September 30, 2010

Reports of Hamilton stadium's death greatly exaggerated

Stop the presses! The Hamilton Tiger-Cats and the city of Hamilton have done what was thought to be impossible: agreed on a site for a new stadium. Yesterday the two warring factions announced an agreement in principle to build a new stadium on railyards in Hamilton's west end, with the Tiger-Cats to chip in toward the land's purchase price to build "an entertainment/sports precinct."

Now all they need to do s figure out how to pay for it. Even with cash from the federal government for using the stadium for the 2015 Pan Am Games, there is by all accounts a $25-50 million shortfall, plus the cost of buying and remediating the stadium land itself. (The Tiger-Cats owners apparently are only interested in helping pay for land that they can develop themselves.) And that's for what Hamilton city manager Chris Murray calls a "utilitarian" stadium seating 22,000, which is 3,000 fewer seats than the CFL normally requires.

The Hamilton Spectator also reports that the TiCats are "proposing to manage the stadium for the city while using revenue from naming rights and ticket surcharges to offset operating costs." Which might not be that great a deal — depending on how the revenues from the place works, Hamilton may be better off running the place itself (or hiring an independent arena manager) and keeping the revenues. But compared to many U.S. stadium deals, where the private tenant just naturally assumes that naming rights money to a publicly funded stadium is theirs to begin with, this is at least a better starting point for talks. It truly is another country.