Was it only two weeks ago that I skipped the Friday roundup entirely on the grounds that nothing was happening? What Berenstain Bears universe was that? The stadium and arena news firehose is back on in full force, so let’s get to it:
- The St. Petersburg city council indeed voted 5-3 to grant final approval to a $1.3 billion Tampa Bay Rays stadium that will come with between $1 billion and $1.4 billion in public subsidies, bringing almost to an end (the county commission still has to vote on July 30) one of the longest-running stadium battles in sports. “We are St. Pete!” shouted city chief equity officer Carl Lavender following the vote, either overcome with emotion or just reading the wallpaper. Rays owner Stu Sternberg declared, “I think, how it was put today, it was just the right time in the right place, and most importantly, the right people,” which is another way of saying that if a sports owner takes enough swings enough times, even a 15-year stadium losing streak can end up with them holding a ten-figure check from the public.
- After the development agreement between the Oakland A’s and the Las Vegas Stadium Authority released yesterday revealed nothing specific about the team’s stadium funding plans, team board member Sandy Dean gave the authority more nonspecifics, saying owner John Fisher is in “good shape” raising money but providing no details of where it could come from other than that it would use $300 million in debt and $850 million in private equity and that “it would be a positive to have outside investors,” something A’s execs are “going to talk with folks about” in “the coming months.” (Who’s going to invest $850 million in a team that has an estimated value of $1.2 billion, plays in the smallest market in MLB, and starts out with $300 million in debt? Reply hazy, ask again later.) Dean also said that Fisher would only use $350 million of the $380 million in public funding approved last year, because reasons.
- MLB commissioner Rob Manfred did reveal this week that the artificial turf at the A’s broiling Sacramento stadium will be cooled by “a hydration element,” and if anyone knows what that means — sprinklers? underground cooling pipes? misters attached to the light poles? — please let me know in comments.
- Also Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times asked a bunch of MLB players who grew up in Las Vegas what they thought of the A’s moving there, and replies included “it’s a terrible idea” (Paul Sewald), “I don’t see it in Vegas” (Bryce Harper), “as soon as they get a good team, they start trading guys before they get too expensive” (Tyler Anderson), and “the whole thing, I fear, is going to be an abject disaster” (Sewald again). On the other hand, Tommy Pham said, “They said the same thing about the Golden Knights: Would this be a hockey town? … Everybody wears Golden Knights stuff in Vegas now.” Opinions differ!
- Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker met with Chicago Bears officials this week to discuss their $2 billion state funding request for a new stadium, and Pritzker still hates it, with his press spokesperson saying afterwards “the governor’s position has not changed” from May, when he called the plan “a nonstarter.” Maybe Bears execs need to threaten to move to Indiana, that usually seems to work.
- Jackson County probably isn’t going to hold another vote on Kansas City Royals and Chiefs stadium funding this year, but it could next year. Gov. Mike Parson will be out of office then, and the people running to replace him won’t be known until the results of an August 6 primary, so this could still go a lot of ways.
- Paris cultural sites are preparing for next week’s start of the 2024 Summer Olympics by anticipating massive dropoffs in customers. In London during the 2012 games, visits to museums, movie theaters, zoos, and the like “dropped by a staggering 30 percent” as non-sports tourists steered the hell clear of the city, and Paris is expecting the same. “We’re the big losers of the Olympic Games,” said independent theater chain operator Pierre-Édouard Vasseur — though maybe he’ll rethink that once athletes start collapsing and dying from the heat.
- NBA Commissioner Adam Silver says his league would consider expanding to Las Vegas once its new TV deal is finalized and arena developers have contacted the league for specs on building NBA-ready venues. Las Vegas, at last count, has as least three arenas that could host NBA games, but sure, building a fourth arena just for the NBA to host the fourth big-league sports team in the nation’s 40th-largest TV market makes total sense.
Hey those Vegas arenas, including the new one planned by Oak Ridge, get built privately (unlike their stadiums). I’m all for a privately funded arena on every corner if somebody wants to pay for them.
Well, we don’t know yet about how funding would work for a potential NBA arena. But agreed that if it’s just a bunch of developers having an arms race to try to dominate the Vegas arena market, then it’s just LOLdevelopers.
I think the Oakview arena will have some form of subsidy attached to it via the good ole STIF and federal credits from the Brightline project. I do know Oakview is attempting to attach itself to Brightline by stating it’s “near” their base of operation. The other arena being discussed (next to Fountainbleu) will have to be privately financed. The city has been burned multiple times by the previous outfit (Mr. Jackie Robinson) it will not allocate any additional financial resources to it (at least that is what is being said publicly).
If for some magical reason both of these $1 billion+ arenas are built, you will have 6 arenas within a 5 mile radius with a capacity greater than 10k (that’s not including Allegiant), 3 of which owned by MGM. How can they stay in operation is anybody’s guess.
There’s been gossip that the Oak View group might just purchase the Rio and build the arena in their massive parking lot/convention center area.
Probably has to do with whether they can get brightline related subsidies
How about this…Hoops In The Sphere!
For urban planning purposes, it is still a bad idea. All those arenas will have their own parking lots, so downtown being largely a sea of concrete isn’t smart for a city that hits 100 degrees 20% of the year and 80% of days are sunny. Downtown Las Vegas is currently 33% parking lots.
Manfred was very vague in his hydration comment. But I am aware of this technology for turf fields. Could be a variation on this? Maybe?
https://www.popsci.com/technology/artificial-turf-self-cooling/
Ooh, good find! So turf that holds water just below the surface, then evaporates it off to cool itself — that’s certainly promising, though the PopSci article doesn’t make clear whether anyone has yet made an entire field out of this stuff.
Always happy to contribute. :)
Yeah … as far as I know no one has come up with a technology for use on an entire field.
…or at least one that is successful at that scale that they’re trying to promote.
Aha, found the system MLB is planning on using:
https://www.shawsportsturf.com/hydrochill/
It doesn’t specifically say which turf fields use this currently.
A little googling and I found some references to teams that use the system.
However … one of them is the marlins who play in a retractable roof stadium that is essentially never retracted.
And I swear when I saw them play a few weeks ago they were on grass and not turf. But what do I know? (Wikipedia says that it’s turf)
There is a video on one page of Derek jeter talking about the surface … it doesn’t feel “right” in a way but again. What do I know?
https://www.shawsportsturf.com/shaw-sports-turf-tv/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LoanDepot_Park
Not all teams that use Shaw turf use Hydrochill, though.
For field hockey, they just have sprinklers that keeps the field wet all the time. That’s to keep the ball stuck to the field as much as possible and reduce injuries, but I suppose it keeps the temperature down too.
Putting water on the field should lead to some interesting throws if the ball becomes slick with water.
Looks like this system (see comment above) has water under the field, not on top of it.
This was just meant to draw attention away from the alternative factualization that the A’s may not be in a position to have the money to do this project as envisionized.
And it worked! I am underpaid.
And holographic displays. We keep getting beaten over the head with that because no-one has invented them yet and we don’t have a holographic display clause in any of our stadium subs- partnership agreements. We have to beat the NFL to those because then I can get pay equality with that stooge Goodell.
I believe Hydration element is just code for “we expect the sewers to back up in Sacramento too, possibly even onto the field”
76ers moving to Camden, New Jersey? This article says the team would be eligible for a $400 million tax credit.
https://www.roi-nj.com/2024/07/18/lifestyle/n-j-making-serious-push-to-lure-sixers-to-new-arena-in-camden/
So… Fisher is going to get $850 million in equity investments, possibly from his own family members? I call BS on that.
Fisher family members own lots of stock in Gap, but they don’t have $850 million to invest unless they sell $850 million of Gap stock or close to it. The market cap of Gap is about $8.5 billion, or 10 times that much.
Selling one-tenth of all outstanding Gap shares within a short period of time would cause the stock price (and every Fisher family member’s fortune) to drop drastically. Thus, they are not going to sell enough stock to invest $850 million in the A’s. It won’t happen.
My tea-leaf reading is that the plan, such as it is, is “Let’s see how many suckers we’re not related to we can find to invest their money in this, and then we’ll go to the family for the rest.” Can’t wait to see the StadCo prospectus!
That’s probably it, but even as a Plan B, the idea of the family selling off a huge chunk of its Gap shares to buy into the A’s is absurd.
So long as it meets the letter of the development agreement law, nobody has to be any the wiser. (Until the whole house of cards comes crashing down, but Fisher clearly hopes he can avoid that by dancing fast enough.)
Yes, this is exactly the sort of shenanigans I’m expecting. Fisher continues to have majority control Athletics Investment Group, LLC, but goes around flogging equity in the StadCo LLC. It’s probably only a gentleman’s agreement that keeps this from triggering the sell-out clauses in the relocation agreement.
The timing is very interesting, since the documents from the LV Stadium Authority freddy linked in the other thread seemed to indicate that the StadCo LLC had been renamed and redomiciled from Delaware just in the past couple weeks. Meaning prior attempts at raising equity were probably selling shares in the parent Investment Group LLC? So if my wild speculation is correct and this scenario is what’s going on, why would anybody want to buy into the subsidiary if no one bit on the parent company?
Maybe a share in a construction/operations LLC would make it easier for Gaming and Leisure Properties to put money in over and above the land contribution, since they’re an REIT? I can’t imagine that FIsher won’t demand more out of them at some point, the way this has been going.
Why would anyone invest in a company that operates the stadium? StadCo would not own the stadium, the county would as a condition of their investment of public dollars. Then again, every day there are successful Ponzi schemes being ran throughout the world so there is a thriving market of suckers. Perhaps the A’s are hoping for the notoriety of “owning” a part of the franchise via surrogate to raise funds. Fisher is better off starting a Go-Fund me for this effort.
I don’t think Gaming & Leisure Properties can’t invest in StadCo. It defeats the purpose of them being a REIT. They also need to charge rent, so Fisher is going to have to pay them market value because that is how the REIT earns income. Fisher’s best hope is that Bally’s builds another resort/casino adjacent to this stadium and invest directly into StadCo, which brings me to this… I don’t know how it’s even possible to build a baseball stadium on 9 acres. Also how is parking supposed to work?
This entire thing is a sham.
Well, I don’t know for sure, that’s why I put the idea out there as a question. Paying for construction and collecting revenue from operations such as leasing to concessionaires certainly seems like it would fall into the remit of an REIT. But then that would also create a bizarre circular relationship between StadCo and the parent company. Pure speculation on my part, but it does seem Fisher, like so many would-be Nevada operators before him, is well out of “arranging financing on reasonable terms” and into “desperate shakedown.”
Is the land in fact meant to fall back into the ownership of Clark County or the stadium authority? If so, I’m sorry I missed that detail, although in my defense it has up until now been about as relevant as who owns the busiest 7-Eleven in Narnia.
This seems like the best ground floor investment opportunity since Donald Trump’s Atlantic city casino play…
Many people are saying that people are lining up to invest in this golden opportunity*… or my name isn’t Reg Manfraud!
Former Tampanian here.
Pinellas is simply the wrong side of the Bay and always has been.
They’re going to spend a billion or so, get a brief bump in attendance (and a better overall experience for those who do go), but the Rays will probably never be league-average, attendance-wise. And ticket prices will be insane because the Rays have never been able to read the room.
Not gonna say Tropicana Field is fine (though it gets a bad rap from people who have never been there) by any means. But it’s comfortable. I have had worse times in better buildings.
At least I will likely be dead by the time they start talking about the new yard being obsolete.
Aside from the real challenges with the St Pete location, they’ve spent 25 years telling everyone that the stadium should be in Tampa, so it should come as no surprise that a lot of people think the stadium should be in Tampa.
Sorry, that is a long sentence.
The Bears are in the rare situation of a team owner dealing with a public official far richer than they are.
Tommy Pham also had the perfect line on the whole Vegas/A’s article: “I cry broke when people ask me for money but, deep down, I know I got it. It’s what people with money do.”
The NBA wants those Vegas arenas because they seem to have big plans for the Summer Showcase, I guess.
Plus Vegas seems stupid enough to spend the money on SUCCESSFUL products, which is why there’s so much blowback against the Athletics moving in.
The 76ers have NEVER been willing to self-finance their arena. They can build themselves an arena with their OWN money anytime they want, nobody is stopping them. As a longtime Philly resident and former diehard fan, I say go ahead and move to Camden, good riddance to bad rubbish! I’ve got an even better idea, move back to Syracuse where you belong!
As far as the Oak/Sac/Vegas A’s are concerned, just come back to Philly, you can share the stadium with the Phillies just like in the old days. The taxpayers who built and paid for the stadium will welcome you with open arms, welcome home!
The issue in Philly is not just who pays for it but where it will be built.
I doubt they would move to Camden. This is probably about leverage to gain support for their Chinatown plan.
The 76ers don’t want leverage, they want at least a billion dollars from the taxpayers. It’s unlikely they’ll get the money in Pennsylvania. That’s okay with the 76ers, they’ll take New Jersey’s money.
Leverage is how you get a billion dollars. But even so, where are you seeing a billion dollars for either arena project? The Philly tax break would be far less than that, and the NJ tax break is capped at $400m (actually $350m it looks like from the tax break legislation).
The Governor has said he wants to keep the Sixers so I expect to be paying for some of their arena even though I live four hours away.
I’m flattered that Neil deMause himself responded to my comments, thank you sir!
The billion dollar figure I used was my estimate of today’s going rate to build a new sports arena/stadium complex.
The 76ers website says that they’re going to “inject” $1.55B (https://76place.com/). The same website claims that the new complex will “create” over $1.5B in new tax revenue. Does that mean that if the taxpayers give $1.5B to the 76ers, it won’t actually cost the taxpayers anything? That’s not just leverage, that’s The Process!
I expect that the 76ers will move to whatever locale pays them the most. Philly, Jersey, Seattle, it doesn’t matter. Money talks, you know the rest!
I’m not as august as Neil but here goes: these things rarely generate (if ever) enough tax receipts to cover the cost and that’s before applying the substitution effect…..
Yeah, that $1.5B in tax revenue is what we like to call “clown numbers.” The actual tax loss from the arena would be less than that, but estimates are all over the place and Harris hasn’t released solid figures.
Sadly all this comes too late for Randy Arozarena… if only Tampa (or St. Pete!) residents had coughed up money – err, pardon me, if their politicians had coughed up money sooner, the Rays could have kept him on the payroll.
They wouldn’t have, of course, but in theory they could have.
Just remember folks, this and Tyler Glasnow and Manuel Margot and Christian Yelich and Ozuna and lots of others are gone and it’s all your fault for not approving $1.1Bn+ much sooner. Just keep that in mind in 12 years when ownership needs more investment to keep the team in it’s current home.