Hey, everybody! I’m finally back from my trip, where I got to visit stadiums large and medium and small, among many other things. Let’s blow the cobwebs off the remaining news from this week, and get ready for a return to a regular posting schedule next week, because it sure seems like a lot is brewing:
- Crain’s Chicago Business reports that a bill in the Illinois legislature would grant the Chicago Bears owners a tax break for their Arlington Heights stadium project in the form “payment in lieu of taxes, or PILT,” which, it’s usually called PILOTs, guys, but whatever floats your boat. None of this is especially new — it’s just like tax increment financing in that the Bears would still be getting their tax bill frozen and the rest kicked back, except that here the money would be called “payments” instead of “taxes” — and is what Bears execs have been going on about with “tax certainty.” Also Crain’s hasn’t calculated how much the tax kickback would be worth to the Bears, or maybe the legislation hasn’t figured it out yet, give me the weekend to get back up to speed and maybe I can get you a number.
- “Is Kauffman Stadium in as poor shape as Royals say?” Ian Betteridge can answer that.
- “Time is running out for Oakland Athletics to get a new stadium,” according to an Associated Press story that cites exactly one person in support of that thesis, a Las Vegas-based marketing consultant, and several people saying there’s no rush, maybe it actually would have been better to go with a question mark headline here, guys.
- How does St. Petersburg plan to pay for a new Tampa Bay Rays stadium? Fox 13 News looked into it and found that “the city is unable to identify a source” and “it’s all on the table but nothing is certain yet,” maybe “looked into it” is overstating things.
- And rounding out the bad reporting quadfecta, Cleveland’s NPR station looked into the economic impact of upgrading the Guardians‘ stadium by consulting only one source, and for some reason it was sports columnist Terry Pluto, who wrote a very good book on the history of the American Basketball Association but so far as I know hasn’t studied economic impact, which would explain why he says things like “81 home games. That’s a lot of activity there.” (For readers unfamiliar with the Gregorian calendar, there are 365 days most years, which means a baseball stadium is dark more than 280 days a year.)
- Glendale’s arena had record revenue in 2022 after the Arizona Coyotes moved out, which I can’t tell if the article means gross or net revenue, but either way it’d be hard not to do better after kicking out a tenant who paid negative rent, so no surprise there.
- Oh wait, I lied about being done with the reporting on bad reporting: “Super Bowl 57 is less than three weeks away from bringing big-time spending and exposure to Arizona!” is the actual first sentence of an actual news article, yes complete with the exclamation point. And, oh god, here’s another one! I’m going back to bed to catch up on my jet-lagged sleep, see you on Monday when things will probably still be just as screwy, but at least we can tackle them one at a time.
Tempe residents are looking forward to having their very own money-losing arena. I predict they will vote enthusiastically to make it a reality.
The Tempe City Council has been gobbling down Nick Wood’s snake oil by the gallon. If they really believe that Meruelo has 2. whatever billion in cash lying around to pay for his arena and development after failing to pay the Arizona Department of Revenue $1.3 million in sales tax for 17 months makes the Tempe City Council total suckers.
It’s good to see this so called “Arizona” place get some exposure. Up until now, I only knew it as an Ice Tea.
Regarding Kaufman Stadium,
The only thing wrong with the concrete is that it doesn’t hold up luxury seating,
they only find something wrong with concrete when they want a new stadium, and
if there is something wrong with the concrete, doesn’t that make the Royals in breach of their contract, “first class condition consistent with other Major League Ballparks?”
The problem with Kauffman is that it’s already built and it would look bad if they just started charging PSL licenses on it. They can (and have) added the luxury seating. This is entirely about more money for the owners both for the Royals directly and indirectly as they seem to be targeting areas where the owners own land and the company most likely to build it is also owned by one of the owners of the Royals.
If you want messed up concrete, they’re consistent with the Oakland Coliseum, though not first-class.
I doubt there’s enough political support for a Bears tax break at this point. It’s going to take a lot of wheeling a dealing in Springfield to get votes for this. You’ll probably see every city downstate get money for minor league stadiums in order to push this through.
The other major metro area in Illinois loved the Rams. The state is probably closer to signing a “Let’s drown the 2-15 Bears and NFL officials in the lake” bill.
During the last session, Springfield told them to “F*** off” so now they’re getting their media stooges to do the move to St. Louis gambit.
Also the governor has a line item veto.
“The idea was floated in Springfield weeks ago, including in a meeting with high-level Democratic staffers that included at least one representative of Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s office. But the plan was initially met with a resounding no, a source with knowledge of the meeting told the Sun-Times.
But now, supporters of the incentive, including the Illinois Chamber of Commerce, are trying to round up support — using the argument that without state support for the Bears, the team could pack up and leave.”
On the Guardians – Terry Pluto (while I find him annoying at times) has won a lot of awards for his sports writing and has published over 20 books. Its more than just one ABA book. I don’t think he has ever claimed to be an economist.
As far as the 81 days out of 365, again you really need to spend time in Cleveland (and the Rust Belt in general) in order to really understand the dynamics. Rust Belt downtowns are ghost towns after 6PM unless there is an event going on. So much so that there wasn’t even a grocery store downtown until 2004 or 2005. So yeah 81 home games for the Guardians, 41+ home games for the Cavs are important drivers for downtown. Not to mention the number of out of town fans that come to games. If you are downtown for a baseball or basketball game when the teams are playing anyone within driving distance of Cleveland you’ll see a couple of thousand fans from those other cities. You don’t get these tourists otherwise.
Be ye mere tourist? No, sayeth I ! We henceforth be Gregorian Baseball Fans, knave !
Is this the part where I need to pull out an economist from behind a pillar, like Woody Allen with Marshall McLuhan in “Annie Hall,” and have them say that Cleveland is no different from anywhere else in terms of sports not being a major factor in the local economy? It’s late on a Friday so I don’t know who’ll be around — all I can offer you is economists showing that LeBron James’ return to Cleveland and the attendance boost that resulted didn’t do squat for the local economy:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180708135112/http://www.crainscleveland.com/article/20180708/news/167521/lebron-james-exit-wont-have-any-effect-northeast-ohios-gdp
You’re talking about one player. I’m talking about if you didn’t have two major league teams downtown at all. Losing LeBron you’re talking about attendance dropping from 17K to 15K so that’s 80K people over the course of a year. If you didn’t have MLB and NBA downtown you’re talking over 2 million people coming downtown.
Agreed, what you really want is a study comparing the Cleveland economy with MLB to without it. And fortunately, we have perfect case studies of that: the 1981 and 1994 baseball strikes that each wiped out one-third of the season. There have been many studies of the economic impact of those strikes on local economies, and none found any measurable impact:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/107808749603200202
https://college.holycross.edu/RePEc/hcx/Matheson_Strikes.pdf
https://web.holycross.edu/RePEc/hcx/HC0604-Matheson-Baade-Baumann_Strikes.pdf
Those papers don’t break out specific data for Cleveland, but I’ll ask Victor Matheson, the co-author of the latter two, if he has anything he can pull and share with us. The point remains, though: Economists have spent the last 30 years looking for any signs that people stop spending as much money in a city if there are fewer sporting events, and they have found zero evidence that this is the case.
Its different when you are talking about a temporary shut down or decline. If you didn’t have pro sports in downtown Cleveland at all downtown would basically die. You’re not talking about NYC. If all the pro teams left NYC sure the city would be fine. That’s not the case for many other cities. Its easy to look at high level data at the 50K foot level but you have to look at the specifics of the stadium. Again spend some time in the Rust Belt and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
I’ve spent time in the Rust Belt, and my co-author was literally born and grew up in Cleveland. My son goes to college in Buffalo. Many of the economists I’ve cited above are from or work in the Midwest. Not sure who you think you’re arguing with, but it’s not the people who have looked into this.
I get that there’s a common belief that sports teams are huge anchors for city downtowns, but there is simply no evidence that this is the case. If you don’t want to look at a short-term strike, how about looking at cities that have lost or gained teams and seeing if there’s any measurable impact?
https://www.fieldofschemes.com/2012/08/09/3636/study-nba-arenas-just-as-lousy-for-local-economies-as-other-sports-venues/
That’s the NBA, but there’s no reason to believe it would be any different for baseball.
Oh, yes, we were told that Comerica Edifice–used eighty-one times a year–and Ford Field–used about ten times a year plus whatever wrestling and tractor shows they can pull in–will revitalize downtown Detroit.
As far as I can tell, when there are games or other events bars and restaurants do increased business close to the facilities but if there’s any spillover in February from Tiger games I don’t see it.
Downtown Detroit has been revitalized to a certain extent…not a lot but at least I’ve been there on non-game evenings and it doesn’t always look like someone just touched off a neutron bomb. But the rest of the city continues mostly to crumble and lose population.
In any case, we have case studies regarding the economic impact of sports teams. The NHL was dark for an entire season and as far as I know even in places like Montreal there wasn’t much of an effect–people spent their money on other things.
By the way, as to the economic impact of the Superbowl on Arizona!: You’ll see that it will bring this amount or that amount. Frank R., whom we dragged out as leader of the Tiger Stadium Fan Club when someone asked who it was, understood how they reach these figures. They throw a dart at a dart board and whatever number the dart hits they add “million dollars.”
I just checked 2 of my favorite hotels less than 100 miles from the Superbowl for February 10 – 13. The casino resort is only $79 a night and the hotel that includes an awesome buffet breakfast and hot cookies is $92. So much for the statewide economic impact.
Sometimes you simply can’t make this stuff up. In the linked article about the Super Bowl generating revenue! There’s a quote from some guy in the chamber of commerce.
“Between the Super Bowl and the Waste Management Open, we’re gonna have over a million visitors come to the City of Phoenix for the first time,”
I can’t think of a more appropriate name for any big sporting event that will bring in a purported gazillion dollars than “the waste management open.”
Hey Neil, maybe you could get them to sponsor your site. FoS presented by waste management.
Sorry. Couldn’t help it.
“…we’re gonna have over a million visitors come to the City of Phoenix for the first time”
What a load of crap. Total attendance at the Open was reported to be about 700k last year, many of which are multi-day attendees and many, many of which are locals (like me). I didn’t land my private jet at Scottsdale airport, or occupy a hotel room, or even go out to eat just because there was a golf tourney in town. Same for the Super Bowl.
If there are a million visitors, they will be sleeping under bridges with the Unhoused because there are only about 70k hotel rooms in the greater metro area, according to the Visitors Bureau pimps. As Allen Sanderson might say, move the decimal one space to the left. And then reduce by half. Then add a big grain of salt.
The Tempe Coyotes are facing another revenue stream being zeroed out. Parking, in arena team store and arena naming rights have already been zeroed out. Now with Bally Sports Network filing bankruptcy local broadcast revenue will be zeroed out until the bankruptcy is over. Then who will pay for media rights when 6 fans are watching?
How did Bilbao do?
I didn’t know they are operating a women’s team as well.
They got creamed – the match was against Levante, which is the biggest women’s powerhouse in Spain outside of Barcelona. The couple hundred supporters in attendance still cheered them on enthusiastically, though, and they did play pretty well for a team that was nowhere near as good.
The Copa del Rey match in San Sebastian was much better, with Real Sociedad squeaking out a 1-0 win over Mallorca. (The San Mames we just saw the outside of.)
It seems the state told the Bears to F*** off and passed a ban awaiting signature on awarding state economic incentives, and now they’re trying the “move to St. Louis” gambit.
“No legislation has been filed and no sponsors have been named for a measure that would create a new class of tax incentive that would allow the Bears to pay to Arlington Heights a negotiated sum for the property taxes on the 326-acre site of the old Arlington International Racecourse.”
“The idea was floated in Springfield weeks ago, including in a meeting with high-level Democratic staffers that included at least one representative of Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s office. But the plan was initially met with a resounding no, a source with knowledge of the meeting told the Sun-Times.“
“ And in the waning days of the Illinois General Assembly’s lame duck session, legislators passed the Invest in Illinois Act, which includes the following language: “the Department [of Commerce and Economic Opportunity] shall not award economic incentives to a professional sports organization that moves its operation from one location in the State to another location in the State.”
https://chicago.suntimes.com/2023/1/26/23572762/chicago-bears-arlington-heights-park-racetrack-stadium-tax-subsidy-chamber-commerce-soldier-field