Are the Buffalo Sabres moving to Greensboro now? An investimagation

The Sabres may be moving out of Buffalo!

Sabres might move, as Erie County’s lease with KeyBank Center expires and city can’t afford upkeep and renovations

The Sabres aren’t moving out of Buffalo!

The Buffalo Sabres have no intention of leaving Buffalo.

“I don’t even think that’s a reasonable expectation,” Sabres COO Pete Guelli said.

The Sabres aren’t moving out of Buffalo, but that doesn’t mean they won’t demand public money to get them to sign a new lease to keep them from moving out of Buffalo!

“Our goal is to kind of sit down with the county to stay in the city and work out a solution that’s best for everybody.”

But as you may remember, New York state and Erie County gave the Bills and Pegula Sports a combined $800 million for the new stadium, and multiple sources have told 2 On Your Side that renovations at KeyBank Center could range between 75 and 200 million dollars.

Will the organization be able to make those types of renovations, especially if it’s in that ballpark? Will the organization need assistance from New York State to do that?

“I don’t have that answer yet either. I think the partnership that we set up here at the stadium has been beneficial to everybody involved, so I wouldn’t rule it out.”

WTF is actually going on here: Earlier this week, Erie County executive Mark Poloncarz, one of the architects of the Bills stadium deal that gave the Pegulas (who own the Sabres as well) $250 million in county money along with $750 million in state money, declared that he wants to end the county’s lease on the Sabres arena, which is owned by the city of Buffalo but leased to the county and then subleased to the Pegulas. (I think. The Spectrum News article linked above says, “Erie County owns KeyBank Center, leasing it from the City of Buffalo,” which is nonsensical; Wikipedia and this article both say Erie County owns the arena; I’m still working on getting hold of a copy of the actual lease.)

The Sabres’ lease, which automatically renews this fall for another five years unless the Pegulas opt out, requires the team owners to pay for all interior upgrades, while the county pays for all exterior improvements. And the arena needs up to $200 million in renovations, look, it says right here in this graphic:

Interior renovations? Exterior renovations? Renovations that are needed to keep the place from falling down, renovations that are needed so the Pegulas can charge more money for luxury suites? Who knows! WGRZ had to make that “ripped piece of paper” graphic, no time to waste on more research!

As for Sabres COO Guelli, I watched the WGRZ interview with him so you don’t have to, and he said:

“That’s not our intention to go anywhere.”

And also:

“That’s where things are not quite as simple. Because basically we would have to walk away from the lease, the way it’s currently structured…

“We’re not looking for [the city and county] to contribute beyond their means.”…

Will the organization need assistance from New York State to do that?

“I don’t have that answer yet either. I think the partnership that we set up here at the stadium has been beneficial to everybody involved, so I wouldn’t rule it out.”

So basically: The Sabres’ lease is expiring, and a key bargaining point will be who will pay for what future renovations. The team COO says the Pegulas aren’t threatening to move, but are threatening to “walk away” from their lease and … go skate on frozen-over Lake Erie? Refuse to leave or sign a lease and become squatters? The exact details are left to your imagination, which is how non-threat threats always work: If you spell out exactly what you’re threatening to do, people start asking whether it’s feasible or ethical or a violation of basic human rights. But if you just allude to how you wouldn’t want anything to happen to the team, then nobody raises any pesky questions. At least, not if they know what’s good for them, isn’t that right, Dino?

Share this post:

DC mayor reportedly set to spend $850m on new Commanders stadium, budget cuts be damned

It’s been no secret that D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser really really wants to build a new Washington Commanders stadium at the site of RFK Stadium, and yesterday some details were leaked via NBC Washington reporter Mark Segraves:

D.C. is close to a deal worth more than $3 billion to bring the Washington Commanders back to the District and build a new stadium at the RFK Stadium site.

So the “deal” is worth $3 billion, for both a stadium and a “mixed-use residential and retail development.” And who would be paying for that?

Multiple sources familiar with the deal told News4 that Mayor Muriel Bowser and the Commanders have the framework for a deal in place that would see the team paying the vast majority of the costs to build a new stadium and much of the money provided by the city going for infrastructure that will support the entire 180-acre development.

“Vast majority,” you say? So how much would D.C. taxpayers be on the hook for?

The Commanders would put up as much as $2.5 billion, and the District would provide up to $850 million, documents obtained by News4 show.

This is what’s known in news circles as “burying the lede,” and that’s quite a lede to bury. The unnamed sources specified that the district’s money would only go toward “infrastructure,” plus also “eligible capital costs,” with one example being parking garages that would be used by the new complex. Would D.C. get to recoup parking fees at the garages it built, at least? Or would Commanders owner Josh Harris get 100% of the revenues while taxpayers covered a quarter of the costs? The sources were silent on this, or else Segraves never asked.

As for where D.C. will get that $850 million, $350 million would be “paid in 2032 through taxes generated from the new development,” which is super unclear — bonds would be sold in 2032 based on future tax revenue? which taxes? — but not nearly as unclear as where the district would get that first $500 million:

One hurdle is the looming $410 million in budget cuts D.C. faces for the current fiscal year that were imposed by Congress. That must get resolved, then the mayor can present her budget for fiscal year 2026, which needs to be approved by the D.C. Council and Congress.

Details! Bowser claims her budget is ready to go, in which case we — and the D.C. council — should soon learn more actual specifics of this proposed deal.

In the meantime, a campaign called “Homes Not Stadiums” has launched a petition drive to hold a voter referendum on a measure to block the use of the RFK site for a stadium so that it can be used for affordable housing instead. “To prioritize the stadium over the needs of the people who actually live here, it’s not acceptable, and the mayor should allow the people to have a say in it,” said campaign organizer Kris Furnish, who is an experienced local activist, albeit not previously around budget or housing issues.

Share this post:

County okays Vegas A’s stadium tax kickbacks that state already approved in 2023, progress!

The Clark County Commission approved a special tax district yesterday to help fund a new Athletics stadium in Las Vegas. This means that … well, what exactly does this mean? Let’s recap the story so far:

  • In June of 2023, the Nevada state legislature approved $600 million worth of public subsidies toward a stadium on the Las Vegas strip. (It would not actually be in the city of Las Vegas proper, because that’s how Las Vegas rolls.) Part of the bill included the county kicking back all sales, income, ticket, liquor, and property taxes from the stadium site to pay off $120 million in stadium bonds plus $25 million for infrastructure and public services.
  • For the last 22 months, the county commission just kind of hung out without approving the actual creation of the tax district, but now it has done so.
  • The tax-kickback district — really a tax-kickover, since these taxes never belonged to the team in the first place — would be “a special section around the stadium covering about nine acres,” according to KSNV-TV, though given that the stadium itself is only nine acres, we’re basically just talking about the stadium itself here. If the taxes generated in the stadium aren’t enough to cover the county’s cost, the $145 million will be taken out of the general fund.

In terms of actually providing more money for the A’s Vegas vaporarmadillo, then, this does absolutely nothing: The action by the county just confirms part of the $600 million in subsidies that were already approved by the state. Commissioners didn’t throw up an additional roadblock by denying or delaying the TIF district, sure, but nobody ever expected them to.

So we’re back where we were last week, and last month, and last year: A’s owner John Fisher has a stadium plan that would cost at least $1.75 billion (tariff surcharges not included), and has in hand a commitment for $600 million in public money, and his family has a couple of billion dollars that he could maybe tap part of if he can convince them it’s a good idea to spend it on a tiny dome in a tiny media market, and he’s trying to sell shares in the team at inflated prices to raise more cash. Whether the vibes here feel more like “full speed ahead” or “Fyre Festival 2.0” will be left as an exercise for the reader.

Share this post:

Podcast claims $1.2B Browns subsidy wouldn’t cost Ohioans anything, because reasons

If you read the internet, which clearly you do or how else are you seeing this, you may have noticed that it’s getting harder and harder to actually get any information from news sites these days. Between paywalls, a barrage of ever more intrusive ads, and clickbait editorial stylings (This Famous Celebrity Just Did a Thing You Won’t Believe!), readers are increasingly fighting a losing battle to find out what’s going on in the world, and that’s even before we get into everything increasingly being written by ChatGPT.

Which brings us to yesterday’s headline at Cleveland.com:

“If you’re not going to the games, it’s largely not going to affect you:” Breaking down the Browns stadium deal

Hmm? That’s the argument being made by advocates of a Cleveland Browns stadium subsidy, certainly: This is all “stadium-related” tax money, so it doesn’t matter if the state gives $600 million of it to Browns owner Jimmy Haslam. (Another $600 million would come from the city of Brook Park and Cuyahoga County, and that’s also part of the stadium deal, but apparently it’s considered rude to say so out loud.) Except that the bill would siphon off all taxes — sales, income, anything else not nailed down — from an as-yet-undetermined area surrounding the stadium, so it could affect you even if you’re just going near the games. And since these are taxes that are currently being paid into the state’s general fund on Browns-related sales and income at their existing stadium, instead giving the money to Haslam would be a net loss for anyone who relies on the state of Ohio to fund anything else, like schools or roads or what have you.

So who said that quote, anyway? An economist? A state legislator? A Browns lobbyist? ChatGPT? The Cleveland.com story, which is only two paragraphs long (unless there’s a longer version behind the paywall, but if so most readers will never see it*), doesn’t actually cite the quote at all, forcing interested readers to dig through its Today in Ohio podcast episode, which sports the title “Ohio House budget makes another devastating assault on public schools.” That title only refers to proposed property tax breaks that are threatening to eat into the schools budget, though; what about proposed tax redirection for Haslam?

Scroll past enough Home Depot ads, and you finally get to the Browns section around eight minutes in:

Cleveland Plain Dealer editor Chris Quinn: “The Haslams have put together a financing deal that on the surface looks a lot better for taxpayers than the recent deals for renovations for the Guardians and the Cavaliers….”

Impact editor Leila Atassi: “When you actually dig into the numbers on the Brook Park proposal, it is a lot better than the deals we’ve seen for renovations at Rocket Arena or Progressive Field. Here’s what we’ve found: The Haslams want, of course, the state and Cuyahoga County to each borrow $600 million to help build this new stadium, but the way they plan to pay it back is different: About 85% of the taxes would come directly from people who use the stadium, through things like ticket and parking taxes, or taxes generated by the surrounding development. Only about 15% would fall on the general public, like tourists who stay in hotels or people renting cars. So basically, if you avoid hotels in Cuyahoga County and rental cars, you won’t be paying for this stadium.”

Okay, let’s take a minute and talk about how the system of taxation actually operates. There are two pieces to it: First, the state or another governmental body collects them; then, it spends the proceeds on something. If the tax rate is raised to pay for a project — as was done with cigarette and alcohol taxes for the Guardians — that’s new tax revenue. And if more tax money comes in than would have without the project, those are incremental tax revenues.

Read the podcast quote again, and it increasingly comes off as complete nonsense. The money used would all come from existing taxes, not new ones, so people going to games or renting cars wouldn’t be paying any more than they would be in the absence of a new stadium. The difference is in what would happen to that tax money once it was collected, as it would now be handed over to Haslam instead of being kept to pay for government services. So the only way it wouldn’t cost regular Ohioans anything would be if there was an incremental increase in the amount of taxes collected as a result of the Browns moving a few miles south and any additional development that happened in Brook Park that otherwise would not take place anywhere in Ohio — neither of which are things that the Haslam proposal even pretends to claim it can prove would happen.

But let’s keep listening and see where that quote in the headline comes from:

Quinn: “At heart, they’ve come up with a plan where if you’re not going to the games, it’s largely not going to affect you. And we haven’t been able to say that about any other stadium deal pretty much in the history of Cleveland. And so that’s why it was kind of important to do the story. I don’t think people hate them are going to take the trouble to read it; they’re just going to say, ‘No. No. No.’ But the idea is they’re going to have to play somewhere, and they’ve come up with a deal that, from my standpoint, I don’t have to pay anything. That’s okay with me to not have to pay anything for this.”

Atassi: “That’s true.”

At the risk of being predictable: No. No. No. It’s simply not true that Ohio can take $1.2 billion in tax money and give it to the local billionaire sports owner and it won’t cost Ohioans a dime. But by employing enough doubletalk and hoping that listeners won’t think too hard about how taxes work, it’s possible to pretend that public money isn’t really public money, because someone related to the team touched it once.

I’m the first to acknowledge that modern journalists have a rough time of it, what with a dwindling handful of reporters forced to stay on top of the news while being graded on how many clicks they get. But this is straight-up journalistic malpractice: Two top editors at the city’s most prominent news source misleading listeners about basic economics, without even asking someone who could explain how budgets work.

And what does an actual economist have to say about this?

When compared to other shit sandwiches, this shit sandwich isn't so bad. #journalism www.cleveland.com/news/2025/04…

J.C. Bradbury (@jcbradbury.bsky.social) 2025-04-14T23:41:57.559Z

Now there’s a headline. Somebody get J.C. a job as impact editor.

*UPDATE: A reader finally sent me a copy of the full paywalled version of the article, which does cite Quinn as the source of the quote, though it doesn’t identify who he is. And it also includes this disclaimer:

Artificial intelligence was used to help generate this story from Today in Ohio, a news podcast discussion by cleveland.com editors. Visitors to cleveland.com have asked for more text stories based on website podcast discussions.

Something tells me that when readers were asking for more “text stories” based on podcasts, they didn’t mean AI hallucinations. Though honestly the AI doesn’t appear to have been hallucinating here any more than the human podcast hosts, so maybe it’s all just part and parcel of the gray goo.

Share this post:

Friday roundup: Bengals want $350m in stadium money from Ohio, A’s still insist Vegas stadium is happening for real

The spring legislative season is always exhausting, but at least we’re already up to … April 11, is that all that it is? At least we can hope that all the team owners lining up for stadium and arena money have already gotten their bills submitted, though plenty of subsidy demands have emerged this late or later: Today is in fact the second anniversary of the Maryland legislature approving $1.2 billion in public money for renovations for the Baltimore Orioles and Ravens (a number that would eventually grow to an unlimited number depending on how much in taxes comes in) essentially without warning, so it wouldn’t be that much of a shock to see a surprise demand emerge from out of nowhere.

And speak of the devil:

  • Hamilton County and Cincinnati Bengals owners the Brown family have declared that if the state of Ohio is set on giving $600 million in tax money to the Cleveland Browns for a new stadium, it should also give $350 million to the Bengals for renovations. The entire renovation plan would cost $830 million and would include a new scoreboard, suite upgrades, new roof canopy, new seating, and improved walkways, escalators, and elevators — which sounds like a lot for that work, honestly, unless the suite bathrooms would be getting diamond-encrusted faucets — and would presumably include county money as well, though officials didn’t specify how much. “Our lease ends before theirs,” griped Hamilton County commissioner Stephanie Summerow Dumas. “Just wondering why is there so much focus on the Browns.” (Hmm, can’t possibly imagine why.) No word on whether the Bengals owners would tear up that insane state-of-the-art clause in their lease as part of the deal, you would think that would be important to ask, I’m looking at you, Cincinnati Enquirer.
  • Newly appointed West Sacramento Athletics president Marc Badain has declared that the team is still on track for a June groundbreaking for its Las Vegas stadium, blaming “skeptics” and “negativity” for the idea that John Fisher may not be able to find $1.15 billion in construction costs on top of the $600 million he’s set to get from the state of Nevada. “There’s a lot of people that make a living out of questioning the success of sports venues and what they actually do for a community,” said Badain, and while on the one hand I feel seen, I do question his description of this as “making a living,” as well as questioning whether a groundbreaking actually means you’re going to build a stadium given that just about anyone with a few shovels can hold one — whoops, there I go with the skepticism again, Badain sure has me pegged!
  • The Denver city council has some skeptics about spending $70 million for land and infrastructure for a NWSL stadium, with councilmember Sarah Parady saying, “We are facing the collapse of global financial markets. … I think we’re gonna be sitting here in a year [and] we will have paid in our amount of money from our incredibly scarce dollars that we are going to need for so many fundamental needs in the city.” Also concerning is the estimated additional $80 million in property taxes the city would be giving up by agreeing to buy and own the land under the stadium, according to  University of Colorado-Denver economist Geoffrey Propheter, who is not only a local but also the expert in calculating such things.
  • Just a few months after $900 million in tax money was approved for upgrades to the Utah Jazz and Utah Hockey Club‘s Delta Center and the Salt Palace convention center, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox’s office abruptly expanded the project’s TIF district last Friday to also redirect taxes from two luxury hotels, an apartment tower, and parking facilities on an adjacent block, providing an additional $59 million in tax money kicked back to the developer, according to Propheter. (That developer would be Jazz and Hockey Club owner Ryan Smith — quelle coincidence!) Then on Tuesday the Salt Lake City council unanimously approved creating the embiggened tax district, with councilmember Victoria Petro bemoaning that “we had no options” but adding that “there is no decimal point here that has been taken with anything less than the gravest consideration,” assuming the gravest consideration can be applied in just two work days.
  • Salt Lake Bees’ new stadium in Daybreak expected to bring economic impacts, growth to local businesses” was the headline on Utah’s ABC4 website on Tuesday, and if you’re wondering “expected by whom?” and your guess was the owner of a single local coffee shop, you’re a winner!
  • Bridgeport, Connecticut now has an idea for how to pay for a $75 million minor-league soccer stadium, and it’s a TIF district, surprise, surprise. Also the full cost would now be $100 million, and would involve additional state money as well, but who can put a price on being one of the umpteen million cities to have a team in one of the nation’s two warring sets of soccer leagues?
Share this post:

Ohio house passes $600m subsidy for Browns stadium even as owner says team would stay without it

As expected the last time I wrote an “I expected” lede, the Ohio state house has approved $600 million in tax subsidies for a new Cleveland Browns stadium in Brook Park that would cost a total of $2.4 billion and also require another $600 million in city and county money. The final version of the bill tweaked the terms very slightly — Browns owner Jimmy Haslam would pre-pay $50 million of his share instead of $38.5 million — but it’s still basically the same plan that Cleveland city and Cuyahoga County officials all hate.

The main person whose disdain for the plan matters, though, is Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, who could veto it if he wants, though he’s hedged so far on whether he’ll actually go that far. The state senate needs to weigh in, too, and could make more changes if it wants.

All of this sounds very reasonable on the surface — democracy in action! — until you step back and consider the big picture of what’s going on here:

So what we have is one of the most expensive public stadium subsidy proposals in history, to induce a team that wouldn’t leave anyway to move a few miles south, to escape a building that is younger than Elle Fanning and which was just renovated and the team owner has said could be renovated again. And yet it looks like the main roadblock will be if the governor throws a hissy fit because it would require spending the wrong $600 million. We don’t get the checks and balances we want, and maybe not even the ones we deserve, unless we have all been very, very bad indeed.

 

Share this post:

No, the No Tax Subsidies for Stadiums Act would not end tax subsidies for stadiums

The Center Square is an odd news outlet: First launched as Watchdog.org in 2009 with financial support from right-wing and libertarian groups like the Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity, it’s veered between editorial support for conservative causes and some excellent reporting. Though I guess you could say similar for lots of news publications these days (cf. the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, etc.), so maybe at this point it’s best to just treat them as another journalism site that contains multitudes.

Anyway, all that aside, yesterday the Center Square ran an article about a federal bill to “end taxpayer subsidies for multi-billion-dollar [sports] complexes,” and let’s see if you can spot where it went wrong:

Reps. Don Beyer, D-Va., Glenn Grothman, R-Wis., and Sens. James Lankford, R-Okla., and Cory Booker, D-N.J., introduced bipartisan, bicameral legislation calling for the end of taxpayer subsidies to build professional sports complexes.

The No Tax Subsidies for Stadiums Act would terminate the ability for professional sporting teams to utilize tax-exempt municipal bonds to finance the construction of stadiums. The lawmakers argue that the tax exemptions were “originally intended to help local governments fund essential public infrastructure projects,” including hospitals, schools and roads.

Yup, that’s the same bill that Booker and Lankford proposed back in 2017, which has now picked up a couple of House co-sponsors. Before that, putting an end to tax-exempt bond use for sports was proposed by Barack Obama toward the end of his second term. And as I wrote back then, while shutting off the use of tax-exempt bonds for private sports stadiums would absolutely save the federal government hundreds of millions of dollars a year that it gets nothing out of — whatever anyone might want to debate about the strength of the substitution effect on a local level, it’s undeniable that the U.S. as a whole gets absolutely nothing economically out of a team playing in one state vs. another — it would still leave intact tons of state and local taxpayer subsidies that are worth far more:

This would close a major loophole that’s been allowing teams and cities to push off a portion of stadium costs onto the federal government — no more Red Sox fans having to help subsidize a new stadium for the Yankees! — and save the feds a few hundred million dollars in coming years. But taxable bonds work just as well for stadiums as tax-exempt ones; they’re just more expensive (by about a point and a half of interest, if I remember right), meaning teams and cities would just need to figure out how to raise more money to pay them off.

Now, is it possible that once federal subsidies are no longer available, more cities and teams will look at stadium and arena price tags and go, “Hell with that, let’s just stay in the old place”? Sure, maybe. But the Obama plan would be at best a moderate speed bump to stadium subsidies, not an actual roadblock.

That Obama proposal went nowhere, and nowhere is where similar Congressional bills have ended up ever since: When Oregon Rep. Earl Blumenauer proposed an identically named bill in 2023, it never even got a committee hearing.

I would love to see an article on why the federal government keeps extending additional tax breaks to sports projects that are already heavily subsidized by state and local governments, even if I end up having to write it myself. But in the meantime, the tl;dr here is: The Booker/Lankford bill would only eliminate a small sliver of government subsidies for pro sports venues; and in any event, there’s no sign that anyone else in Congress wants to so much as consider even that first step.

Meanwhile, the far bigger taxpayer expense right now is in the form of gobs of tax money that is getting funneled to wealthy sports team owners under the guise of “these are taxes on spending at stadiums, therefore it’s really the team owners’ money in the first place.” It would be nice for Congress, or even news outlets, to shine a light on that, but we only have so much breath not to hold here.

Share this post:

Do the Whitecaps really want a new stadium, or just a cheaper BC Place lease?

Add the Vancouver Whitecaps to the list of teams looking to build a new stadium, maybe, possibly, if the price is right:

The Major League Soccer club is in talks with the City of Vancouver about the construction of a stadium at the PNE fairgrounds site, said Whitecaps CEO and sporting director Axel Schuster.

“The club’s ownership has always been clear on their goal of constructing a purpose-built stadium and the importance of a suitable venue to both fan experience and financial performance for any professional sports franchise,” said Schuster in a statement on Friday.

The talks are in the early stages and Schuster did not disclose any other details, but said the club is looking forward to continuing its “constructive engagement” with the city.

The Whitecaps are currently renters at the province-owned B.C. Place, where the CFL’s B.C. Lions are the primary tenant, so surely they wouldn’t mind a stadium of their own. Whether they would welcome the construction debt that would come with it is another story: Schuster didn’t reveal anything about how much a new stadium would cost or whether that “constructive engagement” — interesting choice of that term, by the way — would include seeking public subsidies, something that is significantly less common in Canada than the U.S., though by no means unheard of.

Meanwhile, Schuster added that he’s simultaneously talking with B.C. Place operator PavCo about continuing on under a “different type of lease” after their current one expires later this year. If the Whitecaps owners are just trying to get a better deal by warning they might consider building a stadium on their own, more power to them; if they’re trying to leverage one branch of government against the other, though, the city and the province might want to consider getting together on this to tell the team they’re not going to bid against themselves.

Share this post:

WTH is up with that “Bengals should move to Chicago” story?

It’s always fun when you get to see how stupidity breaks out in real time, and so it was with the story growing over the last few days that the Cincinnati Bengals ownership could respond to the looming expiration of their lease by moving, and in particular by moving to Chicago. This, it turned out, was less a rumor — a rumor needs to be spread by multiple people — than conjecture, or maybe just a looming deadline and the desperation of one man, NBC Sports’ Mike Florio:

With the [Chicago] Bears getting nowhere when it comes to finagling taxpayer funding for a new stadium, the solution could come from having a second team play there.

Instantly, the inventory of games would double, from 10 to 20. It would become much easier for the Bears (and possibly the other team, unless it’s just a tenant) to pay for the building with minimal public assistance.

Enter the Bengals. They’re less than three months away from the final countdown to the expiration of their lease at Paycor Stadium. During the league meetings this week, executive V.P. Katie Blackburn said the quiet thing out loud — after 2025, the Bengals can go wherever they want to go.

It’s easy to come up with a list of cities that currently have no NFL teams. But the best outcome for the Bengals, and the Bears, could be to partner up in a new Chicagoland stadium. Lakefront or Arlington Heights. Wherever. The revenue from 20 NFL games each year, along with everything else that could be hosted in a fixed-roof building, should be able to pay for the building.

It’s hard to know where to even begin. Yes, splitting the costs of a $2 billion or so stadium between two teams would make it somewhat more affordable — but there’s little sign that the revenue from 20 NFL games a year plus “everything else” that could be hosted there would pay for a new building. After all, the Bears and Bengals each play 20 combined home games a year (including preseason) right now, so those revenues would have to rise by about $7 million per game — that’s $100 more per ticket sold, in a future Chicago where the two teams were fighting for the same fan dollars — just to break even.

Still, it was off to the news cycle races, as the Cincinnati Enquirer and multiple other outlets repeated Florio’s suggestion without asking anyone if it made any sense; something called Motorcycle Sports even chimed in, calling it a “bold idea.” USA Today’s Bengals Wire at least called it the “worst possible take,” though in doing so the site still managed to amplify Florio’s fantasy by sending clicks its way. (I realize I’m doing the same here; fact-checking bad reporting is always tricky to do without giving more air to the original misinformation, what whatcha gonna do.)

None of which matters for the idea of the Bengals moving to Chicago, because there is zero sign that either the Bengals or Bears owners would ever consider it. But it does help cement the idea in people’s heads that the Bengals might move somewhere, which is exactly what Bengals VP Katie Blackburn was hoping to do last week by saying, “We could, I guess, go wherever we wanted after this year if we didn’t pick the option up. So, you know, we’ll see.” (A statement, incidentally, that was called “a powerful, loaded comment“ by one Mike Florio.) That option is to extend the Bengals’ legendarily lucrative lease for five years, something the Bengals owners are mulling doing unless Hamilton County coughs up a sweet enough renovation deal to entice them to sign a new lease with fewer holographic replay system guarantees. Threatening to move the team at the same time as you’re threatening to stay and extend your sweetheart lease is … I think “bold idea” sums it up pretty well, don’t you?

Share this post:

Liveblog: What sports economists are telling us about stadiums and public funding

Day two of the sports economics conference at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County! We’ve got a packed day of presenters and we all got lost in campus construction on the way to the meeting room, so let’s go go go:

First up is J.C. Bradbury, who should need no introduction, speaking on “Franchise Relocation and Stadium Subsidies: Credible Threats or Cheap Talk?” Why do we still have so many stadium subsidies when they’re so pointless? he asks. Because sports leagues drive cities into bidding wars. The obvious answer, then: Figure out how to remove leagues’ monopoly power so they can no longer have cities over a barrel.

All that makes sense in theory, says Bradbury, but “in practice, it doesn’t seem to predict so well.” By now, pretty much every major-league market is filled, making move threats far less credible:

And when teams do leave, markets often get them back: Of 20 cities that lost teams since 1990, nine of them have already gotten replacements.

Yet the amount of money going to sports venues keeps going up. WTF? (Paraphrasing there.)

“None of these teams threatened to move, except for the Washington Wizards and Capitals.” And those teams, he notes, were told “to go jump in the lake” by both Virginia and Maryland; at which point “they walked back across the Potomac and asked for $500 million and were told ‘sure.’ They literally did not have anywhere to go and they got $500 million in subsidies!”

Looking at Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf’s campaign for a new stadium in the late 1980s, you can see how move threats are created out of whole cloth by a combination of team ownership and supportive elected officials:

Eventually, legislative leaders were able to get the stadium subsidy passed, with the help of stopping the clock in the meeting room to get around a midnight deadline — and with the help of the move threat that the governor himself had asked for. “Jerry Reinsdorf was never going to move the team,” says Bradbury. “He basically admitted it later.”

A similar scenario played out with the recent Buffalo Bills stadium, where news headlines said “everyone knew” that the team could leave, with no specific cities mention. And for good reason:

The fact that this continues to go on — despite expansion filling more and more cities — shows that the problem isn’t bidding wars. It’s that elected officials are handing over public cash regardless of whether move threats are real. Bradbury then showed a series of slides (no photos, sorry, they went too fast) showing elected officials in Atlanta standing with Braves players or wearing Braves jerseys.

Bradbury’s proposed solution: more voter referendums, because “you can’t fit a majority of the electorate in the owner’s box.” Then he closed with a Simpsons meme, just for me, and by extension you, FoS readers:

To a question about why voters don’t penalize elected officials, Bradbury says they do: Way more politicians are voted out of office for approving stadiums than for letting teams leave: “[Cobb County commissioner] Tim Lee was absolutely floored when he lost his election, because everyone around him loved it.”

More to come when this forms the centerpiece of a chapter in Bradbury’s upcoming book, watch for it coming soon!

Presenter #2: Frank Stephenson on how Taylor Swift’s presence at Kansas City Chiefs games affected TV viewership. There are many equations with Greek letters, but the upshot is: Viewership went up by about a third after Swift started showing up. This could be a potential gold rush for sports leagues, notes Stephenson, if they comp more tickets for superstars to get them to attend games — assuming they can identify other Taylor Swifts, that is, which could be a challenge.

(Major points to this presentation for using the mathematical term “Swift variable.”)

Up next is Shirin Mollah, presenting preliminary data on the impact of U.S. stadium on local labor markets. Looking at Texas and Ohio, she found that there are more new job listings in cities with stadium openings, though she still needs to look at more locations, over longer time periods, and related to specific events.

Paul Holmes follows, with the intriguingly titled “Moneyball, Body Mass, and Salary for MLB Hitters.” Previous studies have found mixed results as to whether Moneyball influenced things like on-base percentage in MLB; but Billy Beane also pointed out in the book Moneyball (which, to be clear, he did not write) that baseball teams overvalue “looking like” a baseball player. Have teams been more open to signing players of, shall we say, non-standard body-mass indexes since then?

The standard Lehman baseball database only looks at player weights once in their careers, so instead Holmes turned to an alternate data source:

Looking at weights on baseball cards, teams penalized overweight baseball players with lower salaries before Moneyball, but now they’re treated the same as their lower-BMI teammates. Rationality! Unless, as several questioners noted, BMI is a bad metric entirely, because you can’t tell flabby players from musclebound ones.

(This had nothing to do with stadiums, but it had baseball cards in it, so I’ll allow it.)

Next presenter is Jeff Carr on “But For? The Ballpark District and San Diego’s Investment.” Conference organizer Dennis Coates notes ahead of time that Carr is going to argue that “there is an economic benefit of stadiums,” so this presentation should be interesting, as should the Q&A at the end.

The Ballpark District is the redevelopment area around the San Diego Padres stadium, approved by voters in 1998. A previous paper (presented by Carr last year) estimated that the TIF district siphoning off taxes from the stadium district was enough to pay off the public costs; but can it be shown that that money would not have rolled in but for the Padres stadium?

The resulting analysis dove heavily into stats jargon (it took me a minute to realize Carr was saying “covariates” and not “covariants,” which are two different things), but cutting to the chase: Property values went up a lot more in the ballpark district than it would have absent the stadium. And looking at the alternate proposed stadium sites, they didn’t see a big rise in property values until many years after the Padres stadium was opened.

You probably see one problem here: Sure, the ballpark district got more stuff built, and more property taxes paid, because it was a ballpark district. (Assuming the model of what would have happened but for the stadium is accurate.) But does that mean that the city of San Diego actually got more overall tax revenues as a result? Or did the district just siphon off development that would otherwise have gone to other parts of the city? Carr agrees: “Just because we build a ballpark doesn’t mean we’re pulling money out of thin air” — for the county or metropolitan area as a whole, it’s likely all substituting for economic activity that would have happened elsewhere.

Geoffrey Propheter, who notes that he “eats, sleeps, and breathe property taxes,” has another concern, speculating that “what you’re actually measuring is this dot-c0m property appreciation push that’s happening at the same time” as the stadium construction. Carr agrees that’s a possibility.

We are getting tantalizingly close to lunch.

But first: Veronika Dolar on whether income inequality between countries impacts Olympic success. Her conclusion: Yes, athletes from countries with more income inequality do significantly worse in the Olympics, both because it’s hard to train like Michael Phelps if you can’t afford good food to begin with and because it’s tough to train as a bobsledder if you can’t afford a bobsled.

Lunchtime! More later.

Keri Rubinstein and her co-author (whose name I was too slow on the keyboard to record, apologies) looked at whether hosting part of the Tour de France has political benefits for city officials. Takeaway: “What we find is a whole lot of nothing. It’s robustly nothing too!” Memo to French mayors who might think they can point to their successfully landing a Tour de France stage to win votes next election: Ouais, non.

One of the highlights of this conference was going to be hearing Judith Grant Long (of stadium hidden cost fame) speak about her research into community benefits agreements in stadium and arena deals, but Long’s mother broke her hip yesterday, so instead her student Robert Sroka presents their paper. (You are very much missed here, Judith.) CBAs, he explained, are seen as ways for grassroots groups to extract benefits from a major development deal; and developers see it as a way to head off opposition by spending a few extra bucks. (I’ve written about CBAs myself here and here.)

“Community benefits” can be anything from parks to free tickets to opening new grocery stores, and Long has compiled data on all of these. A couple of sample slides:

A couple of overarching points:

  • CBAs are increasing in popularity, and are now the standard in both MLS and the NBA.
  • CBAs shouldn’t be assumed to be benevolent contributions — these are part of the political sausage making, and should be seen as such.

Question time!

  • “Is this just a legal form of bribe to leaders who claim to represent the grassroots?” Yup, can be.
  • How often do CBA signatories promise things and never deliver on them? Judith would know that.
  • Can we see a time graph of how many projects have had CBAs each year? “I believe Judith has a histogram in the works in the draft paper.
  • Why so many CBAs for MLS stadiums? It possibly has to do with so many MLS stadiums being sold to the public as community development projects.

Moving on, another economist well-known to readers of this site: Geoffrey Propheter, speaking on determining what factors predict whether lawmakers will or won’t support sports venue subsidies. More specifically:

  1. Are Democrats or Republicans more likely to support subsidies?
  2. If not, what does predict their behavior?

Propheter notes that there’s a selection bias here: “We only see votes for bills that make it through the process.” (In his stats, zero stadium and arena subsidy bills were voted down, because they just never made it to a final vote.) As Propheter has reported before, that’s very much not the case for public referenda:

 

Ideologically, Propheter notes, both parties have reasons to vote against sports subsidies: Democrats because it’s giving a ton of public money to billionaires, Republicans because it’s a huge intervention in the free market. But sports subsidy votes turn out to not be very party-line — and, importantly, don’t seem to carry a lot of weight in terms of whether voters will re-elect you. (Especially if you’re term-limited anyway.)

Some more findings:

  • Republicans, it turns out, are about 10% more likely than Democrats to oppose sports subsidy votes, though it’s more like 7% if you account for more variables. And legislators of both parties approve these bills overwhelmingly, so a 7% difference isn’t a huge amount.
  • Younger Democrats are much more likely to oppose sports subsidies than older ones; for Republicans, age doesn’t matter at all.
  • The most important variables predicting whether legislators will oppose a deal are how far they are from the site, how young they are, if they’re female, and if they’re more politically experienced. (Translation: The best friend a sports owner can have is an old dude who represents the stadium district and is new to politics.) In particular, term limits may make subsidies worse, because elected officials are more likely to have never thought about sports subsidies before, and also more likely to not care what their constituents want because they just care about having a physical legacy.

Coates suggests looking at 1) how officials are voting relative to what their constituents want and 2) which way legislators went in votes earlier than the final one, since there could be useful information there. (He agrees that doing either of these well is a challenge.)

Propheter says he’ll have more data down the road: He’s planning to spend the next five years compiling data for all votes since 1970. Everyone agrees to meet back here in 2030.

If you’ve read this far, I imagine you’re running out of steam, because I sure am. Let’s go to bullet points from here:

  • Mollah presents her second paper of the day, this one on whether English soccer teams that win create more jobs: Cities whose teams got promoted turned out to have more job listings after the fact, whereas those with teams that got relegated saw no impact. She then got into a heated discussion with soccer economist Stefan Szymanski about whether including very lower-level league teams like Grimsby Town F.C. (which is about the most lower-level English soccer team name imaginable) made any sense, since even if they get relegated, they can’t lose many fans, since they don’t have that many to begin with.
  • Zhaosheng Li presents on how NBA players learn from their teammates, and there were so many Greek letters. Not to mention Euler equations. It comes down to the fact that players will take less money to play with better teammates and learn from them (or, as a commenter noted, have a shot at a championship) and … yeah, this is all above my mathematical pay grade and seemingly mostly a theoretical model, I’m taking a mulligan here.
  • Scott Kaplan speaks on how much suspense and surprise affect viewership of NBA games. (“Suspense is really just expected surprise” went one explanation of terms.) One conclusion seems to be that people enjoy surprise but suspense is more likely to keep them watching, which, that tracks.
  • Coates presents a paper called “On the (mis)interpretation of hedonic price coefficients of stadium amenity values,” which he prefaces as being in kind of half-baked shape and basically an “Old Man Yells at Cloud” response, but plunges on ahead: Consultants say stadiums make everyone happier; economists say that’s nonsense. There’s an argument that property values go up near stadiums because people like stadiums — but could it also be because the stadium just took a huge chunk of property off the market? More research needed, which is what Coates is calling for.
  • Jonathan Jensen talks about Formula One and sponsorships, finding that since F1 changed its point system in 2010, when one team runs away with a championship, sponsors are way more likely to drop their teams as a result.
  • And finally, Stefan Szymanski, who haters of my “Is MLS a Ponzi Scheme?” article in Deadspin way back when will recall as one of the economists arguing that that league had overly inflated franchise values, presents on “Root, root, root for the home team: Did TV kill minor league baseball?” Short answer: Yeah. Long answer: Yeahhhhhhh. (A similar effect is seen with lower-division soccer in the UK, though those teams didn’t fold.) Basically, minor league baseball was a viable option when there was nothing else to do, but television gave people a constant stream of things to do, for free, and that was that — especially when there was no hope for promotion to a higher league as there was in British soccer.

And that is that — we’re done, in every sense of the word. Thanks for reading, and I hope this was … entertaining? Informative? Instructive as to what economists do when packed into a room with each other? Any of those, really. See you back here on Monday for our regularly scheduled doomscroll.

Share this post: