Plague of minor-league soccer stadium subsidy demands reaches pandemic proportions

access_time personNeil deMause

Oh hey, USL press release about the ill-fated Pawtucket soccer stadium project, which utterly fails to mention either the metastasizing public costs or the fact that Rhode Island voters now oppose funding it by a 44-35% margin. Anything else in there of actual interest?

Tidewater Landing becomes one of five current stadium projects that are under construction in the USL Championship and USL League One, including one for a future USL Championship club in Des Moines, Iowa. There are another 11 stadium projects approved or in development across USL Championship and League One, following clubs such as Colorado Springs Switchbacks FC, Louisville City FC, Monterey Bay F.C., and Chattanooga Red Wolves SC, whose new homes have opened in recent years.

So, five stadiums under construction (or at least having had a groundbreaking, which lets Pawtucket qualify even though funding hasn’t gotten final approval) and 11 others “in development” — that’s rather a lot, even for a league that currently sports 38 teams across two levels in an attempt to take over the U.S. soccer world by sheer volume. The press release doesn’t specify which cities the USL is currently getting or seeking stadiums in, so with the help of the Field of Schemes archives and Reddit, let’s attempt a rundown in rough order of approvalness:

That’s 19 potential projects, though only maybe ten of them could be considered in progress, and for some of those you’d have to squint really hard. John Mozena of the Center for Economic Accountability, the people behind those excellent stickers, has a Twitter thread about this whole kerfuffle, in which he points out that sports stadiums, thanks to being closed and empty most of the time, have less economic impact than your typical supermarket or chain food store:

If there’s a silver lining to all this, it’s that most of the USL stadium campaigns appear to be spinning their wheels to various degrees. If there’s whatever is the opposite of a silver lining, it’s that none of the potential team owners are giving up, because why stop grabbing for that brass subsidy ring if you can maybe get tens of millions of dollars if you get lucky? Not sure if the USL qualifies as a Ponzi scheme yet, but it’s certainly striving to head in that direction.

Other Recent Posts:

Share this post:

19 comments on “Plague of minor-league soccer stadium subsidy demands reaches pandemic proportions”

  1. You’re just going to ride the “Ponzi scheme” theme to the end like Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove, aren’t you? Even though unless new investors come in to create the supposed investment value gains by existing investors, it doesn’t fit the definition.

    We get it, you don’t like soccer. It’s this thing you have. I’m all in favor of calling out boondoggles, which these projects (in all sports) are. But you keep reliving this one moment of Deadspin fame at every opportunity.

      1. It’s above, linked from “Ponzi scheme.” (To a Wayback archive, because I’m not gonna give Vichy Deadspin the clicks.)

    3. I love soccer! That doesn’t stop both the MLS and USL’s business models from being “damn the actual balance sheets, if we keep expanding fast enough maybe no one will notice.” (Maybe this should be called less a “Ponzi scheme” than a “WeWork scheme”?)

      1. Soccer in America is a good thing, but not at the cost of all these damn venues being propped up at the cost of American taxpayers, many of whom likely still think its some kind of backdoor communist plot.

    4. I take the LIRR past the site of the Queensboro FC stadium, besides some holes in the ground there is absolutely no work being done.

  3. You might want to do some reseach as far as Sacramento Republic. The stadium is part of the Railyards Project for the expanding downtown. This area is the largest unbuilt downtown project in the country. The $33 million you mentioned has been already spent as infrastructure. New roads, water and power is in place. Currently office buildings have been built. Housing, schools, retail and a major hospital are also on the docket. I have no issues with my tax money for these projects.

    1. If you click on the link provided, you’ll find past posts on the Republic stadium, including: “The Sacramento city council unanimously approved a $27 million ‘loan’ to the new Sacramento Republic F.C. MLS team for stadium roads and traffic and transit infrastructure, which isn’t really a loan because team owner Ron Burkle will be paying it back with taxes he’d normally pay anyway.”

      Paying for improvements to stadium property is exactly the same as paying for stadium costs in terms of impact on an owner’s bottom line. If all you’re concerned with is what is written in the memo field of the city checks, though, then this way sounds better, yes.

    2. By the way, are they ever going to do something with that abandoned baseball/football stadium template near the old Sleep Train Arena? Build on it, tear it down, anything?

      1. I’m pretty sure that stadium footprint was covered up/removed years ago by development in the area.

        As for the old arena, demolition is under way. https://www.sacbee.com/news/business/article264418626.html

      2. The last time I google earthed it, the main grandstand footings etc were still in place and what should have been the infield looked like it was slowly turning into an aquatic reserve of some sort.

        But that’s google earth, of course. As I recall that was a 2020 image… and it’s still pretty much as I remember it on googlemaps now:

        https://www.google.com/maps/place/Sleep+Train+Arena/@38.6508474,-121.5186071,534m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x809ad61c0bc7f5e5:0x40c7e6f53a43977b!8m2!3d38.6490388!4d-121.5181284

  4. I get government’s spending money to lure/keep and NFL/MLB/NBA/NHL team for quality of life or image reasons. I get that soccer is gaining in popularity. I have hopped on the bandwagon myself. However, I don’t get big dollars for minor league soccer.

    I also don’t get how soccer stadiums have gotten so expensive. The Crew’s stadium cost $314 million for a 20K soccer stadium. The Browns stadium 72K seats cost a little under $283 million in 1999. With inflation that’s about $435 million in 2019 dollars when the Crew stadium opened. Stadium costs make no sense anymore

    1. They don’t aqib. And we don’t even have to go back two decades to see that in action.

      When Pittsburgh’s new arena opened they boasted that it cost $320m and had “HD tvs in places no-one will ever go”. An odd claim, but still.

      I believe Edmonton’s NHL arena was next up and it’s projected cost ballooned from $480m (which the city manager himself said the revenues from the TIF zone would not be able to cover) to well north of $600m. Even accounting for a) inflation and b) currency conversion (to $470m) that represents a near 50% increase in costs in just a couple of years. Since Pittsburgh is a pretty high snow load area, design itself should not be significantly more expensive.

      The only explanation for the ever spiralling costs of stadia and arenas is that the costs keep going up because the stadium tenants aren’t the ones paying.

      Minor league baseball facilities now routinely cost $100m or more (some nearly double that – Worcester’s new stadium manages to look old and shabby despite costing something like $160m). These facilities would simply never be built if the owners had to pay for them using revenue generated by the facilities themselves. Hence the disconnect between ‘minimum acceptable standard’ and actual need.

      If I owned an apartment building and let my tenants set the minimum acceptable standards for fit, finish and furnishings (to really approximate pro sports franchises, the tenants would also have to impose a monthly rent limit of $0 while leaving me with the property tax bill and agreeing to share future upgrade and maintenance costs), why wouldn’t they demand $30,000 bathrooms and $100,000 kitchens?

      1. Edmonton’s $480 million was in Canadian dollars so that amounted to $370 million at the time. The Penguins arena was $321 million in 2010 so that amounts to a little under 2.4% per year. I haven’t been to the Pittsburgh arena but I’ve walked around the Edmonton arena and it looks sick so I can see why it cost what it did

  5. I take the LIRR past the site of the Queensboro FC stadium, besides some holes in the ground there is absolutely no work being done.

Comments are closed.