Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie announced details of a planned $125 million upgrade of Lincoln Financial Field yesterday, with most of the money allocated for tech enhancements (including a stadium-wide WiFi network, as NFL teams continue to try to push for fans to bring tablets to games to recreate the sitting-at-home-in-front-of-the-TV experience) and, based on the renderings, longer video boards. Lurie also says he plans to pay for the upgrades, which will be completed over the next two offseasons, with his own money.
That’s welcome news, but also a bit confusing, given that it’s been previously reported that the Eagles would get NFL G-4 money for the project, and one of the requirements of G-4 (unlike the G-3 plan it replaced) is that it only go to “public-private partnerships.” So either there’s some public contribution to the Eagles project yet to be announced (though it’s hard to see how they’d work that out if construction is set to start pretty much now), or the NFL was lying to cities like Miami when it told them it would only approve G-4 funds if the city kicked in something, or … maybe because the public already put money into the Eagles stadium, that counts? I’ll check with the NFL and see if I can get an answer, but until then file this one under “unanswered mysteries of league bylaws.”
I emailed the reported of that story at Philly.com the same question. He said he specifically asked the Eagles of there was going to be any public money and was told no, it will all be private.
Yeah, I know what the Eagles are saying. But this raises the question of why the son of the mayor of Miami told me that they had to put money into the Dolphins deal or else the G-4 money wouldn’t be approved.
Well there’s a third option. It’s possible no G4 funds are being used now.
If Lurie is indeed paying for the upgrades to Lincoln Financial Field himself, then that’s awesome and props to Mr. Lurie for doing so.
I told you public money wasn’t required, that was thrown in to the G-4 wording but is not a requirement.
Private funding is the requirement, public money was just assumed. The public owns the stadium, it’s already a public-private partnership.
I’m really, really disappointed in Jeffrey Lurie. You’re one of us, Jeffrey. You’re obligated to fleece the locals at every turn, remember??