It was the NFL owners’ meetings this week, which meant a whole lot of headlines about how the league is providing money toward new or renovated stadiums for a bunch of its teams: $295 million for Dallas Cowboys upgrades, $200 million toward a new $2.1 billion Tennessee Titans stadium, and $100 million for Denver Broncos upgrades. All this is coming via the NFL’s G-4 program, funding that is often termed loans but, since it gets “repaid” with ticket sales money the teams would normally have to share with the league, it’s really grants.
If you’re wondering why the NFL goes through the trouble of shuffling money around this way — asking for a cut via revenue-sharing and then handing it back for stadium projects — it’s complicated. G-4 evolved from G-3, which was originally created way back in 1999, when Robert Kraft was threatening to move the New England Patriots from Boston (well, Boston-ish) to Hartford. The NFL, which had recently seen the Houston Oilers move to Nashville and the Los Angeles Rams move to St. Louis in search of new stadium deals, appointed a committee to see if there was a way to discourage owners from abandoning larger cities for smaller ones, thus hurting the league’s ability to demand top dollar for national TV rights. To lead this committee, the league appointed one Robert Kraft.
You can probably see where this is going: Kraft’s committee approved a plan whereby the NFL would allow teams to withhold some revenue-sharing money if it used it to build new stadiums — but only for teams in the top six markets. The 6th-largest market at the time just happened to be Boston, and Kraft became the first recipient of funds under the league’s new G-3 provision.
Immediately, other team owners claimed it wasn’t fair that the Patriots, one of the richest teams in a league full of rich teams, were getting to use their money to build a new stadium that would benefit mostly them, and so G-3 (and its successor, G-4) was expanded to the entire league. This didn’t make a ton of sense in terms of keeping teams in big markets, but it did make for lots of spending on upgrades, so it was in the league’s interest, maybe, at least if the upgrades brought in more money than they cost, which was more likely to be the case when there was a pile of public money involved too.
To that end, G-3 and G-4 were designed to require “public-private partnerships,” meaning the NFL would only kick in if local taxpayers did first. But somewhere along the way, the league started bending that rule: While the Titans, for example, are supposed to get more than a billion dollars in tax money for their new stadium, the Broncos are getting just $12 million, and the Cowboys nothing — so a more accurate reading of the rule might be “public-private partnerships, or be Jerry Jones.”
And that’s The Story of G-4, or How NFL Stadium Funding Got Weirder Than Mere Billionaires Ripping Off Taxpayers Would Have You Expect. It’s not great news, exactly, since it doesn’t mean team owners are asking for any less public money, but it does go to show that sports leagues do have ways of funding new venues without demanding tax dollars, if they wanted to, which they don’t, because why wouldn’t you want tax dollars? Never spend more for an acquisition than you have to.
Was there other news this week? You betcha:
- The Buffalo Bills stadium still hasn’t gotten a final environmental signoff from the New York state legislature or a community benefits agreement between the team and the county, but it has over a billion dollars in state and county money, so the rest can (and will) wait till 2023 sometime, don’t you worry.
- The state of Ohio just got around to approving its $30 million share of spending on stadium upgrades for the Cleveland Guardians, to go along with $255 million from the city and county. That’s been expected all along, but it’s still worth taking note of, especially when building the stadium in the first place only cost $350 million (in 1994 dollars, but still).
- Speaking of the Titans, their newfound antagonist, metro councilperson Bob Mendes, has proposed reducing the state’s spending on their stadium from $500 million to $450 million and spending the other $50 million on children’s services. That’s probably mostly a rhetorical gambit to show that, no, this isn’t money that has to be spent on a stadium, it could go to kids if the state decided to do that, but also a way of pointing out that if a stadium would really generate $3 billion in future tourist taxes like its advocates claim, why not spend the upfront money on more pressing needs and give the Titans owners any surplus that comes in later? That’s not likely to go over well with team execs, but like I said, rhetorical gambit, it’s more to make a point than actually get approved, so well enough played, Bob Mendes.
- We Are NY Horse Racing released an economic impact study claiming that upgrades to Belmont Park will produce “billions of dollars in economic impact” and I’m sorry, I can’t finish this sentence without laughing, go read the stenography journalism yourself.
- More new Tampa Bay Rays stadium renderings, this time for a proposed stadium on the Tampa side of the bay, though they’re not detailed enough to make much fun of. The roof does have some weird wrinkly thing going on, which presumably has something to do with skylights, but given that we’re extremely likely never to hear of this proposal or this design ever again, I’m having a hard time getting into it.
- And finally, enjoy this story of a St. Louis suburb that destroyed its bond rating by building a practice rink for the Blues then ran out of money to pay for it, because of COVID or something, definitely not because a $55.7 million hockey practice arena could never possibly pay for itself. (If the article is paywalled after the first few paragraphs, just let a bot write the rest for you, it’ll probably be as reliable as most local newspaper reporting anyway.)
Sorry St. Pete, but the Tampa side of the bay has always made more economic sense. That is if you stay in Florida, which makes less sense. A small positive inside a larger negative…..
Any program that eliminated Foxboro Stadium can’t be all bad.
Could someone tell me how either of the renderings of the St Pete or Tampa stadiums are appealing????
Replacing the Trop with someone almost as bad in a failed location will be a disaster.
But that is where it’s going. Stu will likely only chip in naming right fees while Tampa/Hillsborough would need to come up a billion dollars to build that ugly thing that looks like the Blob. Still waiting on the Steve McQueen renderings to be added.
One must wonder why taxpayers money is being wasted on those drawings they keep producing every few years in Tampa. And they’re billions behind in road projects on top of it!
Pretty sure the Rays paid for these renderings, at least.
In the late 90s- the patriots were not one of the most valuable franchises in the NFL. They were somewhat of an afterthought locally, and the crappiness of their stadium definitely held them back. Best I can find is this Bill Plaschke column regarding team values, but patriots weren’t event top 10, despite their larger market.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-05-05-sp-837-story.html
Probably true, Al. Certainly the stadium was seen as an encumbrance (helped by the owner of the stadium and the adjacent racetrack at the time, one Robert K. Kraft.)
That said, Kraft paid $172m for the Patriots in 1994 – just a few years after Jones bought the Cowboys and Texas Stadium for a little under $200m – $140m of which was the ‘team’ component (interestingly, Stan Kroenke appears to have been the highest bidder for the Patriots at the time, offering some $200m IIRC). Of course, the Cowboys themselves were losing more than $1m a month at the time, with Jones’ 11% interest rate on the money he borrowed to buy them adding another $2m/month in carrying costs on top of the operating loss.
I agree the Patriots weren’t seen as a great “property” at the time given their stadium/lease issues, but Kraft (the Lessor) still paid the highest price ever for a US sports franchise at the time.
The formatting on this is a little janky, but looks like Forbes ranked the Patriots #5 in the NFL for team value in 1999, which was the last year before their new stadium deal was approved:
https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-xpm-1999-09-07-9909070103-story.html
That is some bizarre formatting. Their value is 5th but their 1998 operating income was only $13.5 million? I guess their value has to do with Kraft owning the stadium.
Those old Forbes lists are weird. I remember when Jack Kent Cooke built what is now FedEx field and it catapulted the franchise to number one on the sports teams valuations. Forbes valued owning the stadium more then anything back then.
Now you can just have such a favorable lease you’re making all the ancillary income from the stadium, it’s as if you own it and you’re not responsible for any upkeep
The Forbes team value numbers are pretty shaky, agreed. I put way more stock in their income/expense estimates.
Value doesn’t necessarily correlate with operating income, though, since expenses can vary so widely team by team. (Less in the NFL, but still.) I remember for years the Yankees were #1 in MLB team value while technically running a loss, because they had such a bloated payroll — and probably because the Steinbrenners were still doing bookkeeping tricks like reducing their stated income by paying themselves commissions for negotiating their own cable deals, a George classic.