium, but police say it was just arson and has nothing to do with the stadium proposal. Except insomuch as David Beckham is cursed, okay? If construction on this place ever begins, I fully expect it to be interrupted by all its milk cows going dry.

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