Congratulations, we made it through another week! Let’s take a quick run through a few news items before everyone heads out for their long weekends:
- Chicago Bears officials have scheduled an “informational community meeting” for next Thursday to present “conceptual plans” for a stadium development on the site of Arlington International Racecourse. We’ll have to wait and see whether this will include any information about how much such a thing would cost or who would pay for it, or if it’ll just be a cavalcade of vaportecture renderings; the Arlington Heights mayor stressed that this isn’t any kind of actual government meeting and that he won’t even show up, in the Chicago Tribune’s words, “so as not to interfere,” so my money’s on the latter.
- A California judge tossed three challenges to the Oakland A’s proposed Howard Terminal stadium‘s environmental impact statement, inspiring NBC Sports California sportscaster Brodie Brazil to new heights of tortured baseball metaphors: “If we’re equating it to winning a World Series, the A’s were already in the playoffs, they’re already past the Wild Card round, they’re already out of the ALDS, that was the BCDC vote back on June 30, so I would technically say that we’re still in the ALCS, and although the A’s might have already been up one game to none now that the City of Oakland decided a public vote wasn’t going to happen, they might be up two games to none now, potentially three to none.” But what’s the stadium’s Pythag?
- A poll of Tennessee voters found that 61% oppose spending half a billion public dollars on a new Tennessee Titans stadium. Local news coverage points out that the poll was conducted by the libertarian Beacon Center, which is opposed to the stadium funding, which is fair, but given that the language of the poll question was “Do you approve or disapprove of the state putting up to $500 million in funding toward a new Tennessee Titans stadium?” and that’s exactly what the state would be doing, along with $700 million in Nashville city money, it’s not like this question was spun to misrepresent the deal or anything. The Metro Nashville Council will hold its first public hearing on the stadium plan on September 14.
- The Milwaukee Brewers have fallen from 5th to 10th in the National League in attendance since 2019, and team president Rick Schlesinger has a simple explanation: Group sales are down from 600,000 to 400,000 this year, because “there are companies that are still not 100% comfortable organizing groups to be in large-capacity events.” Uh, and in the five cities that passed the Brewers in attendance, companies aren’t concerned about swapping germs? Maybe trading off your star closer at the trade deadline and falling off the playoff pace could have something to do with it, too, just spitballing here; surely it’s not that the Brewers need a new stadium, though, that wouldn’t fit with confirmation bias.
Group ticket sales cannot react that quickly to events like player trades or a team losing form. They take months of planning and coordination.
Differing pandemic levels in different metro areas would not be the worst explanation.
Group ticket sales are down by 200k and overall attendance is on pace to drop by 450k, so they don’t really explain most of it anyway.
Some more procedural wins for the A’s/HT? Yawwwn.. Wake us when they start talking actual funding for this boondoggle. It’s been rather quiet here in the bay over HT news. Word is Oakland is nowhere close to bridging the infrastructure funding gap. But you’ve already reported some of this earlier in the year Neil. The more procedural wins for HT, the more folks like Brazil can portray this mirage of “major wins” for Oakland.
Why do you hate Oakland so much? Just curious… seems like the A’s have a fair share of BS to toss around. Word on the street is the Angels are for sale. Silicon Valley Angels? Can play where great America sits right now.
The Angels pretty reliably pull 3 million in attendance a year in normal seasons, and the general area is crawling with rich people stuff for the players and their wives. You’d be nuts to move the Angels. And it’s still Giants territory anyway.
Giants territory? I’ve yet to see them play a game down here in America’s 10th largest city.
Not even a WS victory parade.
Environmental impact statements are pretty much make-work bullshit anyway. If you’re a Made Man with the right people behind you, EIS requirements aren’t going to get in your way. Favored developments can get a legislative exemption by greasing the right palms (or making really cogent scientific arguments for the exemption, I’m sure that happens a lot). No real news here.
100%!!
I think anyone who actually comes up with a convoluted and confusing/ridiculous metaphor like Brazil’s should not be called a sportscaster. They should just be called a douchebag.
Since the A’s haven’t yet accepted the city’s generous offer of $495m toward the ballpark at HT and the city doesn’t even know where it might get the $495m it has promised, much less the additional $400-600m it will surely take to bribe the team owners to build there… I would say a more apt metaphor would be it’s the first week of spring training and no-one has taken the field yet, but also none of the pitchers or catchers have thus far torn rotator cuffs during gym workouts.
Eat your heart out, Brodie Brazil (if that’s your real name…)
100% truth JB!
Chicago Bears statement and proposed site plan:
https://www.chicagobears.com/arlington-park/