Happy Friday! I don’t know about you, but for me this was a great week: I got a new coffee mug, and also it’s now almost over! The week, I mean, not the mug. You’re smart, you probably figured that out already.
And now, how’s about some news:
- The Toronto Blue Jays owners are planning $230 million in renovations to the stadium formerly known as SkyDome but now named for the team’s corporate owners, or maybe it’s $300 million in renovations, what is money, anyway, especially Canadian money? The CBC’s report says that the redo will include saying “goodbye to the nosebleeds,” as the top 500 level deck will be “completely removed and replaced with non-ticketed spaces,” and oh, here’s a rendering with the 500 level still very much visible, hmm. The stadium is owned by the Jays after Ontario built it and took a huge bath on it, so presumably the renovations will be funded by the team, though Jays president Mark Shapiro called this just a “medium-term solution,” so there’ll still be plenty of time to demand a new stadium later, don’t worry.
- WPRI in Providence breaks down why Pawtucket’s new USL soccer stadium will cost taxpayers $60 milllion and not $45.5 million like its developers claim, which is helpful and all, except when you add up all the numbers it actually looks more like $80 million? ($46.2 million in state tax breaks, $10 million from the city, plus $27 million in additional money redirected from state infrastructure spending — yup, that’d be more than $80 million.) The fog of stadium wars is soupy indeed.
- If the Philadelphia 76ers owners succeed in building their own Center City arena and no longer renting from the Flyers, “The companies that would benefit are Live Nation and AEG, because they would have two buildings in Philly to play off each other, so the rent expense would go down,” former Spectrum manager Ed Rubinstein tells Venues Now. “That’s the reason why we never wanted another arena built.” This would be the Sixers owners’ problem, on the one hand, but also Philly taxpayers’ problem if the idea of giving the Sixers arena a giant tax break would be to help the local economy when it would only end up shuffling concert spending around from one part of town to another.
- There are new Tennessee Smokies stadium renderings, and — oh, come on, you’re not even trying! I get that the plans need to be downscaled some because the stadium is over budget, but at least you can afford some clip art fireworks or people playing random sports. Show some self-respect.
- Somebody dug up this consulting report that everyone’s favorite economist-for-team-hire Andy Zimbalist did on mixed martial arts — okay, sure — and I must report that previous reporting that Zimbalist earns $225 an hour for his services is out of date: His “customary rate,” he wrote in the 2017 document, is actually $850 an hour. And that’s before any surcharges Zimbalist now imposes for supply-chain issues. Please draw your own conclusions as to whether that rate could be an incentive to report the findings that your client is hoping for, or at least look really hard for them.
- Your occasional reminder that sports team owners don’t have a monopoly on getting billions of dollars in public money for no damn reason: Here’s a report on Kansas giving Panasonic $800 million in subsidies for a battery factory in exchange for a commitment of zero new jobs, and here’s Bernie Sanders talking about how a new bipartisan bill to compete with China on electronics somehow involves giving $76 billion to microchip companies. The New York Times called the latter “a remarkable and rare consensus in a polarized Congress,” which is both true and all too telling about what our elected representatives (and major newspapers) can agree on.
- “It’s morally corrupt that new arenas for professional teams worth billions of dollars are majorly publicly funded — especially when the tax dollars could be going to other areas in the city in actual need of the money,” writes Norman Transcript sports reporter intern Clemente Almanza of devoting public dollars to a new Oklahoma City Thunder arena like the team’s owners want, “but” — you knew there was a “but” coming — “that comes with the territory of having a franchise. 18 of the 29 NBA arenas are owned by a government multiplicity” — he’s an intern, he can’t be expected to own a dictionary — and “losing the Thunder would cause catastrophic levels of damage that the state would never recover.” Um, you don’t want to recover the damage … hey, Norman Transcript, don’t you have any copy editors? No? I guess “let the intern sit down and keyboard out a column on why a new arena is necessary” is just how journalism goes these days — that coffee mug gets righter and righter every day.
Yeah, not a great day for journalism… but the Blue Jays plans are to remove the 500 level seats in the outfield only, not the entire 500 level (and yes, most media outlets failed to provide this detail).
Those seats pretty much never sell (ALCS appearances notwithstanding) because they are a very, very long way away from and above the field (specifically the infield, where, you know, most of baseball actually happens).
The notion of replacing them with a sports bar/lounge on one side of the massive scoreboard and a family oriented area on the other seem on the surface to be ok… but neither of those things will move the seating areas/pavilions any closer to the infield.
Would they be more popular than the existing seating zones? Maybe. But popular enough to warrant, say $50m in investment?
I wouldn’t think so.
Anyway, so long as they are just using the parent company’s money, they can do whatever they want.
I find it hard to imagine that a stadium that was built for around $800m, then sold to a private company (Sportco) for $125m, and then ultimately sold to the Jays when they refused to sign a new lease with Sportco (for less than $50m, maybe significantly less depending on who’s figures you believe…) will be getting a privately funded $300m makeover.
Look out Ontario taxpayers…
Sportsco was the 3rd owner. First Ontario, the a consortium (of which LaBatt/Interbew was the largest shareholder with 48%), then Sportsco, then Rogers. The consortium put the stadium into bankruptcy, it was Interbrew’s way of trying to get 100% ownership. Sportsco was a group fronted by former Jays GM Pat Gillick who wanted to buy the Jays. This resulted in multi-year standoff where Interbrew sold the team to Rogers and then Sportsco eventually threw in the towel and sold the stadium to Rogers.
That all being said, I was surprised that the hit to Ontario tax payers was only $262.7 million. Over the years the legend of the Provincial has grown to astronomical numbers. That actually seems like a pretty decent number in exchange for 33 years and counting of major league baseball downtown. Not to mention that unlike American sports venues this pays property taxes.
This was $262.7 million in early-’90s dollars, when a million dollars was still a million dollars. (It’d be roughly double that in today’s loonies.)
The property taxes thing is a plus, yes. SkyDome sits comfortably in the midrange of stadiums that are neither historic crimes against humanity nor in any way actually “good.” Kind of the Susan Collins of stadiums.
If it ($263m) were true it would still be a huge subsidy to private business (which the baseball team is and has always been).
I have serious concerns with the authenticity of that number. In the same way “legend” or folklore can inflate a loss number, those with an interest in doing the opposite can achieve the same end.
Neil are you looking for a copy editor? The tense on the word expect should be expected.
A funny place to have a typo.
Yep, thanks! Wrote that at 4 am, missed it on my re-read this morning.
$300 million Canadian equates to roughly $230 million US. That’s why a Canadian website said $300 million and US website said $230 million
Oh, possibly. A bunch of other U.S. websites also say “$300 million,” but they may have just copy/pasted from Canadian reports without checking the difference between US$ and CA$.
This is why Canadian dollars really need their own symbol. Maybe a stylized loon? Typographers, your expertise is needed!
What happened to the Jays’ efforts to put real grass on that field?