Not gonna lie, this week has been a lot, what with Kansas City and environs voting down a Royals and Chiefs tax subsidy proposal and the Oakland A’s announcing a temporary move to Sacramento, requiring eight full posts in four days. (If you want to show your appreciation, or just your sympathy, you know where to find the tip jar.) I’m tempted to let you all go a day early, but then what would we do with all the other news that happened this week and got short shrift? Let’s take it one bullet point at a time and see how it goes:
- Kansas City Royals owner John Sherman’s wife, Marny Sherman, for some reason got to be the one to make move threats in the wake of Tuesday’s “no” vote on a $500 million sales tax surcharge for the Royals and Chiefs, posting on Facebook that “neither team will work with Jackson County again.” Presumably she means to imply that the teams will either look to neighboring Clay County or the neighboring state of Kansas — she concluded her post, “We will be lucky if both teams wind up in Kansas. At least still in the area!” — though neither has a stadium funding plan in place right now, which is a big part of why the team owners were focusing on Jackson County. Meanwhile, Missouri state Sen. Bill Eigel — yes, the flamethrower guy — says, “I know of no path in the Missouri Senate where we’re going to do any public funding of sports stadiums” and “I think that would be resisted vociferously and extensively,” and while Eigel doesn’t have a leadership position, I’m not sure I’d want to risk finding out what he means by “resist extensively.”
- Arizona Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo is dead set on winning an auction for public land on which to build a new arena, and also is looking for someone who wants to buy the team, and also is threatening to move the team somewhere if he doesn’t get the land. Plus, the Arizona Republic reports that “team leadership is also likely to seek a special taxing arrangement to help finance construction” if it does win the land bid. Alex Meruelo is also a lot — maybe he might want to consider having one less pregnancy?
- Marc Normandin has taken on the question of why other MLB owners are content to let John Fisher have the A’s spend three years playing in a minor-league stadium and then potentially move them to baseball’s smallest market while continuing to rake in revenue-sharing checks, and concluded that other owners are not content at all, but they’re also not going to do anything about it: “Owners are probably just happy that the Fisher saga is nearly at an end, and that this potentially opens up the path for them to split expansion fees once the A’s are fully settled in somewhere new in a new park, and hey, in the meantime, one fewer suitor on free agency means prices get to come down.”
- More on the Sacramento River Cats stadium that is supposed to host the A’s the next three years, via SFGate: [River Cats broadcaster Bill] Laskey mentioned that the press amenities are dreadfully lacking, with only two total broadcast booths — one for each radio team — and, in Laskey’s estimation, space for four to eight people in the press box. When the occasional River Cats game was televised, Laskey told SFGATE the TV crew would take over one of the booths, forcing a radio broadcaster to call the game outside under a canopy, even in the blistering Sacramento sun.”
- Philadelphia’s Civic Design Review committee called 76ers owner Josh Harris’s plan to build an arena on the downtown Gallery mall site “undercooked” and a continuation of the bad public planning that led to the failed mall in the first place, with one member saying, “We need to think about the real giveback here and whether we should build this thing.” The committee is only advisory, but coupled with the fact that city agencies are now months overdue producing studies of the arena project that would allow a city council vote, all the trash talking only adds to the project’s distinct lack of momentum.
- Why should St. Petersburg-area taxpayers spend around $1.5 billion on a new Tampa Bay Rays stadium to revitalize the area around the current stadium when it could just build all the other stuff like housing and museums and skip the expensive part? That’s the question being asked by Tampa Bay Times opinion editor Graham Brink, before acknowledging that there are intangible benefits to having a sports team: “When the team wins, the city feels a sense of collective pride. What’s that worth?” That’s actually been studied, and the answer is: Not as much as you might think.
- I had to head back home after one day of last week’s sports economics conference and so sadly missed taking in a Baltimore Orioles game with the assembled economists, but fortunately the Baltimore Banner has the recap.
- This interview with Good Jobs First director Greg LeRoy took place before the Alexandria, Virginia arena plan for the Washington Capitals and Wizards got a fork stuck in it, but it’s a great reminder of both how dubious the economic arguments were for the deal (MuniCap, the consultant that came up with $75 parking fees to justify the arena, is “not a company known for saying no, let’s put it that way,” says LeRoy) and how dumb it is that team owners refuse to release details of their own numbers on the grounds it’s “proprietary” information.
- And this interview with me by Debtwire took place right after the Kansas City stadium tax vote, but we covered a lot of ground regarding other cities’ stadium and arena shenanigans as well. If only we had had a theme song…
The land auction for the northwest corner of Scottsdale Road and Loop 101 has been set for June 27th. The City of Phoenix infrastructure letter starts out with a disclaimer, “Staff has reviewed the request based upon limited information provided has the below comments. As additional information becomes available these requirements will likely be modified”. The letter continues with 10 pages of demands and regulations, including links to even lengthier city codes. Winning the auction will be the easy part, if the Coyotes think getting approvals from Phoenix will be quick and easy, Meruelo and Bettman are delusional and should check in to hotel 2400 East Van Buren. Then the letter mentions intergovernmental agreements with the Flood Control District of Maricopa County and Scottsdale. Ever hear of the Grayhawk HOA? The Coyotes sure will.
The worst outcome for everyone would be for him to win the bid and then get bogged down in all of the stuff you mention.
I’m not suggesting it should be easier. I’m sure at least most of those regulations, etc, are important. But if he wins the bid and then tries to get public money or fight all the other regulatory issues, he will still be able to sorta credibly claim to have a plan and the other owners may indulge that, which means it will just keep the team in limbo for that much longer.
Or maybe they won’t. Bettman is a corporate lawyer. That’s really his only skillset. I’m sure he is well aware of how this is all going to go. He’ll understand how many hurdles there are left to clear.
But he works for the owners and Meruelo is one of the owners, so he is obliged to keep saying he’s confident in this plan, even though he certainly is not. If and when the league does push to sell/move the team, he cannot be seen to have somehow undermined one of the owners.
He also wants to do whatever he can to keep the few Coyotes fans and sponsors on board as long as he can on the off chance this somehow does work out and they stay or, more likely, they get an expansion team someday.
It is not surprising, I guess, that Meruelo is threatening to sell or move the team. He’s desperate. But that is not going to accomplish anything.
It may be possible that a future Coyotes franchise in a magical yet-to-be realized arena could have a strong fan base. But as of March 2024, there is no evidence at all that the local politicians or populace would be all that sad about losing the Coyotes to another market. This is not like the Winnipeg Jets.
But I suspect the threats will not alienate fans either. The fans are already fully alienated. The ones that still come just really like hockey, I guess, but they have no delusions about the future of the franchise.
LOL. Clear sailing then?
I would say the one difference this time is that in all previous Coyotes arena sagas/near bankruptcies/actual bankruptcies, there was no bona fide suitor for the team (that the NHL would accept… plenty of people with enough money to buy, but none who wanted to take direction from the league on how much money they should lose and where they should lose it).
This time there is at least one whom Bettman/Daly appear to have touched with the silver sword, and he’s willing to move to a market that the NHL had never previously considered viable (so no potential loss of expansion fees).
This may be Meruelo’s last chance to get something done in Phx metro. It’s been obvious for 15 years that nothing is going to work. They can’t even sell out a 4600 seat arena in an area they had been “longing” to get to.
The silver lining for Alex the cheapskate (who actually said he hoped to run the team better by economizing on player salaries shortly after buying the club) is that franchise values have soared, meaning he will make a crapload of profit on the team he is probably behind on payments on.
I’m not sure “nothing” is going to work. Other than having an arena on the east side of the city, the one thing they haven’t tried yet is building a consistently winning team in an organization that treats people fairly and pays them accordingly.
The NHL will try again in Phoenix just like they will try again in Atlanta. They just can’t get past the size of the markets.
The River Cats will not survive the A’s residency. They will have to move. MiLB’s block scheduling and MLB’s series scheduling just won’t work.
This might push the California League out of Fresno and into another market, although I’m not well-versed on what stadiums still exist in the Cal League footprint that would be acceptable to MLB.
There’s a stadium that just opened up in Oakland that the River Cats could play in.
Do the Giants have any say in this? It is their affiliate…..
It’s a great question Jorge. Not knowing what the agreements are and/or when contracts (for affiliation, stadium lease, broadcast or any other matter) might end makes this a difficult one.
You would think that the Giants and Ranadive would have discussed this prior to the agreement and either come up with a way to make stadium sharing work (unlikely in my opinion for the reasons Neil and others have outlined previously) or an acceptable to all parties alternate location for the AAA team (I mean the River Cats, if that isn’t clear…)
In the event that all existing contracts end in Oct 2024, it would be possible to just boot Ranadive’s team out… but given that the A’s appear to have negotiated with him for use of the stadium, that seems unlikely to be the case.
Hey wait! Didn’t Kaval’s GBL have teams in Chico, Tijuana & Hawaii???
Rivercats to Fresno, grizzlies to Lancaster.
Neil, OT
Is everyone OK with the quake?
I didn’t even know it had happened until people started texting me. 4.8 magnitude isn’t much, and western New Jersey is a ways away from Brooklyn.
Apparently we felt it in Pennsylvania. I didn’t feel it. I heard something. I thought it was a truck.
Now every NY team has an excuse to demand a new earthquake proof stadium, with holograms too.
We actually felt it in RI…I asked my wife if she noticed the house shaking:)
I feel like the teams and leagues work against their own best interest. Why do we keep trying to force this team in Arizona to work? Just sell them to Quebec. Why do we keep resisting having a team in a place with a passionate fan base that will support a team vs a place that doesn’t care?
Also if the A’s are so determined to make Las Vegas work then they should play in the minor league triple A stadium in Vegas and start building a fan base there. Their own triple A team affiliate is there as well. Not to sound biased to Canada, but they should sell the A’s to Montreal and bring back the Expos. A much bigger market and a city that wants their team back.
At this point, being a flop in Phoenix is still more valuable than being a hit in Quebec. Phoenix has a million more people. Montreal has the population but it doesn’t have the stadium. As weak as the Las Vegas stadium plan is, it’s farther along than any Montreal plan.
Losing tens of millions is more valuable than making tens of millions. What’s your logic?
Bettman’s goal has always been to expand interest in the NHL. While the Coyotes have been complete failures, allowing them to move to Quebec really doesn’t build interest in the league. People in Quebec City already watch all the hockey they can. And the population difference between Phoenix and Quebec is so vast it really doesn’t make any sense.
The A’s aren’t determined to make Vegas work. If the goal was to get to Vegas, they wouldn’t have partnered with the lowest tier crappiest gaming company in town. Their goal was to resolve the stadium issue enough that the other owners can expand. At this point I’m guessing they’re in Sacramento for the rest of the decade, at some point they beg for a deal there. Fisher sells the team the minute his $200 million expansion check clears.
Mexico City has a population of 25 million, so what? If nobody likes hockey somewhere, and you’ve been trying to build interest for 28 years and only transplants from colder climates care about hockey, it’s time to give up. Tilman Fertitta isn’t interested in throwing good money after bad in Houston, an even larger city than Phoenix with a much larger corporate base. Bettman has been pushing his sunbelt strategy every day of his 31 years as NHL Commissioner. Hockey failed twice in Atlanta, Capitol of the South and home of the world’s busiest Airport. Even in Dallas and Los Angeles , hockey is only a niche sport. The core of the problem is, in a large metro area like Phoenix, Atlanta or Houston how many hockey rinks are there? Maybe a dozen, and then how many are in less affluent areas? Usually none. How many baseball diamonds, football fields, soccer fields and basketball courts are there? Hundreds to thousands. If kids don’t have the opportunity to play a sport, the chances of them adopting that sport later in life is minimal. Bettman has been chasing the NBA ever since he left to become NHL Commissioner, and judging by the multiple order of magnitude difference in interest in the Final Four versus the Frozen Four, Bettman is actually losing ground.
We are at the point where everything besides football is a niche sport in the United States. Overall Bettman’s sunbelt strategy has been a success.
Comparing the frozen four to the Final Four is ridiculous. The frozen four really has nothing to do with the NHL’s popularity or southern expansion of the sport.
Dallas, Nashville, Tampa, Vegas=Successes
Anaheim, Florida, Carolina=Debatable
Atlanta & Arizona=Failures
Teams don’t succeed or fail simply because of some inherent level of interest in hockey in the city. It has a lot to do with the ownership, the arena, the quality of the other teams in the city competing for attention,etc.
There is nothing about Phoenix that makes it inherently less amenable to hockey than Las Vegas or Tampa.
Three decades of failure in the market (in three different locations), probably close to a billion dollars in losses and still negligible fan interest makes Phoenix different from the other markets Ryan mentioned.
They have fielded good teams before. They have tried cutting prices ($25 for two tickets c/w a fifth of vodka). They played in one of the better (if not best) arenas in the league in Glendale. They moved to a 4600 seat arena in an effort to boost ticket prices through artificial scarcity (also because they didn’t have anywhere else to play because they didn’t pay their bills elsewhere). 4600 seats turned out to be still too many.
No-one is interested. There is not one shred of evidence that if you could magically move the 1980-83 Islanders or 1976-1979 Canadiens there that fans would be interested either.
It’s just not an NHL market, no matter how much Bettman wants it to be.
The “evidence” is that smaller cities in the sunbelt have been receptive to hockey.
No, they haven’t had sustained success. They’ve made the playoffs. That’s it. Half the teams make the playoffs and anyone can get lucky once. Hockey attendance, outside of Toronto, is especially sensitive to the fans’ hopes for the team.
It is unlikely that Arizonans are uniquely hostile to hockey. Unless one subscribes to racial essentialism. Which I don’t.
The demographics include people from all over. Just like Vegas, Tampa and Dallas.
But I think Phoenix may be geographically hostile to putting an arena in a place that enough people are willing to go. It’s just too spread out.
The other sports can manage because those fanbases are bigger to begin with. Hockey needs to make it easy for fans to come.
A few people did predict that Glendale would fail. The potential fanbase is on the other side of the city and Glendale was too far to go, apparently. And, of course, ownership tried to stiff the city.
But the people on the east side, apparently, just don’t want to pay for more development. That may be an Arizona-specific situation to some extent. It’s growing so fast and unsustainably, there was bound to be a backlash.
And, unlike Vegas, they don’t have first-mover advantage.
If the NHL wants more new territories, San Diego, Portland, Austin, and SLC may be better than Houston, Atlanta or Phoenix. Smaller markets, but less competition.
Reed, I don’t think it’s actually that hard to see why Phoenix would be uniquely hostile to hockey. It is the only NHL market where its fall and winter seasons are not only objectively the best time of year weather-wise – it’s the ONLY time to go enjoy going outside. The summer time in Phoenix is akin to winters in Minnesota – sure, some hardy few will do outside activities, but most stay indoors. Unlike every other Sun Belt market where the summers are hot but still manageable, Phoenix is unique in this regard. The result is that there’s a lot stronger competition for people’s time and money during the winter months than in most other places.
Couple this with the fact that there’s a beloved NBA team in the same market to pull away season ticket holders, corporate sponsors, and casual fans, and you’ve got a particularly toxic mix for any NHL team to succeed in greater Maricopa County. There are only 2-4 warm-weather markets with both leagues for a reason (depends on if you want to consider the Panthers, who play in Broward County, part of Miami. Also, if you consider Dallas to be a “warm weather” market even though winters in North Texas suck and drive people indoors to catch the Stars and Mavericks).
Maybe if the Suns never existed, hockey could really take hold in Phoenix. But they do, and with the NHL season sitting smack-dab in the lone window of the year when Arizona is actually tolerable to enjoy outside, it’s too much for an NHL club to overcome.
I don’t think the weather is that much better in Vegas or Miami in the summer. But then, all of those places are hell for me, so I cannot compare them the way residents would.
But it is critical that the Coyotes are the fourth team in town rather than the first or second. That is important. And they have produced little good PR in at least a decade.
That was true of the LA Kings at one point, but then they got a superstar and have had success. They are not popular compared to the Lakers, but they have their core fans and a few celebrities show up.
Also, their building is accessible to more people. It’s in a better location and LA is just bigger.
It’s not the NHL’s job to sell college hockey, but it does help a bit anyway.
The Frozen Four sells out every year very easily. Half the tickets are sold before anyone knows who the teams will be. The other half are gone quickly. It’s doing just fine.
ESPN does a terrible job promoting college sports that do not favor the SEC or ACC, but it shows the college hockey tournaments every year anyway. If the NCAA would sell the rights to somebody who would actually promote the game, it might get better ratings.
But for the people who actually know anything about hockey, it is a much better event than the basketball. It’s about the games and not about the hype or the gambling.
But there are only 60+ D1 mens teams versus over 300 basketball teams so most people just are not familiar with it. It has grown, but it is expensive and most universities see more value in throwing more money down the football rathole than trying to have D1 hockey.
Hockey is not, and should not try to be, basketball. Basketball is a lot more widespread because it is a lot cheaper.
Hockey will never be as popular as basketball in the US, but the fans it has are deeply loyal and passionate.
If you’ve ever been to a college hockey game, you’ll know that the energy in the building makes the typical basketball game feel like a nap in comparison. (Obviously, there are exceptions).
NCAA basketball is losing its “casual fans.” The players move around too much. Most of the best ones don’t play in college, but basketball is wedded to its strategy of just marketing the stars. And most college basketball teams don’t really have any stars. How are they supposed to market a midweek Hofstra vs Drexel game?
College hockey has a few stars. More than it used to. Most don’t stay more than a year or two.
But that doesn’t matter as much because the marketing is more about the teams, the atmosphere, the traditions that are unique to the schools – many of which are small and don’t have football.
Actually, ESPN airs the Frozen Four as part of an umbrella contract for all NCAA championships except men’s basketball.
I know that, but it doesn’t do much to help those sports grow.
ESPN crams in as much softball and baseball as they can? Why? Because they own the ACC and SEC Networks.
Their effort for the sports that the B1G is good at – wrestling, hockey, lacrosse – is a lot weaker. Especially on ESPN.com
“There is no lease agreement; the A’s won’t pay a dime in rent”
“In an interview Thursday, Kaval laid out the details of the new partnership with the River Cats: The A’s will pay to upgrade the batting cages, weight rooms and field itself at Sutter Health Park, plus additional seating, premium sections and advertising for the stadium’
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/04/dave-kaval-outlines-oakland-as-rent-free-deal-to-play-in-sacramento/
Could you explain this word ‘pay’ you have used in relation to the stadium in Sacramento? Perhaps you are using it out of context or something, but I am not familiar with it.
The whole “intangible benefits to having a pro sports team” or “having major league status” is so nonsensical, but it’s good that someone has quantified it.
Someone once said that there’s a reason most intangibles are intangible – because they don’t exist.
That’s not true – there are lots of things you can’t easily put a price on, like clean water, that are still valuable.
And people definitely value having sports teams. Just not nearly as much as they’re being made to spend on them, even if you assume the teams would leave without the subsidies, which they usually wouldn’t.
One of my all time favourite sports on tv moments was when Dan Dierdorf would go over his pregame NFL ratings of the competing teams to determine who had the best chance of winning… offense/defense/special teams… and one of the boxes was always “intangibles”, which he proceeded to rank insofar as which team had the ‘intangibles’ advantage.
This, of course, made them clearly and demonstrably tangible.
Hey, maybe Marny Sherman can hock a few of her diamonds, furs, sports cars, houses, etc. to pay for the Royals new stadium! NO more corporate welfare extortion while the rest of America struggles to make ends meet. Let them move to Pixley or Hooterville.
Greensboro!
Give me a ‘T’ !
Give me an ‘I’ !
Give me an ‘F’ !
What does that spell !
Arizona Coyotes’ new arena plans hinge on buying state land
“President and CEO Xavier Gutierrez said the project would be privately funded, though that rang hollow among some critics.
That’s because the team is likely to seek the creation of a special taxing district to help Meruelo finance the massive project. It would need Phoenix and Maricopa County to sign off. Called a theme park district, the area would be overseen by a board that can issue bonds to pay for construction and levy a tax on transactions to repay the bonds.”
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2024/04/06/arizona-coyotes-new-arena-what-to-know-about-state-land-auction/73221890007/
Looks like it’s not quite a TIF, because it would actually be a 9% districtwide surcharge on either sales or income or both. I need to consult with some economists, but this might not be as bad as diverting taxes that would normally be paid to the public treasury.
This reminds me of the part in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy where one of the Ark ships (I think the one filled with management consultants, but it might have been the hairdressers…) lands on a heavily treed planet. After some time spent studying their new home’s non existent economy, they decide to adopt the leaf as their currency – meaning (and chiefly because of the fact that) every resident becomes fabulously wealthy every autumn.