First things first: The Nevada legislature never got around to holding its second day of Oakland A’s stadium hearings yesterday, and while there was no announcement of why, the obvious conclusion is that it’s because they don’t have the votes to pass anything. The current plan is to reconvene on Monday, with the time until then used to see if amending the bill will turn any legislators’ heads: Rumored changes include removing the A’s exemption from the state’s live entertainment tax (which could save the state about $100 million in tax breaks, though that’s a subsidy I didn’t include in my latest estimate, so it would still leave the total public cost at around $500 million) and improving the team’s community benefits agreement to include things like donations to a local food bank (which wouldn’t amount to much at all), so my question stands.
At least A’s owner John Fisher has one friend in the Las Vegas Review-Journal editorial board, which helpfully asserted yesterday that though the economic benefits of a stadium are questionable, this is about “making the region a more attractive place to work, live, invest in and visit,” which Las Vegas desperately needs because nobody visits there, it’s too crowded, or something? Maybe Fisher could actually use some more persuasive friends, though presumably that’s who he has in behind-closed-doors meetings with state legislators between now and Monday.
But that’s not all that’s happening, not by a long shot:
- NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly says Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith “has an interest in bringing the NHL to Salt Lake City,” and “obviously, what happened in Arizona created this talk of potential need for relocation,” jeez, does the guy need to spell his move threats out to you? (Whoever “you” is, since nobody in the Phoenix area seems that worked up about whether the Arizona Coyotes stay or go, and for good reason, but league execs gotta do their thing.)
- You know how much I hate repeating New York Post “reporting,” let alone New York Post “exclusives,” so take this one with the usual grain of salt: The Post says, citing “City Hall and other sources,” that New York Mayor Eric Adams, Mets owner Steve Cohen, and Queens city councilmember Francisco Moya engaged in a “spirited” phone call about tying Cohen’s casino bid to progress on an NYC F.C. soccer stadium, possibly by rolling the two into one land-use bid in exchange for Cohen letting the soccer team use his stadium lots for parking during matches. To make things even spicier, “Sources said Moya claimed after the meeting that Cohen threatened to back ex-con Hiram Monserrate, a former councilman and state senator who previously represented the area, in a Democratic primary if he didn’t get on board with his redevelopment plan.” Moya’s been pretty close-mouthed on the whole casino thing, letting state senator Jessica Ramos take the lead on stalling approval for it so far; Cohen denies this, and Monserrate says he opposes the casino plans, so who the hell knows, it’s a Post story, after all.
- Philadelphia Chinatown residents and supporters will march on City Hall tomorrow to protest plans for a 76ers arena on the neighborhood’s doorstep, arguing that it will create economic and traffic havoc that would destroy the community just as the Washington Wizards‘ arena did to D.C.’s Chinatown. A public meeting on Wednesday revealed some very watercolory renderings of the arena but not much about the public response given that the only reporting on it I can find is from a real estate company, oh journalism.
- Having more professional sports teams may not bring measurable economic benefits, but it does bring more influenza deaths. It’s science!
I get the quality of life/making the city more attractive argument for sports facilities. Its an amenity that a lot of people find attractive. So in my case when I was in Cleveland I was paying $80 a year in cigarette taxes for 3 sports teams. I enjoyed sports, thought having the teams was important to the city so I voted in favor it.
However, when it comes to hockey in Arizona, clearly we have 27 years of data which shows they don’t like hockey enough to merit spending a dime on it.
No, the reason the city shouldn’t pay for it has nothing to do with how much people like or don’t like hockey. They shouldn’t pay for it because there are much better uses of that money and because the only reason the owners refuse to just pay for it themselves is that so many states and municipalities are willing to give them the money.
And it’s not really clear at all that Phoenix could never support an NHL team.
When the team first got there and was fairly successful on the ice, it drew decent crowds in Phoenix despite playing in an arena that wasn’t suitable for hockey. Then it moved to Glendale which is, as many have said, hard for most people in the area to get to even if they’re very motivated to do so, but the team was bad so they weren’t as motivated to bother.
All the hockey writers who have covered the team over the years insist that there’s nothing about the Phoenix area that makes it inherently less conducive to hockey than LA or Dallas or Tampa or San Jose. The reason those teams have succeeded to the extent they have is that they have had pretty good ownership and play in an arena that people want to go to. The Coyotes have never had either.
The Coyotes also have the disadvantage of competing for attention from three other major pro teams and a Pac12 university. That’s not necessarily an insurmountable problem in a massive market. The LA Kings and Dallas Stars get by ok even though they’re probably the fourth most popular team in town (or fifth or sixth or seventh, if you count college teams). The NHL hopes Phoenix can be like that.
But those teams have also had some massive superstars and a lot of on-ice success. Arizona has had only made the playoffs a few times and their history of stars is pretty thin. They had Jeremy Roenick when he was past it, Wayne Gretzky as a *coach* – and not a great one – and Shane Doan. That’s pretty much it (nothing against Shane Doan, of course).
And, since the day they arrived from Winnipeg, the future of the Coyotes in Arizona has always been in doubt. People are a lot less likely to invest in a team if they expect them to leave soon.
You could argue that for anything that is considered an amenity. You could say the same thing about a park, an art museum, etc. I always found it funny when a cigarette tax for sports was considered regressive and unfair but a cigarette tax for the arts was great (this literally happened in Cleveland. The exact same people who hated the tax for sports loved it for arts). My point was simply that I can see a city or state deciding to pay taxes for a sports team if its an important part of the culture of the city and its identity. However, only a very small group of people in Arizona seem to care about the Coyotes. I recall a few years ago when there was some bill in the Arizona legislature about subsidies that would have effected the Coyotes and the state rep/senator said he thought they were already gone
The difference is that parks and art museums serve the public by offering facilities and programs for free or very cheap to *all* of the public. Or that’s how it’s supposed to work. Yeah, if the city subsidized an art museum or a park and it was still charging $40 to get in, that would be bad.
Sports teams are for-profit businesses that could afford to build their own stadiums if they wanted to. And even after all the taxpayers help pay for it, only relatively wealthy people will ever be able to afford to go to the games.
I totally agree that sports teams are often an important part of the city culture. But then the city – or, more likely, the fans – should own the teams and get to share in the profits. That’s how German soccer works. As a result, tickets are fairly cheap and fans feel very connected to their clubs. (There are other problems with how German soccer works, but the public ownership model is good).
As it is now in the US, the public pays for these stadiums and the team owners keep all the profits.
It’s impossible to know how many hockey fans Arizona *could* have if it had a well-run NHL team.
A lot of sports fans believe that they like the sports they like because of something inherent in the sport – it’s just “exciting” or whatever – or they maybe imagine there’s some ethnic connection – only “white people can like hockey” or some nonsense like that.
But history suggests it’s all very fluid and based entirely on how the game has been presented and marketed, especially to kids.
Sports subsidies are a drop in the bucket compared to other corporate subsidies (and overall government funding if you really think about it. I use Cleveland as an example since I was very involved in politics there. If you gave me a week in City Hall I would find more than enough money to cover the costs of sports venues through eliminating duplication and patronage hires of the mayors friends). Depending on the market I would say given the choice of an art museum or a major league sports team I would say many cities the sports team wins.
When it comes to Arizona, fans have shown again and again they don’t care about hockey. So what’s the point of spending money or changing zoning rules for an arena if no one cares if the team is there.
“Sports subsidies are a drop in the bucket compared to other corporate subsidies”
They aren’t a majority of all corporate subsidies, but they do tend to be among the largest individual subsidies.
“If you gave me a week in City Hall I would find more than enough money to cover the costs of sports venues through eliminating duplication and patronage hires of the mayors friends”
That seems extremely unlikely. But in any case, “the government is inefficient, may as well make it even worse by straight-up handing money to major local corporations” isn’t the best policy reasoning.
“Depending on the market I would say given the choice of an art museum or a major league sports team I would say many cities the sports team wins.”
I’d have to check the literature, but I would be very surprised if this were the case, at least not when residents factor in the relative costs and the fact that one is for-profit and owned by a billionaire. (For the record, I think that providing major subsidies for an art museum without getting free admission days and other guarantees is ridiculous as well.)
My points on sports subsidies vs corporate welfare and government inefficiencies/patronage is simply that one gets a lot of attention and the others get overlooked but at the end of the day much higher.
Now when it came to my point on Cleveland let me tell you. They had a Planning Department, a Community Development Department, and Economic Development Department, and a Regional Economic Development Department. Now I knew enough people who worked across these departments to safely say one department would have gotten it done. Especially considering all the development that’s occurred in town has been done by Dan Gilbert and a couple of other companies. On top of that basically every City Councilperson who lost a reelection bid got a job in the City which more often than not was created just for them.
Then you have the County. It wasn’t too long ago that you had 3 different departments for Auditor, Treasurer, and Recorder (the Recorder tracked all the real estate deeds and the Treasurer issued the tax bill) the Treasurer had 9-10 people on staff whose job it was to process the property tax payments. Other counties of comparable size outsourced that to lockbox banks for less than 100K.
I could go on but you get the idea
Once upon a time Phoenix was a great minor-league hockey town. The NHL thought it found a pot of gold in the Valley of the Sun. The Coyotes’ travails not only shattered those dreams, they destroyed Phoenix as far as that winter sport goes.
As well, any mindset that thinks only in terms of “the 4 major pro sports” is a Team America attitude.
The “four major pro team sports” construction is left over from the 80s when the sports people followed were limited by what was available on TV and TV was a lot more limited.
But that’s been breaking down for a while. Soccer is obviously a much bigger deal, women’s sports across the board are a bigger deal, and we have a lot more access to sports from overseas.
I expect cricket, rugby, F1 and who-know-what will grow a lot here. They’ll never be as big here as the NFL, probably, but they’ll have enough fans to support a domestic competition.
What a crock… 27 years of losing will do that. If Arizona was handed a playoff team on a silver platter like Vegas the stadium would be packed.
They finished at .500 or better for six of the first seven seasons they were in Arizona. They made the playoffs in all but one of those seasons (just as the Jets had the year before they left Winnipeg).
Burke & Gluckstern DID bring a playoff team to Phoenix on a silver platter. They were never a serious cup contender, but then, most teams aren’t in most seasons (insert Maple Leafs joke here).
And the stadium was never packed. In fact, Burke often stated he would have lost less money if he had kept the team in Winnipeg (where it was losing some $20m per season at the end of it’s run there).
There are hockey fans in Phoenix. There just aren’t enough of them and those that are there aren’t willing to pay actual NHL prices… that’s why even a decade or more into the Coyotes existence ownership was selling four tickets and a fifth of Vodka for $25. In 2008/09 the average gate/concession/parking receipts for the team was a little over $400k per game. $23 per seat all in, in other words.
Not good.
They were far from last in attendance in their Phoenix years.
14-15,5k according to what I can find.
Officially that is below capacity, but a lot of the seats were obstructed when it was set up for hockey.
Comparing that to a brand new hockey-only arena in Vegas just isn’t a fair comparison.
If they were losing money, it was because they had a bad lease.
So, 81 games x 30k – mid market average of 500k / 38.8m visitors to LV means that a little under 5% of all vistors. If they sell out every game. That’s kind of a lot, even if they only really expect like 25k. Still kind of a lot
* 38.8 / 500k
The New York FC stadium plan in queens is so dumb. That team has been successful because Yankee stadium is easy to get to from Manhattan.
Moving out to queens might give them a better stadium, but it’s going to change/reduce the fanbase
Yep. Soccer specific stadium are nice, but awkward sigh lines in a stadium built for baseball are a small price to pay for a convenient location. There’s a little used soccer stadium in Bridgeview IL that proves this point.
It’s not just the sightlines but the dates. How many Saturday nights do the Yankees want to give up to NYCFC?
When the 7 is running express, it’s about the same amount of time (20-30 minutes) to get to Flushing from Manhattan as to get to Yankee Stadium. So while it may change the fan base, I doubt it’ll reduce it.
From a transit ease standpoint- you’re trading the Bronx, Uptown, Westchester, and the rich parts of Brooklyn for Queens and Long Island, while keeping midtown and downtown (presumably).
If my goal is making money- I’d rather have the current setup, but as we know Stadium bullshit trumps that kind of thinking.
The funniest thing that could happen is NYCFC struggles in Queens, just like the Red Bulls struggle in Harrison, the Fire in Bridgeview, the Galaxy in Carson, and MLS expands again to New York.
Another view of the As impending fiasco https://www.sbnation.com/platform/amp/mlb/2023/6/9/23755237/oakland-as-las-vegas-update-no-vote-mlb
Beautiful. Thanks Davey.
While the senate hearing wasn’t a great look for the A’s. There’s probably a decent chance the senate bill gets passed with significant amendments- whether those changes are ok for the A’s is a different story.
Jon Ralston thinks that an amendment to force the A’s to pay the Live Entertainment Tax could get Fabian Doñate, and several other senators could be swayed by significant community outreach provisions.
The Assembly seems like a tougher go for Kaval and Fisher whenever they get around to having hearings.