Good morning, and thank you for taking a break from your coronavirus panic reading to patronize Field of Schemes. Please wash your hands for 20 seconds with soap and water, and we can begin:
- Carolina Panthers owner David Tepper hasn’t just talked about wanting a new stadium, he’s met with stadium architects, so you know he’s serious, or something. But first, as Tepper said recently, “People here have to agree to do things or want to do things,” which is code for I neeeeeed public moneeeeeey, but that’s okay because Tepper also said the economic impact of added Super Bowls and Final Fours would be “Forget about it. Knock their socks off economically.” Or not much at all, as actual economic studies have found — who’s to say who’s right, really, the guy who would stand to rake in hundreds of millions of dollars or the people using math?
- Arizona Diamondbacks CEO Derrick Hall now says that whole moving-to-Vancouver thing was just a contingency plan in case their roof got stuck open and it was too hot to play. (No, I don’t know how you move an entire baseball game to a different country on a moment’s notice if the retractable roof gets stuck, but Hall’s statement that “We left it open in case we wanted to or needed to and we certainly hope we don’t, because we anticipate this is where we’re playing forever, in Arizona” is certainly an excellent specimen of the non-threat threat.) Team owner Ken Kendrick also compared Chase Field to a “classic automobile [where] when you pull the engine back on a classic automobile, you find things sometimes you wouldn’t wish you would find.” The stadium is all of 22 years old, so I guess Kendrick thinks these are classic cars?
- NYC F.C. made it to the CONCACAF Champions League quarterfinals with a 1-0 win over Costa Rica’s San Carlos before a “home” crowd of less than 3,000 people after most of the NYC F.C. fan groups boycotted playing a home game at rivals Red Bull New York‘s stadium when both Yankee Stadium and backup option Citi Field were unavailable thanks to the grass there needing time to regrow before baseball season. The team could face the same problem for its upcoming home match in the next round, which is sure to increase the drumbeat for a new soccer-only stadium, which likely would be a thing already if NYC F.C.’s owners would just agree to step up and pay for it instead of dickering about tax breaks.
- Sports Illustrated writer John Wall Street (it’s a play on words, see?) writes that if Florida passes a bill to stop sports teams from using state hotel-tax or sales-tax surcharge money to build or renovate stadiums, sports teams will all move out of Florida. His only source for this: an NYU sports management professor who was formerly an investment banker and has worked as an NFL consultant. I am none of those things, but I would humbly submit that both California and Seattle have cracked way down on sports subsidies without any teams leaving (the Sonics did leave Seattle, but that was before the city passed its requirement that the public get a positive return on any sports venue spending), so maybe this is not so much cause for panic?
- The city of St. Louis could use eminent domain to force a holdout landowner to sell his property that sits on the proposed site of an MLS stadium. Eminent domain needs to be implemented for “public use,” and MLS teams are private enterprises, but the Supreme Court has pretty much said that anything that provides jobs is a public use, so this probably won’t be an issue except in St. Louis city officials’ souls.
- The city of Worcester has approved an extra $29.5 million in spending on the Worcester Red Sox‘ new stadium to cover cost overruns. (It was previously reported that $9.5 million will be covered by the team and the other $20 million by the city, which is presumably still the case, but the Associated Press can’t be bothered to tell us that.) If you’re wondering how this affects the already long odds against city taxpayers ever getting their money back on the now $120 million expense, the answer is: it’s not looking great.
- Erie County is looking to hire a lawyer to conduct stadium negotiations with the Buffalo Bills, which means we get more headlines about whether a new Bills stadium is imminent despite the team’s owners insisting that one is not. Trolling for clicks or trying not to bite the hand that feeds them, it’s so hard to tell the difference these days.
- Urban Milwaukee’s Bruce Murphy has another go at that laughable Milwaukee Brewers stadium economic impact report by the laughable Convention, Sports & Leisure, and comes up with some more hilarity, including that CSL attributed $38 million in state benefits to mentions of Milwaukee on TV. Does this mean that Wisconsin taxpayers also should have subsidized Laverne & Shirley?
- Here’s a long Nashville Scene article on how the Nashville S.C. stadium deal became 100% financed, which no it really is not. Maybe having your local alt-weekly bought by real estate developers isn’t the best thing for accurate news coverage? Just a thought.
- This has nothing to do with stadiums or arenas per se, but this article on how Philadelphia Phillies execs redesigned their Phillie Phanatic mascot to try to skip out on paying its original designers for the rights is a pretty fascinating look into the team owner mindset, and that’s before you even get to the part where one of the Phanatic designers also designed Miss Piggy.
- And finally, some fresh vaportecture, courtesy of New Mexico United, which released potential stadium designs that, well:
I don’t get why there’s a giant robot Muffler Man holding a team shield and kicking a giant soccer ball, nor what’s up with the tiny balcony that fans can stand on to watch other fans entering the stadium far below, nor how the lighting system seems to be supported solely by a fabric roof. But a team spokesperson says that they envision it being “used 365 days a year, something that’s mixed with art galleries, local coffee shops, and breweries,” so maybe the giant robot is really art? Or an enormous robot-shaped cappuccino machine? Cast your votes in comments!
Look, Florida, you may be one of the fastest, if not the fastest, growing places in the Western world, and you may well have a robust economy and citizens with disposable income, but all of your sports teams will absolutely leave for, *checks list*, Las Vegas and Norfolk, if you pass this bill.
Don’t forget those shameless opportunists in Montreal – mecca for all pro sports teams don’t you know….
If only Stanley Kubrick had known that francophone communists were after all American sports teams, Dr. Strangelove could have turned out so very differently…
Why you should click Neil’s links:
“the Phillies are putting another black eye on baseball. They’re no better than the Houston Astros,“
Harsh…but deservedly on the mark.
” $38 million in state benefits to mentions of Milwaukee on TV”
I laugh every time I see this ploy. I hear it in regard to the money-losing Super Bowl when it’s played in Glendale. “Hey, look! It’s warm a sunny in Arizona! In February! Who knew??? I’m bookin’ a flight…”
FOS noted when Toronto Blue Jays got a $61M public contribution to building a new stadium for spring training and Class A Dunedin Blue Jays that they may not be getting their money back. Well, they have already had 3 games and nobody’s been spreading millions of consumer dollars yet. They had a record (they had 400 people more than the previous capacity but 2K under their current capacity) on opening day but have been less than their previous capacity and averages since. So, unless empty seats are generating revenue (solar seats anyone?) this has not gone well so far. The Honeymoon (Island) is over after the day.
Also, I was curious about Class A Dunedin Blue Jay attendance and was fascinated to learn that last year after the demolition of the previous stadium and before the new one was ready they managed an average attendance of 230 (!!!!!, not sure where they played but look forward to the press that says they are averaging 10-15 more than last year).
Clearwater, Florida. Jack Russell Memorial Stadium.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunedin_Blue_Jays
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Russell_Memorial_Stadium
Only reason I know. Watch 3 Single-A FSL teams in T-SP metropolitan area, the siphon effect (?) they have on Rays attendance. As you’ve noticed, Dunedin Blue Jays attendance significantly impact Rays attendance. Okay, not so much.
Clearwater Threshers and Tampa Tarpons maybe a different story.
Couple of things. I-91 passed before the Sonics left. It was voted on in 2006 and at the time was deemed a death blow to the Sonics staying in Seattle. Also the Raiders did leave California.
Do we know for sure that Wisconsin taxpayers didn’t subsidize Laverne & Shirley or Happy Days?
Also… the main reason the Sonics left is that they were sold to a guy who pinkie swore that he wanted to keep the team in Seattle and was actually laughing while he took this “oath”.
But yeah, I’m sure the great unifier (Howard Schultz) would have kept the team if somebody had been willing to fork out a half billion or so in tax dollars to one of the richest men in the nation. At least for a few years before it was time to demand another new stadium “or we’re gonna hafta leave anyway”.
Film tax credits hadn’t been invented in the 1970s. And while it may feel like Laverne & Shirley was still running in the 21st century, I think it finally went off the air a few years before that. (Or at least the girls had moved to California by then.)
This seems like an opportunity to me. Surely someone (say, EOne) can use their ownership of the media rights to L&S and it’s clear benefit (media mentions) to Milwaukee to leverage the media value of reruns of a 1970s tv sitcom about 1950s midwest life on, say, Nepalese television.
Of course, Disney might beat EOne to this…
Now I have another team, in addition to my hometown cheatin’ Astros, to root against.
Institutional sign stealing the Astros wasn’t cool, but OMG stealing from the Phanatic…that is sacrilegious.
Won’t be hard rooting for the Phillies to lose seeing that they haven’t seen a winning record in almost a decade.
That tiny balcony is obviously the designated smoking area, because the authorities have sifted through an infinite amount of studies done by an infinite amount of monkeys and discovered the complete works of Shakespeare, and found ONE study that suggests a link between the sight of someone smoking in an open air stadium and developing lung cancer, emphysema, and early death.
How did everyone miss the giant black and yellow ant towering over the stadium entrance. OMG! The horror! The nightmares! How can you forget “THEM!”
Tim. Get a grip. No one is this site is old enough, much less been traumatized by a 1954 movie. Everyone rightly guesses “Bugman” has paid for the stadium naming rights and this is their logo.
Hmmmn. I was thinking more modern… Does Joan Collins 1977 classic “Empire of the Ants” count?
I guessed that the people milling about on the marquee were on a free viewing deck… if you count being within reach of the giant ants’ mandibles as being “free admission”.
… I mean, is feeding actual taxpayers to the ants better than forcing the taxpayers to pay for whatever food and other care the team owner’s giant ants require?
Life – even a sports fan’s life – is full of moral electives, isn’t it?
Points given.
Vaportecture human beings appear to be ants, while the giant ant is ….. well ….. at the top. Of the food chain?