Why yes, thank you, I was fine in the flooding: Our terrace was briefly a small lake, but it didn’t breach the door to our apartment. Still, I will be demanding a new state-of-the-art retractable-roofed terrace from the governor as soon as my lease expires.
And speaking of demanding things from the governor once your lease expires, the Buffalo Bills, amirite?
- Pegula Sports and Entertainment senior vice president Ron Raccuia said that the Bills won’t renew their lease in Buffalo in 2023 unless a deal for a new stadium in in place by then. Asked what the team would do if there is no deal by then, Raccuia replied, “We’re not even focused on that, yet,” which will be familiar to parents as the “Don’t make me come in there” move: Threaten first, figure out what to do if your kid calls your bluff later. He also asserted that the current stadium’s upper deck “will fail” in about five years but that it definitely won’t fail before then, which is an oddly specific way for metal to age, confirmed that the planned new stadium would have a $1.4 billion price tag, and said the team owners have “never discussed” moving the team and “our sole focus is to get a deal done here,” which is slightly odd for an interview where you just threatened to leave if you don’t get a deal done. Raccuia did not say how much public money the team would be demanding, but did call a new stadium “the single-largest construction project in Western New York history,” and who can put a value on that? (Aside from economists, but they don’t understand the value of a team to a city’s “psyche and core,” now do they? That’s about enough out of you and your “measuring the value of a team to a city’s psyche with actual math,” Bruce Johnson!)
- Speaking of evictions, Arizona Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo has officially submitted a bid for land in Tempe for a new arena now that they’re getting kicked out of Glendale. This is only the first step in a possible arena process — later steps will include such niceties as “who’s going to pay to build this thing exactly?” — but first Meruelo has to actually get dibs on the land, so watch this one closely.
- And speaking of the Coyotes, here’s a nice article in Venues Now about the economic impact study that made Glendale city officials feel okay about evicting them — tl;dr version: hockey fans just buy a hot dog and go home, Elton John fans travel further and make a day of it. This seems slightly dubious to extrapolate to all concerts, but as Venues Now doesn’t actually link to the study, we’ll have to take their word for it for now.
- Hagerstown, Maryland is getting a new Atlantic League team to replace the Hagerstown Suns, which were disappeared during the Great Minor League Purge of 2019. The cost: Only $59.5 million to build a new stadium, which is surely an excellent investment and won’t result in a deteriorating empty stadium with graffiti on the luxury box furniture once the team folds, you must be thinking of some other league, surely.
- Alameda County’s sale of its half of the Oakland Coliseum site to A’s owner John Fisher may violate the state Surplus Land Act, because of course it may, all the kids are violating that law!
- Las Vegas Raiders owner Mark Davis is building a $14 million mansion designed to look like his team’s new taxpayer-funded stadium, as one does.
- The New York Yankees clearly need a retractable roof, too. (In the headline I teased this as “hurricane porn,” but truly that term should be reserved for whatever the hell this is.)
- Nice stickers!
Venues Now is owned by OVG, and I believe Azoff has some kind of relationship with OVG. Point is, I’d expect pro-concert spin from Venues Now.
Venues Now didn’t write the report, though, Applied Economics LLC did. I would much rather have linked to the report directly, but this is what we got.
Yeah, I would not be really confident that Glendale didn’t just get the answer they paid for.
The deal they have with the Coyotes is just unsustainable. So they have to kick them out. It’s possible the whole arena is unsustainable, but they want to promise voters that concerts will somehow salvage it. If it doesn’t, that’s future Glendale’s problem.
In this day and age of Spotify where everyone can listen to whatever they want and our tastes are all increasingly fragmented and niche, how many touring acts can fill an arena?
How many people want to spend $100+ to be a mile from the stage?
Don’t forget to demand air conditioning for your retractable roof terrace. And 20-30 4k UHD tvs (or holographic displays, what is the holdup with those things anyway?) for the hallways and bathrooms.
After all, if someone else is paying…
Why wait til your lease expires? I mean, it’s never too early to speculate about how you might not be willing to renew unless you have a deal in place… or remind people what the cost to taxpayers would be if you should leave and your apartment remain empty in perpetuity.
I am not even considering moving to Austin, yet.
I hear Greensboro is nice.
I like the cut of you jib but I think there’s a greater opportunity. Why not demand every seat be a Herman Miller? Have Koi ponds in every concourse? Every seat not with a port but an actual electronic device that has subscriptions to all the cools apps. Etc….
The person who comes up with the ceiling number on sports facilities subsidies should become wealthy since they would be saving taxpayers billions but that person will never exist since there isn’t a ceiling which is so, so damning.
Have a great “labor” day holiday as we enrich billionaires.
Darn wanted that a reply to JB not NDB
Has anyone ever thoroughly studied what happens in cities that elect not to give away money for a stadium – San Diego, St Louis, etc?
Does the money go to education, health and safety?
Or does it just go to more taxcuts and subsidies to different millionaires to different kinds of projects?
People are going to continue tolerating and/or voting for stadium subsidies until they feel like not doing so really helps their community. You can show them all the economic papers you want. It won’t help unless it makes a tangible difference.
Since money is fungible, it’s hard to define what “it” means there — the money just goes back into the general pool of public funds, so it’s not like it’s spent on something specific.
Very occasionally, you get a situation where you can see directly the impact of stadium funding: The time that Maryland passes lotteries to fund the Orioles and Ravens stadiums and then had tapped out the market and was unable to do a lottery for education comes to mind. Or school districts that are starved of funds by property-tax kickbacks. But mostly it’s just a “think of what else it could have been spent on” situation — not unlike defense spending or tax cuts for the rich or monorails or whatever your preferred flavor is of government waste.
It reminds me of the mega cash that NYC gave to the Staten Island Yankees and Brooklyn Cyclone stadiums. I believe that at the time the mayor Rudy “batshit crazy” Giuliani said that it shouldn’t be up for public vote since people don’t know what’s good for them or some crazy talk like that. Neil you probably remember better….
I think the “deciding things without a vote is called leadership” Giuliani quote was about the new Yankees stadium in Manhattan he wanted to build. Around the same time, though.
Got it.
Off topic but funny how leadership manifests it today.
Neil keep up the good work.
Are Ben and Reed related??
Yeah, I see that it’s hard to track, but if there were a way to compare cities and see if the ones that avoid public give-aways also spend more on useful things. Because one doesn’t necessarily follow the other.
I increasingly suspect that a lot of politicians, especially those of a certain party, don’t want to spend money on public schools etc whether there’s money available to do it or not.
For them, strangling the public sector is an end in itself. The taxes are secondary.
So maybe blowing money on stadiums is a perfectly fine way for the band to play on as the Titanic is sinking.
That’s kind of what Judith Grant Long set out to study, and after ten years she’d only gotten as far as “see which cities avoid public giveaways.”
If anyone wants to tackle this as a research project, that would be great. But given the number of variables vs. the relatively small number of major cities, it’s going to be a challenge to come up with anything with error bars smaller than the Grand Canyon.
Ok. Thanks.
It don’t see a solution. If it’s not sports stadiums, business will demand other kinds of hand outs. Cities that don’t cave in will be called “unfriendly to business” and more stuff will just be built in the sprawl. Like Glendale.
Congress could end all of this tomorrow, if they wanted to:
https://fiscalpolicy.org/h-r-1060-the-distorting-subsidies-limitation-act
As I recall, there’s already legislation in place that bars states from using subsidies to poach businesses from other states.
Legislators have simply used end runs to get around them and no-one has successfully enforced the laws that are supposed to prevent this (has anyone even tried?).
I disagree with the notion “it can’t be fixed”. Cities and states willingly get involved in this game. They don’t have to.
Sports leagues and franchise owners are really just like used car dealers. If you get fleeced by one you can complain about their methods and tactics (legitimately), but you cannot say you didn’t have the option of walking away.
Read the fine print. Know what you are signing. If it is impossible to determine what you are signing, don’t sign it. If that means driving the ’85 Tempo for another year, so be it.
Okay, John, this is were I call “Blasphemy!” Deceit. Lies.
US professional sports franchises are as rare as a De Beers diamond (I see your 1985 Ford Tempo and raise you a 1985 De Beers commercial https://youtu.be/JxpwUtZ-59Q ).
Precious. Few. Rare. Scarce. Limited. Like diamonds!
When a franchise becomes available, or one even hints of leaving, a city must do anything within its power to obtain or keep it. Anything! Break laws. Subvert laws. Mortgage the city’s future. REPEAT ANYTHING!
Billionaire franchise owners, heck even just plain ol’ millionaire franchise owners, must be satiated (especially if they are going to donate to my re-election campaign).
Besides, everyone knows professional sports franchises bring with them economic and other benefits. High paying jobs especially in the construction industry (and even more so to the professional sports franchise’s management and players). Increased business to the city’s bars, hotels (AirBnB, motels, Vrbo) and restaurants (not to mention petrol stations, grocery stores and mini-markets). Oh, and stores that sell the franchises merchandise. Yuuuge!
Families, sports fanatics and visitors from near and far, whether fan or foe of the franchise, will pour in. And spend unbelievable bazillions! In your city. Because that’s just what sports fans do! It’s in their nature.
Everyone benefits! Business owners. Business leaders. Local Chamber of Commerce. Construction industry. Your city! Not only via tax monies. There’s the prestige of having a professional sports franchise! It’s like your city having libraries, museums or parks. Only way better! (Pssst! Who needs those anyway. Amirite!)
Oh, and local journalism. Like magic! Subscription rates to the local newspaper will skyrocket. Everyone in your city will want to follow every franchise win or loss (as keenly described by the local sportswriter). And local television news ratings. Bang! Through the roof. For the same reason (especially for the local sports anchor).
Well, I hope I’ve imparted numerous indisputable facts to you in my comment. Speaking of used cars, the MLS is still shopping around Real Salt Lake (your city missed its chance at the Houston Dynamo and Orlando City SC). Not top 4 USA major professional sports league, I know. But, oh so close!
However, I’m positive if your city builds a brand new, downtown, soccer-specific stadium, has a billionaire (if a billionaire is willing to own the franchise out of the goodness of his heart, it’s the least your city can do to pay the MLS re-location franchise fee as well) and your city signs on the dotted line ….. King Garber will bestow this franchise unto your city!
Happy Labour Day!
Sure, Tim. I understand pseudonomics much better now.
One question:
If artificial scarcity always works, why couldn’t we create an economic bonanza (in Boise or elsewhere) by using taxpayer funds to build a factory to start producing 1985 Ford Tempos again?
After all, we’d be the only people in the world able to sell them… brand new 1985 Ford Tempos. Think of it!
And if we made the factory expensive enough (again, we’re not the ones paying), the roof could hold an MLS ready stadium for the franchise apparently issued by royal warrant from the King of Spain…
(I didn’t know RSL was actually being shopped… man that Garber is a sly one…)
A federal fix – with comparable legislation in Canada is the only thing that would work.
Otherwise one state/city refusing to participate just means they lose the team/mall/casino/whatever to the next state/city over.
That’s fiscally smart but it does not seem to win municipal elections. At least not often enough to reverse this trend of public subsidies.
The goal isn’t to get rid of stadiums or teams, it’s for the owners to pay for their own facilities and/or pay fair rent for publicly owned facilities.
But why would politicians vote to tax away subsidies for their donors? And many politicians won’t vote to tax anything whatsoever.
Somehow, both parties talk like the only jobs worth creating are private sector jobs. Cutting teachers, police, etc to subsidize private retail or service jobs somehow gets votes.
“But why would politicians vote to tax away subsidies for their donors?”
I have at times described Field of Schemes as a lesson in the need for radical campaign finance reform.
“Cutting teachers, police, etc to subsidize private retail or service jobs somehow gets votes.”
I’m not sure that it “gets votes” — it’s not like many local pols are running on a platform of taking money from teachers and giving it to corporate fat cats. It’s more that once in office, pretty much everyone falls in line with the “we need to provide subsidies to save jobs” argument, both because they’re surrounded by lobbyists making that case and because it’s just How Things Are Done. As former Anaheim mayor Tom Tait, one of the few not to drink the Kool-Aid, put it:
“Everyone’s at the party, and you don’t really want to be the guy not at the party. It’s groupthink, and you gotta really be pretty comfortable with yourself to say ‘none of this makes sense.’”
https://deadspin.com/pay-to-play-is-the-stadium-grift-that-keeps-on-giving-1834338811
Some more thoughts from former elected officials here:
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/why-do-mayors-love-sports-stadiums/
I liked the Deadspin piece. I hadn’t really considered the “reverse lease” notion… but it’s absolutely true. Maybe we should stop talking about stadium leases and start talking about franchise owners leasing their teams to a host city for a given period of time.
With each passing day sports cartels operate more and more like the Piranha brothers
Not to be a dork, but no matter what a new Bills stadium looks like, it won’t be a larger construction project than the Erie Canal. 360 miles of navigable waterway connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes. The kicker? It was completed in 1825. A football stadium in 2023? Pshaw!