Friday roundup: Nobody wants the Olympics, nobody wants the Marlins home run sculpture, nobody wants the Chargers (but L.A. is stuck with them through 2040)

Posted on October 19, 2018 by Neil deMause

So what else happened this week? Glad you asked:

Stockholm’s new city government said it won’t provide any public funding for a possible 2026 Winter Olympics. That would leave only Milan and Calgary as bidders, and the former hasn’t committed to public spending either, while the latter is set to hold a public referendum next month on hosting in the midst of complaints that no one knows how much it would cost. It’s still a longshot, but there’s a real chance here we could see our long-awaited “What if they held an Olympic bidding war and nobody showed up?” moment, or at least that the IOC will have to consider bids that don’t include its usual requirement that local government promise to backstop any losses.
“Several dozen” Long Island residents marched in protest last week against the New York Islanders‘ proposed arena near Belmont Park, saying it would create too much traffic and construction noise. Those aren’t the best reasons to be concerned about it in my book — I’d be more upset about the crazy discount on land New York state is giving the team, if I were a New York taxpayer, which I am — but maybe the protestors are worried about that too but it didn’t fit easily on a sign.
The owners of the Miami Marlins (i.e., Derek Jeter and the money men behind him) are going to have to pay $2.5 million to Miami-Dade County for moving Red Grooms’ home run sculpture outside their stadium, since relocating it means that Grooms will disavow the work and make it worthless. They should’ve just traded it to Milwaukee for some lousy prospects.
Oklahoma City is looking for capital projects to spend the next iteration of its sales-tax hike on, and Mayor David Holt says if a maybe-MLS-caliber soccer stadium isn’t included, “the Energy won’t be here forever.” The Energy, if that name draws a blank for you, is the city’s beloved USL franchise that’s been there since … 2014? It’s only a matter of time before teams start threatening to move before they even exist, isn’t it?
Bwahahahaha, the Los Angeles Chargers are reportedly locked into their lease at a new Inglewood stadium through 2040, so there’s no way they’re moving back to San Diego or elsewhere no matter how terrible their ticket sales are. Dean Spanos is so screwed! Uh, until he sells the team for a multibillion-dollar profit, but he’ll be crying the whole way to the bank, I promise you!

Jaguars owner to take Wembley purchase bid and go home because England doesn’t love him enough

Posted on October 18, 2018 by Neil deMause

Whoops, turns out Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shahid Khan isn’t buying Wembley Stadium after all, withdrawing his bid because, uh, it was probably going to get rejected anyway:

A senior FA source told BBC Sport that the board believed the odds were slightly against the purchase being backed, given the strong objections of some councillors to the home of English football being sold off.

FA chief executive [Martin] Glenn said Khan had believed his offer “would be well received by all football stakeholders”.

However, Glenn added: “At a recent meeting with Mr Khan he expressed to us that, without stronger support from within the game, his offer is being seen as more divisive than it was anticipated to be and he has decided to withdraw his proposal.”

This will likely put an end to talk of the Jaguars relocating to London, though 1) that was probably a dumb idea to begin with and 2) there’s nothing stopping Khan from still moving to London if he really wants, and just paying rent on a stadium instead of buying one.

Anyway, apparently not everything is for sale at the right price, at least in the UK. You can still buy Utah if you want, though.

Chargers lower tickets prices at new stadium in hopes anybody might turn up to root for them

Posted on October 18, 2018 by Neil deMause

ESPN reported yesterday that the owners of the Los Angeles Chargers, noticing the distinct lack of enthusiasm with which they’ve been met in their new home, were downgrading their initial revenue goals at the Inglewood stadium set to open in 2020 from $400 million to $150 million. And on cue, the Chargers announced yesterday that they were setting ticket prices and seat license fees at the new stadium significantly lower than the rival Rams:

The least-expensive general seating season ticket in the new Inglewood stadium will cost $50 per game and require a one-time personal seat license fee of $100…

The Chargers will share the new facility with the Rams, who last month announced their season tickets will start at $60 a game, with personal seat licenses beginning at $1,000.

I’m not actually sure what “initial revenue” means in that ESPN report, and the site didn’t specify — each NFL team gets $250 million just in TV revenue, so maybe it means first-year stadium revenue, or maybe it means the initial take from PSL sales. If the latter, that would make sense, since the biggest discounts appear to be on the seat-license side, where allowing cut-rate prices is going to seriously cut into the team’s cash flow, especially once fans realize they can get in for a $100 one-time fee and then balk at paying higher PSLs for better seats.

Team execs are spinning this as a way to make Chargers fans more likely to use their tickets themselves instead of selling them to out-of-town fans to recoup their costs, but I’m not sure that microeconomics works that way: It seems just as likely that this will goose sales to ticket speculators who will now figure, “Hey, for only a $100 fee I can get a steady supply of tickets to sell to visiting fans who actually want to see Chargers games, unlike people around here!”

All of which is only likely to stir more murmurings that maybe the Chargers picked the wrong city to move to — or, you know, shouldn’t have moved at all. Turns out that sometimes shooting the hostages doesn’t work out that well.

Seahawks and Trail Blazers owner Paul Allen is dead at 65

Posted on October 16, 2018 by Neil deMause

It’s always sad when someone loses their life, especially at a too-young age, and it’s not the moment that anybody wants to hear arguments about not-so-great things that the person may have done in their time on earth, so let’s just leave it right there.

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!)

Buffalo News: We will bombard you with mixed metaphors until Bills agree to demand a $1B stadium

Posted on October 9, 2018 by Neil deMause

The Buffalo Bills stadium situation is a weird one, with the team’s owners Kim and Terry Pegula insisting a new building isn’t a priority for them, while NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and Gov. Andrew Cuomo and especially the Buffalo News have insisted that they do too need one, and soon! And in the wake of Erie County Executive Mark C. Poloncarz saying that a new Bills stadium would cost $1 billion, which would be too rich for the public’s blood, the News editorial board has doubled down to insist: Oh, yes, there will be a new stadium. No, really, that’s what the editorial was titled, and it went on to say:

Does Buffalo want to remain in the football business?

We say yes to that, also. And to stay here long-term, the Bills will inevitably need a new stadium. The price for one will be likely more than $1 billion….

The current county lease on New Era Field will run out in five years. The Pegulas and Poloncarz are starting to stake out positions and float trial balloons. The balloons may not be full of hot air, but they should not be taken as anything more than conversation starters. The closer we get to the deadline on the lease expiring, the more serious the talks will get.

That … is a very confusing metaphor there (hot air normally means it shouldn’t be taken seriously, but hot air is what makes hot-air balloons fly and oh my brain). And the News editorial board, whose members presumably got their position because of long experience with the written word, didn’t stop there:

Some people keep their old car until it falls apart, but as a region we can’t afford to drive this stadium into the ground.

No no no when you drive something into the ground that’s “drive” as in driving a stake not a car, and anyway stadiums don’t have moving parts so they don’t wear out like cars do, oh just never mind.

In any event, readers can skip to the last paragraph of the editorial, which goes like so:

The Bills are part of our civic fabric and if we have to pony up some tax dollars or added ticket fees to keep the team from becoming the Portland or St. Louis Bills, that’s the cost of remaining a major-league city.

You better help pay for a $1 billion stadium that your elected officials say you can’t afford and that the team’s owners aren’t demanding, or else your team will move to one of two cities that have shown no interest in building new NFL stadiums, so there! The editorial writers seem to have forgotten that Buffalo would still have the Sabres even if the Bills moved to Oshkosh or Boise, but these guys were clearly on a roll, so don’t confuse them with facts, okay?

Friday roundup: Chargers L.A. move still a disaster, Raiders still lack 2019 home, Rays still short of stadium cash

Posted on October 5, 2018 by Neil deMause

I’ve been busy getting my post-Village Voice life rolling this week — here’s my first article for Gothamist, on how to fight Amazon’s monopoly power, and I’ve also started a Twitter account for following ex-Voice news writers as we keep up our work for other outlets — but Friday mornings are sacred, for they are stadium and arena news roundup time:

The Los Angeles Chargers are still doing a great job of selling tickets to opposing fans, with the San Francisco 49ers becoming the latest team this week to play a road game that felt more like a home game. “They can’t fill an MLS stadium with their own fans in Year 2 — how are they supposed to fill a 70,000-plus-seat stadium in a couple years?” remarks USA Today’s Andrew Joseph. “The move from San Diego looks worse and worse by the week.” But the team’s relocation decision was made for such well-considered reasons!
Universities are spending a whole lot of money on college football stadiums, and here’s a list of the spendiest ones.
Erie County Executive Mark C. Poloncarz was asked about building a stadium for the Buffalo Bills, and said it would cost about $1 billion, which is too expensive for either the team’s owners or the county to front. This should be obvious to anyone who reads the news, but I guess in a world where many elected officials pretend that stadium money can be spontaneously generated from rotting meat, it’s worth a reminder.
The nonprofit that owns the Green Bay Packers is looking to get into real-estate development near Lambeau Field, something that a local real estate attorney says is part of a trend for needing to make “a destination out of the facilities” to keep people from sitting at home and watching on TV. (Bloomberg also reports that the Packers are envisioning for-sale apartments as being marketed as “second homes for Packers fans across the country,” which is either fabulously optimistic or a sign that capitalism has gone very, very wrong.) I’d say it’s more that real-estate development can be extremely lucrative, especially when your ownership of a sports team gives you a leg up on getting access to cheap land, but the “more people are sitting at home watching on TV” thing is definitely a thing — though increasingly more people are sitting at home looking at YouTube on their phones, which could present an even bigger challenge to sports marketers.
The new arena of the Detroit Pistons and Red Wings will no longer issue or accept printed tickets, meaning you’d better have a smartphone and keep it charged when heading to a game. I guess this saves some trees, but it probably also makes it easier for the teams to track ticketholders’ data, which is what it’s all about these days.
I missed it a couple of weeks ago, but the Texas Rangers have released a seating cross-section for their new stadium, and it’s somewhat misleading — as you can see, they make the new design look a bit better by moving the front row of seats closer to home plate, which doesn’t necessarily help depending on what the rest of the stadium geometry is like — but also somewhat instructive, in that the team is definitely moving the upper deck closer to the field by having it overhang the middle and lower sections more, which is a promising development. Not that this necessarily means Globe Life Field will have great cheap seats — Globe Life Park, its predecessor, has an insanely distant upper deck, at least from what I’ve been able to determine from watching games on TV — but at least it’s a move in the right direction. Of course, this is only a cross-section at one point in the stands — we still don’t know what’ll be up with the seating sections suspended in midair.
John Romano of the Tampa Bay Times got out his calculator and realized that even if Tampa’s tax-district-surcharge stadium-funding plan for the Rays somehow works, the stadium will probably have about a $300 million funding hole, which is a lot. “So is the stadium in trouble?” writes Romano. “It sure seems that way. And I don’t see a simple way out.” Which isn’t news, but given that Romano has tended to be fairly sympathetic to Rays ownership’s stadium demands over the years, it’s notable that even he’s pointing out the Rays stadium’s new clothes.
The Oakland Raiders definitely won’t be playing in Las Vegas’s Sam Boyd Stadium temporarily next year, and they probably won’t be playing in the Bay Area either, so that leaves maybe San Diego or San Antonio or who the hell knows. Road team! Road team!

Friday roundup: Bad MLB attendance, bad CFL loans, bad temporary Raiders relocation ideas

Posted on September 28, 2018 by Neil deMause

And in other news:

MLB attendance is down 4.2% this year, something commissioner Rob Manfred blames on bad weather but which can more reasonably be blamed on bad teams — in particular bad teams in cities that were previously drawing well (Toronto, Baltimore, Detroit, Texas). The Oakland A’s have been good this year, but their attendance has barely risen, something team president Dave Kaval says he hopes a new stadium will fix by encouraging “new people to engage our product”; that has worked out extremely poorly for the Miami Marlins, but then, engaging the Marlins’ product right now will probably make you less likely to attend games, not more so.
The Detroit Red Wings‘ and Pistons‘ new arena has turned its area of Detroit into “a dynamic, connected stretch that has grown and attracted new businesses and investment with the promise of much more to come,” according to a press release by the Red Wings’ ownership group that the Detroit Free Press seemingly just up and reprinted, seriously, are they even trying?
German soccer fans protested high ticket prices this week by staging 20 minutes of silence at the start of games, as well as unfurling a giant banner reading (in English) “Football is for you and me — not for fucking pay-TV.”
The government of Manitoba has written off the entire $200 million cost of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers‘ stadium, saying there’s no way the team (which is owned by a nonprofit corporation with no shareholders) will ever repay it. When the stadium was approved in 2010, I noted that “the public is taking on a fair bit of risk” by loaning the team the money; guess that was a bit of an understatement.
The defunct Camden Riversharks‘ stadium is set to be torn down just 17 years after it was built, something we already covered here last year, but this gives the Associated Press the opportunity to run the headline “Baseball stadium built 17 years ago to boost tourism faces wrecking ball,” so more power to ’em.
There’s a petition drive in Austin to block the new stadium for the soon-to-be-erstwhile Columbus Crew, which was already approved but not contractually finalized, so more power to ’em, too, I guess.
Ha ha ha ha, Oakland Raiders execs are really considering playing a season in San Diego as part of their hissy fit over Oakland’s possible antitrust suit, though CBS Sports notes that it’s pretty unlikely given that the Los Angeles Rams and Chargers owners would almost certainly raise objections.
People who want an NBA franchise in Louisville say they’d consider building a new arena for it, despite Louisville already having two perfectly good basketball arenas, which is arguably even more crazy than the idea of Louisville getting an NBA franchise at all.
Jacksonville Jaguars and Fulham F.C. owner Shad Khan has had his purchase of London’s Wembley Stadium from England’s Football Association for $800 million approved, but he says he’s not moving either team into it, he just wants to rake in the money from concerts and such. The stadium turned a £5.5million profit last year, which would be a dismal return on an $800 million investment, so who the hell knows what Khan is thinking, but “This will scare Jacksonville into giving me more stadium upgrade money” has to be at least part of it.

Friday roundup: More MLS expansion drum beating, more wasteful non-sports subsidies, more bonkers Tottenham stadium delay stories

Posted on September 21, 2018 by Neil deMause

Getting a late start this morning after being out last night seeing Neko Case, so let’s get to this:

MLS commissioner Don Garber is still beating the drum for two more expansion teams to get to a total of 28, and mentioned seven cities — Detroit, San Diego, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Charlotte, Las Vegas, and Phoenix — as possibilities, notwithstanding that Cincinnati was already picked for an expansion franchise earlier this year. Cut the man some slack, it’s gotta be hard to keep track of all the cities that do and don’t have MLS franchises yet. Maybe he could get someone to make him an app.
Detroit, like a lot of cities, is giving tax breaks and other subsidies to lots of projects, not just sports, and the evidence is that most of these are wasted on development that would happen anyway. Which isn’t new news, but in case you needed the reminder.
A $1.5 billion redevelopment of the parking lots around the Nassau Coliseum is seeking $100 million in New York state grants, despite concerns that building a $1.5 billion mixed-use development in what’s kind of the middle of nowhere without a major-league team playing there is kind of a crazy idea.
And speaking of development near New York sports venues, the Willets Point area in Queens — which visitors to Mets games may remember as a hive of auto repair shops, and more recently as a barren wasteland where a hive of auto repair shops used to be — may end up getting partly used as parking lots for the foreseeable future, which has people whose businesses were forcibly displaced for what was supposed to be new development kinda steamed.
The Mobile BayBears are moving to Huntsville — as I’m sure you know, right? — and the city’s terrible lease on their 22-year-old stadium means the landowner could tear it down if the city doesn’t find a new team to move in. Don’t put all your development eggs in the basket of minor-league sports, kids, and if you do, for god’s sake get some grownups to write the lease.
Restaurateurs in Inglewood are hoping for a windfall once the new Los Angeles Rams and Chargers stadium opens in 2020. Somebody should really tell them that even with two teams, that’s only 20 games a year, so they’d better figure out how to seat 70,000 people all at once to make up for other 345 days a year when not much is going on there. (Okay, not 70,000 people at once when it’s Chargers games.)
Yldefonso Solá Morales Stadium, home of the Caribbean World Series champion Caguas Criollos of the Puerto Rican league, is facing demolition from Hurricane Maria damage because the city can’t spare $15 million to repair it. Not that Caguas should be taking money from all its other desperate needs to fix a baseball stadium, but it does drive home the craziness of Puerto Rico’s economic situation when a stadium will get torn down for the lack of less money than Dustin Pedroia was paid by the Boston Red Sox to play three games this year.
Construction News has a long article about how Tottenham Hotspur‘s new stadium might not open at all this year thanks to organizational disarray and workers snorting coke on the job; it’s worth a full read, but if you just want the short version, Deadspin has an excellent summary with a great headline and your clicks help pay me for future articles for them, so sure, go there!

Friday update: Bad D.C. arena math, bad Bucks arena math, bad Columbus ticket tax math

Posted on September 14, 2018 by Neil deMause

It must be September, because my TV is filled with Jim Cantore and Anderson Cooper standing ankle-deep in water. But anyway:

Washington, D.C., is about to open its new Mystics home arena and Wizards practice facility, and Mayor Muriel Bowser says it’s a model of how the city would build a new NFL stadium as well. “We know [sports] can help our bottom line by attracting people to our city, but it also has a big impact when we’re winning on our collective psyche,” says Bowser of an arena that got $50 million in public subsidies for two teams that were already playing in D.C. anyway. Maybe she should go back to using her terrible soccer stadium deal as a model instead.
People in Calgary are starting to ask whether, if the city is looking to spend $3 billion on hosting the 2026 Olympics, maybe it should build a new Flames arena as part of the deal? Camels, man.
Buffalo Bills co-owner Kim Pegula says she’s going to wait until after the gubernatorial elections this November to start negotiating a new stadium with whoever ends up in charge of the state. It won’t be the lox-and-raisin-bagel lady.
Speaking of the Pegulas and New York’s current governor, they’re planning an $18 million upgrade of Rochester’s arena that hosts the Rochester Americans minor-league hockey team (which the Pegulas also own), with costs to be split among the owners and city and state taxpayers. Split how? Sorry, no room in the Associated Press article, ask again later!
The AP did find time to fact-check Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s claim that the new Milwaukee Bucks arena would return three dollars in new taxes for each one spent, and found that “Walker omits some of the state money spent on the 20-year arena deal and relies on income tax estimates that experts call unreliable.” I could’ve told them that — in fact, I did, three years ago.
“‘Ticket tax’ proposal could lead to higher prices on movies, theater, sports in Columbus” reads a headline on WSYX‘s website, something that the station’s reporter asserts in the accompanying video without saying where he got it from. He’s at least partly wrong: Ticket prices are already set as high as the market will bear, so unless the ticket tax changes the market — in other words, unless people in Columbus are forced to spend more on movies and theater and such because the other options (staying at home and watching TV, going out to eat) aren’t good enough, mostly this will just mean prices will stay roughly the same but a bigger share will go to theater/team owner’s tax bills. (I could try to find an economist to estimate exactly how big a share, but isn’t that really WSYX’s job?)
Former Oakland A’s exec Andy Dolich says the team owners may be looking at buying both the Howard Terminal site and the Oakland Coliseum site, and using the revenues from one to pay the costs of prepping the other for baseball, which, if the Coliseum site is such a cash cow and Howard Terminal such a money pit, wouldn’t they be better off just buying the Coliseum site and developing that? Or is the idea that Oakland would somehow give up the Coliseum site at a discounted price in order to get a new A’s stadium done? I have a lot of math questions here.
With nobody wanting to spend $250 million on a major renovation of Hartford’s arena, the agency that manages the XL Center is now looking for a $100 million state-funded upgrade instead. Still waiting to hear whether this would actually generate $100 million worth of new revenues for the arena; if not, the state would be better off just giving the arena a pile of cash to subsidize its bottom line, no?
Cobb County is only letting the Atlanta Braves owners out of part of the $1.5 million they owed on water and sewer costs for their new stadium. Yay?

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