Author of Brewers’ $600m subsidy bill is going some weird places with his arguments

Milwaukee Brewers subsidy bill author Rep. Rob Brooks has spoken out about his plans to get Democratic support for a $600 million stadium renovation package — according to WTMJ, the official news station of gritting your teeth too hard — and it’s getting weird, man:

He says he recognizes 200 million dollars is a lot of money, but the return on investment for Milwaukee is major.

“If you talk to any advertising agency, I don’t know how you can have a better bang for your buck than whenever the Milwaukee Brewers appear on TV or on ESPN,” says Brooks.

So run that by me again: Brooks thinks that the mere presence of the Brewers is worth $200 million in advertising for the city of Milwaukee? Because, presumably, people see that the city of Milwaukee exists, and loves beer so much that every game features a mascot sliding into a giant beer mug, and think, “Load up the station wagon and cancel that vacation to Duluth, we’re headed to this Mil-wauk-ee place!” On those grounds, the city of Milwaukee should have coughed up several hundred million dollars to keep Laverne & Shirley on the air, or at least the opening credits.

There is actually a metric shit-ton of evidence that keeping a sports team in town has no measurable effect on the local economy, which you think would be observable if it were really worth more than $200 million in TV ad buys. But no time for that, Brooks is still talking:

“As a fiscal conservative, would I like to see it funded differently? Sure, but that is not the reality of how professional sports are funded in this state. We have a team that is being heavily recruited by cities like Nashville and Las Vegas who just spend 1.6 billion dollars to build a stadium in hopes that somebody comes.”

Wait, what? Las Vegas didn’t just “spend 1.6 billion dollars to build a stadium in hopes that somebody comes”; it agreed to spend $600 million toward a $1.6 billion stadium for the Oakland A’s, in particular. It’s certainly possible that if A’s owner John Fisher’s move to Vegas falls through, Las Vegas could offer a stadium deal to Brewers owner Mark Attanasio, and that Attanasio would then think that was a better deal than staying in Milwaukee even though his team is selling more tickets per game there than would even fit in a Vegas stadium, but, okay, maybe “certainly possible” is a little strong, but there might be a version of the multiverse somewhere where it could happen. As for Nashville “heavily recruiting” the Brewers, that was just an unsourced rumor that Attanasio could look to move the team; now somehow it’s transmogrified into Nashville offering cash money to get the Brewers to move purple monkey dishwasher?

There is one small snippet of news buried in WTMJ’s article, which is that Democratic State Sen. Chris Larson says he doesn’t want the city of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County to have to put in any money, but also argued that Milwaukee would get $193 million in tax revenue from the Brewers under this deal — [citation needed] — while turning over $202.5 million in tax money, suggesting that a compromise is possible. Brooks replied that “I anticipate and hope that we can reduce the local contribution with the deal we are working on back down to the 135 million dollar mark.”

That’s still a lot more than zero, but it seems like the attempt here at least will be to whittle down the subsidy from $600 million to a bit less than $600 million, or maybe “$600 million but a different $600 million,” and hope to peel off enough Democratic support that Gov. Tony Evers won’t veto it after the legislature blocked Evers from giving $360 million to the Brewers. This whole two-party system thing is really working out great, isn’t it?

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12 comments on “Author of Brewers’ $600m subsidy bill is going some weird places with his arguments

  1. I’ve vacationed in both Duluth and Milwaukee. Duluth is prettier, but Milwaukee is more fun, unless you go to a Brewers game.

    1. It’s got great custard. Maybe Wisconsin should invest $200 million of tax money in new custard machines?

  2. Milwaukee’s greatest marketing effort was Laverne and Shirley which, I assume, was actually filmed in Burbank.

  3. Well, I’m a regular visitor here, but Milwaukee has certainly had its share of visitors. The French missionaries and explorers were coming here as early as the late 1600s to trade with the Native Americans.

    – In fact, isn’t “Milwaukee” an Indian name?

    Yes, Pete, it is. Actually, it’s pronounced “mill-e-wah-que” which is Algonquin for “the good land.”

  4. Bernie Brewer no longer slides into a giant beer mug. That makes Milwaukee seem lame. Who wants to visit a city that is lame? Trick question: the stadium isn’t in the city, it is in a parking lot away from the city.

      1. I’m not Bud but the last 10 years has seen somewhat of a boom, took awhile though.

        Also, the stadium is in Milwaukee

  5. It’s pretty remarkable: the Giants built Oracle (née PacBell) Park for $350 million (all from their own pocket, BTW) in 2000. Just two decades later, in supposedly les-expensive Milwaukee, just the *renovation* of a ballpark one year younger than Oracle is going to cost nearly twice that? What are we looking at, gold-plated urinals? hydrogen-powered seat warmers? Free beer? (Okay, ya give ’em free beer and maybe it’s not such a scam.)

    1. “3. What the New Plan is Paying For Is Unclear. Other than saying the proposed bill would guarantee the stadium lasts until 2050, it’s vague on what exactly the taxpayers are paying for. The original estimate of likely costs through 2040 was $87 million by M. A. Mortenson, hired by the stadium board, followed by a consultant hired by the Brewers, Venue Solutions Group, which upped the estimate to $428 million, and followed by CAA ICON, which increased that to about $572 million. Now we’re at a $700 million to take us through 2050. How was that determined? How can these estimates be so wildly different? What precisely will taxpayers be paying for? No one has explained, probably because the more you specify the more it looks like normal business expenses that the Brewers should pay.”

      https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2023/10/10/murphys-law-9-obstacles-to-brewers-deal/

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