No time to waste this week on a lengthy preamble, let’s get right to the news roundup:
- It looks like we may have an answer to the question of how much Pinellas County commissioners will demand from Tampa Bay Rays owner Stu Sternberg to approve $312.5 million in county bonds, and that is: nothing. Or at least nothing more than a promise that he’ll accept the $1 billion in cash and tax and land breaks he agreed to back in July: Commissioners Dave Eggers is looking like the likely swing vote at next Tuesday’s commission meeting, saying he wants to see proof that Sternberg will go ahead with the original deal before okaying the bonds, adding, “It’s really on them kind of to be moving this deal along, and maybe they can show us that’s what they’re doing.” (The county legally can’t sell bonds until the Rays provide more documentation of their own progress on the stadium, though it can approve selling bonds.) If the Rays execs are successful at responding to “We don’t know if we want to give you a billion dollars after we were hit with two hurricanes” with “Well, maybe we’ll ask for even more money” before settling on “Never mind, a billion dollars is fine,” then maybe there was a method to their madness after all.
- The St. Petersburg city council moved slightly ahead on repairing the Tropicana Field roof as well this week, approving spending $1.7 million on architectural designs. Can, kicked.
- The Philadelphia city council voted 12-4 on Thursday to approve the $60 million community benefits package for a new 76ers arena near Chinatown, signaling that they will almost certainly approve the entire arena deal at their final meeting of the year on Tuesday. That’s better than nothing (and marginally better than the $50 million originally proposed), but still a whole lot less than the $96 million to 273 million that Sixers owner Josh Harris will be getting in tax breaks, which sports economist Geoffrey Propheter sums up as “pretty f’ing stupid.”
- Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has weighed in on the question of whether the state should put up half a billion dollars toward a new Cleveland Browns stadium in suburban Brook Park, and his verdict is that he’s still “in a fact gathering process” and “I want what is best for Cleveland” and “This would be a decision that would have to be made by the legislature, and of course, I will weigh in on that as well.” Reply hazy, try again.
- Diamond Baseball Holdings, which has been buying up every minor-league baseball team it can get its hands on, just announced that it’s moving the Modesto Nuts to San Bernardino, where they will become the Inland Empire 66ers. The new 66ers will take the place of the old 66ers, also owned by DBH, who are moving to Rancho Cucamonga to take the place of the Quakes, who are moving to a new stadium in Ontario that that southern California city is paying about $100 million to build. Having the ability to move franchises around like chess pieces would be one advantage to monopoly control over all of MiLB, but it’s still not entirely clear if that’s DBH’s main gambit or if they have even more ambitious plans.
- Boston’s plan to renovate White Stadium to be the home of the NWSL’s new BOS Nation FC women’s soccer team (yes, that is officially the worst team name ever) has risen in cost to $200 million, with the city’s share going from $50 million to $91 million. “We are going to pay for our half of the stadium, no matter what it costs,” vowed Mayor Michelle Wu, which critics are calling a “blank check.”
I’m going to be traveling for much of next week, so expect posts here to be a bit more sporadic than usual, though I will make sure to at least check in after the Pinellas County and Philadelphia votes on Tuesday. We will resume our regularly scheduled firehose of news after the Christmas log has pooped out its nougat.
Major soccer leagues in the US (MLS, NWSL, USL) all have the word “soccer”, not “football”, in their names. It bothers me greatly that teams in those leagues use the initials FC.
They want to be associated with real football teams like FC Barcelona
I know. But they play in soccer leagues, not football leagues.
Soccer is a type of football though. There are several rugby union and rugby league teams who also still use the FC initials.
Granted, the reason American soccer teams do this is to appeal to American Europhiles and imitate overseas teams, rather than historical reasons, but that’s an arbitrary difference
What exactly is the endgame for Diamond Baseball Holdings buying that many minor league baseball teams? Is there really that much money to be squeezed out of, like, single or double-A baseball teams and their home markets?
(I know the answer is “actually, yes” — but the possibility of a faceless investment firm someday pitting cities like, say, Burlington and Utica against each other for eight-figure subsidies on a low-A team and ballpark is just too grim for me to contemplate)
This is an excellent question, and one I hope to have some time to investigate after the holidays.
And why are they putting all these recent moves in the same general geographic area? Rancho Cucamonga, San Bernadino, Ontario…
Has a very used-car salesman vibe to it. Hustle every municipality they can for a subsidy, and then when one caves, simply play musical chairs with the other teams located in towns that didn’t. All of a sudden, your brown ’77 Pinto has been replaced with a barf-green ’78 model that has the same license plate. Who would ever notice?
Good on Modesto for not caving. The city balked at the initial demand, and then there was some chatter that they might work together to determine an “appropriate” level of funding, but it’s for the best that came to nothing.
“…NWSL’s new BOS Nation FC women’s soccer team (yes, that is officially the worst team name ever) …”
Bad, yes, but it’s a close race for the title between BOS and “Royal” Salt Lake.
Atletico Ottawa is a pretty strong contender too.
If I am ever wealthy enough to own a club (eventually, won’t everyone in America own one at some level of the increasingly inaccurately named pyramid?), I hope I can name it CSKA-Newark or maybe JuvenTustin.