Remember when Tampa Bay Buccaneers owners the Glazer family said they wanted a bigger new scoreboard than the measly $18.7 million one the county was going to build for them, but they’d pay the difference? Well, almost two years later, the Bucs’ stadium upgrade plans are now in, and they’re a whole lot more ambitious, not to mention involve more complicated financing:
- In addition to expanding the scoreboard from 2,250 square feet to 9,600 square feet and making them high-definition, the Glazers are seeking upgrades to luxury suites and to the sound system.
- The public stadium authority would fund $26 million of the cost — as currently required under the team-friendly lease — while the team owners would kick in between $52 million and $75 million.
- The Glazers are seeking permission to have the Bucs play a second home game outside of Tampa each year, possibly in line with the NFL now doing two games a year in London. In exchange, the county would get out of a commitment to put $11.6 million into a practice facility (also courtesy of that crappy lease) and get to keep more money from non-football events at the stadium. (Which the public owns, mind you, but the Glazers get cash from non-football events because — do I really need to say “crappy lease” a third time?)
- In addition, Noah Pransky of WTSP-TV emails that the Glazers want the county to purchase construction materials for them so they can get out of paying sales taxes on them.
The immediate response from local public officials was not exactly positive:
“We thought we had a deal on the table last week. And then they kind of put out this whole new deal, which is quite different than what we were talking about,” said Mike Merrill, Hillsborough County administrator, whose staff is part of the negotiations because TSA is partly county-funded.
There are too many moving parts yet to say exactly how good or bad a deal this would be for Tampa. Mostly, it’s a reminder that leases that require the public to keep putting money into capital improvements even after giving a team a new stadium are a terrible, terrible idea. Also that people like watching football on giant video screens, because football is a terrible sport to watch live. I still say the future of the NFL is to build a stadium with only one really luxurious seat, and then charge a lucky billionaire tons of money to sit in it — though he’ll probably spend most of the game eating in the in-stadium steak house anyway.
The central argument for any public support of stadiums is that the public somehow benefits. We can debate the benefits and the exorbitant costs. But how can anyone sanely argue that playing more home games thousands of miles away or even somewhere else in Florida benefit the public in Tampa? Does attending a Bucs game have negative benefits?
The local bargaining position is extremely weak (you can play somewhere else if Man United plays here or if we have a Super Bowl)? Does the loss of a Bucs home game get properly accounted as a cost of hosting a Super Bowl? And who knew that a mid-summer exhibition with Man United’s “C” team was a better draw than the Bucs?
Hi Floormaster Squeeze,
You need to keep in mind that the Bucs are the worst performing franchise in the NFL. They were 0-8 at their home field of Raymond James Stadium during the 2014 NFL season. The optics will look much better in future years, if they can go 0-7 or 0-6 at RayJay.