Happy Friday, everybody — we’ve made it to the end of another week again, which seems to keep taking longer and longer, I blame the Moon.
And on to the news briefs, starting with a not-so-brief to cover what would get its own item if this were any other day of the week:
- The St. Petersburg city council took its first vote on the proposed Tampa Bay Rays stadium project yesterday — St. Pete is one of those cities where the council has to vote on things twice, just to be sure — and as expected, it narrowly passed, with five out of eight councilmembers in favor. The official city expense is $212.5 million in property-tax kickbacks on the stadium site plus $130 million in infrastructure spending, but this leaves out a ton of hidden subsidies that Rays owner Stuart Sternberg would be getting:
- About $300 million (present value) in future tax money from Pinellas County
- $320 million worth of future property-tax reductions from the city and county
- $700 million worth of land in exchange for payments worth just $80 million, making for a $620 million public gift
That comes to a public subsidy of roughly $1.6 billion, which would shatter the Tennessee Titans‘ record of $1.26 billion, at least until the next stadium project comes along. There’s still a final council vote to be taken on July 11, before which the city still needs to provide final documents — a local Sierra Club organizer called the process a “runaway train,” while Southern Poverty Law Center lawyers asked the city to “reconsider this rushed and chaotic timeline” — but the writing does seem to be on the wall. MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said, “I think they’ve done a phenomenal job in Tampa Bay, competing, and I think enhanced revenue streams just provides flexibility that can only make things better,” which I think means he’s happy, my universal translator doesn’t do Manfredese.
- A consulting report for Washington, D.C. estimates that a new Commanders stadium in the district could create $1.26 billion in “yearly economic output,” and while I haven’t read the full document yet, economist J.C. Bradbury has the best response anyway: “I fear going into the details grants some legitimacy to the idea that there is some debate over the economic impact of stadiums. If the consultants feel the decades of economic research on the subject is in error, they are free to submit their challenges to peer review.” (The city also commissioned a second report on how to finance said stadium, but has no plans to release it, so you know it’s got to be juicy — fire off the FOIA requests!)
- Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles spoke yesterday about why she thinks a $650 million Carolina Panthers stadium renovation subsidy in exchange for just a 15-year lease extension would be good deal despite Charlotte residents apparently thinking otherwise, and one thing she said was: “This is an investment in our future. That’s why is strongly support what we’re doing with Tepper Sports. Yes, I wish we had the ability to do this on our own. But we have to partner with Tepper Sports and our hospitality industry.” We wish we could pay for the whole stadium renovation, but sadly we have to let the team owner who would benefit from it chip in is certainly a choice, let’s just say that.
- MLB is apparently requiring all teams’ new nonrelocation agreements to allow playoffs games at a neutral site, and Athletics stadium czar Dave Kaval says that’d be great for Las Vegas, which could be in line to host a neutral-site World Series if baseball ever decides to do like the NFL does with the Super Bowl. Given that it’s going to take decades for every team’s nonrelocation agreement to expire and be rewritten, and that Las Vegas could be uninhabitable by then, that’s maybe not the most convincing argument, but Kavals gonna Kaval, especially when he needs to distract from the mess that is the team’s Vegas stadium plans.
- R.J. Anderson wrote a super-long look at the public ownership model for pro sports teams for CBS Sports this week, and while I have some quibbles — in particular, it tends to conflate community ownership by fans (the Green Bay Packers, German soccer teams) with public ownerships by municipalities (several Canadian Football League teams and minor-league baseball teams) — it’s a good, in-depth overview. Whether either fan ownership or public ownership would necessarily put an end to stadium subsidy demands is an open question: The Packers did demand money to upgrade Lambeau Field, and sports leagues have leaned on municipally owned teams to build new stadiums. But as Anderson notes, at least fans and municipal officials have other priorities than just squeezing every last penny of profit out of teams, so there would be some benefits like cheaper tickets and fewer move threats, which would at least be a start.
And this, in the recently relocated Arizona Coyotes franchise.
Salt Lake’s Delta Center zoning changes meet opposition from planning commission
https://www.ksl.com/article/51041452/salt-lakes-delta-center-zoning-changes-meet-opposition-from-planning-commission
Putting NBA and NHL in the same arena in a market half the size of any other with both is ret@#$ded. Charging Chicago or Boston prices for hockey tickets in SLC is even dumber. Hopefully the retreaded Coyotes and Jazz will both fail and SLC will be left without pro sports.
I don’t actually think using “retarded” to mean “stupid” and swapping out some of the letters makes it less wrong.
Also, would the NBA and NHL in separate arenas in a market the size of Salt Lake be any better?
We get it. You hate Utah.
This schtick is tired.
No, I don’t hate Utah, what I hate is another attempt by Gary Bettman to shove NHL hockey on a non-traditional market that has little chance of supporting hockey. Why Utah? Because Bettman couldnt find an owner in Kansas City and Tilman Fertitta is smart enough to realize, even in a market the size of Houston, adding an NHL team will dilute the fanbase, while adding $100 million in annual expenses, on top of the billion dollar purchase price. If the 4th largest city isn’t viable for NHL hockey against an established NBA team, competing against a 40 plus year established NBA franchise in a market the size of Salt Lake City is a formula for disaster for both franchises. The Delta Center has basically the same configuration as the America West Arena the Coyotes complained so much about. What are the plans for adding seats for hockey that doesn’t ruin basketball sightlines or reduce basketball capacity?
What is clear is Bettman hates Canada. Unless Edmonton sweeps the remaining 4 games, this will be the 32nd year in a row since a Canadian team won the Stanley Cup, the same number of years Bettman has been Commissioner. The Canadian Loonie is a lame excuse, the Loonie has been stable around 75 cents for a decade, and prices in Canada reflect this established exchange rate. Quebec City would probably succeed, has a move in ready Centre Videotron and has a long waiting fan base across Quebec and Atlantic Canada. Hamilton would be a huge cash cow, and has had a NHL ready Arena for 40 years that is being totally renovated and will reopen next year.
Does Bettman really think Alex Meruelo can win the auction next week, come up with a development plan that Phoenix will approve and not get bogged down with litigation from Scottsdale and the Grayhawk Community Association, and then be able to finance a multi billion dollar development? Very unlikely. The only way hockey is returning to Arizona is for a well capitalized owner to grovel in front of the Glendale City Council, offer to buy the Desert Diamond Arena, and pray that 4 council members are in favor. Then the reCoyotes need to promote the improvements to Loop 101 from North Scottsdale and the South Mountain Freeway bypass around Downtown Phoenix. The constant badmouthing of Glendale, while doing a terrible job of marketing while putting a team on the ice that only had one decent playoff appearance in 28 years was the problem with Arizona.
Agree. I live in central Scottsdale and have been to a few Coyotes games. It’s a lot easier than driving to downtown Chicago to see a Blackhawks game. Added bonus: In Glendale, you know your car will still be there after the game.
Bettman does not hate Canada…He doesn’t care one way or the other. He only cares about revenue…
You know what? Forget it. Not doing this again.
You clearly don’t follow any of the actual reporters who cover these issues every day, or understand how the NHL does business, so I’m not going to bother.
You’re clearly in an epistemic cul de sac on this and will just go on inventing conspiracy theories and whatever else you need to justify a position you’re already wedded to.
I missed the beginning of this thread, or I would have banned “You hate Utah” as a personal attack. And the way it’s gone since then, on both sides, shows very clearly why that rule is in place.
Anyway, it stops here. If anyone else posts something that’s an attack on a commenter, not on their comments, this whole thread goes down the memory hole. Thanks for your cooperation!
I don’t understand what the attraction is for neutral-site baseball playoffs. Is it just a manipulation tactic so they can say, “no, really, St. Petersburg, you’re guaranteed to get the World Series one day, even though your team usually sucks!”
Aping the NFL is not a good idea at this point. Ten years down the road, that will probably be clearer. MLB’s best bet, especially since paring back the minors, is to bolster their regional fanbases. And yes, that means offering the annual hope that the biggest of big games will be played that year in your home stadium.
Unless you’re the A’s, of course, who appear to have given up on cultivating any sort of fanbase.
Also, I don’t see the feasibility of fans traveling to another city with less than a week’s notice, for an unknown number of days, to watch an unknown number of games. How would you even book that flight or hotel? And you’re asking fans in the host city to help fill 160,000 to 350,000 seats over a 4 to 7 game series.
With a 32,000 seat stadium the A’s wouldn’t be getting any neutral site World Series games simply because their stadium is to small (having been a season ticket holder with the A’s for several years one of the things I looked forward to was the ability to go to post season game which the A’s frequently participated in so I would have wanted a neutral site post season)
Btw, I’ve been wondering, Fisher is a big shareholder in The Gap. He has over 37 million shares. The Gap used to give dividends of above a dollar per share. That has now been cut in half which would blow a $18 million hole in Fisher’s yearly income. This happen in 2021 and winter 2022 was when Fisher started strip mining the A’s roster. Coincidence?
Ken, you’ve noticed a very important piece of the puzzle right there… Dubious sources like Forbes can crow all they want about Fisher being one of the paper-wealthiest owners in MLB, but any long-term successful capitalist* will tell you that cash flow is king.
*For instance, Warren Buffett and the late Charlie Munger… wonder why neither of them were ever invested in major-league sports teams, despite plenty of opportunities…
Ian Mr Buffet was a minority owner of the Omaha Royals triple A team for 21 years from 1991-2012. The initial investment to completely purchase the team was $5m and Warren probably only put in 25% of that
Yeah, and he’s got a few hundred acre farm outside of Omaha that he’s held for decades, too. But MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL… never took a stake.
I would think that being a minority owner of a pro team would be a pretty idiot-proof investment, but maybe not.
I don’t get it either, except insofar as probably someone in the MLB office has a folder on their hard drive labeled “Make WS more like Super Bowl???!?” and got the lawyers to start inserting a clause in leases just in case.
Like most of the Manfred era- it’s a big FU to the fans. What is the point of supporting a team through an already watered down regular season- if it means the biggest playoff games you might ever get to experience will be played at a neutral site?
The last 30 years of pro sports has been an FU to the fans. They don’t care about the average fans, only the corporate ones.
Don’t get me started! I was one of those bloggers (not in my underwear and not in my mom’s basement) who followed the dolphins. They wound up giving us some access to the team as “ambassadors”…
I watched the shift from the ownership engaging with us in reaching out to fellow average fans (we met h Wayne and he personally thanked us) to it being a corporate bunch of nonsense.
The current owner (like others) only cares about the corporate sponsors and he made that crystal clear.
The owner had hired a team president who was a PR guy. He gave us so much nonsensical “song and dance” about how the team was partnering with this or that company and how the fan experience would be enhanced.
All without a hint of irony related to this not being for average fans.
Then came the price increases and changes to seating that caused average fans to not renew.
I specifically recall THE moment that I was done – the president talked to us in the stadium one afternoon. I asked him if I could have him on a podcast … and he demurred; later “his people” got back to me and said “don’t bother him”. I took it to mean that he had no interest in average fans.
Sad to see. But I witnessed it in real time.
It depends on the owner and the league, I guess. Some owners are just want to have a good reputation in their city. And NHL owners, especially, do care about their total attendance because it’s a significant chunk of their revenue.
But I suspect the NFL owners are the least worried about “the average fan.” They get most of their money from TV, those ratings are always astronomical, and all of that money is shared so there’s not much they can do as an individual owner to mess that up.
So they focus on local sponsors and the corporate boxes. The other fans that show up are just a bonus.
The NBA is headed that direction if it’s not already there. Ticket prices are high. The TV money is huge and increasingly international. The mass of men leading lives of quiet desperation have never mattered less to the NBA’s bottom line.
On the other end of the spectrum, MLS has come to recognize that the hardcore fans create the atmosphere at the matches, in the same way the student section does at college and high school games.
MLS is selling the vibe as much as it is selling the game on the pitch so they try to encourage and accommodate those people.
The issue with Miami isn’t “the fans”. Pro football has never been an easy sell in southern Florida and with the region increasingly Spanish-speaking, it’s become more difficult. Miami is actually the weakest “home market” for the NFL based on the size of the TV audience. That’s why Stephen Ross uses the stadium site in Miami Gardens to stage Formula One racing and top-tier tennis.
The Superbowl is one game on a Sunday. The World Series drags on for almost 2 weeks. You’re really going to move a Mets Yankees World Series to Vegas? Why buy season tickets for the Reds or Tigers if the World Series is guaranteed to be in Vegas? And baseball is still banning Pete Rose while trying so desperately to make Vegas work?
They are mimicking the NFL, yes. The NFL routinely promises to put at least one Super Bowl in each brand-new stadium, to give local politicians some justification for throwing their citizens’ tax dollars into a new stadium.
It does seem silly to dangle the carrot of possible neutral-site playoff games to St. Petersburg or Clark County in order to get public money for a new ballpark, but that is apparently what Manfred wants.
It seems like the economic impact of new stadium at the RFK site would already be known, since there’s already been a football stadium there before. Although without a moat. Maybe the moat will make it an economic drive.
If these stadium deals are the financial bonanza’s these mayor’s believe they are, why aren’t cities like Fresno, Bakersfield, or even Los Angeles (yes, a two-team market) lining up for major league franchises of any sport? California leads the way in new stadium builds by far (Giants, Niners, Kings, Warriors, Lakers, Clippers, Rams, Padres)…Fresno could really put itself on the map, and there is a ton of wealth in the Central Valley.
Last year I was in Fresno, and I almost took a wrong turn two blocks from the ballpark and drove directly into the middle of somebody’s drug deal.
On the other hand, let’s see how things turn out whenever the high-speed rail finally happens. The Republican mayor is surprisingly a huge booster, because he understands it’s a major lifeline.
Because stadiums aren’t a financial bonanza and because the league would have to expand to more than 40 teams before Fresno made sense as the next expansion market. 48th largest metro area.
Baseball offers no ROI, at best (realistically, negative ROI), on the cost of a new ballpark. A team owner has to find incredibly foolish local politicians in order to pay for one. (Oh, hi, St. Petersburg!)