Every single damn time: I start thinking that things have calmed down and it’ll just be the same few sports subsidy deals for a while, and then suddenly someone drops a new one or two out of nowhere. The NYC F.C. and Kansas City Royals stadium demands weren’t entirely unexpected, but they also weren’t expected just now for the sums of money that are being asked for, so they definitely qualify as a surprise to me.
I’ve already been on one Kansas City TV station this week, and I’ll be on their NPR station KCUR this morning from 9 to 9:30 am Central time. And I wrote about the NYC F.C. plan for Hell Gate, and will likely be doing so again, so clearly more people are paying attention as the ongoing stadium game moves to, or rather returns to, a couple more localities. (If you’re new to this site as a result: Hi! This all has been going on for a long time, and seems determined to continue until we’re all dead, try not to be too depressed, near-hopeless causes are worth fighting for, and laughing to keep from crying is a perfectly acceptable way of getting through the days.)
And with that, let’s get to other news that fell by the wayside this week, or that has come up since yesterday:
- With that NYC F.C. public price tag still very much an unknown, I put in an email to University of Colorado economist Geoffrey Propheter, who formerly specialized in property tax expenditures for the New York City Independent Budget Office, to see if he had any ideas for estimating how much New York City would be giving up by granting a full property tax break for a $780 million soccer stadium. As it turned out, he very much did: His new book “Major League Sports and the Property Tax Costs and Implications of a Stealth Tax Expenditure” is due out next week, and it includes a methodology for estimating the forgone property tax on sports projects. In the case of NYC F.C., he estimated that a full tax exemption over 49 years would cost New York City somewhere between $132.5 million and $197 million. Add that to the share of city infrastructure costs that would be going to the stadium (almost certainly $100 million or more, if the total infrastructure tab comes to $200-300 million as City Hall has projected), the value of getting the use of city land for 49 years (still TBD), and subtract out the $30 million the city will take in in rent, and we have … somewhere between a $200 million loss for city taxpayers and something substantially more than that. We’ll hopefully know more once Adams presents an actual memorandum of understanding and/or lease proposal to the city council, unless this is part of Adams’ whole pretending-things-are-true-just-because-he-says-them thing, in which case we may have to dig a bit more to come up with final numbers.
- Oh, and also NYC F.C. paid one of Adams’ top campaign aides $20,000 to lobby his former boss on the stadium deal, according to the New York Daily News. This is totally legal, somehow.
- On Royals owner John Sherman’s $2 billion stadium ask, Craig Calcaterra has feels that are so well stated that I’ll just quote them here: “Less than 15 years ago Kansas City taxpayers spent $250 million for renovations to what was the already wonderful Kauffman Stadium and made it even more wonderful. Indeed, it remains wonderful. It’s one of the best parks in all of baseball by any conceivable measure. To suggest that it even needs another $250 million, let alone eight times that much, just to keep pace with other ballparks is to insult the intelligence of literally any person who has ever stepped foot in that or any other ballpark. As for the economic benefits, literally every shred of comprehensive research on the economic impact of sports teams and stadiums has established that they are not drivers of economic development. I realize that the actual facts on this score are routinely ignored as team owners, team boosters, and credulous members of the media parrot utterly unsupported claims that ‘New sTADiUM mEAN BiG puBlIc bEneFiT!!!’ but their parroting does not make it true. It is bullshit even if they want people to believe otherwise.”
- Economist J.C. Bradbury adds: Yup, that’s about the size of it.
- The World Cup starts Sunday in Qatar, and there are two ways to write about it: List all of the horrors of slave labor that helped build a fleet of new stadiums, or … not.
- The news has been too busy for me to get around to the collapse of FTX and what it means for the Miami Heat‘s naming-rights deal with the now-bankrupt crypto company, which is a shame because it’s a true laugh-to-keep-from-crying masterpiece. (FTX signed a penalty clause to pay $16.5 million if it defaults on its naming rights payments, plus pay for removing its signage on the arena — but now it’s penniless and bankrupt and can’t be made to pay anything! Hilarious!) Let’s make up for that now by enjoying the fact that a Miami strip club is offering to buy the used naming rights, which is truly the ending we all deserve.
- Speaking of bankrupt things, Chester, Pennsylvania is now one of them. Guess that revitalization-through-publicly-subsidized-soccer-stadium thing is continuing not to work out so well there.
- Anaheim is planning to do an appraisal of the condition of the Los Angeles Angels‘ stadium, in anticipation of maybe enforcing a lease clause that could require team owner Arte Moreno to do a couple hundred million dollars worth of maintenance. “It’s important for the people of Anaheim and the council to know the condition of the stadium and [whether it is] being kept at a first-class professional baseball stadium,” said councilmember Jose Moreno, no doubt cackling deep inside at the idea of holding Moreno to the kind of state-of-the-art clause that teams usually use against cities.
- Nashville Mayor John Cooper says it would cost as much to renovate the Tennessee Titans‘ stadium as to built a $2.1 billion new one; Nashville councilmember Bob Mendes called this “the biggest lie the mayor has told” and said ‘there’s no way on Earth that ‘first class’ stadium requires a three-story sports bar or a luxury songwriters lounge or a covered rooftop area with grass and trees on top of Nissan Stadium.” Mendes also released renderings of what the Titans owners are looking for in a renovated stadium — do they include gratuitous balloons, people watching anything but the game, and ghostly figures from another realm? Would you have it any other way?
As to stadium names, one of my SABR friends came up with an appropriate one for the White Sox ballpark: Chick Gandil Memorial Stadium.
Well, at least NYCFC’s new stadium will allow beer to be consumed in the stands..
for now….
Unlike the Olympics there are many places where you could put the World Cup and not have to build anything. They could have the entire thing in London which already has enough soccer specific stadiums, hotels, and infrastructure to absorb the tourists.
That’s why it’s coming to the North America in 4 years. Using existing NFL, and CFL stadiums. The 1994 US hosted World Cup using NFL and College stadiums was an attendance and cash bonanza. This World Cup was going to be here, but then FIFA voters saw that Qatar money.
Yeah, North America is to the World Cup what Los Angeles is to the Olympics: a safe bet where at least there’s lots already in place.
I was reading an article in the Athletic and they were saying that with so many of the stadium in Doha and Qatar being so small people could attend 3 different matches in one day. They could accomplish this in just London. France and Germany also have enough soccer specific stadiums that they literally wouldn’t have to build anything for this event. Everything about this was stupid
That’s true, but countries like to spread the games around, let more cities and taxpayers see/pay for the games. Also, not sure any 1 city wants 32 (soon 48) different fan bases roaming their streets for three weeks. When France and German have hosted the WC and Euros (also a 32 team format) they spread the games out. And Englands various bids usually include games in 3 London stadiums, Manchester, Birmingham, Newcastle, Leeds, Sheffield and sometimes Cardiff. But like the US, there we no plans to build any new stadiums, except for the renovation of the Olympic (now West Ham) Stadium.
You could hold the Olympics (summer or winter) in any number of past host cities and not have to build much of anything. Sure, venue requirements change over long periods of time, but the facilities built for Greece or Brazil could have been maintained and used many times.
That’s not what the IOC (or FIFA) is about, though.
In this case, they wanted to hold a World Cup in the middle east… which they had never done before. The game is growing in Asia generally, and part of the FIFA mandate is to move the tournament around in the hopes of achieving this (and generating the most cash, naturally).
The Al-Thanis showed up with the most money.
Let’s not pretend the World Cup hasn’t been held in some morally questionable places in the past. Post Franco Spain, Argentina, Brazil (under a military dictatorship)… and who hosted the last world cup?
I agree hosting the tournament in Qatar is problematic. So were quite a number of the previous hosts.
The thing with the Olympics is that there is no regular use for most of the venues. UK, France, Italy, Germany, and Spain all have top tier soccer leagues so their stadiums are used all the time. What would you do with a swimming or track and field stadium when there isnt an Olympics going on? Even if you were rotating the Olympics between 4 cities. What do you do with those venues for the 20 years before the games come back?
Qatar was next-level stupid simply for the fact that it’s a country of 2.7 million people and the World Cup draws a million fans. You hold it in any of the European countries and they can easily absorb that. Not that you would want to put it in just one city but you could literally have the whole tournament in London and not have to build a single stadium, hotel, or subway station.
You don’t have to grow the game in the Middle East like you did in the US when they put it there in 1994. People in the Middle East are already huge fans. That’s why so many despots – er Royal Families own teams.
Sure, but that’s the nature of the Olympics in general. How many people have ever watched a single fencing, rhythmic gymnastics, biathlon or water polo tournament OUTSIDE an olympic competition?
It’s a very small number.
The Al-Thanis offered a rumoured $2-300Bn in spending on the World Cup. It’s not complicated to understand why it is there. And they will absorb the fans just fine (if you’ve watched any of the FIFA road to the world cup propaganda programs, you’ve seen what they have spent the money on… 100 new hotels, cruise ships, a brand new metro system etc)
Most of the venues will not be used afterwards, just like the Greece or Brazil Olympics. Sorry to be so blunt, but that is FIFA (and the IOC)’s problem, not Qatars. They had the money and FIFA took it. Just like they took Russia’s.
I don’t know whether it represents some sort of sea change, but both FIFA and the IOC have been having trouble attracting bids in recent years. I wish they weren’t attracting any at all, of course, but that’s why they have both taken to ‘partnering’ with problematic nations.
And at least as far as the world cup, ‘we’re next’.
Makes you think doesn’t it?
I looked up the up-coming book by Propheter, Major League Sports and the Property Tax, on Amazon and it looks like a college textbook. Can you ask him to create a non-academic friendly book in the near future? I’d love to learn more about how sports stadiums affect property taxes in various neighborhoods.
Yeah, Geoff said there’ll be a ebook version that may be more affordable, at least. Academic pricing is kind of off the hook.
As for a non-academic book, that’s Field of Schemes’ side of the road. Will definitely see if I can get him to sit for an interview about this, though.
Kauffman Stadium is still a beautiful facility. A design that has never aged. It looks better than many of the ballparks which have come out in the last 20 years. It appears to be well maintained and I believe it is outrageous the owner is looking for a new stadium. It’s not my money, but if they are going to spend, spend it on Kaufman to make it even better. What a shame the fans of the Royals may lose a treasure of a ball park
Better yet, John Sherman should spend money on his starting rotation instead of re-signing Ryan M.F.’ing O’Hearn.