Welp, that’s another year in the books. In 2023 we saw the Baltimore Orioles and Ravens owners finalizing more than $600 million each in renovation subsidies, with the O’s on track to get hundreds of millions more in development subsidies; the Milwaukee Brewers pushing $435 million in renovation subsidies through the state legisltature; Nashville approving a record $1.26 billion subsidy for a new Tennessee Titans stadium; Alexandria, Virginia and St. Petersburg, Florida each proposing to break that record with new sports venues that could come with $1.5 billion public price tags for the Washington Capitals and Wizards and Tampa Bay Rays respectively; Kansas City Royals owner John Sherman kicking the tires on every possible location across two states to see who’s most likely to cough up tax dollars for a new stadium; the Chicago Bears owners kicking even more tires in even more places; Tempe, Arizona overwhelmingly voting down $500 million for a new Arizona Coyotes arena while Oklahoma City overwhelmingly voted in favor of $850 million for a new Thunder arena; and, of course, the Oakland A’s announcing their move to Las Vegas in exchange for $600 million in tax money, unless the Nevada teachers union wins its lawsuit or referendum or A’s owner John Fisher decides paying for even two-thirds of a stadium is too rich for his blood.
That’s not a great year, there, at least not if you were hoping that this site could celebrate its 25th anniversary with any signs of the great stadium swindle slowing down. Oh, we got to poke fun at Jeremy Aguero for being a lobbyist in economist’s clothing, but pointing and laughing gets unsatisfying after a while. Here’s hoping for a 2024 that involves delivering fewer sacks of tax money to billionaires, though I wouldn’t get your hopes up all that much. And hey, Field of Schemes supports dark mode now (click the little crescent moon at bottom right to try it out), and there’s a new set of fridge magnets for subscribers — sometimes you’ve just got to celebrate the one amazing victory but as often as not not.
Here’s a smattering of year-end news for everyone, thanks as always for reading and donating:
- Everyone was talking for a minute about that Associated Press article about how there’s lots of public money going into stadiums and arenas for private sports teams, but honestly it was kind of scattershot and not anything you didn’t already know if you regularly read this website, or honestly even if you read that first paragraph above. There are some nice enough quotes from economist Rob Baade (“It’s not as if the concrete is falling down and people are in grave danger if they attend a game”) and J.C. Bradbury (“When you ask economists should we fund sports stadiums, they can’t say ‘no’ fast enough”), but if you want to skip the entire thing, you have my permission.
- The British Columbia “crown corporation” (what they call quasi-public government agencies in Canada) that owns B.C. Place says it needs upgrades to host the 2026 men’s World Cup after getting $514 million in upgrades to host the women’s World Cup in 2015. No price tag yet, but the stadium owner warned that without renovations Vancouver “wouldn’t have been able to attract Taylor Swift” — hey, that’s Montreal’s line!
- It’s now been 25 days since the A’s owners canceled a planned reveal of new stadium designs on the grounds that two Nevada state troopers had been shot several days earlier, I’m sure it will no longer be too soon any year now.
- Indy Eleven‘s stadium is being built on a literal graveyard, this should go well.
I was wondering why my dark mode was working all of a sudden. Thanks!
Though commenting is a little difficult.
Oh, yeah, the comment entry text could use a bit more contrast. It allows me to customize the text styles, let me see if I can fix this.
Thanks Neil!
Taylor Swift isn’t scheduled to play BC Place until December 6,7,8 in 2024. I am really disappointed CTV News did not get a comment from Taylor Swift or her tour manager to confirm their opinions on the condition of the stadium. Incidentally, Beyonce did perform at BC Place in 2023, one of the 8 concert dates at the stadium. I am curious why the Tourism and Sports Minister didn’t mention that.
You got 8 concert dates (minus any you were going to get without the ‘current’ renovations – which cost almost six times what the stadium cost to build originally) for just $500m or so?
Total win!!!!
Just think, if you spent another Billion, you could get up to 16 concert dates at some point in future!
Just renewed my subscription for 2024 :)
The situation in Jacksonville will definitely bear watching for next year: the Jaguars have set the midpoint of 2024 as the desired timeline for presenting an agreement to the NFL, which kinda seems like an unrealistic goal when there’s a billion-dollar subsidy involved. Part of me thinks the franchise set that unrealistic target on purpose, knowing that Jax doesn’t have that many resources from which it can siphon that amount of funding, and knowing that the state government is too busy fighting and real and imagined “enemies” (mostly the latter) to be involved in any capacity.
Thanks!
And yeah, there’s no downside to setting an unrealistic deadline to try to get elected officials scrambling. If and when they don’t hit the target date, you can always move the goalposts then.
1. Move the Jaguars to London
2. Move the Jaguars to the AFC East
3. Move the Dolphins to the AFC South
The concept of “fork over a billion dollars an build a useless stadium to become a major league city, when you aren’t” is a fraud that cities like Jacksonville, Oklahoma City etc can’t afford.
The Phoenix media has been hyping a $200 million economic impact from the Fiesta Bowl. With tickets starting at $24 on Stubhub, all they need to do to hit $200 million is sell over 5 million tickets. The Chase Field Bowl was almost entirely Jayhawk fans, with UNLV fans appearantly unable to make the 5 hour drive. What happened? The Phoenix Valley is full of KU alum, and they had an opportunity to go and cheer for the Jayhawks in their backyard. How much did that contribute to the Phoenix economy? Around $198 million short of what the sports stadium promoters pulled out of a hat.
Yeah, but hot dogs…
Unless it was last year, the dumbest deal is building a $ billion plus outdoor stadium in Buffalo. Chicago made the mistake of building an outdoor stadium on Lake Michigan 20 years ago. Buffalo is one of the smallest markets in the NFL (unless you count Toronto) so building a new stadium that will have no other use beyond 6 football and 4 snowball games a year is 100% waste.
Maybe having an old stadium is why Taylor Swift didn’t perform in Buffalo. She is scheduled to play Toronto 6 times in November 2024. If Buffalo had a newer stadium, she could have had the two facilities bid against each other to get her rental cost down.
Buffalo was 2022, yes.
Thanks for your excellent work again this year Neil.
I doubt we’ll see billionaires decide that there are other parties more deserving of welfare than themselves anytime soon.
With respect to BC Place, the upgrades were actually done in 2010/11 (it reopened in 2011 as I recall), so the renos really weren’t done “for” the women’s world cup… nor were they ‘for’ the olympics, as they were among the last events hosted before the stadium closed for renovations (maybe even ‘the’ last before it closed, I can’t remember).
There were ‘roof’ issues with the old air supported dome, of course. But did those require a $514m/$536m renovation? I would say no, they didn’t. Both the Lions and Whitecaps were angling for new or heavily renovated facilities elsewhere (with the carrot being that BC place sits on some very expensive real estate… something that was very much less true when it was built in the early 1980s).
PavCo ultimately convinced the gov’t that it would be ‘better’ to renovate the aging concrete stadium than build new one(s) elsewhere. Also that doing so would “pay for itself”, which I think is demonstrably untrue.
Also, since neither the Lions nor Whitecaps had anywhere else to go (the Whitecaps did propose a new stadium on the waterfront near the seabus terminal, iirc, but despite the fact that their ownership could have paid for it easily, details on how it would be paid for were very sketchy), it seemed unlikely that anything would be ‘lost’.
Prior to the renos, PavCo claimed BC place was used 200 days a year. I don’t know if that is true, nor whether each of those ‘usage’ days actually required a stadium/floor that size. A lot of events use football stadia because they are available, not because 50,000+ seats are necessary. They projected that, with the renovations, the stadium could be used an additional 40 days per year.
For better or worse, PavCo convinced the gov’t of the wisdom of their plan. And just $536m later, here we are…
For anyone interested in more bc place info (and political doublespeak…)
https://news.gov.bc.ca/stories/excitement-builds-for-bc-place-re-opening
“Excitement builds for BC Place re-opening”
Sounds like a winning candidate for those “Most boring headline of the day” contests.
Tempe and Oakland get gold stars for not kowtowing to the demands of billionaires. Everyone else…pffft.
Tempe voters get gold stars, not most Tempe Officials. Mayor Woods, and councilmembers Adams, Keating And Navarro were all 100% in favor of giving the Coyotes $500 million in subsidies and tax breaks. A special award goes to former Mayor Hugh Hyena Hallman, who singlehandedly led the attack on Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport. The viciousness of Hyena Hallman’s interviews and editorials about Phoenix and Sky Harbor Airport would make a hyena proud.