Happy Friday! Unless you’re a New York Mets fan or a Puerto Rico fan, that is, or a fan of not destroying the climate more than we already have, or of knowing how words in Spanish are pronounced, in which case sorry, hope next week will go better! (SPOILER: It won’t. Maybe for you, but not for someone, possibly everyone. I mean, have you been paying attention at all to [waves hands at generally everything]?)
We got news! Or at least news-adjacent:
- Pretty much everyone in Philadelphia’s Chinatown hates the idea of having a 76ers arena built on their doorstep, in part for fears it would help jumpstart gentrification. (Generally not, but also maybe yes in this case.) A 76ers development spokesperson replied that it was “disappointing” to see such local opposition when the team is proposing “one of the largest community benefits agreements in the history of our city and country,” which, yup, that’s totally how community benefits agreements are supposed to work, with the developer disparaging community members if they don’t want to accept your first proposal. Or how it too often ends up working, anyway.
- It has nothing to do with stadium and arena funding per se, but the cold war between Madison Square Garden owner James Dolan and the state of New York over Dolan using facial recognition tech to ban lawyers working for firms suing him from attending events and then the state moving to revoke MSG’s liquor license got even more entertaining with the news that Dolan hired a private eye to tail a Liquor Authority investigator. If this spills over into the state legislature actually moving to pull MSG’s tax exemption after 41 years, that would be more important/hilarious, but Gov. Kathy Hochul doesn’t want to do it because, she says, she knows “how important the Garden is,” so that’s probably not happening, at least not until Dolan hires someone to stake out Hochul’s house.
- And in other MSG news, while I really really hate reporting on news that sources to the New York Post, since it’s not really a legitimate news source, this story about the soon-to-open $2.2 billion MSG Sphere in Las Vegas being an inevitable money-loser because it massively overestimated both how much it can rake in from concerts and how much it can get in naming-rights fees is too deliciously schadenfreude-y not to at least take a peek at. (And could be true! The Post isn’t always wrong, just usually.)
- The Chicago Bears may soon get public funding for a new stadium while Chicago taxpayers are still paying off the old one. This isn’t technically bad, for reasons we’ve covered here before, but it’s also not great. Anyway, you can mostly skim through that article, as the best part comes at the very end, when Kennesaw State University economist J.C. Bradbury delivers the kicker: “Expecting a stadium to generate a revenue windfall for the community is like expecting Charlie Brown to kick the football. It’s not going to happen.”
- “Has the NHL had it with the Coyotes?” asks (checks exactly what hockey fan site this is) HockeyFeed. As evidence that the league’s backing for the team and its perpetual efforts to either gain a new arena in Arizona or sell any tickets is — avert your eyes, spelling fans — “starting to waiver,” the site cites an “NHL insider” (read: Canadian sportswriter) as saying on a podcast that “I’ve had a couple of GMs who tell me their owners are not happy about it.” Good enough for Betteridge work!
- I sincerely doubt that West Virginia University economist Brad Humphreys actually phrased his public testimony about a potential new Cleveland Browns stadium as “If it is a dome stadium, it will be over a billion dollars,” but in an article that also writes “Humphreys is West Virginia University professor and renowned stadium finance expert,” attention to details like whether it’s “dome stadium” or “domed stadium” is probably too much to ask for.
- Did the Veterans Stadium turf kill Tug McGraw? We’ll probably never know, but you might want to keep your kids off artificial turf fields — or away from other things like, you know, water — just in case.
- Were you hoping to go into the weekend with a handy list of European soccer stadiums that could be underwater thanks to sea level rise by 2050? Got you covered.
Since the NHL doesn’t split gate receipts, other NHL owners have no financial stake in what size arena the Coyotes play. Phoenix’s main benefit is to help the NHL market themselves as a nationwide league, and not just a Canadian/Northern US regional league.
The NHL does do revenue-sharing, though, so other team owners are helping bail out (some of) Meruelo’s losses while his team plays in a broom closet at ASU.
This is really common in sports leagues: Happily cash the expansion fee checks (or national TV rights value boosts) when putting teams in smaller markets, then complain till the cows come home that those teams aren’t pulling their weight compared to big markets in terms of revenue.
Yeah, I suppose it could really interesting if the NHLPA complains. They’ve been know to get snippy when teams don’t maximize their revenue potential, since it affects their salaries.
The NHLPA has already complained loudly about the financial sinkhole that is the Coyotes.
They don’t want to lose the jobs (which, since contraction involves paying the disinterested and/or incompetent owner to go away, isn’t going to happen), but they certainly don’t want to keep putting 17% of their pay into escrow knowing that at least some of that is being funnelled to a team that does not have a fan base willing to pay NHL prices to see it. Similarly, Rangers, Maple Leafs and other fans aren’t happy to be paying some of the highest prices in the league to help fill/ease a $30-40m financial hole in Arizona’s operating budget.
I guess we can say that the price wouldn’t drop even if no NHL franchises were losing money on operations, but it is still galling to know your money is going to fix someone else’s near 30 year mistake.
Owners have been complaining mightily about this also (generally behind closed doors in meetings), particularly after Bettman told them that he would appear at the Coyotes 2009 bankruptcy hearing and ‘regain control’ of the franchise without it costing them a dime… He was right, of course, it didn’t cost them a dime. It cost them $170m to buy back plus about $75m in losses to operate for the two seasons the league operated the club.
I’m guessing the next owner’s/BoG meeting after that was a bit chilly…
And after bleeding Glendale for 10 plus years for upwards of $100 million and not paying taxes, Glendale tossed out the mangy stray dog. Now the desert dogs have found another city dumb enough to feed them after leaving or evicted from Phoenix, Scottsdale and Glendale. Chandler holds their Ostrich Festival once a year in Tumbleweed Park. Tempe holds it’s Ostrich Festival twice a month on alternating Thursdays at 6pm in the City Council meetings.
I would say the general public interest in any negative (or potentially negative) consequences for the Dolans far outweighs any accuracy or other concerns in referencing NYP stories.
I mean, even if the story turns out not to have a shred of truth in it, just think of the joy you are creating among the public at the thought of the Dolans taking one on the chin.
Some things just transcend truth…
Jeepers. That MSG Sphere is one butt ugly building. Not only is Dolan an asshole, he’s an asshole with appalling taste.
I mean, you’ve heard his band, right?
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvGE2jXLBAo?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en-US&autohide=2&wmode=transparent&w=640&h=360]
And here I thought we were friends, Neil.
One day Lucy is gonna have a change of heart and leave that football there, just you wait, deMause.
That list of soccer stadiums likely under significant flooding by 2050 is interesting in that it is nearly all in England. Of the 22 stadiums listed 19 are in England, 1 in Wales, 1 in France and 1 in Germany. Is there something about siting stadia in England? Interesting that neither Belgium nor Netherlands have stadiums on the list.
Most of them are close to rivers. In Fulham’s case, partially in a river. Lots of coastal towns, too.
The craziest thing about the MSG Sphere is how they hired Darren Arnofsky to make an immersive film for them to play during the day. His movies are all hopelessly dark and depressing. That’s just what tourists in Vegas want.
In the link about Chicago paying of old debt and “it’s not so bad,” Briana asked “why can’t the old debt be folded into the new debt?” There was no reply. Is it a legal no-no?
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That was 11 years ago, but I don’t understand the question now, so I probably didn’t then either. “Folded into” how exactly?
You’d think Dolan would have CPA’s on staff who could add expected future iincome and have an “ad ha!” moment…..