Before we get to the bullet points, and I know how much you all love the bullet points, there is pressing news we have to discuss first, which is that Athletics owner John Fisher has the billion-dollars-plus he needs to build a stadium in Las Vegas. Sort of. Maybe. According to a guy:
Athletics owner John Fisher and his family will invest $1 billion into the construction of a stadium in Las Vegas and U.S. Bank and Goldman Sachs will offer a $300 million loan, club executive Sandy Dean said Thursday.
Dean made his remarks to a special meeting of the Las Vegas Stadium Authority board.
Dean said four letters will be presented at the Dec. 5 authority meeting asserting construction details and financing will be in place. Final approvals are expected to be made at that meeting to allow construction of the $1.5 billion, 30,000-seat domed ballpark with a capacity for up to 33,000 fans.
So it’s official: Fisher has financing in place for his Vegas stadium … well, no, he will have financing in place by December … or he’ll have a letter (or four) stating that financing is in place?
[One] letter, Dean said, asserts the Fisher and his family have the ability to meet their financial commitment. Dean said [another] letter from U.S. Bank will show that through a review of the owner’s finances that it “concludes the Fisher family has more than sufficient resources to fund the equity investment that’s required to build the stadium.”
Except! Here’s video of Dean saying that one of the letters will be “from John Fisher indicating that his family will invest a billion dollars in support of the project here in Las Vegas.” So which is it: Is the Fisher family committing to spend $1 billion on a Vegas stadium, or just avowing that it is worth $1 billion? We already knew the latter — Vegas convention center authority chief and unregistered A’s lobbyist Steve Hill keeps saying it, among other things — but that’s not the same as actually figuring out what the family would liquidate to pay for the stadium: the San Jose Earthquakes? The Gap?.
(Dean also said Fisher is still looking to sell minority shares of the team at inflated prices because “it would be good coming to Las Vegas to have outside partners from Las Vegas,” but not because he needs the money, oh no: “The ability to finance the stadium is independent of that.”)
The question all this keeps coming back to isn’t “Where can a billionaire find a billion dollars?” but rather “Is the Fisher family ready to throw a billion dollars of its own money down a stadium hole?” The number of stadiums that can cover their own construction costs is slim; the number that have done so that are in their leagues’ smallest market and include a pricey dome is zero. Which is why people are eager to see Fisher put actual money on the table; promises of a letter next month that will maybe describe actual money on the table is not quite the same thing.
Sorry if all that was anticlimactic. And now, this week’s bullet points:
- Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost wants to intervene in the Cleveland Browns‘ lawsuit against the city of Cleveland seeking to block the use of the Art Modell Law to block the team from moving to a new stadium in Brook Park. Yost says the team’s claim that the law, which requires that teams be offered up for sale to local owners before being relocated from their current home city, is “unconstitutionally vague” is “wrong,” and since Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam only sued the city, he needed to file a motion to intervene on behalf of the state. Feel the excitement!
- Philadelphia councilmember Mark Squilla may have come down in favor of letting the 76ers owners build an arena next door to Chinatown, but he has an idea for ensuring that the neighborhood isn’t disrupted: a zoning overlay to “require affordable housing, restrictions on types of businesses, and limits on the size of new storefronts to discourage chain restaurants from crowding out traditional Chinatown retail,” in the words of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Adds the Inquirer: “The precise language mandating how any of this would work has yet to be added to the bill.” This is on top of proposing a tax increment financing district to kick taxes collected in Chinatown back to local businesses to offset any rise in rents as the result of increased property values — pretty sure that would only risk encouraging landlords to increase rents more knowing businesses would be getting subsidies to help pay them, need to go back and check my Intro to Economics textbook chapter on microeconomics.
- The World Series is over and I didn’t get around to discussing the New York City Economic Development Corporation’s claim that each Yankees and Mets home playoff game generated $20-25 million in economic activity, but suffice to say I talked to an EDC spokesperson who told me (on background, so I’m not supposed to quote them directly so I’m not) that the analysis was based off a previous model from 2022 that puts together assumptions from the city tourism board plus assumptions from the Yankees and then applies a multiplier. Also, they look at “anonymized cell phone data”? No, you and I are not allowed to see the actual model, so no further details about WTF this means will be available.
- Spotlight on America has a piece on how Tempe, Arizona said no to funding an Arizona Coyotes arena and how other cities could follow its lead, which is all well and good until it concludes by lauding late Seattle Seahawks owner Paul Allen for his commitment to Seattle, when Allen actually paid the city to hold a referendum so he could get $300 million in public money for a football stadium, then refused to open his books like he promised in exchange for the money, seriously, what?
- Perhaps you would prefer a deep dive into the toilets at the Los Angeles Clippers‘ new arena? Perhaps you would prefer I hadn’t phrased it that way? Sorry, you’re getting both!
“then applies a multiplier”
Why do I think multiplier is what ever number the Yankees needed to get the economic impact over $20 million?
It’s a multiplier used by the US Bureau of Economic Analysis — they didn’t say which one, and not that that makes it any more legit for these purposes.
#LOLFisher.
A brief thought experiment… imagine that the GAPfailson had decided to sell the team in Oakland to a casino magnate named Milton Shulman, or a shipping & waste management consultant/nightclub owner named Spike Buttafuoco… the actual buyer details don’t matter.
And, frustrated with Oakland’s inability to contribute more than 50% (or is it 125%? I lose track sometimes) to a new stadium at the coliseum site, NewCo decides to apply to relocate to a new host city.
And that host city only agrees to fund 25-30% of the cost of a new stadium.
Exactly what do you think MLB’s answer to this would be?
We know from past experience that MLB “approval” has been either withheld (or at very least threatened to be) when new stadia are deemed necessary but the host city does not cough up what other owners believe is “enough”. (insert clip of Mel Brooks as the governor in Blazing Saddles here).
We’ve heard statements from owners (MLB or otherwise) in which they claim the amount offered “won’t get league approval”.
And yet here we are… Vegas is paying less than a third of the cost of the new stadium (and kudos to them for not offering more… I am not suggesting Vegas is cheap. In fact I would have preferred it if they had offered nothing…) and MLB has given approval for Fisher to pay for the rest. If he can. Maybe.
I don’t live in either city, so it has no real impact on me as a fan… but it seems to me that Oakland could have offered $200m toward a $600m-800m new stadium on the coliseum site – less than half of what they did offer – and the team, as well as the league itself, would have been better off taking that deal.
And yet, here we are.
#LOLFisher #LOLManfred
Which past experience(s) do you have in mind? There’s been one relocation in the past half century and it didn’t transpire as you describe. It’s unclear what you’re referring to.
There have been far more relocations in major league sports than one in the past half century. As I clearly stated, it is not only MLB in which this happens.
Many of the examples are of moves that ultimately did NOT happen, precisely because the owner went back time and time again to increase the subsidy demand. As has often been stated on this site, you only have to hear “yes” once and the agreement is locked in. But if you hear “no” fifty times in a row, you can still go back for a fifty first (and generally much more expensive) ask.
One of Lou Wolff’s favourite excuses when he/Fisher proposed (often ludicrous) deals for land or stadia was that MLB would “Not accept” anything less than what he/they required. Several NFL owners, including if memory serves, Modell in Cleveland, have rejected stadium renovation deals offered by host cities as being “something the NFL would not approve or support”.
There are a number of other deals offered in which the payee suggested their respective league ‘could not or would not’ accept such a level of funding. I would suggest looking up the history of several “drawn out” stadium deals… the language used (and the final price compared to the initial ask) is often quite illuminating.
Salt Lake City has twice as much money on the table plus development of the Power District. Maybe Fisher wants Vegas to collapse.
Or, Fisher is trying to start a bidding war and see if the state of Nevada gets weak knees and ups its subsidy to at least $1 billion.
Someone could calculate the minimum public subsidy needed to build a new MLB ballpark for $1.5 billion-plus, in MLB’s smallest market, while keeping the owner’s contribution low enough that the increase in franchise value makes the owner’s contribution worth it.
My guess is that minimum is at least $1 billion.
Not much new to report on the topic of the roof on Tropicana field, but there sure is still a lot of speculation.
But we forget the real cost of the storm. I talked with a friend who owns a home that was damaged in st Pete and she wonders what the future holds for property owners, cleanup efforts, etc.
And her more directed question was about why there is so much attention being paid to fixing a stadium or investing in a new one – rather than helping residents.
It’s of course just her opinion. But then I saw several articles like this one which hits around the edges of the same questions.
Long term change will cost money. Where will that money come from?
https://www.fox13news.com/news/st-pete-mayor-lays-out-plans-short-term-hurricane-recovery-while-calling-long-term-change.amp
There’s some more discussion of the insurance situation here, not sure if it rises above the level of speculation:
https://www.tampabay.com/news/pinellas/2024/10/31/tropicana-field-roof-remediation-fema-hurricane-milton-city-council/
Intuit Dome is a trip. Once you spend the 30-40 minutes setting up their mandatory/proprietary/buggy as hell app, you never need your phone or wallet again. Entrance is via facial recognition, as are the numerous grab and go concessions. Only problem was when the scanners to enter the club level scanner glitched, they just did a visual check of the tix on you phone that you were supposed to be there. Which meant that that AI overlords weren’t notified you were in the club, so they didn’t keep track of the food or drink we took from those grab and go stations. As of yet, none of that has shown up on my cc.
I’m never gonna pay to watch the A’s in Vegas, but I would pay a couple bucks to watch John Fisher kick an empty beer can down the sidewalk across from the airport. That could actually be surprisingly impressive. Shocking that a guy like him is giving us this much entertainment value for free!
Let’s say Fisher does put up the money- I believe your analysis puts the cost to Clark county at about $400 million? Is there a final cost to the stadium project that would be such a gargantuan amount of spending on construction that it would make that $400 million in subsidies worth it? All overruns would be paid by fisher, the Sphere famously cost over $1 billion more then initially budgeted.
If this A’s stadium jumped from $1.5 billion to $2+ billion- would that amount of local spending make the subsidy “worth it”?
The only way $2 billion in spending would be worth $400 million in subsidies would be if it were taxed at a 20% rate. Nevada doesn’t have an income tax, and its state sales tax rate is 6.85%, so no, no way it comes close to earning that back even with a $2 billion (or $4 billion) stadium.
Paul Allen ripped off Seattle and then he died. Coincidence?
Frances Farmer will have her revenge.