I thought about writing some kind of year-end list for this site, but got stuck on whether the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel or the Buffalo News should win Best Performance As A Team PR Department By An Allegedly Major Newspaper, and never got around to writing the rest. Newballpark.org had no such problems, though, and devotes an entire post today to all the ways in which the San Francisco 49ers‘ new stadium was a disappointment: the sod had to be replaced five separate times, it was crazy hot in the sun during the early season, and attendance for college games was pretty lousy. The 49ers kinda sucked. And, though the site doesn’t mention this bit, the traffic was terrible, at least in the early going.
All this is fun to point and laugh at, but I’m not sure that Newballpark’s proposed solution (the 49ers should have built a roof on the stadium) makes all that much sense: Yeah, it would have kept fans from collapsing from the heat, but you can put in a fake turf field if you want for a hell of a lot less than the couple hundred million dollars it would have taken to add a roof, retractable or not. And as for the 49ers’ on-field fortunes taking a nosedive, you could make the case that this actually happened at the perfect time for the 49ers: All their crazy-high-priced PSLs have already sold, so the team owners have guaranteed that they can pay off their building, regardless of whether those PSLs are worth much going forward. Yes, it would be nice to keep people actually going to games and buying $6 bags of M&Ms, but if the choice is between people being disappointed in the product after they’ve paid for it or beforehand, I’d guess that the Yorks will take the former any day.
So, does that make the new 49ers stadium a success, or not? It depends on what you mean by success: Despite a $1.2 billion price tag, it was paid for without bankrupting either the team or the city of Santa Clara, which is a rarity these days. On the other hand, all 49ers fans get for their years of waiting (and their hard-earned PSL cash) is to have escaped a stadium where they were in danger of frostbite for one where they’re in danger of heatstroke. And sports teams, it turns out, don’t magically turn into winners, or even remain winners, just because they’re in a schmancier building. Maybe everyone’s New Year’s resolution — for ticket-buying fans, for cities seeking stadium deals, and even for teams looking to cash in on the former two parties — should be “be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.”
The roof at Miller Park has convinced me that every outdoor sports venue would be improved with some kind of roof.
Watched the Maryland/Stanford game yesterday. Hard to believe but you could actually see dust being kicked up by runners- the turf still needs a lot of work.
Tom Orsborn of the San Antonio News-Express made a late push for PR shill of the year, but more likely he’s setting himself up for a title run in 2015.
The stadium might not bankrupt Santa Clara but I think that’s setting a very low bar of success from the city’s POV. I’m convinced that the stadium is and will remain a perpetual drain on city resources. The poor attendance of the college football games refutes the council’s notion that people would be enthralled simply to enter the stadium for any event.
I’d really like to see what the stadium authority’s books are looking like right now, is it paying for the numerous field replacements, are policing costs staying w/in budget, how much are the alternative events “putting into” it?
I’m not very sanguine about this.
Also, the city recently took $2 million from the capital improvements fund to pay for super bowl parties and events (they then turned around and hired a firm for fund raising to replenish these funds–can you think of a more worthy donation than for NFL parties?). BTW, my local park hasn’t had an update of the playground equipment (which is falling apart) since the Ford Administration. The city’s priority has clearly been on serving the team to the while ignoring other needs in the city. Of course the council has their 50 yard line seats–so I guess all is well.
The jury is still out about the effects of the Stadium Authority stadium construction loans and operating expenses on the City of Santa Clara. Personal Seat Licenses and the naming rights brought in money to pay off part of the Stadium Authority’s $950 million in stadium construction loans – but the people of Santa Clara aren’t seeing the Stadium Authority’s books – so we don’t know how much of the loans has been paid off and how much remains, other than that many hundreds of millions of dollars in loans are still outstanding. The people of Santa Clara should be shown all of the Stadium Authority’s financial information.
In addition, our City Council foolishly reduced the rent the team is paying to the Stadium Authority by $5 million. As of March 2014, a report to the City Council showed the Stadium Authority was already running $13 million in the red for operating expenses. And the City Council froze the rent that Great America is paying to the City in return for parking spaces for the stadium, so the City has given up inflationary increases in rent for the next few decades. Both of those rent giveaways are costs to Santa Clara taxpayers. In the past, Santa Clarans have made up for shortfalls in the City budget through furlough days – so our libraries, for example, have had furlough days every month and cutbacks in library hours overall.
Finally, the City has paid city staff to deal with the stadium. Those staff salaries are coming out of our General Fund. That is a cost to the people of Santa Clara too.
All of these costs to the city are violations of the campaign promises made by our council members and current mayor, who told us that the stadium would have no cost to Santa Clarans. Period.