Category Archives: Oakland Raiders

Downtown L.A. stadium declared officially dead, unofficially

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I’m not actually how to read this, as the official NFL position on AEG’s downtown Los Angeles stadium plan has been that they’ve hated it for a year and a half now, but: Yahoo! Sports is reporting that two “sources” (one of them a “league source”) are saying that the AEG plan is dead as far as the league is concerned, as “Unofficially, the NFL believes that the cost of the AEG plan, which the league believes will be at least $1.8 billion, will make it unworkable”:

“The numbers just don’t work, no matter how you look at the deal,” a league source said in February. “It’s either too hard for AEG to make money [and pay the debt on the stadium] or too hard for the team. I just can’t see a way for it to work.”

Again, nothing really new, except that the NFL is now sending off-the-record staffers to leak the word that really, it’s time to move on to other L.A. stadium proposals. Not to mention a decidedly on-the-record Marc Ganis, the NFL consultant who might as well be a league source, who pointedly told Yahoo!: “The focus on the sale of AEG has stalled the chance for people in the area to view potential other sites and opportunities. … If Los Angeles leaders don’t move on to look at other options it will only delay the return of the NFL to Los Angeles further, possibly even years longer.”

This might be a reasonable ploy to get L.A. moving on some other stadium possibilities — or at least vague rumors of possibilities — but it’s terrible timing for the Carolina Panthers, Miami Dolphins, Atlanta Falcons, Buffalo Bills, St. Louis Rams, San Diego Chargers, Oakland Raiders, and any other NFL teams I may have left out that are currently using the “L.A. has a stadium deal ready to go!” threat to try to extract money from their current hometowns for new or renovated stadiums. I was just telling a reporter yesterday that these teams are all scrambling for stadium funds now because they have a limited window to use the L.A. threat before it either falls apart or somebody else moves there first; it looks like that window may have just begun to slide shut.

 

Raiders to close off top deck of seats they forced Oakland to build in ’90s

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Okay, the trend toward NFL teams wanting smaller stadiums is officially a thing: The Oakland Raiders have announced that they’re going to be reducing capacity by 10,000 seats for the 2013 season, including tarping off the top deck of Mount Davis, the stadium addition that was installed for the Raiders’ return to Oakland in 1996.

This would make the Coliseum the smallest venue in the NFL, and would maybe help the team avoid the TV blackouts that have been common in recent years. But mostly, it would mean the Oakland stadium sagas’ final descent into farce: Oakland spent $200 million on building Mount Davis, tried to sell PSLs to pay off the costs then found that no one would buy them, and then saw the A’s owners vow to leave town because the renovations had ruined the stadium for baseball — mostly by blocking views of the Oakland hills, which wouldn’t be as much of an issue if they hadn’t built that towering third deck that the Raiders now say they don’t need.

I’d say this is the greatest example of multi-leveled irony I’ve seen in a while, but it still can’t quite top this.

The week in stupid, California edition

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There are days when I feel like things are getting better. Days where I get calls from daily newspaper journalists asking intelligent questions about stadium financing, where elected officials actually make some substantive demands of team owners, recognizing that they, too, have leverage. Days where it seems like 17 years of writing about this crap hasn’t been entirely for naught.

And then there are days like today. First up, from an article on something called San Jose Inside, by Rich Robinson, a “political consultant in Silicon Valley”:

While the NHL lockout allegedly hurts owners and players, the real victims are businesses in or around arenas. Small businesses that cater to fans and are dependent on the league don’t have the luxury of losing over a billion dollars on principle…

These businesses are not hobbies or philanthropic endeavors. Few will retire after four years of labor. For them, hockey really does matter. And it is for this reason the lockout must end.

I appreciate that Robinson is probably a hockey fan, and so probably fed up with the comical non-negotiations that have the NHL barreling toward its second canceled season in the last nine years. (Even if the rest of us are finding it endlessly entertaining.) But we’ve covered this before, as have others: Just because people aren’t going to San Jose Sharks games doesn’t mean they’re not going out to eat or otherwise spending money. In fact, in all likelihood businesses in San Jose not near the arena are seeing at least a minor windfall of customers as local residents try to figure out what to do with all that refunded ticket money that’s burning a hole in their pockets — just like the Toronto comedy club owner who, during the MLB baseball strike, quipped, “We really feel it would be in the best interest of entertainment in Toronto if the hockey players sat out the whole season too.”

Moving on, we have the alleged journalism enterprise Bleacher Report, which today sees its AFC West Lead Writer Christopher Hansen proclaim that the Oakland Raiders really really need a new stadium because:

A new stadium does wonders for a team’s value by drastically increasing revenue. The Raiders have a revenue problem which can’t be sustained long-term. If the Raiders don’t get a new stadium soon, Mark Davis could be forced to cut back on expenses or sell the team.

Where to begin? Perhaps with the fact that yes, stadiums bring in more revenue, but they also come with additional costs, namely about a billion dollars to put one of them up. That’ll cut into your drastically increased revenue pretty fast, unless you get somebody else (i.e., taxpayers) to pay for it. As for Mark Davis having to cut corners or sell the team, according to Forbes, yes, the Raiders are one of the less-valuable teams in the NFL, but they’re still turning a profit ($23 million last year). So Davis would be selling the team … what, in a huff because he’s not making enough money? Actually, wouldn’t it be more likely that he’d sell the teamafter getting a stadium deal, since he’d be selling high? Don’t any editors at Bleacher Report actually read these things before they’re posted? (Don’t answer that.)

Meanwhile, the Bleacher Report piece links to a Bloomberg News report that notes that Oakland fired a quarter of its police force last year to save money, but still made good on the $17.3 million a year it’s obligated to pay off each year on renovations to the Oakland Coliseum that induced the Raiders to return to town. You’d think this would be a pretty good cautionary tale of why not to devote scarce city resources to a sports team that only plays 10 games a year in town, but not if you’re Raiders CEO Amy Trask:

“The 1995 deal didn’t work from a financial perspective for any party to the deal — city, county or Raiders,” says Amy Trask, chief executive officer of the Raiders. “That shouldn’t stop us from trying to reach a deal that works for everyone.”

Really, trust her, this time it’ll totally work. You don’t want anyone to think you’ve lost your ability to believe in people, do you?

Roger Goodell can get in the newspaper just by opening his mouth

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From the “Newspapers will report on anything famous people say” department:

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said Thursday the league is willing to contribute funding to help build a stadium in Oakland to keep the Raiders in town…

”It’s our stage. It’s part of where we present our game. It’s the biggest part,” Goodell said. ”It’s also really important to the fan experience. Having full stadiums is critical for us. We want to have our fans in the stadium, we want to make sure they have the best facilities, we want to make sure the teams can generate enough revenue to be successful and competitive.”

Wait, you mean the NFL is actually willing to give the Raiders stadium money as part of its league-wide program to provide teams with stadium money? Stop the presses!

Vikings stadium approved, Rams, Raiders line up to be next

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And it’s official: The Minnesota senate yesterday passed the conference version of the Vikings stadium bill by a vote of 36-30, giving final legislative approval to the $1 billion project, which will receive $500 million in construction subsidies, plus about $300 million in public money for operating costs. (Or as the Los Angeles Times puts it: “The Vikings will pay $477 million of the stadium costs, the public $348 million and the city of Minneapolis $150 million.” That would be The City of Minneapolis, LLC, presumably.) The Minneapolis city council still needs to sign off on the deal, as does Gov. Mark Dayton, but those are considered formalities.

Stadium supporters celebrated at the capitol, while opponents warned of pending doom (“We know there are going to families who are going to lose their house, probably their marriages, their cars, their livelihoods so we can enjoy football,” said state senator John Howe of the expanded gambling that will help fund the project).

And, of course, everyone started focusing on the question of who’ll be next to get a new stadium, now that Minnesota has set the baseline at $1 billion (fourth-most expensive NFL stadium ever) and $500 million in public construction subsidies (second-most after the Indianapolis Colts), reversing a trend that had seen the New York Giants, New York Jets, Dallas Cowboys, and San Francisco 49ers pay for more than 50% of their new facilities. The San Jose Mercury News’ Mark Purdy wrote that “you can hear dominoes falling, all the way from Minnesota,” opining that with the Vikings off the table for an L.A. move, “the [Oakland] Raiders are in good position to stare down Oakland officials and not blink.” The St. Louis Rams, meanwhile, have upped the ante in their own stadium upgrade campaign, reportedly demanding that the Edward Jones Dome have its fixed roof replaced with a retractable one, something that 1) may not be feasible, 2) would come at an unknown cost, and 3) seems dubious how much benefit it would be for anyone, unless Rams fans are really steering clear of games because they can’t see a patch of blue sky.

Not to be a broken record (in case any readers are too young to have seen a record, perhaps this will help), but it’s important to remember in all this that Los Angeles currently has two new-stadium plans that have been officially designated by the NFL as unacceptable, thanks mostly to the fact that a team owner (or the league) would have to pay for most of the construction cost via either rent payments or a chunk of equity in the team. And maybe also because this not having a team in L.A. thing is just working great for the league’s existing franchises as a boogeyman to scare local elected officials with. NFL owners, start your airplane engines!

Davis threatens to move Raiders to L.A. (yes, again; no, different Davis)

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Newly anointed Oakland Raiders owner Mark Davis made his first public remarks on the future of the team yesterday, and they were drawn straight from the threatmongering playbook:

“The timetable is yesterday. So that’s where it is. We’ve got to get a stadium. We’ve got to get that done,” Davis said Tuesday in his first public comments since taking over the organization in October following the death of his father, Al.

“It’s such a competitive business. It really is competitive. We can’t compete for a lot of the players that other teams can, at times.”…

“We’re trying to get something done up here but if we can’t, we’ve got to get something done somewhere because we need to be able to compete,” he said. “And that’s where it’s at.”

The message is clear: If no new stadium is forthcoming in Northern California, then Davis will likely look south to Los Ange—

Davis said he has talked to groups in Los Angeles but hasn’t received an offer he likes.

Well, alrighty then. It’s no surprise that Davis hasn’t liked the offers from L.A. — as covered here previously, they both pretty much come down to “if you pay for it, we will build,” which isn’t what most sports owners want to hear, especially in the NFL, where moving to a bigger market doesn’t even get you more TV money. So this pretty much comes down to a reiteration of Davis’ late dad’s strategy: Complain loudly that you need a new stadium, and see what shakes loose, whether in Oakland, Santa Clara, Los Angeles, or Cucamonga. It’s worked before, though sometimes you have to repeat it for a few years first.

California’s RDA ruling could affect A’s, 49ers, Chargers stadium plans

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As if the umpteen stadium and arena battles ongoing in California needed more drama, the state’s supreme court handed down this yesterday:

The court ruled unanimously in favor of a state law passed last summer that abolished redevelopment agencies and voted 6 to 1 to strike down a companion measure that would have allowed the agencies to continue if they shared their revenues.

More than 400 redevelopment agencies will cease to exist after Feb. 1. Authorized by law since 1945, the agencies have been responsible for such success stories as Old Pasadena and San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter but also plagued by projects that some argued had little public benefit.

First, some brief backstory: After Gov. Jerry Brown declared his intentions earlier this year to stop allowing city redevelopment agencies to siphon off property tax proceeds for local development projects, the state legislature offered a compromise of sorts: If RDAs would cut the state in on a share of the boodle, they’d be allowed to continue. Yesterday’s court ruling struck down that deal, saying that while the state could shut down RDAs it couldn’t attach strings to them; and so, as of a month and two days from now, all RDAs will cease to exist. (Ironically, the court was ruling on a lawsuit filed by a bunch of cities and their RDAs, which were trying to knock down only the piece of legislation that would eliminate RDAs, not the one that would allow them to continue. Whoopsie.)

This is big news for the sports world because, as you might imagine, cities have been thrilled to hand out development dollars when it’s not really their money they’re spending. (While technically RDA spending is just a straight-up TIF — any new tax revenue gets diverted to pay for the project — in practice, at least according to Brown, the state has ended up filling the gaps in school spending and other local services that have resulted.) So pretty much every sports construction project now underway or in the planning stages in California has involved RDAs, which means many of them may now be in jeopardy.

A quick scorecard, from north to south:

  • Oakland’s Victory Court plan for an A’s stadium appears to now be out the window, since that relied on an RDA-based TIF. However, its second “Coliseum City” plan for the A’s and Raiders could still move ahead, according to Newballpark.org, as Oakland’s existing stadium site is “part of a separate joint-powers agreement which allows the Coliseum Authority to raise money for its own projects.”
  • Any thoughts of moving the Golden State Warriors to a new arena in San Francisco will likely be hampered by the ruling.
  • Santa Clara’s stadium funding was thought to be already in place — barring a last-minute petition drive — but $40 million of that was supposed to come from the city’s RDA, which now must turn it over to the state instead. (I’m not clear on what happens to the $4 million the city RDA already pre-paid to the 49ers last March.) That’s not a huge sum to be made up on a $1 billion project, but given how the whole financing plan is already held together by spit and baling wire, you never know what could turn out to be its striped bass.
  • San Jose’s RDA already completed its part in the city’s proposed A’s stadium plan, giving team owner Lew Wolff an option to buy RDA-owned land for the project last month. Yet a lawsuit filed earlier this month by the Giants-funded Stand For San Jose charges, among other things, that San Jose illegally jumped the gun by agreeing to sell the land before going before a public vote; if a court agrees, then San Jose could be forced to go back and hold a referendum before selling the land — except at that point the RDA would no longer exist to do the sale.
  • AEG’s downtown Los Angeles football stadium project would use a TIF, but it seems that it’s one that doesn’t require an RDA. (I think this is because rather than actually redirecting the money, the city would just be totaling up the new tax benefits and hoping they’re enough to pay off the stadium bonds, but don’t quote me on that.) Still, this could give a minor boost to Ed Roski’s City of Industry stadium plan in the race for first place among L.A. stadium plans that don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting approved by the NFL or attracting an existing team owner.
  • The San Diego Chargers, whose stadium chief previously said that without RDA money, their stadium plans are “done, finished,” are indeed completely hosed. But they kind of knew that already.

In any case, before anyone gets too excited about it being a new day in Baltimore, the state legislature — which, you’ll recall, started off this whole mess by trying to save RDAs while reclaiming a share of their money — can always pass new legislation reestablishing some form of local redevelopment agencies. This being the California state legislature, of course, that will inevitably be a long and painful process — which is why I told the San Diego Union Tribune that my prediction is for “gridlock,” as team owners wait to see how the new world order shakes out.

The interesting bits here in the short run will be how the 49ers (and, if necessary, the A’s) handle the potential new speed bumps in their stadium campaigns. More news to come in the new year, I’m sure.

Oakland plans second vaportecture stadium for A’s

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Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, not content to have one A’s stadium plan with no real idea how to pay for it, announced on Friday that “we are sending today a letter to Commissioner Selig to make it pretty clear that Oakland wants the A’s, that we have two sites for the A’s that are viable that could be delivered by 2014.”

Site #2 is, in fact, the current site of the Oakland Coliseum (I can’t be bothered to remember its latest corporate name — nice investment, whoever owns naming rights this week!), which would be replaced by a new A’s baseball stadium, a new Raiders football stadium, and a new hotel under the latest plan. (Not-very-detailed renderings available at Newballpark.org.) This “Coliseum City” would be paid for by … okay, Quan didn’t actually mention that part, but the city has a Request For Proposals out for the project, which … actually asks the developers to submit “a description of its approach to developing financing measures.” Three guesses how many of the six developers who’ve reportedly responded to the RFP will be proposing to fund the whole project themselves?

Coliseum City, incidentally, would also include a renovated arena for the Golden State Warriors, which is significant because the Warriors owners last week met with San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and Giants CEO Larry Baer to discuss a new arena near AT&T Park to open in 2017, the year the Warriors’ lease at Oracle Arena — which was completely rebuilt in 1996 for $121 million — runs out.

One more item from the Quan news conference: She said that the Giants claim they can use legal measures to delay any A’s move to San Jose for as much as ten years. Which is exactly what they would say, and exactly what she would say, but just passing it along.

Raiders, 49ers on Davis’ death and stadium deal: No comment

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In case you’re wondering what the death of Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis means for the team’s possible relocation plans, the San Jose Mercury News has a rundown for you:

  • “[Davis' son and new owner] Mark Davis did not comment on his intentions.”
  • “[Raiders CEO Amy] Trask said, ‘I am working with our team, our organization and the Raider family to navigate a very difficult time.’”
  • “[San Francisco] 49ers spokesman Steve Weakland said in an email: ‘Out of respect to the Davis family and the Raider organization, we have no public comments at this time.’”

In other words, no news is no news. It’s possible that Mark Davis has a bit less distaste for the 49ers than his dad, but in the end, what’s expected to make a shared 49ers-Raiders stadium happen or not — whether in Santa Clara, Oakland, Los Angeles, or Kuala Lumpur — is likely going to be money, not enmity. Trask has already been working on it, after all, so if the numbers pencil out, having a different Davis to answer to isn’t likely to change things — and likewise if they don’t.

Santa Clara reclaims half its redevelopment funds for 49ers

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The city of Santa Clara looks to have finally resolved its attempts to reclaim redevelopment funds that it had earmarked for a San Francisco 49ers stadium and which the state was trying to take back. The upshot: The city will repay the state $11.2 million this year and $2.7 million each year thereafter, amounting to about half of the city’s available redevelopment funds, but will be allowed to keep the rest.

With the city having promised $40 million to the 49ers, $2 million and change per year isn’t going to cut it, so it’s unclear what this will mean for the stadium plan. “In a project of this size and financial complexity, it’s going to require some flexibility to see it through,” 49ers spokesperson Steve Weakland told the San Jose Mercury News, which translates as “We’ll figure something out.”

Realistically, a few million missing dollars in public money isn’t likely to have as big an effect on whether the project gets built as the underlying shakiness of the $493 million in private money, what with the economy still in the crapper. NFL money would help some, obviously, but it still looks as if the most financially workable scenario involves the 49ers and Raiders sharing a stadium — which, since it presumably requires one to be the tenant and one the landlord, is going to be no easy feat to negotiate.