Has there ever been a week before this where two cities dropped a combined $1.425 billion on sports stadium subsidies? Actually, yeah, there was that week in April 2022 when Maryland approved $1.8 billion in stadium subsidies one day after New York approved $1 billion in stadium subsidies, which is honestly going to be tough to beat. Part of this is just how state legislative calendars work, with elected officials typically racing to get potentially unpopular bills passed super-quick at the end of sessions before anyone notices, but it can still feel alarming in the same way a couple of sports subsidy plans getting defeated in quick succession can feel encouraging. “Don’t get distracted by small sample sizes” is probably the best guidance, though “Whoever has the gold makes the rules” isn’t bad either.
Anyway, it’s Friday, so you know what that means! Let’s see what else has been happening:
- Missouri Gov. Mike Parson has declared that his state will “put the best business deal we can on the line” for Kansas City Chiefs and Royals stadiums by the end of the year, in response to the state of Kansas offering upwards of $1.4 billion in sales tax kickbacks. “Look, I can’t blame Kansas for trying,” said Parson, while literally standing next to the Chiefs’ two Super Bowl trophies. “You know, if I was probably sitting there, I’d be doing the same thing. But at the end of the day, we’re going to be competitive.” This is why states need nonaggression pacts to avoid cross-border raiding wars, somebody in Kansas and Missouri should have thought of — oh right.
- Of course, it’s not just Kansas and Missouri fighting over the teams: The Royals could also move to Nashville if a new stadium isn’t approved, according to … Manny Abarca, the county legislator who wants a stadium approved. But it’s not just him, the executive who runs day-to-day operations for Music City Baseball, the group trying to bring an MLB team to Nashville, says he’s “never had a conversation with Royals Owner John Sherman about a potential move to Nashville,” oh, hm, maybe it is just Abarca saying this then.
- In the wake of his Phoenix arena plans getting shot down by the Arizona State Land Department, Arizona Coyotes owner (former owner? what do you call a guy who no longer owns the team but still owns the name and logos?) Alex Meruelo decided to give up on his plans to bring back the team as an expansion franchise, disbanding what’s left of the team and turning the name and territorial rights back over to the NHL. The league could now try to find another owner eager to build an arena and pay an expansion fee of upwards of $1 billion, though given how poorly Coyotes games were attended over the years that feels like an uphill battle. The world is full of stupid wannabe-sports-team-owner billionaires and stupid wannabe-sports-team-host elected officials, though, so never say never!
- I haven’t run across the work of Charlotte Observer deputy opinion editor Paige Masten before, but she’s suddenly on the Panthers stadium beat full-time, penning columns about how spending $650 million out of $800 million on renovations seems bad in comparison to Jacksonville spending $775 million out of $1.4 billion on renovations, and on how the Charlotte deal would look better if the city would share the report claiming $22 billion in economic impact with the public, or even with city councilmembers. These are maybe not the most pressing concerns I would have about spending $650 million in tax money on a private sports owner’s privately owned football stadium, but at least it’s better than some of the Observer’s recent reporting.
- Speaking of Jacksonville, Jaguars owner Shad Khan “could have taken a chest-thumping victory lap” on Wednesday, reports the Associated Press, but instead he just said, “I don’t get any joy out of proving people wrong [but] definitely for the ‘Debbie Downers,’ last night was not a good night.” Then Mayor Donna Deegan added, “Unlike Shad, I do enjoy proving people wrong. I have been very petty in this process, saving every article, every negative tweet, every ‘no way you’re ever going to get this done.’ I’ve saved them all, and I’m relishing that today.” But there was no literal chest-thumping, I guess, that’s just for male gorillas and anyway signifies a warning and not a celebration of victory, how did that metaphor go so wrong?
- In case you’re wondering whether Democrats or Republicans are more likely to vote for sports subsidies, economist Geoffrey Propheter has crunched the numbers and it’s a dead heat. Local elected officials across the political spectrum are susceptible to lobbyists whispering in their ear should probably be the lesson here, at least the political spectrum as it exists in this country.
- The St. Petersburg city council has pushed its final Tampa Bay Rays stadium vote back a week to July 18 so it can have all the deal documents ready to read before the vote. Somebody call up Charlotte, “vote first, get the reports later” is totally okay now, no sweat!
- Arlington Heights Mayor Tom Hayes announced that he’s not running for re-election next April and also that he thinks “a decision will be made by the Chicago Bears within the next 10 months in terms of where their new stadium is going to be located” so “we’re going to continue to work on it in the next 10 months.” Unnamed sources agree, is that momentum I smell?
- Atlanta officials are telling people to stay out of downtown during the Copa America match they touted as something that would bring people downtown, this is fine.
- ESPN’s Bill Barnwell decided to find enough expansion cities to create 100 NFL teams, and didn’t even mention the obvious? Mark my words, it’s only a matter of time before the Lubbock Hubcaps start looking toward the greener pastures of Greensboro.
- Finally, condolences to the family, friends, and readers of Don Bauder, the longtime San Diego journalist who kept a close watch on stadium deals in that city through his work for the San Diego Union-Tribune and San Diego Reader. Bauder died at 88 last week; please enjoy some of his past work via the Wayback Machine.
I’m a big fan of Bradbury but that tweet is misleading. First off, I’m not positive that there were any economic incentives to bring Copa America matches in the first place. But the bigger issue was that the presidential debate, which wasn’t scheduled until just a few weeks ago, caused road closures. That combined with the soccer traffic was a problem. Obviously if they knew there would be a debate the game wouldn’t have taken place last night.
The soccer match (Panama vs. USA) was scheduled for Mercedes-Benz Stadium long before any debate between the current and previous President was cooked up.
My point is a bit subtler than that, and wasn’t really about the particular events. It was pointing out that Atlanta officials who like to crow about the “economic impact” of *many* sports events that come to Atlanta also then simultaneously freak about about “traffic.” Which is it? Do we need more people downtown or “we full!” ? I went to the game, the traffic wasn’t really any worse than usual (despite all the warnings). Atlanta is a big city than can handle lots of people. That’s why these events aren’t really all that big a deal. Also, I am sure there were some incentives to attract the game, because that’s how the Metro Atlanta Chamber rolls. https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/atlanta/copa-amrica-tournament-scores-metro-atlanta-economy/XJUGW5RSCRF7JFIWNX4EUZUZAI/
I don’t think it’s cynical to assume that Alex Meruelo was simply going through the motions of “trying” to get the land to build his new arena, and that his intent all along was to pocket the cool billion that he received for selling the now-previous iteration of the Coyotes without looking like *too much* of a bad guy. And really, Gary Bettman and the NHL might have also preferred this outcome (and the quickness with which it came): the sooner the public forgets the Coyotes adventure ever took place, the better.
My thoughts exactly. Hard to sell the idea that your league is primed for growth, if the facts on the ground are that you can’t get a deal done to remain in an existing market. MLB, take note…
The league *is* growing by every metric it cares about. Ratings, attendance, salary cap, etc.
Just because it isn’t the NBA or NFL doesn’t mean it’s failing.
They’d like to be in Arizona but they don’t need to be.
I think you’re right. My conclusion was that the NHL was panicked Meruelo would actually win the auction as he was the only bidder, which would’ve dragged this whole saga with the Coyotes out even longer. That’s why they were so intent on getting the sale done before the auction to prevent that outcome. The auction failing and Meruelo riding out into the sunset is probably the best case scenario. If another wannabe ownership group in Phoenix wants to come forward and put in a bid against Atlanta and whoever when the league goes to 34 teams, great. But it solves an untenable situation, and they gave a notoriously litigious owner a billion reasons to walk away and leave the NHL alone for good.
I don’t think it is that complicated.
Even if he won the auction, he had many hurdles to cross to get it built. The league has lawyers and people who can look into these things. They knew that was extremely unlikely to ever happen.
Mereulo probably knew it was a long shot too. But he hoped to save face, at least, by spinning the story that this is all the state government’s fault.
The league pushed for a move this winter because it had become clear that the team would be playing in Mullet for at least three more seasons and possibly much longer.
That was unacceptable.
Of course, all of that was clear a year ago too. But, in the last year, the board of governors had become increasingly confident in Utah. It remains to be seen how it will go, but they have a lot more faith in Ryan Smith than any other prospective owner in any other city.
And, as it turns out, that’s more or less what Bettman said happened.
However, as far as I know, Bettman and Daly never explicitly conceded that the Mullet experiment went worse than they expected, but Marty Walsh did, many times. He was making it a PR headache for the league, as he should.
“The world is full of stupid wannabe-sports-team-owner billionaires…”
While there are undoubtedly billionaires that are stupid and we may think that spending $billions on a team is a rather stupid thing to do with your money, from the point of view of someone with (essentially) unlimited wealth it’s not an unreasonable thing to do. Millions of us play fantasy sports every year, the billionaires just play them on a different level.
Mark Davis got Las Vegas to throw ~$750 million at his gigantic roomba of a stadium on the Strip. Even the owners we think of as cartoon villains and comedy characters can make even bigger fools out of the cities they deal with.
If Las Vegas has trouble getting the economic development dollars promised with Allegiant Stadium adjacent to 150,000 hotel rooms, what chance does Buffalo or Jacksonville have of seeing billions in economic impact?
Meruelo certainly retained the ownership of a notional/theoretical expansion team, but pretty much all sports leagues/cartels now hold all the IP (names, logos, colours etc) under central ownership.
At one time they were the property of individual teams/owners, but these days the IP is all league controlled (blame Al Davis if you want… it was one of the examples he cited in Raiders I/II… hence the change).
He had been granted the right to use said name, logos, colours and other IP, but technically he did not own it any more than other teams do. It appears he has now renounced that “right”.
The Chiefs and Royals should just crossover over that border into Kansas. Whatever Parsons cobbles together won’t be close to $1.6 billion, or may be both teams can pay for their own stadiums if they want to stay in Missouri….
On a personal note, it would be hilarious to see the Chiefs owner having to take his team to Kansas. Hunt was of the main owners behind the Rams moving to LA because he wanted the money in the St. Louis market and state to himself.
I think the chiefs would gladly take the money and head to a Kansas speedway adjacent site. The Royals problem is that site is ideal for Kansas politicians who want to be this year round sports entertainment city. But it effectively puts the royals on the edge of the metro area. Instead of being in the center of things, you’d be cutting your season ticket base in half (the drive from independence, parts of KC, Mo, lee’s summitt etc is just way too far for sensible people to invest in more then a couple games per season). The royals will push for something near the river in Kansas City, KS, and maybe they get it- but those areas are pretty industrial and successful, they’re not exactly screaming for gentrification, nor would they be desirable for a stadium village concept.
From the time of the move from Winnipeg to now, it’s hard to top the serial incompetence of the leadership (owners and executives) of the Coyotes. I’ve come to think attendance is a terrible proxy for franchise viability in a market, and not just because I’m an Oakland A’s fan.
Had the ‘Yotes had as steady hands on the tiller as, for example, the also-in-a-nontraditional-hockey-market Nashville Predators, I think the NHL in Arizona story would be very different.
You’re not wrong.
Phoenix used to be a good minor-league hockey town. The Coyotes’ true legacy might be in destroying Phoenix for hockey, whether major or minor league.
Nashville and Raleigh are succeeding by selling the NHL as entertainment.
The NHL is entertainment. What else could it be?
Arizona still has a decent youth hockey scene and the have ASU, which is about to join the NCHA.
Phoenix had a great formula for success, over a million first and second generation transplants from the upper Midwest and zillions of snowbirds from Canada, Minnesota and Chicago. Team ownership was the problem. Steve Elman couldn’t finish the demolition of Los Arcos, or finance Westgate until the Cardinals and Superbowl arrived. Instead of emphasizing their strengths, ownership was the leading cheerleader for “it takes hours to get from the East Valley to Glendale on weeknights”. Never mind that 40% of games were on Saturday. Cheap stunts like charging for parking, which just annoyed fans along with overpricing the upper ends was horrible marketing. Those perennially empty upper ends screamed “the Coyotes are a failure”. After bankruptcy Bettman had 15 years to give the Coyotes a draft and all star game, he never even discussed it. If Bettman and NHL owners wanted to keep the Coyotes in Arizona so badly, they should have dug into their own pockets to turn the Coyotes around. All Bettman could do was come up with schemes to bleed Glendale at the time Glendale was slashing police, fire, library, park maintenance, code enforcement and other services. Every elected official who considers voting for these insane sports subsidies should be required to read the unabridged story of the 28 years of the Arizona Coyotes saga.
Snowbirds and transplants by themselves do not form a fanbase. You can’t sell pro sports in Phoenix to people who spend half the calendar year in Canada.
By contrast, Nashville and Raleigh used to be Southern backwater towns but have grown in population and economic clout in recent years.
Depending on tourists and transplants to fill the arena is not a bad way to get started.
It worked in Tampa and Vegas. So much so that Vegas tried to find ways to prevent season-ticket holders from selling their tickets to fans supporting the other team.
But those teams both had arenas fans generally liked and, importantly, on-ice success, which drew in a lot of bandwagon fans and improved the cache of the corporate tickets.
Arizona never had an ideal arena and never found that success that would help them make that turn.
And Phoenix, unlike Vegas and Tampa, already has three other major teams plus a Power 5 college program in the immediate area. But so does Dallas and yet the Stars have caught on. But again, they had success. That makes a huge difference.
Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall is sitting in a smoke filled room, as in Chicago,1960, with Ryan Smith and his lawyers hammering out an “agreement” on the Delta Center redevelopment. Then sometime next week they’ll dump it in front of the SLC city council and give them the 4th of July weekend to glance at it before voting yes an entire week later than originally planned on July 9th. Sounds like Scruggs and Elman, 2001. That didn’t work out very well for Glendale.