It seems like the New Orleans Superdome gets a major renovation every five years or so, with the latest one, a $500 million upgrade (originally $450 million, but I guess that was before fees), underway since 2020. The state of Louisiana is putting up $300 million of the cost, which leaves Saints owner Gayle Benson to pay the other $200 million, something it turns out she hasn’t been doing:
Members of the commission, formally known as the Louisiana Stadium and Exposition District, or LSED, were informed at a board meeting Wednesday that the Saints haven’t paid their share of the massive renovation project since December, and currently owe $11.5 million to the commission, which has been covering the bills to date.
The holdup, according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune, apparently has to do with the Saints’ lease, which was only extended five years until 2030 as part of the renovation deal, making it the second-priciest per-year lease extension subsidy ever. The Saints front office is still haggling with the state over terms of a longer lease extension, and the T-P reports that unnamed sources say “the payment dispute is directly tied to those talks,” though it’s unclear why Benson thinks it’s okay to renege on payments agreed to in your last lease extension as part of talks for a new lease extension. (In a statement, the Saints ownership said it was withholding payments while waiting on “certain documentation.”)
All this is of some urgency because next year’s Super Bowl is scheduled to be played at the Superdome, and work remains to be done on widening concourses, extending suites, and adding a new club and new bars. If the brinksmanship continues, would Louisiana taxpayers be on the hook for fronting the money for those upgrades? Would the NFL consider switching hosts for next year’s Super Bowl if the upgrades aren’t complete? Is $11.5 million a piddly amount of money to worry that much about, in comparison to the $300 million in public subsidies already approved and whatever taxpayers are likely to be on the hook for with the next lease extension? Possibly, who knows, and probably, but it’s a good reminder that the answer to the question of how much a particular stadium will end up costing the public is usually “more than you think.”
Maybe somebody from Louisiana needs to ring up NFL HQ and say “that Superbowl? You guys can hold it here, no problems. That NFL team that is behind on its lease payments? We’re cancelling their lease effective July 1st 2024. “
Katrina produced a lot of horrible sociological impacts that will be felt for generations, but creating a perpetual welfare cycle for the Superdome and Saints ownership shouldn’t be left off that notorious list. And even by stadium graft standards, it doesn’t make any sense! The Superdome is a shit venue and an absolute PITA to get in and out of; no amount of widened concourses or overpriced bars are going to change that. For all the money the state legislature has poured into it, they could’ve built a brand new facility. Instead, like the Liberty Bowl in Memphis, it perpetually gets these minor cosmetic additions that are the stadium equivalent of lipstick on a pig. It’s the equivalent of a dipshit 20-something constantly spending a few thousand here and there to modify their shitty Honda Civic, when they could’ve just bought a nicer new car had they saved up. It’s being bad at wasting money.
Of all the different types of stadium scams, these deserve their own category. A local government is happy to throw “updates” in perpetuity at the slightest threat of relocation or losing a major venue, and they don’t even have the foresight to just build a new facility and be done with it – for 20 years or so, at least.
In case anyone wants to speculate, the next Super Bowl is at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, CA. However, having the 60th Super Bowl has some cache and they may not be as inclined to switch.