NBA – Field of Schemes

Outgoing owner promises A-Rod won’t move T-Wolves to Seattle, everyone immediately wonders if A-Rod will move T-Wolves to Seattle

April 14, 2021 Neil deMause

Glen Taylor, the billionaire former Minnesota state senator who owns the Minnesota Timberwolves, is in the midst of selling his team to online marketing billionaire Marc Lore and not-billionaire-but-pretty-wealthy former disgraced baseball star Alex Rodriguez for around $1.5 billion, and given that neither of those guys are locals, it’s immediately sparked heightened speculation about whether the team could move, maybe to Seattle, which is still on the hunt for a replacement for the Sonics. In response, Taylor told WCCO-AM that his sale agreement contains language to keep the team in town; as reported by the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which Taylor also owns:

“We have it in the contract, they have signed the contract to do that,” Taylor said…

Taylor said in his interview with Chad Hartman that the NBA does not want to see the Wolves moved out of Minnesota to another city like Seattle.

“The real agreement is with the NBA. The NBA will make the decision if somebody’s going to move or not move,” Taylor said. “The NBA will not approve of the Timberwolves moving from here to Seattle. It’s in the NBA’s interest that in Seattle, that a new team is formed. It’s an economic decision that’s in the interest of all of the owners.”…

He also said the new owners “are not going to pay” $1.5 billion to buy the Wolves then another $2 billion or so to move the team.

“That’s the assurance that I have that they aren’t going to move it out there,” Taylor said.

So, we have: Lore and A-Rod won’t move the team because they signed a contract saying they won’t; the NBA won’t let them move; and the NBA might let them move, but would charge the owners so much money to do so that it wouldn’t be worthwhile. That’s totally clear and not at all inconsistent!

In response, the Star Trib linked to an article it ran last July wherein several legal experts said it would be difficult to make a permanent non-relocation agreement in a sale contract enforceable, or to get one approved by the league:

“You could have some contingencies … and I’m sure there could be a provision that relates to keeping the team in place,” said Eldon Ham, an author and professor of sports law at Chicago-Kent College of Law. “But I don’t think it would be able to extend forever.”

At the crux of any guarantee to keep the Wolves in Minnesota would be how long that guarantee would last or how harsh the financial penalty would be for breaking it. Ham said any kind of agreement that makes outlandish demands, like a 30-year promise to keep the team in Minnesota, might not make it past league approval, which requires a $1 million fee just to apply, he said.

“The league itself has to approve all this,” Ham said. “So if you have a ridiculous contract, they’re just going to tell you: ‘We’re not approving this stuff.’”

So, what’s really going on here? Clearly, Taylor, who still needs to maintain his local cred if only to keep Minnesotans from threatening to burn his newspaper in effigy, is trying to do all he can to say that if the Timberwolves ever move, it’s not his fault. So he’s putting in some kind of clause in the sale agreement, but also noting that the NBA would want a ten-figure payoff to let Seattle back into the league, something the new owners are unlikely to put up just to move from one mid-size city to another mid-size city — all of which is true.

But as we’ve seen here time and again, move threats aren’t just about actual threats to move, but ways to (say it all with me now) create leverage for owners to extract concessions from local elected officials. The T-Wolves’ Target Center just got a $140 million renovation in 2017, helped along with $74 million in public money, but at 31 years old it’s also the second-oldest arena in the NBA, and you just know how shiny new sports team owners hate not having the shiniest new buildings to go with their freshly acquired baubles. Hence how there’s somehow only one remaining NBA arena built before 1990, seriously, what kind of planned-obsolescent world are we living in, people?

Anyway: There’s no reason to think that Lore and A-Rod will move the Timberwolves, but there’s also every reason to suspect that they would not be unhappy for the possibility of the Wolves moving to continue to be front-page news in, oh, say, the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Especially if talk of a new arena, or another round of renovations to this one, begins making the rounds. This is all conjecture, mind you — maybe A-Rod will declare “Today, I am a Minnesotan!” and vow that the team will only leave over his dead body — but it’s conjecture informed by a whole lots of sports shakedown history, so let’s just say that if this isn’t the last we hear about Wolves-to-Seattle rumors, don’t be surprised.

Friday roundup: How to tell a dump of a stadium from a marvel, and why “stupid infrastructure” should become a term of art

April 9, 2021April 9, 2021 Neil deMause

I have nothing introductory to say this week other than that I’m wondering if you kind FoS supporters would give me $2 million in 24 hours if I made more robots out of lacrosse masks. So on to the news:

Here’s a long article about the opening of Veterans Stadium 50 years ago that has some interesting bits about all the other stadium proposals for the Philadelphia Phillies and Eagles that were considered and rejected, but mostly is instructive for referring to the Vet as “a cathedral” and “a marvel” rather than how it was mostly described when it was being torn down, which was along the lines of “a dump.” It’s funny how things go from wonderful to outmoded to nostalgic, based mostly on who can make money off of getting them built and/or getting them replaced.
Honolulu’s replacement for the genuinely-falling-down Aloha Stadium is set to cost $350 million, and the state legislature has quietly switched its financing plan from a roughly 50-50 split of revenue bonds (those paid back with stadium revenues) and general obligation bonds (those paid back out of the state’s general fund) to all general obligation bonds. This could be because revenue bonds are a tougher sell during a pandemic when no revenue is coming in, or it could be because revenue bonds are a tough sell regardless when the only revenue will be from college football games; either way, my question stands about whether maybe if you can’t afford a $350 million college football stadium, you just don’t build a $350 million college football stadium.
Aaron Gordon makes an excellent point about the current debates over the federal infrastructure bill that the question should be less what counts as “infrastructure” and more what creates a good public-benefits bang for public bucks. For example: “Should we be spending $174 billion in electric vehicle incentives — a subsidy for massively profitable automakers and upper-middle class Americans — when a fraction of that could provide frequent, reliable bus service to the majority of Americans instead?” Nobody’s proposed any of the new federal infrastructure money going to stadiums just yet that I’ve seen, but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before someone tries to build a gondola with it, at which point I sincerely hope the decision is based less on whether gondolas are infrastructure than on whether gondolas are stupid infrastructure.
San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s plan to tear down his city’s old arena and build a new arena with money from mumble mumble hey look over there has hit a snag in the form of our old friend the California Surplus Land Act, which you will remember from such past hits as “Can Inglewood provide land for a new Los Angeles Clippers arena without offering it up to affordable-housing developers first?” The Surplus Land Act got tightened with new guidelines in late 2019, so turns out the city may have to reopen bidding on the arena site, though San Diego COO Jay Goldstone (cities have COOs now?) told the Union-Tribune “there is no intention to issue a new request for proposals at this time.” Tune back in for further updates once the lawyers are done.
The planned $450 million renovation of the Superdome for the New Orleans Saints has been stalled and may be scaled back as a result of 1) the pandemic, which is making investing in such things as expanded clubs and suites look like not so great an idea, and 2) state legislators who are questioning the state’s $90 million (with another $210 million coming from the state stadium district, which is also run and funded by the state) as too expensive because “they’re the New Orleans Saints, not the Louisiana Saints.” (Okay…) The good news, reports WBRZ: “the latest federal coronavirus aid package has dollars for which the [stadium] district could be eligible.” Aaron, you listening to this?
Los Angeles Angels owner Arte Moreno still hasn’t decided whether to build a new stadium or renovate the old one on the 153 acres of land worth $500 million that Anaheim gifted him with for only $150 million last year, but he has released some images of colored blobs of whether things might go, or not.
If you were wondering whether former NBA player Jackie Robinson’s plan for a $2.7 billion arena/hotel/conference center/bowling alley/wedding chapel in Las Vegas is still in the works, a year after he initially said it would be completed, and with still no sports team to play in the arena because Vegas is already swimming in arenas, the answer is of course it is.
And finally, if you thought the Dollar Loan Center Center was hilarious, you’ll love Inter Miami‘s renaming of its temporary (they swear) stadium to “AutoNation’s DRV PNK Stadium,” a name that just trips off the tongue. It looks like AutoNation even spells it “drive pink” sometimes, so the bizarre spelling seems especially unnecessary, but if you want to promote your car dealerships by giving money to cancer research and then paying the local soccer team to put your charity’s name on its stadium, you can spell it however you want, because America.

Friday roundup: Georgia man holds no truck with numbers, new stadiums falling apart already, plus a guy who spent three years living in a Phillies concession stand

March 26, 2021March 26, 2021 Neil deMause

Happy Friday! Still recovering from the double whammy of my second shot on Sunday plus learning that birds aren’t real, so I’ll keep the intro short this week and get right to the news:

In the wake of J.C. Bradbury’s paper showing that the Atlanta Braves stadium had no statistically significant measurable impact on sales tax receipts in Cobb County, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that former county commissioner Bob Ott retorts: “A model is one thing. But I’m looking at what’s really there.” Former county commissioner Bob Ott maybe doesn’t quite understand what economic modeling is — Bradbury was measuring what was really there, but he had to create a hypothetical model to show what would have been there without the stadium, since he doesn’t have Naomi Wolf time-traveling nanoparticles — but since he’s no longer in office and Bradbury is, maybe it doesn’t matter too much anymore.
Members of the St. Petersburg city council say they don’t want to consider any of the redevelopment bids that Mayor Rick Kriseman solicited for the Tropicana Field site until they hear from Tampa Bay Rays owner Stuart Sternberg whether he plans to stay or go when his lease is up in 2028, which kind of makes sense, though it does allow Sternberg to make himself an obstacle to redevelopment, which is always a good way to gain leverage when seeking public funds. Councilmember Darden Rice also called the standoff between Kriseman and Sternberg “a standoff between two people with very rusty guns and one bullet,” which is a very funny image and probably unfairly more convincing as a result, much as people are more likely to believe things if they rhyme.
The Tennessee state bill to allow Knoxville to siphon off $65 million in state and local sales taxes from a quarter-mile around a new Tennessee Smokies stadium and kick them back to the team owner for stadium costs passed a state senate committee Wednesday by a vote of 8-0. Next stop for the bill: the senate ways and means committee, it looks like, though this legislative calendar is really not the easiest to read.
The Las Vegas Raiders‘ giant outdoor video screen at their one-year-old stadium needs to be taken down and repaired, and the Minnesota Vikings‘ five-year-old stadium is getting $21 million of repairs done to its faulty drainage system, and how soon is too soon to start complaining that stadiums are broken-down and obsolete and need to be replaced? (Answer: Once a team owner can demand a new building while keeping a straight face, it’s not too soon anymore.)
Some people in Delaware want to build a private indoor track and field facility, and say there are three possible ways to pay for it: find some private investor to put up the cost “because of the economic impact that it has on the community” (uh?), do a “public-private partnership,” or get the state to pay the whole bill. Yep, those would be the three possible combinations of public and private money; I guess they figured nobody would buy “Mexico will pay for it.”
The Miami Heat‘s arena is set to get a new naming rights sponsor — some cryptocurrency company instead of some airline company, we don’t need to bother with the actual names here, they’re not paying us to use them — and unlike most other public sports venue owners, Miami-Dade County actually gets a cut of naming-rights money, so will get an extra $5 million a year from the deal, yay! Still not enough to make spending $200 million to build the place worth it or anything, but it’s better than a kick in the head.
Marc Normandin has a great essay this morning about how boycotts are meant to be strategic actions, not ways to make you feel moral in an immoral world, so until there are picket lines outside stadiums, “you’re not a bad person for continuing to watch or attend MLB games just because the people who own the teams and guide the league’s direction are assholes.” It’s a useful reminder, especially in a world that increasingly insists that it’s up to individual consumers to fix things, not the people with the actual power to do so.
I don’t have much to say about this New York Times article on a former Philadelphia Phillies worker who has written a self-published book about the three years he spent living in an empty concession stand at Veterans Stadium, but I figured you’d want to know about it nonetheless. You’re welcome.

Friday roundup: Terrible economic impact studies, terrible renderings, but one smart mayor, at least

March 12, 2021March 12, 2021 Neil deMause

It’s been a long year of waiting, but the moment we’ve been looking ahead to is finally within sight, and only one thing seems to be on everyone’s minds: What songs are we going to request that Yo La Tengo perform for pledges tomorrow afternoon on the WFMU fundraising marathon? I already requested “Better Things” the year after Hurricane Sandy, but I’m hoping I can find something equally appropriate for 2021.

Here’s some stadium and arena news to tide you over while you wait:

Economic impact studies of sports venues are usually pretty terrible, given that they generally start out by measuring “impact” (i.e., all money spent in or around a stadium or arena whether it benefits anyone but the team owner) and ignore spending that’s just shifted from one part of town to another, and so on. But the projection that a new $228 million arena in Augusta will generate more than $600 million in economic impact by adding up “$436 million in new spending” plus “$208 million in new sales taxes” breaks new ground in bonkers: Doesn’t the Augusta Downtown Development Authority know that sales taxes are already part of “spending”? Plus, is the sales tax rate in Augusta really 48%? The full “market analysis” is here, but it doesn’t provide details on its methodology and the $208 million sales-tax figure doesn’t seem to appear anywhere in it, so we’ll just have to trust that the Augusta Chronicle’s fact-checking department was on the job and, oh dear. Maybe the “applause editor” does some fact-checking in her spare time?
Also in economic-impact-study news, various studies have projected anywhere from $200 million to $600 million in impact from a new arena in Palm Desert, but Mayor Kathleen Kelly says, “Sports arenas are pretty notorious for over-promising and under-delivering positive economic impacts for the surrounding community. So, I do have to look at the proposal with some skepticism.” She adds an arena could draw off spending from area restaurants to arena concessions, and take up hotel rooms that otherwise could be occupied by longer-term visitors — hey, somebody’s been reading this site, or maybe just the mountains of data showing that arenas haven’t had a large measurable impact in the past! Warms my heart, it does.
The Florida House Ways & Means Committee voted 16-1 yesterday to repeal the state’s program that allows sports team owners to request up to $2 million a year apiece in sales-tax money to repay their private stadium and arena construction or renovation costs, and, yes, this was just proposed a couple of years ago, but maybe one of these days it’ll actually pass. Especially given that it’s a program that has allowed team owners to demand public money for venues they’ve already built, making the economic impact of the subsidies an easy-to-calculate zero.
Detroit’s Joe Louis Arena is gone, but you can still park in its parking garage, which is about to become “much more than just a place to park in the morning” as it is converted to a “mobility hub” that is … a place to park in the morning and buy coffee. It’s all privately funded, at least, so far.
If you want to read an article about sad Sacramento soccer boosters appealing for a billionaire to come and bring $500 million for an expansion fee and a new stadium after the old billionaire backed out, here you go! Features Sacramento mayor and former Kings water-carrier Darrell Steinberg saying of the plan that ended up leaving the city cutting services to pay down arena debt, “We didn’t give up on the Kings and we’re not giving up on Major League Soccer.” Adds Steinberg: “What we need is a plug-and-a-play from an investor to then help us finish the last piece of this.” In related news, I only need $6 billion as the last piece of the puzzle for building my space elevator, please apply within.
Not to be topped, News 4 Nashville has a “first look inside Nashville’s new soccer stadium,” which is actually someone clicking around on computer renderings of the place, complete with a visible cursor. We had that already back in November, and with creepy shambling Sims!
And if you want to read an article about Cleveland Cavaliers owner and Quicken Loans magnate Dan Gilbert and his gajillions of dollars in public subsidies that starts out describing how he “was raised by a pair of Century 21 real estate agents” and “went to Michigan State University—where he was arrested for running a sports gambling operation,” Defector has gotcha.

Friday roundup: Miami ripped off again by Loria, Rays roof removal proposed, America’s journalists snookered

February 19, 2021February 19, 2021 Neil deMause

I’ll keep this short today, in deference to any Texas readers who may be trying to save battery life thanks to that state’s power outages. Once your bandwidth is back, here’s a good reminder from the New York Times that climate change is expected to cause unseasonable cold snaps and winter storms as well as insane summer heat, so you have lots more of both to look forward to. Or, if you prefer, here’s an article on a similar theme from the Village Voice a few years back that I wrote a much snappier headline for.

Stadiums, right, that’s what you came here to read about! Let’s see what we’ve got:

Miami-Dade County is finally getting $5.5 million from Jeffrey Loria’s sale of the Miami Marlins, which is a lot less than the $50 million or so the public thought they were owed from a revenue-sharing deal in Loria’s stadium-subsidy deal, but that’s what happens when you let an owner calculate his own profit margin. Though at least Loria didn’t deduct the cost of paying himself to negotiate the deal, like New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner once did with a cable contract. (Crap, hope I haven’t given Loria any ideas.)
When I wrote a couple of weeks ago that various developers’ plans for redeveloping the Tropicana Field site to include a new Tampa Bay Rays stadium were “pretty boring,” I hadn’t yet seen this one that involves ripping off the roof and adding a weird semicircular scrim that doesn’t look like it would protect anyone from rain while building oddly tall tower-in-the-park edifices next door. Renovating the Trop to be open-air is an interesting idea, I guess, if it would cost less than building a whole new stadium, not that the proposal says anything about cost. Pretty pictures, ooooh aaaah!
Finally a public sports funding project that is actually being rethought thanks to the pandemic economy: St. Louis County is holding off on $6 million in subsidies for a youth sports complex in Hazelwood what with the county being out of money as a result of Covid and, uh, also having already committed $6 million a year for 40 years to pay off the former Rams stadium. Okay, this seemed like more promising news before I finished writing that sentence, sorry.
Buffalo Bills co-owner Kim Pegula says a new stadium is “our top priority in this off-season,” or rather doing a study of a new stadium is. Maybe that’ll get Gov. Andrew Cuomo off her case, at least for long enough that his governorship crashes and burns first.
Still wondering how Nick Mastroianni, the guy who helped finance Nassau Coliseum’s renovations by selling green cards to wealthy Chinese investors before getting sued by investors for allegedly skimping on interest payments, ended up controlling the arena after former Brooklyn Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov bailed on it? Norman Oder’s Atlantic Yards Report has an explainer, though the explanation pretty much comes down to “some kind of backroom shenanigans,” which you probably could have guessed.
Tennessee Smokies owner Randy Boyd is pointing to the Fort Wayne TinCaps‘ new stadium as a model for his proposed downtown Knoxville stadium and proposed $65 million in subsidies, so that means it’s time for another article by our friends at WBIR about how great the stadium would be! This time it’s an evaluation that the Fort Wayne project, which WBIR doesn’t mention it but it cost local taxpayers there $25 million plus millions more in tax credits for surrounding development, “worked out” — for which the evidence provided is that sometimes it’s used for farmers markets or Boy Scout sleepovers, and also there’s been downtown development since it opened and surely that must be because everyone wanted to be near the baseball stadium that was open for 70 home games a year, right? Make a note to check on that later, maybe, this story is already full with quotes from Fort Wayne’s mayor. (To be fair, WBIR did finally run an article interviewing Boyd’s critics, in which one called the Smokies plan “an absolute boondoggle in every sense of the word,” though it still just comes down to he-said-she-said and not any actual investigation of how the financing would work.)
Speaking of terrible excuses for journalism, here’s Phoenix TV station KNXV reporting that “Downtown restaurants score big thanks to Phoenix Suns fans,” for which the evidence is that restaurants reopened what with the Suns allowing in fans again and … were hoping they’d show up to eat. Yeah, KNXV didn’t even wait around to report on how things actually went, that sounds like work, man.
Finally, New Mexico’s KOB-TV can’t even get me to bother to read their article about Albuquerque’s proposed soccer stadium, except to say that they need to hire a copy editor for their headlines already.

Friday roundup: More crazy stadium subsidy demands than can fit in one headline, you call this a lull?

February 12, 2021February 12, 2021 Neil deMause

Every couple of weeks, it seems, someone in the comments predicts that we are about to see the end of sports’ 30-year surge in stadium and arena subsidies, either because of Covid-depleted budgets or legislators smartening up or just everybody already having a new place. To which I say: If the stadium scam is slowing, why are my Friday mornings still so #$@&%*! busy?

Ahem. And now, the news:

A lawyer for the South Bend Cubs, saying the team owners were “shocked” to discover that a law allowing them to siphon off up to $650,000 a year in sales and income taxes for their own purposes had expired in 2018, has asked the state legislature to renew it. Oh, and also increase the cap to $2 million a year. You know, while they have the document open on their screens. “South Bend and every other city that has retained their relationship with Major League Baseball have to get to a certain level by 2025,” said attorney Richard Nussbaum. “If they don’t, they risk losing the team.” It’s an epidemic, I tells ya.
Speaking of which, Hudson Valley Renegades owner Jeff Goldklang got his $1.4 million in stadium renovation cash from Dutchess County, after emailing residents and fans warning them that the team could move if it was denied the subsidy.
Fort Wayne F.C., which I had to look up to be sure it actually exists and which turns out to be a “pre-professional” (much in the way that kids are “pre-adults”) USL League Two club, is seeking to move up to League One in 2023 and wants a $150 million soccer-stadium-plus-other-stuff project, to be paid for by mumble mumble hey look over there! It also features an instant classic in the field of fans-throwing-their-hands-skyward-while-fireworks-go-off-over-soccer-players-not-playing-anything-recognizable-as-soccer renderings, which is worth $150 million if it’s worth a dime:
The Oakland A’s owners (not the Oakland A’s, I still remember when I was an intern at The Nation Christopher Hitchens lecturing us on how one should always say “the U.S. government” and not “the U.S.” because just because the government approved something didn’t mean the populace did, but anyway) won their lawsuit to allow their Howard Terminal stadium project to have challenges to environmental impact reviews reviewed on a fast track, which is a big thing in California. “This is a critically important decision,” said A’s president Dave Kaval, who indicated he hopes the Oakland city council will be able to vote on a stadium bill this year, presumably after it’s figured out who the hell would pay for what.
Raleigh Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin wants to talk about building a new hockey arena to keep the Carolina Hurricanes in town long-term — their “old” one opened just over 21 years ago — and Sougata Mukherjee, the editor-in-chief of the Triangle Business Journal, points out that maybe now is not the best time what with 7% of the state not having enough to eat, small businesses on the brink, and, oh yeah, a pandemic still going on. Cue Hurricanes execs or their political talking about how a new arena will mean “jobs” in three, two…
While we wait, here’s San Diego Union-Tribune sports columnist Bryce Miller saying that San Diego should build a new arena to lure a nonexistent NBA expansion franchise because it would be “catalytic.” In the sense of the Oxford dictionary’s sample sentence for meaning 1.1, maybe?
Twenty years ago this week, the Pittsburgh Pirates‘ and Steelers‘ Three Rivers Stadium was blowed up real good, only a little over 30 years after it was first opened. I went to a couple of games at Three Rivers over the years, and I agree with former Pirate Richie Hebner’s review that “the graveyard I work in during the offseason has more life than this place,” and the Pirates’ new stadium is one of my favorites. Still, it and the Steelers’ new stadium deserve the blame for popularizing tax kickbacks in the stadium financing world, after Pittsburgh voters passed a referendum barring any new tax money from going to new stadiums, and the state legislature responded by “loaning” the teams stadium money that would be “repaid” by taxes the state would be collecting anyway — prompting Pittsburgh state rep Thomas Petrone’s timeless comment: “It’s not a grant. It’s not a loan. It’s a groan.”
Phoenix restaurants are hoping that having partial attendance at Suns games will provide more happy hour customers, something that seems not only ambitious given the proven not-so-robust spinoff effects of sports stadiums, but also slightly heedless of whether it’s such a great idea to encourage basketball fans to congregate indoors and take their masks off to drink and then go directly to congregating indoors to watch the Suns. In entirely unrelated news, restaurants around the new Los Angeles Rams and Chargers stadium in Inglewood are afraid of being driven out of business by new high-priced options gravitating to serve well-heeled football fans.
Finally a partial explanation of how funding for that new Des Moines Menace soccer stadium would work: In addition to city funds, it would be up for state hotel-tax funds designated for projects that “improve the quality of life for Iowa residents.” Other projects proposed to dip into the hotel-tax pool include a Des Moines Buccaneers junior hockey arena, a private indoor amateur sports facility, and a new mall; is it just me, or does “quality of life” seem to have been interpreted as “ways to put money in the pockets of Iowa business barons”?
Hey, remember the $200 million highway interchange that Las Vegas is building, totally coincidentally, near the Raiders‘ new stadium? It is now a $273 million highway interchange. But the city needed to build it anyway, because traffic was too bad at the old interchange and, shh, don’t tell them.
Okay, here’s one way in which maybe the pandemic has delayed some stadium spending: The Baltimore Orioles owners have signed a two-year lease extension on Camden Yards, while also working with the Maryland Stadium Authority “to establish a new long-term agreement that includes upgrades to the facility,” according to WJZ-TV. So it’s possible some 2021 and 2022 sports subsidies will end up getting pushed back to 2023 or so — yay?
If you wanted a live webcam of construction on the new Knoxville stadium for the Tennessee Smokies that hasn’t even been approved yet, let alone started construction, the team’s new stadium promotion website has got you covered.

Cuomo allows sports venues to reopen on February 23, because money

February 11, 2021February 11, 2021 Neil deMause

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared yesterday that sports and music venues that hold more than 10,000 people — both outdoor stadiums and indoor arenas — will be allowed to reopen to fans at 10% capacity starting February 23. Each building will first have to have its ventilation systems approved by the state department of health, but once that’s complete, the New York Knicks, Brooklyn Nets, New York Rangers, Buffalo Sabres, New York Mets, and New York Yankees could all soon be playing before paying crowds.

The announcement came as a bit of a surprise in a state that, even with falling coronavirus rates, still has the fifth-highest positive test rate in the country, as new more transmissible variants threaten to create a renewed surge in coming weeks. But Cuomo said that with reduced capacities, improved ventilation, requiring mask wearing, and requiring a negative test result in the previous 72 hours, he could “get this economy open intelligently and in a balanced way.”

All that is well enough — if you’re going to start putting fans back in seats, it’s clear, keeping them masked and distanced is key. But the negative test certification — which Cuomo called “the key” to reopening — is what begins to paint this as hygiene theater: As we learned last year during the Miami Marlins fiasco, 40% of people will still test negative four days after being exposed to the virus, and 20% will test negative even three days after symptoms have started. Plus there’s the problem of people who get tested on a Monday and then contract the virus by Thursday. As one infectious disease expert put it to the New York Times:

“A test 72 hours prior to a game will help identify some cases, but that’s also three days in which an individual can become infectious,” [Saskia Popescu, an epidemiologist from George Mason University,] wrote in an email.

Coming just one week after Cuomo announced that restaurants would be allowed to open to indoor dining, something that can’t be done while masked until chefs develop food that can be absorbed through diners’ skin, the sports reopening is a clear signal that New York state is prioritizing “getting the economy open” over actual safety concerns. As the Times editorial board wrote just hours before Cuomo’s sports announcement:

Too many leaders — not just Mr. Cuomo — are ignoring that call. Massachusetts and New Jersey are allowing businesses, including restaurants, to expand capacity for indoor services, and Iowa just lifted its mask mandate. The impulse behind these moves is understandable. Restaurants and the people who earn their living through them are in dire straits because they have not received sufficient government assistance. State and local economies are hanging by a thread, and everyone is exhausted by restrictions and desperate to return to some semblance of normal life.

But the number of people who get sick or die from Covid-19 in the coming year will depend on the outcome of a desperate race that’s underway, between human vaccination and viral mutation. … By relaxing restrictions now, state and local leaders are undermining their own vaccination efforts. To get a sense of what this looks like to scientists and public health experts, imagine a military general leading the fight against a foreign enemy — and then selling that enemy deadly weapons on the side.

Meanwhile, food critic Ryan Sutton of Eater came out against the restaurant reopening, noting that choosing Valentine’s Day weekend to resume indoor dining “feels chosen less for any health milestones and more for the fact that it is historically one of the biggest nights for restaurants.” While restaurant workers will soon be allowed to sign up for vaccinations, the slow pace of vaccine production means they could be waiting for appointments well into the spring or summer. (Cuomo didn’t say whether stadium and arena workers will be added to the vaccine priority list.)

Speaking as a New Yorker and a Mets fan eager to see how the team will screw up its winter of big-name acquisitions, I’m dying to get to a ballgame as much as anyone. But “dying” only metaphorically: If allowing a couple thousand lucky fans to witness the Knicks and Nets firsthand leads to an uptick in cases that allows new viral variants to take off, sickening and killing people across the city who have no interest in basketball, Cuomo’s sports reopening move could go down as one of the most poorly timed decisions in governmental history. And even if we get lucky and limited-capacity indoor sports turn out not to become superspreader events, seeking a “balanced” reopening — presumably between the full reopening many businesses would want and the continued shutdown of indoor activities that scientists recommend, meaning between profits and deaths — is, let’s just say, a telling reminder of how most elected officials see where their bread is buttered.

Friday roundup: Inglewood to seize land for Clippers arena, half-assed Rays stadium renderings, plus maybe an MLS lockout!

January 29, 2021 Neil deMause

I should probably have something to say about a week in which hedge-fund operators and day traders went to war over who could outgrift each other, but you know, I think let’s just leave that right there. On to the news!

After a lengthy approval process that didn’t involve much in the way of public subsidies, Steve Ballmer’s Los Angeles Clippers project will be taking advantage of the city’s ability to seize land by eminent domain, after the city council approved the move on Tuesday. Eminent domain can only be used for projects that are for a public use, and the arena will be privately owned and operated, but the city’s lawyers say the arena qualifies because it will provide residents with “access to amusement, enjoyment and recreation.” For, you know, a price. I don’t know if Netflix has any plans for a new headquarters, but clearly they should be thinking of getting in on this racket as well.
The other day when discussing plans to redevelopment St. Petersburg’s Tropicana Field site, I neglected to include images of the Tampa Bay Rays baseball stadiums that all seven approved developers provided as options in their proposals. Which is fine, as they’re pretty boring! One just slapped on a blue polygon with a Rays logo on it! But there is one with a pitcher throwing out of the stretch for some reason despite there being runners on second and third (or near them, anyway), so feel free to enjoy that.
Speaking of grifting, MLS owners inserted a loophole in their new collective bargaining agreement with their players that would let them cancel the entire thing with one month’s notice if the pandemic kept cutting into profits, and now that’s exactly what they’re doing, probably leading to a lockout starting today, though the union offered $53 million in last-minute concessions last night. As always, you got to have a con in this land of milk and honey.
The total construction cost of North American sports venues opening in 2021 is expected to drop to $5.8 billion from last year’s record $8.9 billion, when the Los Angeles Rams, Las Vegas Raiders, and Texas Rangers all opened new billion-dollar-plus stadiums. This will likely be a lull of at least a couple of years in part thanks to the pandemic and no one rushing to open new buildings when you can’t sell tickets in them yet anyway, but anyone thinking that this is some kind of permanent sea change hasn’t been reading this website for the last 23 years.
On that note, $16.2 million in public money so a golf resort in North Carolina can build a new hotel? Sure, why not!
Texas gives extra school funding to districts that give property tax abatements to developers. Really you don’t need to know anything more than that, but if you’re interested, click the link for a brief interview once you’ve picked your jaw up off the floor.

Friday roundup: Tokyo Olympics back on, NFL doesn’t understand vaccines, and other hygiene theater stories

January 22, 2021January 22, 2021 Neil deMause

It was yet another one of those weeks, where you finally look up from the news that’s obsessing everybody only to find that while you weren’t looking, monarch butterflies had moved to the verge of extinction. There doesn’t seem to be an end to this anytime soon — which is pretty much the motto of this website, so let’s get on with it:

Japan was reported to have decided to cancel the 2021 Summer Olympics in Tokyo because the pandemic won’t be over by July, then doubled down and declared that the games are definitely still on. All this is still subject to change, especially since the coronavirus itself is still subject to change, so expect the rumors and counterrumors to continue right up until the torch is lit, if a torch relay is something that can even be pulled off with social distancing.
The NFL is planning to sell 14,500 tickets to next month’s Super Bowl in Tampa, plus allow in 7,500 vaccinated health care workers for free, because as we all know, once you’re vaccinated you no longer pose a contagion risk and so are the equivalent of an empty seat in terms of viral spread. Wait, what’s that? We don’t know that at all? Oh well, I’m sure it’s safe, surely the NFL would never do anything to put anyone at risk.
Speaking of hygiene theater, the Arizona Coyotes are allowing up to 3,450 fans to attend their games, but say it’s fine because fans must be masked and socially distanced and are required to “download an app to answer a series of health survey questions” first, which pretty much comes down to “promise you don’t have the ‘rona first, okay?” The Coyotes have still only drawn an average of 2,329 fans for their first two home games, which is either a sign that Phoenix-area hockey fans still aren’t comfortable going to games at an indoor venue in the middle of a communicable disease spike, or that there are no Phoenix-area hockey fans, make your own joke.
And speaking of Arizona and deadly diseases, officials of the spring-training Cactus League would like to see exhibition games put off past March so they have a better chance of actually being able to sell tickets, with Glendale city manager Kevin Phelps adding, “Without those fans staying in your hotel rooms and eating in your restaurants and shopping in your stores, spring training quickly becomes one of the worst business decisions you can make.” Actually, even with them, Kevin! Not that it matters, since spring training is going on full speed ahead on schedule after owners failed to get players to agree to be paid less for a shortened season.
The Double-A Jackson Generals, who were booted out of the affiliated minor leagues last month despite somehow not showing up on USA Today’s master list, have now been evicted by the city of Jackson, Tennessee, though mayor Scott Conger says the team will be allowed to bid on using the stadium site along with anybody else who wants it. Team owner David Freeman has retorted that since the team is still technically a member of the Southern League, even without any players to play in it, it’s meeting the terms of its lease. This lawsuit is going to be by far the most interesting thing ever to involve the Jackson Generals, very much including the time when the team was for inexplicable reasons renamed the Diamond Jaxx.
Here’s a Jacksonville Business Journal article asking “What do the Jaguars need to be financially viable in Jacksonville?” while noting that the city is now only the 43rd largest TV market in the U.S. Not mentioned in the article: that local TV revenue doesn’t matter at all in the NFL since all TV contracts are national and revenue is shared among all the teams, and Jaguars owner Shad Khan is still raking in almost $100 million a year in profits regardless. Surely it is mere coincidence that this article, which mostly quotes only Jags officials and longtime NFL consultant Marc Ganis, is appearing just as Khan is preparing to again ask Jacksonville for $200 million in development subsidies; to think otherwise would imply that news outlets are willing to serve as mouthpieces for billionaires’ subsidy demands, and what kind of world would that be to live in?
NBA commissioner Adam Silver has clarified that the league isn’t necessarily going to expand right away despite a Covid-spawned cash crunch, because “in essence at the end of the day we’re selling equity in our league by virtue of expansion” and “ultimately, the main driver for expansion should be the ability to grow the pie, not necessarily to bring in, you know, to sell equity, to bring in cash now, you know, as opposed to generating the money later.” That’s all very reasonable, and simultaneously a way to say, Hey, Seattle, we’re not going to let you in our little club just to raise quick cash, you gotta make this worth our while, capisce?
Hey, did you know that the current Busch Stadium, and also the Busch Stadium before that but not the one before that, was built on or at least near the site of a pen where African American slaves were imprisoned? (Also that the original Busch Stadium was named that because league rules prohibited naming a stadium after a beer like Budweiser, so instead St. Louis Cardinals owner Gussie Busch named it after himself then created Busch beer to get around the rule? But I digress, damn you, Wikipedia rabbit holes.) Two state representatives would like to see the Cardinals erect a plaque at the stadium noting this fact, which seems reasonable enough, especially since the pen apparently wasn’t torn down until 1963 — though according to St. Louis Public Radio, it was “well hidden even before it was demolished. It was located in a subbasement, so that the screaming, wailing, and corporal punishment would happen out of sight and hearing range of the people who lived nearby.”
And finally, let’s all bask in Las Vegas tourism authority chair Steve Hill saying that the new Las Vegas Raiders stadium has been a hit for the city despite not being able to host fans because: “It’s been a great representation of Las Vegas. We’ve all seen games on television where you get that just great backdrop of Las Vegas, both during the day and at night. It’s a spectacular shot from the stadium and of the stadium.” Spending $750 million in public money on a football stadium was totally worth it because now TV viewers will finally know what Las Vegas looks like, stop looking at me like that and definitely don’t ask me why I said it was a good idea for the Raiders not to pay rent, okay?

Friday roundup: OKC Thunder want their subsidies sooner, Indy Eleven want theirs later, let me repeat back your orders to make sure I have it right

January 15, 2021 Neil deMause

I’ve already thanked everyone individually, but I’d like to give a collective shoutout to all the readers who signed up as FoS Supporters this membership cycle. The money you send translates directly into time I can spend covering stadium and arena news for you, and I remain extremely heartened by your support. If you sent me your mailing address, your magnets should be en route; if you didn’t, send me your mailing address already, these magnets aren’t going to ship themselves!

And speaking of covering stadium and arena news, let’s cover some stadium and arena news, why don’t we:

The owners of the Oklahoma City Thunder, who won $115 million in arena upgrades as part of a sales-tax-hike project to fund mostly parks and social services because that’s the way Rick Horrow sells you your monorail, are now asking to get the first $115 million off the top to build a new scoreboard and install new seats and let the parks and stuff wait till later. City councilmember JoBeth Hamon says she would rather prioritize “things people would see out their front door,” get a load of her! How many megapixels do your trees have, hmm?
Indy Eleven owner Ersal Ozdemir, who last year successfully got $115 million in state money for a new MLS stadium while wriggling out of a requirement that his USL team actually make the jump to MLS, may now be about to wriggle out of the requirement that he actually pick a start and start building the stadium anytime soon. A bill introduced by state senator Jack Sandlin, the main backer of the original stadium bill, would extend that deadline to July 2024, in exchange for absolutely nothing that I can tell, because the business of Indiana is Indiana’s business or something.
The would-be Atlantic Schooners‘ would-be CFL football stadium project was already mostly dead, and now it’s completely dead, with the Halifax Regional Municipality declaring it was putting the plan on hold indefinitely since nothing was going on with it anyway. The Schooners ownership group says it still hopes to bring the plan back from the dead someday once the pandemic is over, though, because you never want to leave $20 million in subsidies sitting on the table if you can help it.
Did I say the Worcester Red Sox‘ new stadium would cost a record $157 million? Make that a record $172 million, once you add in the $15 million in “infrastructure improvements” the city will also be on the hook for as part of the team’s new lease. Some of the money will come from state and federal dollars, but that’s still money that could have been used elsewhere otherwise, though I guess “let’s build the local sports team some new roads or else the state will just blow the money on Lowell or Pittsfield” has some logic to it if you’re extraordinarily provincial.
Speaking of the Worcester Red Sox, the city of Pawtucket is suing the team’s owners of for failing to adequately maintain Pawtucket’s McCoy Stadium before the team relocated after the 2020 season. (Really after the 2019 season, since there was no 2020 minor-league baseball season, which ruined a perfectly good road trip to Pawtucket I had planned.) Pawtucket is seeking unspecified damages.
In case you’ve missed it, the NBA season is already a mess thanks to Covid outbreaks, and the league is trying to fix things by allowing players to keep playing maskless indoors in close proximity to each other for 48 minutes a night, but not allowing them to hug. Before that there was talk of holding off on playing games until the pandemic has stopped raging quite so much, but surely this will do the trick, no need to do anything crazy now.
Speaking of Covid, it’s running rampant in Arizona, where baseball spring training is about to start in a month, but MLB wouldn’t agree to any delay unless the players agreed to take pay cuts, which they wouldn’t, so fingers crossed that the vaccine rollout speeds up, I guess.
Part of Miller Park Way in West Milwaukee will remain Miller Park Way even though the Milwaukee Brewers‘ Miller Park is no longer called Miller Park, because locals have grown attached to the old corporate name, so there it will stand forever, apparently. Kind of like the Citgo sign.