I was out sick yesterday, but fortunately nothing incredibly stupid happened with the $1.5 billion Virginia arena subsidy plan for the Washington Capitals and Wizards for the first time all week, so my services weren’t needed. (Other than the whole thing remaining incredibly stupid, but that’ll still be true today, and next week, and next month, and…)
Other things, though, kept happening, and my Decemberween gift to you is to present them all, neatly wrapped and suitable for pointing and laughing:
- Veteran sports business reporter Alan Snel’s LVSportsBiz.com has announced a new policy of not reporting economic impact claims without also including how the numbers were calculated, and while that may sound like a simple matter of reporting out all the details, it becomes much funnier when you realize that this means Snel just isn’t going to report any numbers that don’t show their math. On a Las Vegas Raiders announcement of the economic impact of their team, Snel reported that he’s waiting on Raiders officials to grant “an interview about how the economic impact number was determined before we publish that number”; about a similar UFC impact report, he wrote that “LVSportsBiz.com will publish these numbers when UFC and Applied Analysis explain how they determined these economic figures.” I truly hope this will lead to stories like “A’s Claim New Stadium Will Create Some Damn Number of Jobs, So Far As We Know They Pulled It Out of Their Ass,” which honestly would be some of the most accurate reporting out there.
- And speaking of goofy economic impact numbers: A new roof for Montreal’s Olympic Stadium, which already cost $1 billion in 1976 loonies, may or may not cost $750 million, but if it does it’s okay, says Quebec Tourism Minister Caroline Proulx, because then Taylor Swift might say “Joli toit!” and play five nights there and bring $350 million in spending that totally would be from out-of-towners who would all fly to Montreal because Taylor Swift never plays near them. [citation needed]
- Not saying that a stadium district project called “Project Smoke” sounds like a grift, but when the guy presenting it is a Nashville pediatrician who pled guilty to billing fraud and people at the meeting were reportedly saying, “Have you Googled this guy? Can you believe this?”, it’s definitely not a good thing. Though it could make a good Avengers 5 plot to replace the one about Kang now that Jonathan Majors has been fired.
- “Baltimore is not on the verge of landing a pro outdoor soccer team,” begins a Baltimore Sun article about the Maryland Stadium Authority commissioning a site study for a stadium for this team that, it bears repeating, does not exist and likely will not exist soon. The study cost $50,000, which is not a lot of money in the grand scheme of things, but is maybe around $50,000 more than needs to be spent identifying places to build a stadium that likely won’t ever be built.
- The Jackson County legislature on Monday put off a decision on whether to put a sales-tax increase for Kansas City Royals and Chiefs stadium projects on the April 2024 ballot, then the measure’s sponsor, county chair DaRon McGee, introduced a “corrected measure” that would specify that the sales tax wouldn’t take effect until the teams negotiated 40-year leases, agreed to community benefits agreements, and chose an acceptable site. We’ll see if that makes county executive Frank White hate it any less, but it is at least better than voting to collect a giant pile of money for the local sports teams and then negotiate the details later, we’ve seen how that works out.
- Philadelphia’s law department has now denied more than 100 public records requests for information about the proposed 76ers arena, which is a lot! Activist and journalist Faye Anderson said one of her few requests was approved shows that city officials and other involved parties have been meeting weekly for more than a year on the project, but she can’t get any information about what they’ve been talking about. “What were they saying behind closed doors?” she asked. “What were they saying when they thought those conversations, those records, would never see the light of day?” An appeal has been filed with the state Office of Open Records, so we may find out next month, or later, or never.
“A pro outdoor soccer team?”
Does soccer need to be played outdoors? Is this a thing?
And with all the non-MLS pro leagues sprouting teams like weeds Baltimore can’t find one?
Happy Holidays Neil!
Since Baltimore does have an indoor team (the Blast of the MASL), it is a distinction worth noting.
Wow. They are still going? I remember watching them play in the MISL on HTS in the 80s…
Oh! Thanks Sir M!
Good to know…..
Indoor soccer never dies. There have been a few different leagues, but this version of the Blast is over 30 years old.
Indoor soccer never dies, it just stays irrelevant.
Irrelevant to whom? The people who play it care as do the people who watch it. That’s what matters.
Indoor survives, despite the best efforts of the people involved to try and kill it.
And it IS relevant, just to very few people. I am one, but I am under no misapprehensions about it.
It’s more or less Christmas… and I am loathe to criticize a working journalist that is trying to do something other than the stenography an press agency work that most journalists are paid to do these days…
But a quick view of the LVSB site shows the following:
Jeremy Aguero, is a principal, or owner, of Applied Analysis, a data-research company of 17 employees.
(where do we begin. Pardon me. Where, do, we begin?)
And a memorable headline like:
Athletics take swing at ballpark in Las Vegas.
This is up there with a sports figure named Cain or Kane having a good game being followed with endless headlines about Kane being able.
Stop it. Just Stop it.
Apart from that, Merry Christmas everyone.
As President of the
Acme Headline Co. of
Greensboro, NC, I take exception to your exception to the great work our company types out without thinking.
Headlines are needed to inform, give a chuckle and least importantly, generate “clicks” (whatever those are).
You will not be hearing from our legal counsel
(my idiot brother-in-law).
Go Yuletide!
Hi, Neil. I read your blog a few times every week for a couple of years and I love it. But I have to admit that stepping back it reads like the accident log of the Atlanta region during an ice storm — everything is bad, bad, bad, mixed in with a dose of absurd and “oh, no, you ditn’t”. I’ve kind of lost my bearings in it all. I would love to see, sometime in the New Year, a special column of yours featuring “the five best, or least bad, stadium deals of the 2000s”, so we have some fixed actual goalposts of what can be achieved. Maybe you even did it sometime in the past — if so, could you please give me the link?
The best ones are probably the ones that didn’t happen at all. But off the top of my head: Golden State Warriors, Orlando City SC, Seattle Kraken … I could probably come up with some others.
Unfortunately, most of these stadium and arena deals are happening not because team owners want new stadiums and arenas, so much as because team owners want public subsidies, and stadiums and arenas are the way to get them. So “good,” or even “less bad,” deals are few and far between, because that’s not where the money is.
I’d add T-Mobile Arena, Sofi stadium, Delta Center
The economic impact data is BS but Allegiant Stadium and the convention center expansion (which was part of the funding deal), has increased the type of events Vegas can accommodate. Still a bad deal, but over time probably moves closer to neutral than all the other terrible NFL subsidies.
Neil,
An internet news site (I’m not naming) did an article on the expensive new and renovations paid by taxpayers and they have no quotes from you? I hope they reached out to you and were too busy or declined.
sorry
should be expensive new stadiums
and reached out to you and you were too busy
“Internet news site,” hmm. There was the AP story that was kind of a half-assed roundup of recent deals that the reporter felt like mentioning, and no he didn’t reach out to me, but at least he talked to Rob Baade and J.C. Bradbury. If there was another one, I missed it.
“Our preference is to keep the franchises where they are,” MLB Chief Financial Officer Bob Starkey said. “But ultimately, we’re not going to do anything that’s short-sighted.”
https://fortune.com/2023/12/24/taxpayers-on-hook-billions-new-sports-stadiums-major-leagues-move-teams/
Actually that was it. I read it on Huffington Post. And half-assed is a great way to describe it.
Baltimore would be a logical place for a USL Championship team, but I guess there is no appropriately sized stadium with a grass field and it isn’t worth it to anyone in particular to build one.