One of the key factors in perpetuating the billions-of-dollars-a-year system of public subsidies for private sports stadiums is what’s been dubbed the sports-media complex: the way that local news sites in most cases parrot the arguments of team execs and local elected officials for devoting taxpayer money to new sports venues. There are a bunch of reasons for this, from news outlets’ reliance on team access for reporters and team-related ad spending to the media’s inclination to uncritically repeat claims made by powerful people — Joanna Cagan and I were writing about this as early as 1998. The upshot is that voters, when they even get any kind of say in these deals, are usually working from information that is heavily skewed toward what the people who stand to benefit from stadium subsidies are saying, whether it’s true or not.
To see how this works in practice, let’s check out today’s San Antonio Express-News editorial on the prospect of a May vote to direct tax money toward a new arena for the Spurs:
Winning May vote for Spurs arena combines county venue tax, private funding
Okay, that is just a terrible headline. Is county tax money and private funding required in order to win the May vote? Is the May vote a winning idea, because it would include both tax money and private funding? How much of each would be combined? Why does a vote to spend tax money on a Spurs arena qualify as “winning,” as opposed to a more neutral term like “passing”? The whole thing seems designed to confuse readers more than enlighten them, which is not the traditional goal of journalism.
May is absolutely the right time for a public vote. A May election provides ample time for debate and discussion. A vote would serve as a capstone to Mayor Ron Nirenberg’s tenure. … Finally, with the Spurs’ lease agreement at Frost Bank Center set to expire in 2032, should a public vote fail, there would be plenty of time to bring a revised plan to voters.
So voting on (or for?) an arena deal would be a “capstone” for the mayor, because what longtime local politician wouldn’t want their legacy to be “tried to send a bunch of tax money to the local nepo baby rich guy“? And no worries that voters might not agree, because if they say no, there’s plenty of time to ask them again and see if they can be convinced to say yes.
Should Bexar County dedicate its venue tax — on rental vehicles and hotel rooms — toward the new Spurs arena? Yes, it absolutely should. But commissioners should do this with a negotiated guarantee from the Spurs and the city for investment in around the Frost Bank Center.
It absolutely should! Because reasons! But only if the Spurs owners agree to “invest” enough in and around the arena to make up for the cost of … how much would this be costing the city again?
Should the Spurs make a major contribution toward a project that will exceed $1 billion? Yes, absolutely.
The whole project will cost over $1 billion, okay. (Actually previously reported as maybe as much as $4 billion total, but who’s counting?) But what deal exactly does the Express-News think voters should be voting on, or for? The only attempt to estimate how much hotel and sales tax money San Antonio could divert to pay for arena costs is “holy sh*t that’s a lot of money” (actual quote from an actual economist!), so it would be nice for the paper to provide some numbers, but that’s apparently outside the scope of the editorial board.
One criticism of a potential new arena is that the Frost Bank Center would sit empty, but the reality is that if the Spurs were to move (and we are not suggesting that will happen), then the Frost Bank Center would still be empty and the surrounding area would still lack economic development.
So building a new arena would leave the city’s 22-year-old current arena vacant and redundant, but that’s okay because if the Spurs moved, to somewhere, which they won’t, but they could, to somewhere, then the arena would be vacant anyway. Checks out!
The best path forward is for a May vote on a new arena downtown, with a commitment to a new economic development approach to the area surrounding the Frost Bank Center and a sizable contribution from Spurs ownership.
And from city taxpayers, a contribution that is … what’s 100% minus “sizable”?
Newspaper editorials are always weird and maybe a bad idea overall: They simultaneously give newspaper editors a soapbox where they can throw all pretense at accuracy and fairness out the window, while simultaneously making it seem like the paper’s news coverage must be objective, because it’s not the editorial page. But to the extent that there is any point in the things, it’s that newspaper editors are supposed to know stuff, by virtue of being in charge of reporting the news all day, so when they say something is a good or bad idea, they know what they’re talking about. When instead they just use that public stage to repeat what Important People are whispering in their ears … I’m not sure what it is, but it sure ain’t journalism, and it sure ain’t earning the public’s trust.
You’re not even from San Antonio you don’t truly know the culture you can’t relate to our experiences
If San Antonio has a “culture” of journalism that involves obscuring the facts from readers, then I apologize, I guess?
And a culture of barely readable run-on sentences, as well?
Remember the Alamo (dome)!
Bexar county has a long history of making bad deals to suit the Spurs… Even though it was a football stadium “designed” to lure the NFL to town (thirty years on, the dream lives… hey, the Brahmas are here…), part of the rationale for the dome was that the it would satisfy the ‘need’ for a new Spurs facility while also satisfying the need for Spurs ownership to not pay for said facility.
Ten years at the Alamodome, twenty at the current arena… could San Antonio get thirty out of their next billion dollar boondoggle???
I do not live in San Antonio, but I know the difference between good journalism and blind boosterism. This is a shameful example of carrying water for the rich owners of the team. The public at large be damned.
I counted 43 dates of concerts/comedian acts in 2024. Add that to the Spurs 41 home games each season (they did not make the 2024 playoffs), and the building sits empty more than 270 days per year (per Wikipedia, their are no other tenants). What an investment!
I occasionally listen to local sports radio and have concluded that they are 1) not the sharpest tools in the shed, particularly on non-sports matters; 2) desperate for content, and debating a new stadium is great fodder; 3) would prefer to be in a brand new, state of the art facility when they cover their teams. This all favors ownership in their coverage.
Sure. And in addition to debating a new stadium being great fodder, it is also economic self preservation. Guess what happens to the sports journos who cover teams and don’t adopt a total booster position?
They find interviews hard to come by, and free passes even harder.
Sports journalists’ espoused views on the “new stadium for ‘our’ team” issue should be considered those of the team ownership, not the general public. Next to the billionaire owner him/herself, they are the least disinterested party there is (even the players are more neutral… they will be making millions wherever they play).
I don’t know for sure what happens to specific reporters who oppose the local team’s stadium deal because I can’t think of any examples of that happening. Lots of local journalists call out the ownership of their local teams for their on-field decisions, and that does not seem to cost them access to the press room, but that is different.
My recollection is that the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review has always been anti-stadium deal because that’s a right-wing paper and they can frame it as another communist scheme to tax hardworking blah blah blah.
But that’s the only example I can think of. Perhaps there are others.
Otherwise, coverage of local teams is one of the few things keeping local news in business, apparently, so I can see why they would be scared about a team leaving. As I recall, somebody at the Tampa paper said outright that when the Buccs got a new stadium, the paper felt obligated to support it for that reason.
But these days, the threat of relocation is not what it once was because the market is so saturated now. Where could the Spurs go that would be obviously more lucrative than where they are? Maybe Austin, I guess?
As for the beat reporters who occasionally write about the stadium deals – I suspect they just do not understand the issue very well. They live in a world where sports are Very Important see and how many people are at the games and just assume it is the huge economic driver they’re constantly told it is.
What Neil said about editorials is right on. They often appear to just be an outlet for certain people to lie without having to be held accountable for lying.