I’ve been trying to write about this all week, but stuff kept happening: Broward County commissioners agreed to a term sheet that would give the Florida Panthers a five-year lease extension through 2033, and the money part is so convoluted that it calls for its own set of bullet points:
- Panthers owner Vincent Viola will give the county $51.5 million to pay off the remaining debt on the arena where the team plays, which cost the county $185 million to build in 1998.
- The county will continue to spend $25 million a year in hotel tax money on operations, maintenance, and upgrades to the arena, for the life of the lease extension.
- The county has two five-year options to extend the lease. If it doesn’t do so, it has to return some or all of Viola’s $51.5 million debt payment.
- Viola gets development rights to land around the arena, which he had given up as part of a 2015 deal to get access to the hotel tax funding and get the out clause in his lease that is the whole reason why the county is renegotiating his lease now instead of waiting until 2028.
I’m hesitant to put a dollar figure on the whole thing, but it looks like if Broward County picks up the two five-year lease extensions it gets the $51.5 million while spending $25 million a year over 15 years, which comes to around $250 million in present value, plus gives up development rights to 140 acres of land, which is worth who knows — let’s guesstimate it as $250-300 million in subsidies from the county to Viola. On the other hand, if Broward doesn’t do the extensions, it doesn’t get the $51.5 million, but also its annual arena subsidies go down to more like $100 million, so that’d be more like a $150-200 million subsidy — but also it would need to redo the Panthers’ lease a decade sooner.
So on a per-year basis — math’s almost done, I promise! — that’s either $17-20 million a year for a 15-year extension, or $30-40 million a year for a 5-year extension. That would still be less than the current record $43 million a year lease extension that Charlotte gave the Carolina Panthers (no relation), but it’s a chunk of change regardless.
The Broward County Board of Commissioners still needs to give final approval to the deal, so maybe if we’re lucky we’ll get some hearings or something that will shed more light on the bouncing dollar signs. In the meantime, we had more news this week, let’s get to that:
- Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch says if Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf wants a new stadium, he should mostly pay for it with private money. Welch also revealed that the White Sox greats at that private ballfield event Reinsdorf held this week for elected officials included Bo Jackson, Ron Kittle, Harold Baines, and Ozzie Guillen, and they didn’t even play catch — though given Kittle’s career –7.5 defensive wins above replacement, you probably don’t want to let him throw many baseballs your direction anyway.
- Frisco, Texas approved that $141 million-plus renovation for the F.C. Dallas stadium that it was set to vote on Tuesday, as expected. At least the new sun roof looks cool, even if the provided rendering shows lots of fans still sitting in the sun.
- My former employer Gothamist, continuing its race away from quality journalism that saw it earlier this week write about New York police shooting a bystander on a subway car in the head by only asking former cops whether it was justified, opines that the Philadelphia 76ers not moving to Camden is a loss for New Jersey officials who proposed the idea. Not mentioned: All the other things New Jersey can do with $400 million if it doesn’t give it to Sixers owner Josh Harris. Guess this is what happens when keep laying off your news staff.
- The design of the Oakland Athletics‘ proposed Las Vegas stadium is 50% complete, and no, I don’t know what that means either. It would only have 30,000 seats, with another 3,000 in standing room. If you don’t count the Tampa Bay Rays stadium, which only holds 25,000 because its upper deck has been closed since 2019, this would be the smallest MLB ballpark since the 1969 Seattle Pilots played at 25,000-seat Sick’s Stadium, which went so well that the Pilots moved to Milwaukee the next spring.
- Cleveland.com asked some sports economists if a new Cleveland Browns stadium would be good for local jobs or tax revenue, and got the expected answer. It’s a good overview of the existing economic findings, though, and worth reading if you want to dive into the details of why sports subsidies don’t pay off for taxpayers, not even if you count the value of keeping a team from leaving town.
I think it is the ‘wrong kind’ of panther that is in danger of going extinct… it should be the pro sports one and not the actual Panther.
Touché
And nice financial analysis Neil. Its enough to make your head spin.
I kept sitting down this week to run the numbers, and by the time I started doing the math some other damn piece of bigger news would interrupt. Thankfully it was a fairly slow Friday.
Reading that agreement was so nicely flowed, Neil. It started off as, “huh, that’s pretty nice to get the debt retired” to very quickly eliciting my inner Lando Calrissian with, “this deal keeps getting worse by the minute!” I’m sure the Panthers are hoping everyone fixates on just that first bullet point and not the complicated details that follow.
Although, I haven’t read the Gothamist since moving away from the east coast many, many ages ago and it saddens me to see them fall so far. Of all places, there is no excuse for New York City to not have vibrant, hard-hitting independent news outlets that don’t kowtow to the institutional powers.
There’s still Hell Gate! And City Limits sometimes, and, uh, I’ll get back to you.
Surprise! Surprise! New arena deal reached at the LeBreton Flats site for the Sens in Ottawa. Price tag not revealed, of course.
No sooner do the 76ers get a government-funded sportsball palace of their own when they sign Joel Embiid to a maximum contract extension.
Somebody’s cooking the books somewhere.
He was the frontrunner for MVP before missing too many games disqualified him, and you’re surprised he got paid again?
So Reinsdork’s team reached it’s zenith… 120 losses.
And frankly, I am disappointed.
Not with the 120 losses. They deserve all those and more. I am disappointed that they have won 36 games, meaning they can’t eclipse/be eclipsed by the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics.
All I can hope for now is a tie…
Yes, I know, percentage wise they can still be worse (and most likely will be…) but 35 wins out of 162 games would be a low water mark that would be very very hard for any future team to fail to beat.
Maybe next year’s White Sox can do it. But no-one else, surely?
Well…. this happened….
https://x.com/KleinschmidtJD/status/1838294536252186912
Talk about tone deaf. As impossible as it may seem, Failson Fisher may be even dumber than we thought.
As to Camden, I can only report my visit there a few years ago.
We had the SABR convention in Philadelphia and my friend and I, minor league fans, had already seen the Phillies stadium so when the group went there we went over to Camden for the River Sharks game.
We got off the train at 6:15 p.m. on a Friday afternoon, right in downtown, city offices and county seat there. Absolutely nothing was open–not a convenience store, newsstand, fast food joint, nothing at all. It was about a ten minute walk to the ballpark and along the way I saw one person who wasn’t obviously on his way to the game.
We went back about ten p.m. and again during that walk saw nothing open and not one human being who wasn’t part of the game crowd.
I’m not sure how much revitalization, if any, an arena would spur.
The Riversharks have been gone for more than a few years. In fact, the stadium has been demolished and built over. The new athletic complex for the college and community opened two years ago.
The problem with Camden is it’s one of the most financially disadvantaged and dangerous cities in the entire country. It might only be eclipsed by Chester. Ask Union fans how many of them venture past the waterfront or even simply past the few block area with the stadium and casino.
There’s no jobs there for the natives for the most part, and the only stable or safe parts of the city are the parts that cater to students or young professionals. The real city is for the most part hopeless and full of people turning to crime because there’s so little opportunity for them.
Camden is a huge drug market so the only way it will likely ever be really revitalized unless the drug trade is dealt with the way it should be is through gentrification. Either way, Camden natives lose.
I agree with you on an arena. Yes Camden is accessible through Patco and the Ben Franklin Bridge -and it is full of doctors and academics and others who work in the more high paying professions and live in the pricy condos or neighborhoods like Cooper’s Ferry- but it’s not somewhere most people will want to stick around. It doesn’t help that criminals have no fear of consequences anymore.
While it’s true that the Wells Fargo Center is also mostly surrounded by parking lots and industrial related businesses, the area around the Sports Complex has always been safe enough that people had no problem going to select local restaurants or bars before or after the games. That’s not the case in Camden. The whole city is only like 10 square miles or something, and it keeps losing population by the thousands every decade because its actual neighborhoods of Camden natives are that bad.