We made it through another week! Well, if you’re here reading this, you did, anyway. Let’s celebrate with some mostly depressing news:
- The Erie County legislature hasn’t voted to spend $250 million on a new Buffalo Bills stadium yet, but deciding how to vote is for suckers, they’ll just be focusing on which $250 million to spend. (If you’re wondering why the linked article says that Erie County plans to somehow save money by adding a quarter-billion dollars in debt, that seems to be because the state is pouring in $160 million toward future operating expenses that the county was on the hook for at the old stadium; I can’t be bothered to try to parse the Buffalo News’ “reporting” this morning, but suffice to say that spending $250 million still costs $250 million in this part of the multiverse, at least.)
- The Atlanta Journal Constitution is concerned that if more Cobb County areas form their own cities and take hotel tax revenues with them, the county will have less money to pay off its $300 million in Atlanta Braves stadium debt. This feels like mostly a bookkeeping issue to me — if new cities siphon off tax revenues, that’s bad for the county whether they have to pay for a stadium with it or not — but I’ll leave it to the next J.C. Bradbury paper (or tweet) to figure that out.
- The Arizona Coyotes are officially moving into Arizona State University’s new 5,000-seat arena! Which, yes, was already announced as official back in February, but now it’s officially official. ASU will get to keep parking, naming-rights, and sponsorship revenue, while the Coyotes will get ticket and merchandise sales and a cut of concessions, plus is working on ideas for raising money via “branded content” and “fan activation” and, okay, they’re just making up marketing terms now, let them have their fun.
- The San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission has granted its approval to the new Oakland A’s stadium plan … or maybe just released a staff report recommending that it be approved? It all depends on whether you trust Front Office Sports’ unsourced reporting as far as you can throw it, which I don’t particularly recommend, just look at that shifty acronym!
- The Chattanooga Lookouts owners are getting a pile of state sales tax money to help pay for their new $86.5 million stadium, so much for the pandemic forcing the team to stay at its 22-year-old stadium for a minute longer.
- In non-sports news, Georgia is giving $1.5 billion to an electric-car manufacturer to open a plant east of Atlanta, which is a record for a public subsidy for an auto plant. But don’t worry, it’s supposed to create 7,500 jobs, which is only a cost of $200,000 per job, which is a terrible ratio compared to literally pretty much any other thing you could spend public money on, where’s my helicopter?
$200,000 is chump change. Between city and state entities, Frisco, TX, spent upwards of $160,000,000 in direct giveaways and tax kickbacks to bribe the PGA to move there on the promise of “100 with potentially as many as 250 jobs.” (Read: “100 jobs”)
Oh, there are much worse per-job rates — I’m reminded of the infamous Minnesota subsidy where the company (I want to say a Dairy Queen) said it had created exactly one job. But it’s still a godawful rate compared to pretty much literally anything else you could do with the money.
BCDC hearing on the Oakland A’s development project on the agenda for June 2. Vote expected June 30. This is only the Commission’s first pass at the project; if they approve removing the project site from Port Priority status in June, then later on in the process they will need to decide if the specific development proposed is a good idea. https://www.bcdc.ca.gov/BPA/BPA2-19.html
Well, if the Coyotes can sell all 5,000 tickets per game at an average price of $95, they will equal their average game day revenues from the 2008/09 season.
Yeah. It was (and is) that bad.
Their TV ratings are also the worst of any team, and dropped by 58%.
NHL local ratings dropped by 23% this season, with only four teams showing increases
https://awfulannouncing.com/nhl/nhl-local-ratings-dropped-by-23-this-season-with-only-four-teams-showing-increases.html
As that article shows, a lot of the problems with local ratings declines are because fewer people have access to the RSNs without a VPN.
But in some cases, like the Coyotes, it’s because the teams aren’t much fun to watch.
NMG: I recall a radio talking head discussing the Coyotes tv numbers around the time Moyes put them into bankruptcy court. I don’t remember which year it was for, but there were months during that season when the average lcoal viewership was under 10,000.
As the sports talk host said, “In a city of 5-6m, you could get 7500 people to watch the test pattern”.
This will make little sense to anyone too young to remember test patterns, but sadly I am not one of those people…
If, as Mr Gutierrez states, that the Coyotes has the greatest fans, then why are they teaming up, for one year, with the Oak View Group?
Coyotes, Oak View Group join forces for sales partnership at new ASU arena
https://www.azcentral.com/story/sports/nhl/coyotes/2022/05/09/arizona-coyotes-top-firm-oak-view-group-enter-business-partnership/9700069002/
They must be really, really in dire straits as they cannot sellout a 5,000 seat (which is actually about 3,700) arena.
Can someone tell/remind me why Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum (original home of the Phoenix Suns) wasn’t seriously considered for the Coyotes, even on a temporary basis? Home of WHA & minor league hockey for decades. Still open, still standing, right? Seats about 13,000 for hockey. Not enough luxury boxes?