Category Archives: Sprint Center

Maloofs on Kings future: Crazy like a fox, or just crazy?

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Ailene Voisin of the Sacramento Bee, in a column that’s otherwise devoted to the dubious notion that the Sacramento Kings owners need to end “their ongoing silence” about the team’s future (what, and give up leverage?), drops a few hints about WTF is going on with all these rumors about the Kings talking about moving to Virginia Beach:

  • George Maloof – the architect behind the near-move to Anaheim in 2011 – is particularly intrigued with a proposed arena deal in Virginia Beach that would be 90 percent publicly funded, with $195 million coming from the city, $35 million from developer Comcast-Spectator and another $150 million from the state.
    Family members and/or their representatives also have had recent talks with officials in Seattle, San Diego, Kansas City, Mo., and St. Louis. … George is the naysayer. Joe and Gavin are attached to Sacramento, but they are unsure about how to breach the emotional and financial separation between the family and the community.
  • The Maloofs are united in their refusal to sell the team, which means the folks in Seattle might look elsewhere. This should be reassuring to Sacramento, because a sale would virtually ensure the Kings’ departure. (The Chris Hansen group in Seattle, for example, would outbid any investors interested in keeping the team here.)
So if Voisin is correct and the Maloofs aren’t simply playing good cop/bad cop with her, then what seems to be happening here is that Seattle is the market where the Maloofs could make the most money, but they don’t want to sell the team and Hansen wants to be an owner, not a landlord. So instead you have George Maloof (and/or his representatives) jetting around the country to try to shake loose a deal lucrative enough that his brothers will give up their emotional ties to Sacramento that go all the way back to 1998.

This doesn’t actually sound like the most effective way to leverage the best deal for your team — “Hey, everybody, let’s refuse to sell to the guy who wants to throw money at us and then bicker among ourselves about what to do instead!” — but then, the Maloofs have a long track record of head-scratching moves, so maybe they really are this dysfunctional. Unless that’s just what theywant us to think, and this is really the world’s longest-running grift.

A funny thing, meanwhile, has started to happen out in the cities that are supposed to be bidding against each other for the Kings: They’ve started to pay attention to what the others are doing, and not just in an “Oh my god, somebody else wants the team too!!!” kind of way. From an editorial in yesterday’s Virginian-Pilot:

In Seattle, which is building a $490 million arena, the city has required the developer to personally guarantee the $200 million public investment if rent and admissions taxes fall short. His net worth must remain at least $300 million, and Seattle will audit him each year to ensure he’s capable of making the payments.

Admittedly, this isn’t the most important part of the Seattle arena plan — that would be that Hansen is agreeing to sizable rent payments that will rise to meet the bond payments if there’s a shortfall in tax revenue, something that Comcast hasn’t promised to Virginia Beach so far as I know. But at least newspaper editors have learned to look at other cities for examples of how to negotiate better sports facility deals. Baby steps…

Kansas City losing money on old arena since Sprint Center has opened

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Hey, every city thinking of building a new arena while also keeping your old one around — I’m looking at you, Seattle — here’s your cautionary tale, courtesy of Kansas City:

While the Sprint Center has exceeded many people’s expectations since it opened five years ago, one promise has not been fulfilled.

Kansas City leaders have not identified a new purpose for Kemper Arena.

Kemper has lost nearly all its big events, including the circus and monster truck shows, to the shinier, newer facility downtown. It now loses money every year, is kept dark for months at a time, and the city is struggling to find a solution.

“This city is not big enough to support two 20,000-seat arenas,” City Manager Troy Schulte said. “The sooner we deal with that, the better off we’ll be.”

The Kansas City Star goes on to note that Kemper has seen its annual number of events fall from more than 150 to a mere 25 this fiscal year, including “a handful of American Royal events, plus graduations, Jehovah Witness gatherings and the like.” Current plans are to either tear down Kemper and replace it with a smaller facility, or possible renovate the current building to hold fewer seats.

Kemper is currently losing $1 million a year, which eats up most of the $1.8 million a year that the city gets from the Sprint Center. Plus, of course, the city is paying $13.8 million a year in debt payments on building the Sprint Center. And another $2.2 million a year in remaining debt on Kemper. With coups like this, who needs failures?

K.C. Star writer to Sacramento: Sprint Center cost nothing! Really!

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On Sunday, the Sacramento Bee ran a front-page (of the E section, anyway, whichever one that was) opinion piece by Barbara Shelly, a columnist for its fellow McClatchy-owner paper the Kansas City Star, on what Sacramento’s Kings arena push can learn from Kansas City’s own arena battles. And Shelly’s conclusions went a little something like this:

Since opening in 2007, the Sprint Center has shattered the expectations of even the most ardent believers. Pollstar magazine rated it the fifth-busiest arena in the nation and 12th-busiest in the world in its latest rankings. It turns a profit for its operators and the city, even though a pro sports franchise has not yet materialized.

In a coup that silenced all but the most hard core of the naysayers, Kansas City built a $276 million arena without raising taxes for residents or assuming any risk for operating losses. Its story involves a great deal of luck, but it could point to a way forward for Sacramento and other cities.

Only one problem with that description: It bears no resemblance to reality. As both I and my own corporate colleagues at The Pitch explained two years ago, the Sprint Center turns an operating profit for Kansas City — but that’s only if you don’t count the city’s annual $13.8 million in construction bond payments. And that money is all coming from hotel and car-rental taxes — which only counts as “not raising taxes for residents” if you think that people only ever rent cars while on vacation. (And even if you do think that, there’s still an opportunity cost to devoting car and hotel taxes to an arena: It means you can’t raise them to pay for something else, meaning other taxes — the kind that are indisputably paid by residents — have to be higher than otherwise as a result.)

Even with my lowered expectations for standards of professional journalism since journalism effectively stopped being a viable profession, I find it pretty astounding that this stuff could end up in a major newspaper without anyone bothering to do a quick fact-check, or even a reality check. I was hoping that The Pitch might have caught wind of it and taken the Bee to task, but they’re kind of busy right now with a wind of their own, so it’s probably understandable that they haven’t.

AEG’s sweetheart Sprint Center lease: the breakdown

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After all the confusion over exactly how arena managers AEG and Kansas City are splitting money from the Sprint Center, Justin Kendall of K.C.’s alt-weekly The Pitch was kind enough to send over the actual section of the lease that spells this out. And it’s an eye-opener, as much as any document that includes phrases like “All Prior Fiscal Years’ Six Million Dollar Amortization Payment Cash Flow Deficiency” can be said to open anyone’s eyes.

I’m no contract lawyer, but if I’m reading this correctly, here’s the way all profits from the Sprint Center are disbursed:

  • The first $347,000 a year goes to pay back the six million dollars in cost overruns that AEG and Kansas City rang up for the arena, split 80/20 between the city and AEG, plus an interest rate of 4%.
  • The next $6.7 million a year goes to pay back AEG’s $50 million share of the pre-overrun arena cost. AEG, however, gets paid back at an interest rate of 12%.
  • Next, AEG gets enough money to earn it a guaranteed 16% return (including those interest payments on its $50 mil) on its initial investment. As an added bonus, if there wasn’t enough to earn it a 16% return in some prior year, AEG can take out extra in subsequent years.
  • After that, $3 million (total, not annual) is put aside for a Capital Reserve Fund. And finally, if there’s anything left, it’s split 50/50 between AEG and the city. Little wonder that AEG president Tim Leiweke called this a “throwaway provision,” and said his lawyers predicted they’d never earn enough to have to pay it.

What’s missing here? Well, while AEG gets a guarantee of being made whole on its $50 million investment, plus 12% interest, plus 4% more in profit on top of that, the city of Kansas City is on the hook for $216 million in arena bonds — amounting to $13.8 million a year in bond payments, K.C. budget director Troy Schulte tells Kendall. While an occasional $1.8 million windfall, as the city got last year when the Sprint Center had an exceptionally good year, is nice, it’s still a drop in the bucket on that debt.

In other words, AEG may have been an excellent choice for an arena manager, one that has used its clout to fill the Sprint Center with plenty of concerts. But in landing someone to run their new barn, Kansas City gave away the farm.

Is the Sprint Center really making money?

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The Wichita Eagle looks at a report in the Kansas City Star (by our old friend Kevin Collison) that that city’s new Sprint Center is making money, and wonders whether that might be good news for Wichita’s soon-to-open Intrust Bank Arena, NCAAs or no NCAAs.

Only one problem: While the Sprint Center is indeed turning a profit, that’s only an operational profit — in other words, it doesn’t count the cost of paying for building it in the first place. Kansas City essentially handed over the building to arena managers AEG after it was complete, and told them to deal with the expense of running the place and allowed them to keep most of the proceeds; the fact that K.C. will see any money at all, in fact (estimated at $1.8 million this year), is an indication that AEG is doing a good job, since according to its lease it doesn’t need to share any profits at all with the city until it’s making a 16% return itself. Given that K.C. is on the hook for $10-15 million a year in arena bond payments (guesstimating here — that information doesn’t seem to be online anywhere [UPDATE: It is now, and I was — ahem — on the money]), there’s almost no way it will actually turn a profit on building the Sprint Center.

That said, it’s still better for AEG to be running a profit than running a loss, especially since the Sprint Center still doesn’t have a major-league sports tenant. And AEG seems to be intent on using its success with concerts to drive a hard bargain with any sports teams looking to move to Kansas City: AEG president Tim Leiweke told the Star, “The economic model of this building is quite successful. The last thing we or the city want to do is throw away that model and make the arena a loss leader with another tenant. It’s a tougher scenario with a professional team. I’m sure we wouldn’t be able to write a check to the city for $1.8 million.” In other words: As predicted, they’re not going to be no pushovers for, say, the Islanders.