Friday roundup: Rays plan return to upgraded Trop, soccer stadiums in every city not working out so well

access_time personNeil deMause

This was a light posting week, as I was traveling and the airline mayhem as the result of the government shutdown … didn’t actually affect me at all, my flight was uneventful and actually landed ahead of schedule. The cab ride from the airport hit a lot of traffic, though!

Stadium and arena news was light as well, presumably everyone was distracted by one scandal or another, but there’s still plenty to chew on:

  • The Tampa Bay Rays confirmed that they’ll return to Tropicana Field next spring after roof repairs are done, along with “an expanded main videoboard, new video displays behind home plate and along both foul poles, a new sound system and updated suite interiors.” The city is, as required in the team’s lease, paying for $59.7 million in repairs ($7.65 million has been covered by insurance); the team owners are paying for upgrades, though they haven’t revealed how much they’re spending, and determining things like whether replacing the interior of a flooded luxury suite with a nicer interior is a repair or an upgrade could get dicey, hopefully someone either in city government or in the local media is keeping an eye on that, please?
  • “Can Soccer Stadiums Revitalize American Cities?” asks the New York Times, with the big reveal being: Nope. “Mixed-use development components, particularly ones that include housing, are often delayed or, to date, are incomplete,” reports the Times. “And those projects, experts say, don’t always bring in the revenue and economic activity that are promised.” Ian Betteridge is shocked, shocked.
  • The owner of the Des Moines Menace is seeking state money for a $95 million soccer stadium for that minor-league USL team as well as a yet-to-be-created women’s pro soccer team, and the Des Moines Register is asking if it will revitalize Des Moines like soccer stadiums have other cities, guess they couldn’t get past the Times paywall. (Psst, use archive.ph.)
  • The Los Angeles City Council officially voted to oppose the Dodger Stadium gondola project, with one councilmember calling it “an insult to our communities, and the process has been an insult to our collective intelligence,” yup, that tracks. The ultimate decision is up to the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which wrapped up its public comment period on the proposal yesterday.
  • The Philadelphia 76ers arena plan for the edge of Chinatown is dead, but the controversy over how the site will be “revitalized” lives on, with Sixers owner Josh Harris planning to start demolitions soon and neighborhood advocates saying that’s only “going to make the situation worse with no real guarantees that it will get better.” But blight is good for getting development projects approved, so it could end up being better for Harris, why doesn’t anyone ever think of the poor little rich boy?
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Chiefs seek ideas for Kansas dome, Missouri gov counters with roof offer of his own (cost TBD)

access_time personNeil deMause

Ugggh, I really did not want to have to write a whole item on Kansas City Chiefs execs issuing a request for proposals for Kansas stadium designs and “negotiating for land near the Kansas Speedway” because we already knew they were playing footsie with Kansas, this isn’t really news. If there were indications that this meant team owner Clark Hunt is more serious about moving across the state line, sure, that would be worthy of note; but since ginning up a move threat looks pretty exactly like planning a move, and in fact team owners don’t really have to decide which they’re doing at the outset, we’re still on the “play off neighboring states against each other” square of the game board.

But when no news gets an actual response, that’s when it bubbles up out of the quantum field and turns into news, and we have now reached that point:

As the Kansas City Chiefs weigh whether to play future games in a renovated Arrowhead Stadium or a proposed dome in Kansas, Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe on Tuesday floated a potential mixture of the two concepts aimed at keeping the team in his state….

“There’s some interesting architectural improvements to make to Arrowhead that could be conducive to an all-weather protective environment without being a full dome,” Kehoe told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “I would say, look at some of the structures that are in Europe that may have some sort of fabric device that goes over it.”

Yes, many soccer stadiums in Europe have fabric roofs! So does the Los Angeles Rams stadium, and it’s even freestanding without touching the seating bowl, so probably an even better comparable for what you’re considering, Gov. Kehoe. And putting a retractable roof over the stadium was actually proposed way back in 1968 when it was first designed, this really is quite the day for non-news news.

The catch, obviously, is that adding a roof over the Chiefs’ current stadium could be quite spendy. (Kehoe said nothing about a price tag or how it would be paid for.) The closest anyone has gotten to talking about real dollars and cents this week was the Kansas Reflector, which checked in with economist J.C. Bradbury — whose eagerly awaited new book “This One Will be Different: False Promises and Fiscal Realities of Publicly Funded Stadiums” will be out in 2026 — about whether a new stadium would pay off for the public, and you can practically hear his exasperated sighs between the lines:

“If you went and called a doctor for a study on the dangers of smoking, you wouldn’t be able to find a doctor who would say smoking is good for you, right?” Bradbury said. “If you would ask economists about the economic benefits of stadiums, you probably couldn’t find an economist who would say that they’re beneficial. But no one wants to listen to economists on that.”

But, J.C., the Kansas Reflector wanted to listen to you! And gave the story the hard-hitting headline “Chiefs weigh stadium in Kansas, but economist doubts economic gains” … okay, maybe the paper could have chosen a stronger word than “doubts.” Give it another decade, and maybe we can get the media up to “questions” or even “mistrusts”!

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Will the Commanders name their stadium after Trump? A mini-investimagation

access_time personNeil deMause

I was traveling yesterday and missed the big (?) news (?) about how “a senior White House source” has been in touch with Washington Commanders owner Josh Harris about having Donald Trump’s name on the Commanders’ new stadium, something that White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said “would be a beautiful name, as it was President Trump who made the rebuilding of the new stadium possible.” (Citation needed on both of those facts, Karoline.)

That Trump wants his name on a football stadium should come as no surprise, as he wants his name on pretty much everything. That Harris is talking to him about it is also unsurprising, as it’s clearly good politics to meet with Trump and at least pretend to listen to him until his attention wanders elsewhere. Actually calling it “Trump Stadium” is another story, for a bunch of reasons:

  • Naming rights are worth a lot — as much as $30 million a year, which even spread over 30 years can be worth almost half a billion dollars in present value — and that’s money Harris won’t eagerly give up. He could try for some kind of hybrid name, like “[Corporate Name Here] Stadium at Trump Field,” but he’s likely to be limited to a smaller group of potential buyers if the official brand is saddled with an unwanted partner, especially one as polarizing as Trump.
  • ESPN reported that “a source with firsthand knowledge of the process” said Harris “doesn’t have the authority” to choose a name on his own, and “the city would be involved in that decision, and the Park Service would be involved.” That’s not necessarily true: D.C.’s term sheet with Harris grants the team “exclusive rights to manage, operate, market, and control the Stadium,” which presumably includes the right to name it. (Harris is explicitly guaranteed all the proceeds from stadium naming rights.) The city and Park Service could perhaps present some roadblocks in the case of a name they didn’t like, but then so could Trump if he doesn’t get his way.
  • Stadium names, to put it mildly, come and go. Unless Trump is successful in getting it contractually guaranteed that his name will be on the stadium in perpetuity, there would be nothing stopping Harris from quietly removing it once he’s out of office. (Or, more hilariously, printing it in the smallest type size imaginable.)

So this is all firmly in the category of things to wait and only take seriously if anyone at the White House still remembers it a month from now, like the time Trump said he wouldn’t allow the stadium to be built unless the Commanders changed back to their old name or the time he threatened to take away NFL tax breaks if players kept protesting racism. Or, you could run story after story about what D.C. residents think and what people on the internet think and what Tip O’Neill would think, that’s also a choice.

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Friday roundup: Royals “poll” fans on why they need a new stadium, plus still more soccer teams, so many soccer teams

access_time personNeil deMause

I’m posting this week’s roundup from the road, so apologies if any news slipped through the cracks, and I’ll try to catch up with it next week. But at least I’m not shutting down my site to take a full-time editing job: While I’m very happy for Tom Scocca’s bank balance and health coverage, he’s one of the best writers and most astute political analysts in an increasingly threadbare media landscape, and his writing at Indignity and elsewhere will be sorely missed.

In happier news … hahaha, what am I saying, most of this news is dismal as always. But anyway in LOLdemocracy news:

  • Kansas City Royals officials are surveying selected fans about their thoughts on three potential stadium locations — Downtown/Near Downtown, Clay County/North Kansas City and Johnson County/Overland Park — some of which surely is meant to serve as a push poll, given that it only includes one positive option about the team’s current home (“Kauffman Stadium is still a great place to watch a game; There is no reason for the Royals to leave”) and two negative ones (“Kauffman Stadium is past its prime and needs to be replaced by a modern ballpark that is surrounded by an entertainment district with shops, restaurants and bars” and “I love the ‘K’, but it lacks the amenities of modern ballparks and our region would be better served with a brand-new ballpark in a different part of town”). And while surely team owner John Sherman will use the actual responses in some way, you know that his main concern is who he can extricate the most public money from — and by naming three potential locations, he also creates leverage to get the most public money from whichever site he or fans might prefer otherwise, so really win-win-win for him!
  • Raleigh may be asked to build a new stadium for the NC Courage and North Carolina F.C. (currently about to go on hiatus before jumping to the USL’s new top tier intended to compete with MLS) soccer teams, and Green Bay may build a stadium for new minor-league soccer teams, and Rancho Cordova may get tax incentives to help build a $175 million arena for an indoor soccer team, hands up everyone who knows where Rancho Cordova is or that the U.S. has an indoor soccer league! In any event, everybody still gets a soccer team, cities really don’t have to rush to pay for stadiums to get one, you have to beat them away with sticks at this point.
  • Tampa Bay Business and Wealth (?) headline: “The data is in: Mixed-use stadiums win big for cities and fans.” Actual report (?) by consultants JLL (“We believe in the power of real estate to shape a better world”) linked to in the article: “Attendance trends from the 2025 MLB regular season show that stadiums in Lifestyle Market ecosystems drive elevated attendance, even when team performance is poor” (mostly based on the success of the Atlanta Braves, who drew well in 2025 despite sucking largely because people still  bought tickets thinking the entire starting rotation wasn’t going to get injured) and “By 2040, we predict that at least half of MLB organizations will announce plans to develop a new stadium or perform a major redevelopment of their existing venue” this seems to be more winning big for team owners than for fans or cities, you know?
  • MLS commissioner Don Garber is headed to Vancouver to complain that the Whitecaps don’t get first dibs on dates for playoff games and have to share food and beverage revenue with their government landlords, can you imagine the nerve of those Canadians?
  • On Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb’s proposal for a sales tax surcharge district to fund Guardians and Cavaliers upgrades, Cleveland.com reports that “on Reddit, users on r/cleveland and r/cavs were largely united around the same message: billionaire team owners should pay for their own stadiums. They rejected the idea that beers or hotdogs should cost more,” while “on Facebook, the reaction was more skeptical — and often sarcastic.”
  • We already knew that the Baltimore Ravens were working on a nearly-half-billion-dollar renovation funded mostly by tax dollars, but “The Ravens are investing an additional $55 million for the improvements, with the stadium authority set to reimburse the team up to $35 million of that amount” is a new twist, not to mention a new definition of “investing.”
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Spurs owner wins vote to unlock $889m in arena subsidies after outspending opposition 32-to-1

access_time personNeil deMause

Voters in Bexar County, Texas approved two measures yesterday to raise hotel and car rental taxes and use the proceeds to help build a new San Antonio Spurs arena and renovate their old one to be a year-round stock show and rodeo venue. Though early polling last month had showed Proposition B trailing 46-40%, the arena measure squeaked through by a 53-47% margin after the pro-arena campaign pumped at least $7 million, almost all of it from Spurs owner Peter Holt, into campaign ads urging voters to “keep the Spurs in San Antonio, baby,” while the opposition campaign had spent only $219,000 at last count.

Of the proceeds from the new tax hike, $311 million will go to the Spurs for their new arena, and $192 million to redo the old one for the rodeo. In both cases, though, that’s money paid out over the next 30 years — meaning the $311 million will only be enough to pay off about $150 million of Holt’s arena expenses in the present day. The passage of the ballot measure, though, also unlocks a pile of other public funding: In August the San Antonio city council approved spending $489 million in sales and property tax proceeds toward the arena, contingent on yesterday’s county vote, bringing Holt’s total thus far to $639 million; there’s also a proposal for the city to spend $225-250 million on traffic upgrades around the new arena site, which if approved next spring will raise the overall public subsidy to as much as $889 million.

That is starting to get to where, as they say, you’re talking about real money — especially for building an arena to replace one that is only 23 years old and was just renovated 10 years ago. But by threatening that the team would leave (for somewhere unspecified) if public funds weren’t approved, as well as hammering on the idea that taxes on hotels and car rentals and the arena itself aren’t really tax money because reasons, Holt successfully convinced a slim majority of county residents that this arena will bring the promised redevelopment riches that the last one promised and failed to. As a prize, he will now get a $1.3 billion arena by putting down only about $500 million of his own money, and he can presumably expect to recoup some of that through things like the sale of naming rights and jacking up ticket prices, while the city and state will have to cover their share without any cut of arena revenues.

This is pretty much how democracy works in America right now: The public gets to vote on things, occasionally, but other times their elected representatives vote without consulting them, and in either case rich dudes who want tax subsidies get to spend millions of dollars on lobbyists and campaign ads in order to win hundreds of millions in return. I’ve been saying for 27 years now that Field of Schemes is actually a book about the need for campaign finance reform, and it just becomes more true with each passing year. Though at least the Spurs’ terrifying mascot is happy now — our system of governance works fine for those who own it.

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Cleveland mayor wants new taxes to fund Cavs, Guardians upgrades to avoid using old taxes to do so

access_time personNeil deMause

This week’s candidate for weirdest headline, from yesterday at Cleveland.com:

Bibb to Cavs and Guardians: No more bailouts until there’s a new game plan to fund stadium repairs

So once the Cavaliers and Guardians owners agree to a new way to fund stadium repairs, then Mayor Justin Bibb will agree to bailouts? Wha? Let’s read further:

Bibb told reporters at a recent news conference that he wants to create a special financing district that could collect small fees on parking, dining and entertainment in the Gateway District. The mayor said it’s a “practical, pragmatic” way to generate revenue to help maintain Progressive Field and Rocket Arena.

“Fees” on parking, dining, and entertainment are more commonly known as “sales tax surcharges,” and applying these to the entirety of the Gateway District — which includes not just the Cavs arena and Guardians stadium, but a bunch of malls and restaurants and other attractions — would represent additional tax money that locals and tourists alike would have to pay toward maintaining and upgrading the teams’ venues. That’s in one way better than the city having to scrounge around every couple of years for more cash to spend on upkeep, but in another way worse in that the city would be implementing a new tax to funnel upgrade money to the team owners ad infinitum, presumably even after the expiration of the current leases (2034 for the Cavs, 2036 for the Guardians) during which the city took over major capital repairs for the teams in exchange for them agreeing to stay put a few more years.

If the Cavs and Guardians aren’t ready to pursue new revenue streams, Bibb said City Hall won’t approve another bailout.

“I made it clear to the teams,” Bibb said. “I’m not tapping the general revenue fund until we look at these other concepts.”

“Take my tax money or I won’t give you any more tax money” is a novel approach, I’ll grant you that. Bibb says using surcharges in a New Community Authority, or NCA, would “shift the cost of stadium repairs away from residents and toward visitors who attend games and dine nearby,” but 1) residents go to see Cavs and Guardians games, that’s exactly who Cavs and Guardians fans are, and 2) even if this were all tourist money, it’s still tax money that the city could choose to collect and keep, but would instead be turning over to the team owners. (Cleveland currently has a similar taxing district on the lakefront, but that’s designated for building public spaces, at least, not for upgrades to privately controlled sports venues.)

One weird twist about Ohio NCAs is that property owners have to opt in to them, so it’s entirely possible all the landholders whose restaurants and malls would get newly tax-surcharged could tell the city to pound sand and there would be no new revenue at all. (The stadium and arena are co-owned by the city and the county; it’s an interesting question if the Cavs and Guardians, as tenants, could opt out of being taxed to fund their own upgrades.) Cleveland.com theorizes that “business owners would support it because the Cavs and Guardians drive foot traffic that keeps the Gateway District lively,” but that presupposes that 1) business owners will assume the Cavs and Guardians will leave without new taxes, despite those leases being in place for another decade and 2) they think game-day foot traffic is valuable enough to be worth getting saddled with as much as a 5% tax hike.

All this is coming to a head because the cigarette and alcohol taxes that were originally used to pay for the Gateway venues and later extended to pay for upgrades are coming up short of what the teams want, and local voters are currently so steamed by the Browns moving to suburban Brook Park that they may not approve a renewal of those taxes anyway. Mayor Bibb is also famously steamed about the Browns moving, or at least was until Browns owner Jimmy Haslam agreed to make $80 million worth of payments to his city, but he’s stuck with those leases for the near future, and would rather raise taxes just in the sports district than on all of Cleveland.

Even if it’s public money either way, you can kind of see where Bibb is coming from. Or you could point out that the whole Gateway complex was pitched as economic development that would pay for itself but instead is requiring ever-higher levels of public subsidies, and there’s a time to stop throwing good money after bad. At this point it would probably require breaching the teams’ leases and letting them walk if they want, but since neither has any great immediate options for relocation (Brook Park isn’t going to build two stadiums) and they can walk in another 9-to-11 years anyway, there’s an argument to be made for calling their bluff now and seeing what their owners do once the subsidy faucet is shut off.

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Sportswriters alarmed as Bears again do not get $1B in tax money toward new stadium

access_time personNeil deMause

The Illinois legislature adjourned Friday without approving any Chicago Bears stadium bills, and people be reacting:

  • Phil Rogers, writing as a Forbes “contributor,” reports that “the wait goes on as the team tries to find the necessary funding for needed infrastructure upgrades and assurances on property taxes.” Inserting both “necessary” and “needed” is piling on the sports owner perspective a little thick, but probably on brand for a guy who once co-wrote a book with Bud Selig.
  • Gene Chamberlain, the Bears correspondent at Rogers’ old workplace, Sports Illustrated, complains that the the McCaskey family is only “looking for a frozen tax rate which has already been negotiated with surrounding taxing bodies, and about $855 million for infrastructure,” but Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker “falsely depicted the Bears as attempting to get the stadium built by public funds,” because infrastructure isn’t a stadium and tax breaks on a stadium aren’t … wait, let me start over.
  • Bloomberg News calls it a Bears “fumble,” because you know how non-sports news outlets especially always love the sports puns. Bloomberg also describes the Bears as “stuck with an outdated stadium and fans longing for a new football coliseum,” which 1) Soldier Field may be unloved, but it was just completely rebuilt in 2002 which isn’t all that long ago and 2) fans don’t especially seem to be longing for what the Bears owners want to build.
  • The Chicago Sun-Times reports that “Bears sources” say the team could start looking at stadium sites outside Cook County, writing that “numerous suburbs have courted the team,” though notably not by offering any of the money that the McCaskeys want. Also said Chicago suburbs are all in Illinois, which is the state whose legislature just declined to approve that billion dollars or so in tax money, so this may not be as promising an option as you think, Sun-Times.

So anyhoo, the McCaskeys did not succeed in getting around a billion dollars from the state of Illinois, will continue to seek ways to get around a billion dollars from the state of Illinois, stop the presses. This is pretty much the exact same set of stories that ran back in June when the state legislature adjourned then without giving the Bears owners a wad of cash. At least this time around the Sun-Times didn’t describe the session as expiring “without the Chicago Bears breaking the line of scrimmage in Springfield” after the failure of legislation that “could’ve thrown the team a block in their rush to the former Arlington International Racecourse” and Bears lobbyists being “left on the Capitol sideline” — though the paper’s headline did say that the owners’ last-minute offer of $25 million “doesn’t move ball forward in Springfield for new stadium,” it’s a sickness, I tell you.

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Friday roundup: Bears offer Illinois dimes on the dollar toward stadium, Browns considering $150k-a-seat PSLs

access_time personNeil deMause

Apologies for this week’s late roundup — I had to retrieve my now-repaired laptop from the shop and get settled back in before writing this. On the bright side (for you, the information-craving consumer of sports subsidy news, surely not for me, the lowly scribe of such reports), even more stuff happened while I was at the store, so you get to enjoy bonus material as a result!

  • The Chicago Bears owners responded to Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s demand that before getting any state help with a new stadium, the team must pay off the state’s $350-500 million in remaining debt on Soldier Field: How about $25 million instead? The response from legislators has been mostly LOLBears: State Rep. Kam Buckner called the offer “inadequate” and “disrespectful,” while Pritzker deadpanned, “I’m not sure what it’s tied to, what they’re asking for in return for it. I think if they’re donating $25 million to support the people of Chicago or the people of Illinois, that’s always a good thing.”
  • Did the Cleveland Browns owners forget to mention that as part of their new stadium in Brook Park, they’re considering charging personal seat license fees of as much as $149,300? Must have slipped their mind, along with how much of those fees would apply to the Haslams’ share of stadium costs and how much to the public’s $600 million and up cost. (Pretty sure the answers are “all” and “none,” respectively, since that’s how it always works.)
  • Also on the Browns front, the Crain’s Cleveland Business editorial board writes that Mayor Justin Bibb’s proposed deal to get $80 million worth of payments in exchange for letting the team move to Brook Park “leaves a bit of a bitter taste” but may be the best Cleveland can get given that “team owners hold the leverage in an environment where cities are desperate to retain their teams.” Or, at least, they do when the state legislature hands out $600 million to the team to help it move from one part of the state to another. Fixed that for you!
  • The Seattle Sounders owners are seeking outside investors to buy a minority share of the team, with the proceeds possibly being used toward building a new soccer-only stadium, possibly at its Longacres training site in nearby Renton. That’s a lot of possiblys, for sure, but Sportico values the Sounders at $825 million and soccer-specific stadiums generally go for less than half that, so … possibly.
  • CT United F.C. will begin play in MLS NEXT Pro next year playing home games at venues scattered across Connecticut, while it waits for a new stadium to be built in Bridgeport — which is to say, while it waits for the state to decide to give it $127 million to build one. “On the merits of the actual math, the jobs, the housing, the economic impact and aligning with what the priorities have been stated for this administration, it aligns perfectly,” said CT United owner Andre Swanston, take his word for it, he’s just a disinterested hundred-millionaire.
  • “Will the College Football Playoff title game bring economic boost to the Tampa Bay area?” WTSP-TV actually looked at the results the last time it hosted the CFP championship in 2017, and nope: A promised $250-350 million economic impact turned out to be just $720,000 in added sales tax receipts, while hotel tax receipts actually went down. “If that were the case, why is every major city and community bidding on these major events?” asked Hillsborough County Commissioner Ken Hagan. Because you’re all idiots?
  • No, the “sky stadium” Saudi Arabia plans to build for the 2034 World Cup doesn’t look like this, it looks like this. The former is AI generated, the latter, honestly, is probably AI generated at well, but maybe AI generated on purpose by the people who actually plan to build it? With more than half of the internet now AI slop, it’s arguably bigger news when something isn’t a fake, no?
  • And finally, if you’ve worn out the entertainment value of the yule log, we now have the Athletics Las Vegas stadium construction camera. You’re welcome.
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Spurs owner pours $6.5m into campaign to win Tuesday’s arena subsidy vote

access_time personNeil deMause

Early voting is underway for San Antonio Spurs owner Peter Holt’s ballot measure to get $311 million in Bexar County tax money over 30 years (about $150 million in present value) as part of a $750 million public funding deal, and here’s what’s happening:

Guessing at what will happen when the polls close is always fun, and with surveys showing county voters slightly opposed to the arena funding measures, and being outspent by only a 32:1 ratio often being enough to defeat a sports subsidy measure, it’s fair to say that Holt is going to need all of that $6.5 million to spend on last-minute campaign ads. Not that a defeat on Tuesday would be final: As Wolff observed, there’s nothing stopping Holt from coming back with a slightly different plan — he could even do so the very next year, lots of other team owners have! His arena is just 23 years old and was just renovated 10 years ago, you’d think he’d be in no rush, but billionaires gonna billionaire, it’s how they got to be billionaires in the first place.

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Mavericks, Stars owners launch war for Dallas arena supremacy, taxpayers hold on to your wallets

access_time personNeil deMause

A shooting war has broken out between the owners of the Dallas Mavericks and Stars, with the Mavs owners filing suit yesterday against the Stars owners for … well, it’s complicated. But suffice to say that it all looks to have to do with two elements that are increasingly common factors in sports arena scheming: an expiring lease, plus a battle for dominance between a city’s NBA and NHL franchise owners.

When the Minnesota North Stars first relocated to Dallas in 1993, they shacked up with the Mavericks in Reunion Arena, a then 13-year-old arena owned by the city. The two teams convinced the city to spend $420 million to replace that arena with the American Airlines Center in 2001, and have been co-tenants there ever since, paying $2.2 million a year each in rent and other payments. (No, you are correct, that does not come close to paying off a $420 million construction cost.)

Ever since Sands casino owners Patrick and Sivan Dumont (along with Miriam Adelson) bought majority control of the Mavericks from Mark Cuban in 2023, however, they’ve been increasingly focused on building a new arena-and-casino complex somewhere in the Dallas area. (Casinos aren’t legal in Texas, but the Mavs owners aren’t sweating that part just yet.) Stars CEO Brad Alberts said at the time of the sale that he was fine with going it alone at the current arena, possibly with some renovations, but needed to wait to hear the new Mavs owners’ plans first.

Since then, things have deteriorated fast. Late last year, the two teams failed to reach agreement on a planned $300 million renovation of the current arena — to be paid for half by the city of Dallas, the rest either by the two teams jointly or the Mavs owners alone, depending on who you ask. This was immediately followed by the Mavs seizing the Stars’ half of the arena operating company and withholding their arena revenues. The conflict only escalated with yesterday’s lawsuit filing, in which the Mavs owners charged the Stars owners with breach of contract for moving their corporate headquarters from Dallas to nearby Frisco — in 2003 — and with obstructing improvements to the current arena.

Why the Mavs owners would want to pay to renovate an arena they want to move out of is an excellent question; there’s some speculation that they were simply hoping to lock the Stars into the current arena to keep them from building their own new one. And sure enough, since everything fell apart the Stars owners have begun talking up the possibility of building a new arena themselves, possibly in nearby Plano, or possibly in Frisco, The Colony, Arlington, or Fort Worth.

If all this is starting to sound familiar, it’s likely because of the recent throwdown in Philadelphia between the Flyers and 76ers owners. That was a slightly different scenario — their arena is privately owned, solely by the Flyers owners — but it played out similarly: Sixers owner Josh Harris launched plans to build his own new arena to outcompete the Flyers for concerts, and eventually used this as leverage to get the Flyers owners to agree to jointly build a new arena at the current site. (There’s since been talk of a similar possible dispute in Boston between the Celtics and Bruins.) Two arenas in even a moderately large market can be tough on the owners, who are left needing to compete for concert dates and may even have to offer discounts to land them; but threatening to build competing arenas can be a lucrative game of chicken if you think you can force your fellow team owner to agree to an arena deal that benefits you to avoid being second fiddle in their own city.

Both team owners are playing their arena leverage plans close to the vest, but this whole situation is well worth watching, especially as the teams’ leases expire in 2031 and they’re both hoping to use that to their advantage. Each has several Dallas-area cities they can try to play off against each other for arena subsidies, but at the same time both need to outmaneuver each other, something that the city governments could themselves use as leverage, if they play it smart. Hoping that city officials play things smart is usually a bad bet and early indications aren’t great, but there’s at least a chance here, so fingers crossed!

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