Thanks for sticking around to the end of the week! As a reward, you get more news items to stick around through! This is the information economy you signed up for, sorry, no refunds!
- The folks at No Home Run in Tampa Bay have commissioned a poll on the Rays stadium plans, and say it shows that while 51% of voters supported them initially, that figure fell to 38% after respondents heard “key financial details.” This turns out to be: that Rays owner Stu Sternberg would get stadium land at a price that appears to be below market value, that he wouldn’t pay property taxes, that the city would be on the hook for $494 million (including interest) while Sternberg would keep all revenues from the stadium including non-baseball revenue, and that he would not share profits on the sale of the team with the city, all of which are undeniably accurate — all polls are hot garbage, it’s true, but this one seems as legit as any.
- What do people in Charlotte think of the plan to spend $650 million in public money on Carolina Panthers stadium upgrades? “Leaders say” that it’s necessary for Charlotte to remain a “big-league city,” according to the Charlotte Observer, at least if by “leaders” you mean the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance, that’s how representative democracy works, right, the only important people are the ones who own businesses? When not reporting on what the bosses think, the Observer also asked, “Could the Panthers leave Charlotte if they don’t get $650 million from the city?”, answering its own question by saying that sure, “the Panthers don’t appear to be interested in moving” and team owner David Tepper has made “no outward statements about wanting to relocate,” but they could, and other NFL teams have, are you $650 million worth of scared yet, huh, huh?
- The Jacksonville city council seems prepared to rubber-stamp the city’s plan to spend $775 million in public money on Jaguars stadium renovations, with no councilmembers at a Wednesday workshop expressing major misgivings about the deal. There will be a single public hearing on June 17 for Jacksonville residents to weigh in — it remains to be seen how many councilmembers will show up for that, and how many will listen as opposed to just playing with their phones.
- The Indianapolis City-County Council on Monday approved Mayor Joe Hogsett’s plan to create a TIF district to kick back taxes for a new MLS team and dissolve the one previously approved for the USL’s Indy Eleven. Indy Eleven fans are displeased, and some councilmembers questioned whether dedicating tax money to a team and ownership group that don’t even exist yet is the best move, but Hogsett countered that the Eleven plans were too financially risky and also the stadium was going to be built on a damn African-American graveyard, so good points on both sides, really!
- Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch has become the latest state official to tell the Chicago Bears and White Sox owners to pound sand on their subsidy requests: “Even after the election, I just think it’s, things we have to focus on: the kitchen table issues. People want to make sure their groceries are affordable, their rent is affordable, you know, that they have a roof over their head. The last thing they want us to be talking about is stadiums for sports teams. … As we’ve said to the Bears over and over again, to the White Sox, and also to the Chicago Red Stars, there’s just no appetite to use taxpayer funding to fund stadiums for billionaires.”
- The Chicago Reader, meanwhile, has a good article on Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s weird obsession with building the Bears a new stadium with tax money, which is even better since they fixed the part where the coining of the term “vaportecture” was credited to my old Deadspin editor Barry Petchesky. (It’s not the Reader’s fault — the new Deadspin owners broke a bunch of bylines when they did a site redesign, though they’re fixing them now.) I get quoted some in the piece, but the best line, as is often the case, goes to University of Chicago sports economist Allen Sanderson: “There’s a better chance of Brandon Johnson being drafted number one by the Bears than that stadium making a dollar.”
- Janet Marie Smith, who worked on the design of the Baltimore Orioles‘ Camden Yards but is not involved with its current renovation, was asked by the Baltimore Banner to comment on what the O’s owners could possibly be spending $600 million or more of public money on, and mentioned various things that reflect a “more fluid way of watching a game,” including more standing room and bar areas, which is certainly one way of describing giving fans fewer places to sit.
- The NFL is ramping up lobbying efforts to protect the use of federally tax-exempt bonds for stadiums, holding a briefing for Congressional aides during the draft in April. None of the recent attempts to rein in this practice went beyond a committee hearing, but since it saves sports team owners about $230 million a year in taxes for absolutely no benefit to the U.S. as a whole, may as well throw a few lobbyists at making sure no one even thinks about touching it, that’s the sports league way.
Brandon Johnson sounds like another imbecile like Tempe Mayor Corey Woods or Vice Mayor Jennifer Adams.
1. Chicago is the largest market with one NFL team. The next largest markets are the San Francisco 49ers and Arlington Cowboys. None of these teams are going anywhere.
2. Da Bears contribute virtually nothing to the Chicagoland economy. Rich North Shore season ticket holders drive into Chicago 8 to 10 times a year, go to da Bears game, and drive back to Lake Forest. End of story.
3. Phoenix has an example of a $50 billion development that really adds jobs and economic activity. The TMSC fabs will be producing chips that will be used in devices exported all over the world. Other companies will move to Phoenix to be near TSMC. Other services will be needed to supply these companies and ASU will increase it’s tech programs. Now that’s what economic development looks like, not gold plating VIP suites used a dozen times a year.
Not disputing the lack of economic impact the Bears might have, but your characterization of Bears season ticket holders as rich North Shore types is completely out to lunch. Season ticket holder here who knows dozens of other ones who live all over Chicagoland and beyond.
“Dozens” of season-ticket holders disproves the case?
There is no case to prove, it’s a made up stereotype, if that’s a thing. Bears STH are all over. Like every team. In our two rows, STH live in California, Ohio, Western suburbs, South Loop, Belvidere, Beverly…
Would the Bears leave the Chicago market? No
Could they get public/casino money for a new stadium in Indiana? Maybe.
The Horsehoe Casino in Hammond is a 16 mile drive from Soldier Field. That’s a lot closer than the Arlington cowboys drive to downtown Dallas or the Santa Clara 49ers driving to San Francisco.
I’ve been going on about the obsession among civic leaders in small- and smaller-market cities to remain “big league” sports towns, but it’s absolutely a real thing. Especially in places like Charlotte and Jacksonville, both of which are not only relatively new to being “big league” cities, but are relatively new to being considered major population centers in America at all. (The NFL’s justification for giving expansion teams to those cities in the 90s was their breakneck growths in the preceding years, trends that have mostly still rolled over into the 2020s.)
Now, whether either of those towns actually needed a “major league” franchise (or two, in Charlotte’s case) to validate their growths or elevate them in the hierarchy of American cities — or whether those efforts have even worked in the years since they were awarded their very first teams — those are different debates altogether.
My suspicion is that it mostly gives local electeds more recognition at mayor’s conferences — if you’re the mayor of Charlotte the other mayors will greet you with “How about those Panthers!” whereas if you’re the mayor of Santa Fe everyone will just nod politely.
(Assuming anyone remembers the Carolina Panthers play in Charlotte and not Raleigh or Greensboro, that is.)
I would posit that people’s perceptions and opinions of Jacksonville would be higher if it *didn’t* have the Jaguars, so that would be an interesting test subject for sure.
And one last note to the point about cities “needing” a sports team to validate its come-up: Austin feels like a pretty clear counterexample to that theory.
Austin might actually be the only counterexample of a city that could get more major franchises but hasn’t made much effort to do so.
As far as I can tell, it is the largest metro area in the US without an NFL, NBA, NHL or MLB team. It does have an MLS team, however and is sometimes mentioned in expansion discussions for the other sports, but nothing looks imminent.
But it has a lot of other things going for it that few other cities have – at least if you’re just considering the sorts of things that would make a city well-known internationally or attract visitors.
Austin also has its own purveyor of bigtime spectator sports played in publicly financed stadiums—the University of Texas Longhorns. UT has a lot of political power in with state and local government and the loyalty of many Longhorn fans is linked to their nostalgia for the old days when Austin was basically a college town and their dislike of the tech boomtown it’s become. Pro sports coming to town would be one more unwelcome reminder to old Ausinites that hippie Austin is a thing of the past.
It’s actually not really big enough to support a major sports team, and local politics probably wouldn’t support a big subsidy.
Austin is bigger than a bunch of markets that have major pro teams at around 2.4m in the greater metro area. It’s also growing rapidly.
It’s still way down the list in TV market size, unless you count it as part of the same market as San Antonio, which Nielsen does not.
https://ustvdb.com/seasons/2022-23/markets/
The tax-exempt bond issue is never going to go anywhere. You’ve got about 100 billionaires owning major league sports teams across the country. What are the odds Congress will do anything that costs 100 billionaires money?
Congress passed an increase in top tax rates for the rich in 2013 to help fund Obamacare, and passed a similar wealthy-bracket increase in 1993. So it has happened, though not when Republicans held the House.
Sure you’ll see rate increases from time-to-time, especially since future administrations can undo those easily. But how often do you see structural changes like this. For example, no one can argue that the carried interest loophole is good policy. It literally only benefits a small group of people in one industry. Politicians from both parties say it sucks but it never goes anywhere.
A few years ago Cory Booker took up this issue. It didn’t go anywhere. However he did champion “Opportunity Zones” which not only benefits the ultra-wealthy but a lot of those zones are in the areas surrounding sports venues. So he was out there grandstanding on the issue and then gives the same people a tax break
Good wrap up for the week today. I got a lot of my, “tut tut”ing out of just from these headlines.
Gonna guess the Illinois House then went on to do absolutely nothing about the cost of rent or groceries.
Not specifically related, but it’s Friday and here’s a news item about a stadium that was purchased for $1 and with $14 million in upgrades it became an apartment complex. Which is weird and amusing.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/04/unlocked-indiana-abandoned-baseball-stadium-apartment-building.html