Category Archives: NFL

Eagles announce stadium upgrades, don’t announce public subsidy request, but will

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The NFL approved league G-4 stadium funding yesterday for the Atlanta Falcons, Carolina Panthers, and Philadelphia Eagles, as part of the expected shares of new or renovated stadiums that — whoa, wait, the Eagles? What are the Eagles doing on that list?

“We are excited to have received league support today for our stadium revitalization project at Lincoln Financial Field,” said Eagles President Don Smolenski. “We will share the details of this project with our fans in the coming weeks.”

And not just with fans, one hopes, but with Philadelphia legislators as well, since one of the conditions of the G-4 program language is that any funded projects must be “public-private partnerships.” So the only way this is going to work is if the Eagles seek some public money for upgrades to 10-year-old Lincoln Financial Field. If those cost $60 million to $100 million as previously projected, then we’re talking about $30 million to $50 million in public money. It’s the sort of thing you’d hope that any of the numerous articles about the renovation plan would have mentioned, but I guess it’s a lot to expect today’s newspaper journalists to think outside the press release.

MN plans statewide tour to beg people to gamble more so that Vikings stadium can be funded

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Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton may have come up with the nifty idea of diverting cigarette tax revenues from the general budget to help pay for a Vikings stadium, but that doesn’t mean the state is giving up on its original plan of getting Minnesotans to gamble their money away to pay for the new NFL facility. So both state officials and local charity groups have announced a statewide publicity tour in June to convince people of the total awesome coolness of the new e-pulltabs that nobody wants to install or play at the moment.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune article on this includes the first photo I’ve seen of the actual e-pulltabs, so let’s take a look and OH GOD UNCLE SAM WANTS ME TO DEPOSIT MY IMMORTAL SOUL IN HIS TOP HAT!

“Our hope,” Allied Charities director Al Lund told the Star Tribune, “is we increase money for our [charity] missions by selling more games, which in turn provides more tax revenue for the state, and ultimately we hope enough revenue to pay for the stadium.” Come on, people of Knucklehead’s! The fate of Minnesota depends on your misplaced faith in the law of averages!

Browns stadium renamed, public owners get squat

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They started changing the signs on the Cleveland Browns stadium this weekend, from Cleveland Browns Stadium to FirstEnergy Stadium, which as you’ll know if you’ve been reading FoS is because new owner Jimmy Haslam sold the building’s naming rights for $6 million a year, none of which he’ll have to share with the taxpayers who actually own the stadium

Meanwhile, NBC Sports blogger/NFL mouthpiece Mike Florio decides that this is a perfect time for a quip:

Earlier this year, new owner Jimmy Haslam sold the naming rights to FirstEnergy.

Hopefully no discounts or rebates were involved in the transaction.

Get it, see, because FirstEnergy is an electricity company, and they like to offer discounts and rebates to their customers! [UPDATE: Or maybe because Haslam has his own problems with rebates — thanks to commenters for pointing this out.] And also, the idea of discounts and rebates being involved in a sports stadium deal is so unheard-of, it’s hilarious!

MN gov proposes diverting cigarette and sales taxes for Vikings stadium

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Heads up, everybody, Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton has a new plan to pay for a Vikings stadium, and it doesn’t involve gambling of any kind at all. Well, not the fun kind of gambling where you can win cash prizes, anyway, but just gambling with your health: The state would take the first year’s $24.5 million windfall from a new cigarette tax and pour it into the stadium fund. And if gambling revenues continued to fall short, the state could tap $20 million a year from a new provision to get Minnesota-based corporations to pay their full taxes on in-state sales.

All of which is well and good, except that both of these taxes were already in the state budget plan, and expected to put money into Minnesota’s general fund. Dayton is only proposing to use them for the Vikings stadium — instead of the far simpler method of just appropriating money straight from the general fund — because he promised that no general fund money would go to the stadium, and since these are new taxes that haven’t hit the general fund yet … well, let’s let Minnesota Revenue Commissioner Myron Frans explain it:

“These are new revenues coming in to the state for the first time. And the same thing is true of the new electronic gaming situations for gambling, that was a new revenue source and it all goes into the general fund. It’s just that the Legislature designates some of those funds to be used for certain purposes.”

Yes, right, money is fungible, so it doesn’t really matter which pocket you take it from, we get that. None of this changes the fact that the gambling plans were put into place specifically to fund the stadium, while the cigarette and sales-tax provisions would be there to fund schools and such if the state doesn’t give the proceeds to the Vikings.

Though really, maybe the best way to look at this is that Frans has a point: All tax revenues could go to the general fund if you wanted them to, so no matter how you raise the money, a stadium subsidy is a public cost. In fact, the same thing goes for those e-pulltabs and e-bingo and all the other e-things that Minnesota is trying to use for stadium funding: The state could be using those revenues for other services if it wanted, too, so it’s not really found money, either. So really the way to look at this is that no matter how they end up paying for it — gambling, smoking, bake sales — Minnesota taxpayers are out $1.1 billion on the Vikings deal, and it doesn’t really matter how they pay for it, one way or another they’ll pay. Um, that was your point, right, Myron?

Dolphins probably would have lost stadium referendum anyway

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Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross might not want to point too many fingers at Florida House Speaker Will Weatherford for killing his stadium renovation subsidy referendum, now that it looks like the referendum was likely to go down to massive defeat anyway:

A majority of Miami-Dade voters who cast ballots in the special stadium election before it was called off opposed the $350 million makeover, according to a count the elections department released late Tuesday.

The tabulation showed that among the 60,678 voters who voted by mail or at early-voting sites, 34,780 — about 57 percent — opposed the Dolphins’ proposal, compared to 25,898 — or 43 percent — who favored it.

Early voting doesn’t always match up precisely with later voting, and Ross still would have had a week and change to gear up a major ad campaign to press for “yes” votes. But it’s another sign that this spring’s whole campaign was a tremendously uphill battle, and way more likely to be the opening salvo in a years-long stadium war than something that anyone, Ross included, seriously thought would succeed on the first try. Remember, the thing about stadium campaigns is that team owners can lose as many times as necessary, so long as they eventually win once.

Vikings’ stadium design is less freaky-looking than Falcons’, slightly

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And we have our first renderings of the proposed $1 billion stadium plan, and, uh, yikes. Vikings execs had promised “a bold, iconic, geometric structure with long sloping, angular facets that are primarily directed toward the downtown Minneapolis skyline,” and it’s certainly “sloping” and “angular,” not to mention really odd in many ways, from the ten-story-high entry doors to the thin strip of seating in one end zone that just hovers there against a glass wall, with the fans presumably to be teleported out in case of emergency or, you know, if they just have to use the bathroom.

The slanty roof is apparently to keep snow from building up on it and doing this, and having half the roof made of glass (actually ethylene tetrafluoroethylene, the polymer used for the outside of the Beijing Olympics’ Water Cube) will let in light and avoid needing a retractable roof, so that actually makes sense. As for the rest of it, it’s definitely not as crazy (or “innovative,” as the architecture critics like to call it) as the Atlanta Falcons stadium plans. Whether it makes for a better place to watch a football game I’d have a hard time telling you from the renderings.

Clearly wacky-looking geometric designs are the wave of the future, thanks in large part to computer-aided design and new construction materials. And if you’re spending a billion dollars on a football stadium, just about all of it via public subsidies, you presumably want something really striking to show that you’re getting something really new, not just the old kind of new you had before. Still, you have to wonder whether is just going look dated and goofy 20 years from now, like some other attempts at modernism — though come to think of it, that’ll probably be about when the Vikings owners are ready to demand an even newer stadium, so maybe it’s all according to plan…

Dolphins CEO: If stadiums start raining from the sky, sure we’ll take one

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How rumors get started:

At a brief meeting with reporters, [Miami Dolphins CEO] Dee was asked directly if the team would consider relocating to Palm Beach County, if a stadium was built for them there.

“We’re open minded to all long-term solutions,” Dee responded.

So, some reporter (I’m guessing from a Palm Beach news outlet) decided to ask Dee if the Dolphins would move to a new stadium there, and Dee, being no dummy, didn’t rule it out. No big news there.

The resulting Miami Herald headline:

Miami Dolphins ‘open-minded’ to stadium in Palm Beach

Number of people seriously proposing building the Dolphins a stadium in Palm Beach: zero. (Okay, one, counting whoever asked Dee that question.) Amount of money it would cost to build a new stadium in Palm Beach: somewhere around a billion dollars. Amount that the Dolphins would be willing to put in toward that amount: not a whole heckuva lot, given Dee’s past statements on the matter, and that the Dolphins would still be stuck with $232 million in remaining debt on Sun Life Stadium even if they moved. Budget shortfall on this imaginary stadium: somewhere around a billion dollars.

We can only hope that this was actually the start of a subtle ruse on the part of the unnamed questioner, and that future questions will become progressively more implausible: “If someone offered you a stadium in Tallahassee, would you move there?” “In Guantanamo Bay?” “In Mare Tranquillitatis?” Whoever can guess the point at which Mike Dee stops responding, “You can’t close the door on anything,” wins two tickets to … no, not a Dolphins game. Something good.

Levi’s to pay $11m a year to put name on 49ers stadium

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As has been rumored ever since it was noticed that they’d registered a whole bunch of stadium-related domain names, Levi’s is buying the naming rights to the San Francisco 49ers‘ new stadium in Santa Clara. Price: $220 million over 20 years. That’s more per year than any NFL stadium other than the New York Giants‘ and Jets’ MetLife Stadium, which is about right, given that while the Bay Area is pretty big and lucrative, it’s still not New York (and there will only be one team playing in Santa Clara, at least unless the Oakland Raiders move in).

So what does this mean for paying off Levi’s Stadium’s $1.2 billion price tag? The naming-rights money is supposed to help pay off $450 million in short-term bonds that Santa Clara’s stadium authority sold toward funding construction, with 70% of the fee going to the authority. Santa Clara is already expecting to get more than $300 million at least $400 million from seat licenses, so add in the present value of $7.7 million a year in naming-rights money — somewhat backloaded, as it’ll start at $5.7 million in 2014 and rise 3% a year to $10 million in 2033 — and … taxpayers should have their butts mostly covered, anyway, though it’ll likely require selling some 20-year bonds that can raise money now and be paid off over time with the Levi’s boodle.

So Santa Clara’s big gamble looks to be working out relatively well: If taxpayers do end up on the hook for something toward the stadium costs, it should only be a tiny fraction of the $1.2 billion total construction cost. Which doesn’t necessarily make such a risky maneuver a good idea for other cities — not every team can sell its naming rights for $11 million a year, and Santa Clara got very lucky that the 49ers got good just in time for those PSLs to go on sale — but at least those who were worried this would be a Cincinnati-style taxpayer albatross can breathe a little easier.

Charlotte invited Panthers owner to closed meeting to demand stadium cash because “that’s what Jerry wanted”

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When the Charlotte city council met on January 14 to approve subsidies to the Carolina Panthers for renovations to their privately owned stadium, members of the public were barred from attending, leading to a lawsuit for violating the state’s open meetings law. The only people allowed in the room were elected officials — oh, and one more person, according to Charlotte NPR station WFAE:

Generally “closed” means “closed,” because the council needs privacy to work out its negotiating strategy and terms, says City Attorney Bob Hagemann, because “you do not want to have those kinds of conversations in front of the other party to the negotiation.”

You certainly wouldn’t want to have them in front of the company’s CEO. . . right?

But that’s exactly what the city did with Panthers owner Jerry Richardson.  He sat in on two of the four closed sessions council held to discuss using tax dollars for Panthers’ stadium renovations.  Minutes from those meetings show council members were fine with the arrangement. They still are.

“I don’t know if it was appropriate or not, but it was important to him,” says Councilman Andy Dulin. “It must have been of importance because he did show up – you know that put an exclamation point on the seriousness of the negotiations that some might not have done. I appreciated him being there.”

Councilman James Mitchell also appreciated Richardson coming and asking directly for the money: “I think that’s what Jerry wanted. I think Jerry wanted the council to know why he was doing this.”

And what did Jerry have to say during his private audience with council members? Fortunately, the council at least took minutes, which show that Richardson touted how he’d “gone to bat for the city” by getting the NFL to move its opening day to make way for the Democratic National Convention, plus talked about how he quit the NFL in a salary dispute. (Because he’s a hardball negotiator, see?) City attorney Bob Hagemann and deputy city manager Ron Kimble also warned that the Panthers were “ripe for courting” by Los Angeles.

As Deadspin remarks: “The system, every system, is rigged in the favor of the powerful; the council voted 7-2 in favor of funding the stadium.” Some are more rigged than others, though. The open-meetings case is expected to have its first hearing any day now; I can’t be the only one who can’t wait to see how this plays out.

Florida house kills Dolphins subsidy, CEO says “Screw renovations if we have to pay for them”

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Man, just when we were gearing up for a nice ridiculous Miami Dolphins stadium subsidy campaign, the Florida house had to go and ruin everything by failing to vote on a stadium renovation subsidy bill before the end of their session on Friday. This means that the public referendum that voting already started for is now called off, as is (for the moment, anyway) hopes by Orlando City Soccer Club and other Florida sports teams for a chunk of the state stadium boodle,

There’s lots of fingerpointing going on now, as you’d expect — Dolphins owner Stephen Ross accused House Speaker Will Weatherford, who failed to bring the bill to a vote, of “put[ting] politics before the people and the 4,000 jobs this project would have created for Miami-Dade and that is just wrong,” while Weatherford replied that “you’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars and I think the House just never got comfortable there when the session ended” — but the real question is what exactly happens now. Does Ross go ahead with the renovations, or a smaller set of renovations, with his own money?

The Miami Dolphins do not intend to pay for any upgrades to Sun Life Stadium now that the team’s push for a subsidized renovation to the 1987 facility has failed, CEO Mike Dee said Sunday.

“We cannot do this without a private-public partnership,” Dee told Miami Herald news partner WFOR-CBS 4. “At this time we have no intention of investing more.”

That’d be a no, then. So what are the Dolphins going to do, other than shaking their fists angrily at Weatherford? (Dee called his vote an “abuse of power” and repeatedly called him “a guy from Pasco County,” and somebody planted a story in Mike Florio’s NBC Sports column saying that “a source” says that “those supporting the proposed upgrades to Sun Life Stadium” believe that Weatherford killed the bill because he was promised monetary support in the next election. So, yeah, they’re pretty mad at Weatherford right now, or at least trying to focus their rage there.) Will the Dolphins, say, threaten to move now?

“The Dolphins are one of the only franchises in the NFL that don’t have a long-term lease with their community,” Dee said. “At some point somebody’s going to buy the franchise from Steve, and clearly the stadium is the first thing they would need to address.”

Well, that’s not exactly a threat per se—

As for whether Ross might sell the team or try moving it elsewhere, he added: “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Now that’s getting closer to a threat. Or at least the kind of statement that the media can interpret as a threat to move, which is just what Ross and Dee need right now.

Realistically, the team isn’t going to move anywhere anytime soon: While the pending announcement of who’ll get the next couple of Super Bowls was a nice opportunity to try to press for renovation money, there was enough legislative support for public subsidies that the Dolphins will invariably be back a year from now to press their case again, just like the Marlins did year after year after year. But in the meantime, it’s worth their while to get the “Will the Dolphins move to L.A.?” rumors started, in the hopes that maybe that will help turn around some of those awful poll numbers that likely would have defeated the referendum next week anyway.

In fact, Ross might have dodged a bullet here, since this way he gets to blame Weatherford for blocking the stadium bill, instead of having to blame the public for voting it down. I wouldn’t go so far as to claim that sources say critics of the deal believe some people imagine that Ross planned it this way all along, but … oh, wait, I just did, didn’t I?