Friday roundup: NYC approves $780m NYCFC stadium in Queens, still doesn’t know what it’ll cost the public

access_time personNeil deMause

I keep meaning to find a place to mention it, and here is as good as any: sports economists J.C. Bradbury, Dennis Coates, and Brad Humphreys have taken up the task of updating Judith Grant Long’s epic database of stadium and arena deals, and the results are online as a CSV file. There are likely still going to be some debates about specific figures — the Buffalo Bills stadium is listed with an $850 million public cost, for example, because that’s what the New York Times said, but that leaves out state and county money set aside for future maintenance and upgrades — but it’s still a hugely useful resource for getting ballpark estimates (sorry) of both total and taxpayer costs. Bookmark it now, or just click the “Data” tab here anytime to find it!

That’s enough about that, let’s get to the news, oh the news, so very much the news:

  • The New York city council approved NYC F.C.‘s plan to build a Queens stadium across the street from the Mets‘ stadium, which is expected to cost $780 million and open in 2027. While construction costs are being covered by the team’s owners, Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner and Manchester City owner Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, it’s still unknown exactly how much the city will be giving up in property-tax breaks and discounted rent (the city Independent Budget Office estimated $516 million) or how much the city will be spending on infrastructure for the project (which includes housing and other stuff too, so it’d be tricky to determine exactly how much of infrastructure costs should be charged to the stadium). Ah well, plenty of time to figure that out after the agreements are all signed! Queens councilmember Shekar Krishnan cast the only dissenting vote, declaring, “We are not facing a stadium crisis in this city. We are facing a housing crisis, an inequality crisis and a climate crisis. Now we’re looking at a proposal that gives away public land worth hundreds of millions of dollars in public financing for a commercial soccer stadium. What is the benefit for the people of New York City?” You mean the joy of visiting Naming Rights Sponsor Stadium isn’t enough?
  • Patrick Tuohey of the Show-Me Institute wants to know what happened to the 2022 Populous study of the Kansas City Royals‘ stadium that projected it would cost more to repair than replace, thanks to “concrete cancer,” since it’s been taken down from the KC Ballpark District website. Good news and bad news, Patrick: The report is still there on the Wayback Machine, but it provides no sourcing at all for its figures. It does print them in very large type, though, and how could anything in a 48-point font be wrong?
  • Jackson County legislator Sean Smith polled his constituents about why they voted how they did on the Royals and Chiefs stadium tax surcharge referendum last week, and determined it’s because nobody listened to their concerns and engaged in too much “fear-based campaigning” by threatening the teams would leave. Smith didn’t release any detailed results of his survey, though, so it’s left as an exercise for the reader to imagine what the public’s concerns were, exactly.
  • Adding insult to injury department: Workers for the Oakland A’s weren’t told by team management that the franchise was relocating to Sacramento next year and that they would all be laid off as a result, they saw it on the TV news. “Thank you for ruining our lives,” said one A’s bartender only identified by CBS Sports as Tony. (Also, the layoffs have reportedly already begun, because John Fisher has clearly determined you don’t need concessions workers when you’ve so effectively alienated your fans that no one will come to your games.)
  • The Atlanta Braves claim that a new survey found their stadium-in-the-middle-of-suburban-nowhere ranks 13th out of 30 teams in “walkability,” and we don’t even need to debate whether it’s a dumb survey because it turns out 13th actually means 21st because it turns out the dumb survey people don’t know how to break ties.
  • “Can Minor League Baseball Survive Its Real Estate Problems?” asks the New York Times, but those problems were created by MLB when it bought and contracted the minor leagues and then forced cities to scramble to upgrade stadiums to avoid being left without a chair when the music stopped. Try to keep up, New York Times! Even without a sports department!
  • D.C. United wants to build a stadium for a minor-league affiliate in Baltimore, and the Baltimore Banner article on how “there hasn’t been enough information shared about the project” doesn’t even try to ask how much it would cost or who would pay for it, this has not been a great week for journalism. Here are some tips, guys, start with those!
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The Arizona Coyotes are moving to Salt Lake City (maybe, depending, check back later)

access_time personNeil deMause

Yesterday, the interwebs started buzzing with talk that the Arizona Coyotes were, maybe, going to be moving to Salt Lake City next season. Things like:

The NHL is concurrently drafting two versions of a league schedule matrix for the 2024-25 season, one with the Arizona Coyotes and another with the Coyotes franchise playing in Salt Lake City in the event of relocation.

And:

The NHL would purchase the Coyotes from Meruelo in a deal believed to be worth around $1 billion. … The league source said that after purchasing the team, the NHL would then sell the Coyotes to [Utah Jazz owner Ryan] Smith at a price that could be as high as $1.3 billion — much higher than the $650 million expansion fee that the Seattle Kraken’s owners paid in 2021 to join the league. The source said the NHL’s other 31 owners would split $300 million as part of the sale.

And:

The team’s final game is at home against Edmonton next Wednesday. One Coyote indicated today that there are rumours of “meeting about the future” before everyone goes their separate ways for the off-season.

The reason behind this reported shift: Uncertainty around the league about Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo winning a June 27 public land auction for a parcel near the Phoenix-Scottsdale border and then being able to put together an arena financing plan. Though Scottsdale Mayor David Ortega on Tuesday walked back his statement the previous that an arena on the site was “not feasible, or welcome,” saying he’s now fine with it so long as traffic is directed away from his city, the whole deal is apparently flimsy enough that the NHL wants to have a Plan B — or maybe even a Plan A, as Daily Faceoff, citing “multiple sources,” asserted that “there is a real possibility that the Coyotes franchise is not based in Arizona come June 27.”

This morning brings no real updates, with the league remaining officially silent and even Coyotes players having been shielded from the press after last night’s game. So what can we make of all this?

First off, the Utah legislature’s vote last month to approve $500 million in spending on a new or renovated arena if the NHL comes to town definitely got some attention. The money is supposed to come from a 0.5% citywide sales tax hike plus kickbacks of sales taxes from a “10-block revitalization area” around any arena. How much an NHL-ready arena would cost overall remains unknown, as is how much Smith would pay to cover the remaining costs after plunking down maybe $1.3 billion for the Coyotes, but $500 million in the hand is worth some anonymously leaked move threats to the league, at least.

Whether the NHL would actually go through with a Utah move for the Coyotes, especially before the Arizona land auction has even taken place, is less clear. Salt Lake City may have some public money approved, and that’s certainly tasty to the league; it would also be one of the league’s smallest media markets, and by far the smallest with both NBA and NHL teams competing for winter sports ticket sales (1,148,120 TV households, behind Miami’s 1,720,970). Actually going ahead with the move would be a major bet on giving a team to whatever city coughs up a public subsidy and has an owner willing to overpay for a team because he once played roller hockey or something, and let them figure out how to actually sell tickets once the team gets there.

And then there’s maybe the weirdest twist to all of this, according to Sportsnet:

The real key is what the NHL will promise Meruelo to avoid this ending up in court.

Those same sources indicate he could be offered a five-year exclusive window to “bring back” the Coyotes as an expansion franchise — although there would be certain language stating what would need to be accomplished for him to return. (The league definitely desires a return to the market if it leaves.)

Sure, I guess? The NHL is clearly enamored of the Phoenix area’s size — though it’s smaller than Atlanta and Houston, which also don’t have teams and don’t seem to have drawn the same unrequited love from the league — and would be happy to have a team there, even if it’s one owned by Meruelo. If that “certain language” stipulates arena financing being in place and, say, season-ticket deposits from more fans than you can count on one hand, it wouldn’t be the craziest way of the NHL deciding where to stick an expansion team. (That would probably be this.)

All of this remains at the level of rumor, needless to say, even if true it could just mean that the NHL is coming up with contingency plans to ensure that the Salt Lake City arena has dates available for the Coyotes’ 2024-25 schedule. In the meantime, are people already wondering how a Utah Coyotes (yes, there are coyotes in Utah, at least more than there is jazz) would impact the Oakland A’s move options? Of course they are:

The longer any online discussion continues, the greater the chance that it will lead to somebody clowning on John Fisher.

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Liveblogging that ginormous ESPN article about how the A’s picked Sacramento

access_time personNeil deMause

Oh hell yeah, it’s an ESPN tick-tock (not TikTok) of the Oakland A’s to Sacramento agreement! If there’s one thing ESPN is still good for, it’s fly-on-the-wall insider accounts of major front office decisions, and I for one am going to read this right now, and you get to read it with me:

THIS WAS John Fisher’s moment. It was a cold and rainy morning at Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento, with the microphone glitching whenever Kings owner Vivek Ranadive tried to heap praise upon the Oakland Athletics owner, but this was the place — the single, solitary place in the entire known universe — where people gathered to willingly extol the virtues of Fisher.

Give ESPN’s Tim Keown his props: He knows how to write a great lede. This one has it all: a great sense of place and of dramatic tension, attention to detail (leaving out only a link to the microphone glitch video), and a framing that subtly spells out how A’s owner John Fisher wants nothing more than to be loved, and is receiving nothing but hate. A+ so far, no notes.

They cheered because they are employed by him, or might be soon, or by an entity that might profit from what this man owns.

For a guy who wants to be loved, and who can pay people to cheer for him, Fisher sure is choosing a funny way of dealing with his current employees.

Keown follows with the usual about John Fisher not being able to name any A’s players (the one player he cited Sacramento fans as being able to see next year was New York Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge), and only speaking briefly and then getting the hell out of there, and then the intro is over. CUT TO:

THE VIEWS FROM the A’s waterfront offices in Oakland’s Jack London Square are magnificent: ferries coming in and out, light shimmering off the Bay, San Francisco’s skyline nearly close enough to reach out and touch (the site of the team’s abandoned Howard Terminal project is just a slight lean to the north).

Again, nice scene setting, but when is this, and why are we here?

Representatives from the team and the city of Oakland met at 8:30 a.m. on April 2, precisely 49½ hours before the festivities in West Sacramento

Ah, okay. Might have wanted to do a “49½ hours earlier” screen card first to tip off that we’re in flashback now, just a suggestion.

By early February, with no movement from the A’s, the city’s representatives assumed the team had found somewhere else to play.

And now we’re in a flashback within a flashback — is Chris Nolan directing this article? Anyway, the notion that Oakland city officials assumed Fisher had a plan for a temporary home is slightly dubious given that he’s never seemed to have a plan for anything before, but maybe.

Kaval said $97 million, payable whether the team stayed for five years or opted out at three, was a non-starter and wondered how the city had come up with that number. He was told that Mayor Sheng Thao’s team had done its research, and the number factored in the cost the team would incur by relocating twice in the next three to five years, the $67 million annually the team receives from NBC Sports for its television rights for being in the Bay Area — a figure, the city says, that includes just $10 million in ad revenue, meaning NBC Sports subsidizes to the tune of $57 million per year — and the sweetheart $1.5 million rent the team currently pays at the Coliseum.

“This is above market rate,” Kaval said, and [Oakland chief of staff Leigh] Hanson agreed. “It is,” she said, “and your deal now is criminally below market.”

That’s some impressively hardball negotiating, and it’s good to hear that Thao’s staff didn’t just come up with that $97 million rent number out of thin air. But it’s also the kind of bluntness that failsons who just want to be adored absolutely hate — I speak from personal experience here — and you have to wonder if this didn’t play a role in Fisher and Kaval announcing a Sacramento move less than 24 hours later. Let’s keep reading and find out!

“Well,” Kaval said. “This isn’t going to work for us.”

Hanson said she shrugged. “It’s your responsibility to decide where you’re going to play baseball,” she said. “We pick up trash and we do cops and we care about economic development, but it’s not our responsibility to house you.”

No unearned adoration here at all, guys. What good is being a billionaire’s lackey if elected officials can just talk to you like you’re an equal?

Sources say the A’s, however, never laid out an offer sheet, never presented so much as a single piece of paper with demands or suggestions. At one point during the second meeting, in March, Kaval suggested the A’s might be willing to accept “the Raiders’ deal” — two years and $17 million, the arrangement Raiders owner Mark Davis struck for the two lame-duck years in Oakland before he moved his team to Las Vegas…

The “Raiders’ deal” was the only negotiation tactic Kaval employed, according to sources familiar with the negotiations.

So either Kaval genuinely didn’t want to cut a deal with Oakland, or he was hoping to be presented with an offer he couldn’t refuse. Either tracks, honestly.

Kaval took exception to the city’s offer of a five-year lease, since the team believes its future Vegas ballpark — start date unclear, financing undetermined — on the 9-acre site of the yet-to-be demolished Tropicana Casino and Resort will be ready for the 2028 season, maybe even a year earlier.

Hanson said the city had worked its own numbers there, too, and those numbers indicated the A’s will need five years, minimum, before the Vegas stadium is completed. Left unspoken, sources say, is that significant doubt remains whether the deal in Vegas will happen at all, and the five-year gambit was a hedge against ever having to negotiate with the A’s again.

Ha! Also, yup.

Kaval had made it known the team was in daily conversations with Ranadive and Sacramento, weekly discussions with Salt Lake City. There were those on the Oakland side of the table who believed Sacramento was a done deal before this meeting began — and they weren’t the only ones. Broome, the GSEC CEO, was in the room during the negotiations with Ranadive, and he told ESPN he knew Sacramento was getting the A’s 10 days before the official announcement.

So we’re back to “Kaval didn’t want a deal with Oakland,” which is fine, but then why meet with them at all? Were he and Fisher worried about some kind of St. Louis Rams-style lawsuit charging that he’d skipped over the part of league bylaws that tries to see if a team can be kept in its current home first, and figured that sitting across from Hanson and saying “Yeah, nope” would check that box?

Either Keown didn’t ask Kaval or didn’t get an answer, because he’s on to:

By early evening Hanson got Thao’s approval to present a revised offer: a three-year lease with a $60 million extension fee.

That’s kind of negotiating against yourself, but $60 million over three years is roughly the same per year as $97 million over five, so sure.

Within 24 hours, rumblings that Sacramento was the choice filtered out through the Twitter feed of “Carmichael Dave,” a Sacramento radio personality well-connected to Ranadive and the Kings.

This future we live in is truly a remarkable place.

By 10 a.m., at about the same time the A’s were on a flight heading for Detroit, Ranadive was standing at the podium, wind whipping his hair, thanking his good friend.

And that’s about all we get on the “why” of the A’s move to Sacramento. But Keown isn’t done dropping news bombs:

MLB, at the behest of Manfred, waived the team’s relocation fee because — according to a league source — it would be too burdensome for Fisher to pay. “So if we say there’s a relocation fee of $2 billion,” the source said. “Realistically, how are we going to get that?”

Seriously? I know the leading theory is that Fisher got his way by being so annoying that MLB owners would rather let him make his dumb move to Las Vegas than have to keep listening to him whine about Oakland, but if he really got out of paying a relocation fee by turning his pockets inside out and frowning sadly … that’s either a sign of him being a genius negotiator or the most annoying man in the world or both.

Also, if Fisher can’t afford an expansion fee, how’s he going to afford to spend $1 billion of his own money on a stadium in Vegas? Or does he plan on finding someone else’s money and pretending it’s his? There’s only one guy who gets away with doing that.

“After 15 years of this, owners are on Rob [Manfred],” the league source said. “They want to know, ‘What’s happening in Oakland? Let’s go, it’s time to s— or get off the pot.'”

If those are the options you give someone, those are the results you get. Fisher, clearly, went with Door #1.

IN WEST SACRAMENTO, there are logistical questions that remain outstanding. The physics of the Triple-A River Cats, a Giants affiliate, and the big league A’s sharing a ballpark have yet to be determined. Significant improvements to Sutter Health Park are necessary to comply with the collective bargaining agreement and receive the approval of the Major League Players Association. Lights will need to be upgraded, bullpens revamped and a second batting cage constructed. The home clubhouse is currently beyond the left-field wall, an arrangement that seems less than optimal.

Here we have a partial answer to the question of whether the players’ union can block the Sacramento move, which has been reported elsewhere but is worth repeating: Not so long as somebody upgrades the stadium so that player working conditions are major-league quality. (Whether baseball fan conditions will be is another story.) How much that will cost, and who will pay for it, remains unknown, apparently even to Keown.

And finally, the pièce de résistance:

[Greater Sacramento Economic Council president Barry] Broome said, “The only thing I asked of the Fishers is when they win the World Series in the next three years, they put that parade right in the middle of our town.”…

He is speaking about the A’s, a husk of a team. … Broome is undeterred. “All we need is a 19-year-old kid named Vida Blue, a 20-year-old guy named Reggie Jackson,” he said. “We just need three, four, five guys. We need to look in the Dominican Republic for a shortstop, for Omar Vizquel.” (Vizquel is Venezuelan.)

Boom. Keown has a few paragraphs to go, but that’s putting a hat on a hat, your punchline is right there. Good night, folks, tip your bartenders, and come back soon for more Fun With Fisher and Friends!

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Nevada referendum on A’s stadium funding gets court hearing, still unclear if it’ll make November ballot

access_time personNeil deMause

The Nevada state teachers’ union had its day in court yesterday, making oral arguments asking the Nevada Supreme Court to approve language for a referendum on repealing last summer’s $380 million (plus about another $220 million in future capital improvements, property tax exemptions, and exemption from the state’s entertainment tax) allocation of state funds to a new Oakland A’s stadium on the Las Vegas Strip. And the verdict is … ha ha, don’t be silly, there’s no ruling yet, what kind of jurisprudence do you think we have in this country?

Which is all well and good: Judges, like legislators, should get time to think about things. But Schools Over Stadiums, the project of the Nevada State Education Association that is pushing for the referendum, is also on the clock here, because there are only 77 days left — 76, now — to collect 102,000 signatures and get a referendum on the ballot this fall. A poll last week found that voters in the city of Las Vegas oppose the stadium funding plan by a 52-32% margin, and while this would be a statewide vote, that certainly bodes well for both the petition-gathering effort and the ultimate repeal campaign — assuming there’s time to conduct them.

The question being raised before the court is whether the referendum language has to include the entire text of the bill that would be modified by the ballot measure, as a lower court ruled, or if it can just describe the sections it wants removed, as the union would prefer. But either way, the more important question is whether the court can settle on some language soon, or else any referendum may have to wait until 2026 — which would throw A’s owner John Fisher’s stadium plans into even more disarray than they are now, since he’d be trying to raise money for a project that could have $600 million in funding pulled out from under it while it was under construction.

Meanwhile, there’s still a separate court case underway about whether the stadium funding vote was constitutional in the first place, with the teachers’ union arguing that it technically required a two-thirds majority, which it didn’t get. It’s not clear when that will be heard, or how long it will take for a verdict, and then for appeals. So all of which is to say: It could be a while before anyone knows whether Fisher really has $600 million in public money in his pocket or not, which could mean a long stay for the A’s in limbo, or whatever we’re calling Sacramento these days.

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Scottsdale mayor to Coyotes owner on arena plan: “Not feasible, or welcome”

access_time personNeil deMause

Let’s get this out of the way right off the bat: The Arizona Coyotes‘ proposed arena site is not in Scottsdale. It’s right next to Scottsdale, but it’s not in Scottsdale — much like the Oakland A’s proposed stadium site is on what’s called the Las Vegas Strip, but not actually within the city limits.

Still, just like when Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman said she thought the A’s should stay in Oakland, when the mayor of Scottsdale says that he doesn’t want a Coyotes arena on his doorstep, that’s not exactly a great way to create momentum for the Coyotes’ arena campaign:

The prospect of a rookie developer attempting to buy Arizona State Trust Land with absolutely no infrastructure on the Phoenix side of the 101/Scottsdale Road intersection at the doorstep of Scottsdale is not feasible, or welcome…

I admire the hockey sport, Arizona Coyotes community involvement and phenomenal youth clubs at the Scottsdale Ice Den. But I along with City of Scottsdale staff will continue to monitor any actions that occur, and negative repercussions for Scottsdale. As it stands today, the fantasy hockey project must move west, away from Scottsdale.

Mayor David Ortega’s specific beef is about water and sewer lines, which he said he has no intention of providing from Scottsdale, and wants extended from Phoenix to the west instead. (He did say Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego “confirmed that all utilities must be extended from 56th Street,” which isn’t exactly clear about whether Gallego is offering to foot the roughly $100 million bill for that, or is just acknowledging that whoever gets the land would need to pay for it.) Ortega also complained that “the dream Coyote retail components sit too close to the retail lions of Scottsdale,” implying that he thinks it would just cannibalize economic activity from his city.

Again, none of this is a death knell for the Coyotes project, as Ortega’s approval isn’t needed. But as we just saw in Kansas City, development subsidy plans are most likely to fail when all the “growth coalition” ducks aren’t in a row, so starting off with one elected official loudly proclaiming that the arena should stay offa his lawn is definitely not what Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo would want.

For now, Meruelo needs to focus on winning a public auction for the land he wants — currently set for June 27 — and then getting both Phoenix and Maricopa County to sign off on the creation of what Arizona calls a “theme park district” within which a tax surcharge would be levied on sales or business income and then kicked back to pay off construction bonds. This isn’t a TIF, because it’d be a new tax on top of the development paying normal taxes to the city and county, but it’s also not quite like a tax just on tickets where the money mostly comes out of a team owner’s pockets because economics; I’m currently engaged in a lengthy email exchange with a couple of economists about how exactly to figure out what should count as the public cost, but since we don’t know the projected total amount of the tax surcharge it’s a bit premature anyway.

If Meruelo doesn’t get what he wants, team CEO Xavier Gutierrez has warned, “the NHL has made it very clear” that “we would have to look at other markets,” which is not what commissioner Gary Bettman has been saying out loud, but sure, rattle that move threat saber. It doesn’t sound like at least one local elected is impressed, but maybe you’ll have better luck finding Phoenix or Maricopa County officials who are more admiring of the hockey sport.

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A’s still moving to Sacramento for three years, despite no lease and MLB disdain, because reasons

access_time personNeil deMause

We made it through the weekend, and it looks like the Oakland A’s are still moving temporarily to Sacramento, though with A’s owner John Fisher you never can tell. Let’s check out the latest developments:

  • A’s stadium goon Dave Kaval clarified, according to the San Jose Mercury News, that “there is no lease agreement” with Sacramento and “the A’s won’t pay a dime in rent.” Rather, the A’s will pay for some upgrades at the River Cats‘ 10,000-seat ballpark (price: Kaval didn’t say) and will be allowed to play there for three years with an option for a fourth based on just, I dunno, a handshake? Handshakes come with option years now? Followup questions much, Merc News?
  • ESPN’s Buster Olney tweeted on Friday that other MLB teams have “a lot of disgust with how the A’s have handled the ballpark situation,” especially since Fisher is expected to keep lowballing payroll while farming revenue-sharing checks from the league. “This makes us all look bad,” Olney quotes “one person” as saying (presumably a person who works for an MLB team, Olney didn’t say). Olney didn’t explain, even after being asked about it by pretty much everyone on Twitter, why then every team owner in baseball voted for Fisher’s Vegas move. It’s the expansion fees, right? It’s gotta be the expansion fees.
  • A “communications and branding expert” in Las Vegas writes in the Nevada Independent that the Sacramento residency “leaves one wondering why the club wouldn’t simply move to Summerlin’s minor league ballpark instead,” then answers his own question by saying “one of the main reasons Nevada was probably rejected as an option is the annual $67 million deal the team has with NBC Sports California” which will have to be renegotiated in Sacramento but still might be worth more than whatever Fisher might get in Nevada. Plus, he notes, the Nevada Supreme Court is set to hear arguments starting tomorrow in the Nevada state teachers union’s push to put a stadium funding repeal referendum on the state ballot, which could kill the entire Vegas move if a vote goes like it did last week in Kansas City. All of which adds up, writes Michael Schaus, to “an improvised and haphazard scramble,” yup, don’t think anyone had missed that.

If there’s been one common theme to Fisher’s entire A’s relocation saga, it’s been pushing on ahead regardless of whether he seems to know how he plans to proceed or why he’s doing it — whether that was choosing Las Vegas in the first place when he had a seemingly more lucrative stadium deal on the table in a bigger market in Oakland or choosing Sacramento as a temporary home because maybe he can keep part of his TV deal and anyway he’s friends with the local minor-league owner there. Not that any of the theories above are necessarily wrong, but there’s a fine line between decision and whim, and John Fisher above all other major sports owners keeps finding a way to walk it.

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Friday roundup: More vague Royals threats, Coyotes trying every trick in book at once, plus: stadium theme song challenge!

access_time personNeil deMause

Not gonna lie, this week has been a lot, what with Kansas City and environs voting down a Royals and Chiefs tax subsidy proposal and the Oakland A’s announcing a temporary move to Sacramento, requiring eight full posts in four days. (If you want to show your appreciation, or just your sympathy, you know where to find the tip jar.) I’m tempted to let you all go a day early, but then what would we do with all the other news that happened this week and got short shrift? Let’s take it one bullet point at a time and see how it goes:

  • Kansas City Royals owner John Sherman’s wife, Marny Sherman, for some reason got to be the one to make move threats in the wake of Tuesday’s “no” vote on a $500 million sales tax surcharge for the Royals and Chiefs, posting on Facebook that “neither team will work with Jackson County again.” Presumably she means to imply that the teams will either look to neighboring Clay County or the neighboring state of Kansas — she concluded her post, “We will be lucky if both teams wind up in Kansas. At least still in the area!” — though neither has a stadium funding plan in place right now, which is a big part of why the team owners were focusing on Jackson County. Meanwhile, Missouri state Sen. Bill Eigel — yes, the flamethrower guy — says, “I know of no path in the Missouri Senate where we’re going to do any public funding of sports stadiums” and “I think that would be resisted vociferously and extensively,” and while Eigel doesn’t have a leadership position, I’m not sure I’d want to risk finding out what he means by “resist extensively.”
  • Arizona Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo is dead set on winning an auction for public land on which to build a new arena, and also is looking for someone who wants to buy the team, and also is threatening to move the team somewhere if he doesn’t get the land. Plus, the Arizona Republic reports that “team leadership is also likely to seek a special taxing arrangement to help finance construction” if it does win the land bid. Alex Meruelo is also a lot — maybe he might want to consider having one less pregnancy?
  • Marc Normandin has taken on the question of why other MLB owners are content to let John Fisher have the A’s spend three years playing in a minor-league stadium and then potentially move them to baseball’s smallest market while continuing to rake in revenue-sharing checks, and concluded that other owners are not content at all, but they’re also not going to do anything about it: “Owners are probably just happy that the Fisher saga is nearly at an end, and that this potentially opens up the path for them to split expansion fees once the A’s are fully settled in somewhere new in a new park, and hey, in the meantime, one fewer suitor on free agency means prices get to come down.”
  • More on the Sacramento River Cats stadium that is supposed to host the A’s the next three years, via SFGate:  [River Cats broadcaster Bill] Laskey mentioned that the press amenities are dreadfully lacking, with only two total broadcast booths — one for each radio team — and, in Laskey’s estimation, space for four to eight people in the press box. When the occasional River Cats game was televised, Laskey told SFGATE the TV crew would take over one of the booths, forcing a radio broadcaster to call the game outside under a canopy, even in the blistering Sacramento sun.”
  • Philadelphia’s Civic Design Review committee called 76ers owner Josh Harris’s plan to build an arena on the downtown Gallery mall site “undercooked” and a continuation of the bad public planning that led to the failed mall in the first place, with one member saying, “We need to think about the real giveback here and whether we should build this thing.” The committee is only advisory, but coupled with the fact that city agencies are now months overdue producing studies of the arena project that would allow a city council vote, all the trash talking only adds to the project’s distinct lack of momentum.
  • Why should St. Petersburg-area taxpayers spend around $1.5 billion on a new Tampa Bay Rays stadium to revitalize the area around the current stadium when it could just build all the other stuff like housing and museums and skip the expensive part? That’s the question being asked by Tampa Bay Times opinion editor Graham Brink, before acknowledging that there are intangible benefits to having a sports team: “When the team wins, the city feels a sense of collective pride. What’s that worth?” That’s actually been studied, and the answer is: Not as much as you might think.
  • I had to head back home after one day of last week’s sports economics conference and so sadly missed taking in a Baltimore Orioles game with the assembled economists, but fortunately the Baltimore Banner has the recap.
  • This interview with Good Jobs First director Greg LeRoy took place before the Alexandria, Virginia arena plan for the Washington Capitals and Wizards got a fork stuck in it, but it’s a great reminder of both how dubious the economic arguments were for the deal (MuniCap, the consultant that came up with $75 parking fees to justify the arena, is “not a company known for saying no, let’s put it that way,” says LeRoy) and how dumb it is that team owners refuse to release details of their own numbers on the grounds it’s “proprietary” information.
  • And this interview with me by Debtwire took place right after the Kansas City stadium tax vote, but we covered a lot of ground regarding other cities’ stadium and arena shenanigans as well. If only we had had a theme song…
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A’s announce temporary relocation to Sacramento for next 3-4 years

access_time personNeil deMause

The Oakland A’s and Sacramento River Cats (and Kings) owner Vivek Ranadive have issued a joint statement that the A’s will play the next three seasons in Sacramento’s 10,000-seat minor-league stadium while awaiting a move to Las Vegas:

The A’s and the San Francisco Giants‘ Triple-A River Cats will presumably timeshare, each heading to the road while the other is at home, which should be tons of fun for MLB’s and MiLB’s schedulers. (See update below.) But lots of questions remain:

  • Is this a binding agreement, or could A’s owner John Fisher back out of it (either now or in future years) if he finds what he thinks is a better option?
  • How much will the A’s pay to lease Sacramento’s stadium?
  • Will the 10,000-seat capacity be expanded, or will any overflow fans just have to sit on the 4,000-person outfield lawn?
  • Does the MLB Players’ Association have any say in its members playing in a minor-league stadium for at least three years?
  • Will the A’s be able to keep their NBC Sports California TV deal, and if so how much of their current $67 million a year rights fee will they retain?
  • There’s a one-year option if the Vegas stadium isn’t ready by 2028, but what happens if it’s still not ready by 2029, which seems increasingly possible given that’s less than five years away and there’s still no design or financing plan?

I’ll be updating this post if and when more information is available. In the meantime, here’s the new temporary home of your Las Voaklamento A’s:

UPDATE, 11:37 am: It just occurred to me that the Pacific Coast League plays week-long series against one team at a time, to cut down on travel. This is going to make drawing up an A’s schedule really interesting, to say the least.

UPDATE, 12:26 pm: Per the Athletic: “Asked if the team would change its name to the Sacramento A’s, a spokesperson said the club will be called the Athletics and A’s for the interim period.” So no city name at all, really? Couldn’t they at least follow ABA precedent and call themselves the Californians? The West Coasters?

UPDATE, 12:33 pm: Twitter is already debating where the A’s will move to next after this:

UPDATE, 1:17 pm: A’s employees don’t know any more than we do.

https://twitter.com/RickeyBlog/status/1775934866070360248

UPDATE, 2:39 pm: ESPN reports: “Any move to a minor league ballpark will have to gain the approval of the Major League Baseball Players Association, which will assess factors such as player safety, weather and the suitability of dugouts and clubhouses.” Nothing on whether the MLBPA just has to sign off on playing conditions or can veto the move for other reasons as well.

UPDATE, 2:42 pm: Fisher gonna Fisher. To be fair, he wouldn’t be the only person who can’t name a single current A’s player.

UPDATE, 2:47 pm: Trevor Hildenberger, who pitched for the River Cats the last two years, has a warning for A’s players:

 

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Will the Kansas City Chiefs move to Greensboro? An investimagation

access_time personNeil deMause

One of the main themes of the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals‘ now-failed stadium sales-tax subsidy campaign was that if it didn’t pass, the teams would have to “consider our options,” as Chiefs owner Clark Hunt put it. So naturally, the media has been all abuzz the last two days with articles wondering if the teams will move — or at least whether the Chiefs will move, presumably since nobody gets that excited about the Royals, who have gotten off to a head start on an eighth straight losing season. And the media being the media, some of the headlines haven’t skimped on the alarmism:

The actual news here, though, is awfully thin. Yes, the Chiefs’ lease expires in 2031, after which the team could theoretically move if Hunt can find a more lucrative place to move to. Yes, Ron Ryckman Jr., whose Twitter handle is still “Speaker Ryckman” even though he retired as Kansas House speaker last fall, texted the Kansas City Star that “Jackson County fumbled. Now there will be a mad scramble for the ball and we’re in the best position for a scoop and score,” pointing to a state fund from sports betting proceeds that currently has $4.1 million in it as evidence that “Kansas taxpayers will see minimal costs” from any new Chiefs stadium. And yes, the mayor of Dallas posted a somewhat tongue-in-cheek “Welcome home, Dallas Texans!” tweet following the vote, saying, “our market is big enough, growing enough, and loves football more than enough to support a second NFL team.” (Greensboro officials have so far remained coyly silent.)

So, politicians gonna grandstand, sure. But are the Chiefs really likely to go anywhere? To his credit, the Associated Press’s David Lieb looked at how this has historically worked out after team owners lose tax subsidy votes, and found typically they just stick around and try to shake down local elected officials some other way:

“Usually, team owners just find a new way to get money, and they’ll go the legislative route,” said Geoffrey Propheter, an associate public finance professor at the University of Colorado Denver. “Rarely do team owners just straight up leave.” …

After losing elections, some teams subsequently sidestep voters to get new stadiums.

In 1997, voters in 11 southwestern Pennsylvania counties rejected a proposed half-cent sales tax to replace a stadium shared by the MLB’s Pirates and NFL’s Steelers with two separate facilities and to fund a convention center expansion. But the next year, a regional development district approved public financing for the new facilities without going back to voters.

Similar scenarios played out elsewhere in the mid-1990s. When voters in King County, Washington, rejected a tax plan for a Seattle Mariners ballpark, owners threatened to put the team up for sale. Within a month, state lawmakers authorized a new financing plan for a new baseball stadium.

After Wisconsin voters rejected a sports lottery for a new Milwaukee Brewers ballpark, the state legislature authorized a regional sales tax to help pay for it.

And so on. Sure, there are counterexamples — Lieb mentions the San Diego Chargers moving to Los Angeles after a stadium funding referendum there went down to defeat. And it’s always worth noting that relocations are somewhat easier in the NFL, since it’s less of a challenge to find cities where you can sell out just eight home games a year, plus so much of teams’ revenue comes from national TV money that flows in regardless of where you play. But history shows that when team owners are denied subsidies at the ballot box, they try, try again — sometimes, as in the case of the San Francisco Giants, eventually deciding to build a stadium without a ton of public funds.

So far, officials in Jackson County seem amenable to negotiating a deal with the Chiefs and Royals owners that doesn’t suck quite so hard for the public, though it’s open to interpretation whether that means one that costs less public money or just one where the team owners are clear up front about exactly how much they’re asking for. But turning one mayor and one ex-legislator’s statements that, sure, they would love to host the Chiefs into an “uncertain future” is bad journalism — unless you see journalism’s job as being part of a “growth coalition” to get whatever local business leaders want done, in which case, fine job, Washington Post.

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A’s owner rejects Oakland’s $97m rent request, could hit up Sacramento for a temporary home next

access_time personNeil deMause

Representatives of the Oakland A’s and the city of Oakland met yesterday as planned to discuss the city’s latest proposal for a $97 million lease extension to keep the team in the Oakland Coliseum for 3-5 years while a new stadium in Las Vegas is (maybe) built, and how did that go? Not well at all!

“We appreciate Oakland’s engagement and also we are far apart on the terms needed to agree on an extension,” the club said in a statement.

ESPN previously reported that A’s owner John Fisher would accept a two-year deal with a total of $17 million in rent, which certainly qualifies as far apart. No word on whether he would be okay with the city’s demand that he sell his 50% stake in the Coliseum site to a private developer (presumably these guys), though ESPN said that wasn’t expected to be a sticking point in talks.

If Fisher doesn’t want to pay up to Oakland, though, his other options are limited. ABC7’s Casey Pratt says he’s hearing (from undisclosed sources, this was just a tweet) that A’s execs are set to meet with Sacramento officials today, then will hold an internal meeting tomorrow. Sacramento’s stadium only has about 10,000 seats, with another 4,000 fans able to sit on its outfield lawn and in standing room, so would seem like a terrible option for an alleged major league team — though their current average attendance would fit comfortably in a ballpark that size. Also, a temporary move to Sacramento might allow Fisher to hold on to his lucrative TV deal, even if he would have to negotiate it down from the current $67 million a year if he moved out of the Bay Area proper, which might be alluring to an owner who has pretty much given up on the whole “put a viable team on the field and try to sell tickets to watch them” thing as a business model.

All of this, of course, presupposes that the A’s will have a stadium in Vegas to move to by 2028 or thereabouts, and there remains no word of how that’s supposed to work, either financially or in terms of fitting it into the available space. Fisher increasingly appears to just be making this up as he goes along, but only Oakland so far has even partly called his bluff — it remains to be seen whether Sacramento or MLB or the mysterious investors who Fisher claims will pay for $1 billion worth of his Vegas stadium will tell him to go pound sand as well, which is probably what it would take for our reader predictions to come true. Until then, we may be left wondering what Sacramento River Cats fans will think when they find out their Triple-A team may be replaced by a lower level of baseball.

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