And how’s your city’s week going? That good, huh? It’s going around.
I would share more Bluesky snark with you, but there’s stadium news to be gotten to:
- The Cleveland Browns owners have formally issued their request for funding for a $2.4 billion domed stadium in Brook Park, and it includes $1.2 billion in taxpayer money. (The breakdown is $600 million state, $178 million county, $422 million city, if you’re an Ohioan and are wondering which of your government budgets the money would be coming out of. Also, though it’s being described as “new tax revenue,” it really isn’t; hey there, Casino Night Fallacy!) Team owner Jimmy Haslam is describing this as a “50/50 public and private partnership,” though of course that’s only on the spending end; the chances of taxpayers getting an equal cut of stadium revenues are estimated as ROTFL. At least one of the elected officials being asked for cash was extremely unenthusiastic: Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne, who has stated that he’d rather the Browns remain within the city of Cleveland, said, “We have to throw a flag on the play” and “it’s a Hail Mary to throw out numbers that don’t square,” sorry, we’ve reached our maximum daily exposure to football metaphors, we’ll have to pick this up again next week.
- D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser told a community meeting that she wants to build a Washington Commanders stadium at the RFK Stadium site, and according to WTOP, “When someone asked whether Bowser would commit to not offering a subsidy, she said no.” News reports didn’t describe the crowd reaction to that non-pledge, but given the overall skepticism about a stadium plan expressed at the meeting, we can picture it for ourselves.
- Speaking of resident reaction, “‘Highly speculative’: Residents bristle at lack of answers on funding for new Spurs arena” is a pretty evocative headline, well done, San Antonio Express-News. And unlike in D.C., in San Antonio massive public scorn matters, because the Spurs arena development plan — which goes by the truly jaw-dropping name Project Marvel — is going to require a public referendum to pass, so the Spurs owners have some bristling to address.
- The United Soccer League says it’s planning to launch a new top-tier division in 2027 to compete with Major League Soccer, made up of some of its existing second-tier franchises and some new ones, and you know what new soccer teams means: new soccer stadium demands! USL officials talked a lot about how the U.S. needs a system more like Europe, where there are tons of soccer teams in cities large and small, but left out the part about how those teams’ stadiums are typically built without large public subsidies, curious, that.
- And speaking of soccer stadiums, a clown study by the Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis claims that a new soccer stadium in Bridgeport would “generate $3.4 billion in economic output and sustain 1,300 new permanent jobs annually until 2050.” Wait, 1,300 permanent jobs annually? Like, 1,300 jobs one year, then another 1,300 jobs the next? It will not surprise you to learn that the Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis is connected with UConn’s business school, not its economics department, though it may surprise you that the report was apparently issued last August but only got reported on by the Hartford Business Journal this Wednesday, slow week in the stenography industry, I guess.
- You may think you don’t want to read a long profile of College of the Holy Cross economist Victor Matheson in the school’s magazine, but what if I told you he provides scientific tips on which lottery numbers to avoid picking? Matheson also discusses stadium funding (“Let’s just say that I’m fairly happy that I have long-term job security as a critic of spending massive amounts of taxpayer money”) and the fact that he wears a different soccer jersey to class each day, which, yes, requires a lot of soccer jerseys.
Let’s figure what an awesome deal a $2,400,000,000 football stadium in fabulous Brook Park is, by the way, move over Las Vegas. Assuming that’s 60,000 seats, that comes to $40,000 a seat. The Browns play 10 games a year, and after 20 years they’ll be back for a couple billion in upgrades. That brings each seat to $200 per game. That doesn’t include interest, operating costs, and definitely not the football players salaries. As far as economic development for Ohio, how many fans from outside Ohio will attend Browns games? Make that Cuyahoga and adjacent counties.
Actually a good portion of the season ticket base is from outside Cuyahoga County. When I was a season ticket holder, most of my neighbors were from Columbus, West Virginia, etc. If you go to Hopkins Airport after the game you’ll see a couple of thousand people who flew in for the game
Wait, people seriously fly in several times a year to watch the Browns in person? I don’t know if that’s fan devotion or masochism.
Yeah Browns fans are like that. Season ticket holders are from all over the place. Also you have people who fly in 2-3 times a year and sell the remaining tickets or buy from brokers or other season ticket holders. That’s part of the reason why they have an empty stadium every December even though its sold out. People don’t do the drive for a 2 win team
I’m not tht familiar with Cleveland, but in Chicogo, most of the season ticket holders are from the lakefront, northern Cook, southern Lake and DuPage counties. Phoenix draws lots of the opponents fans, but there is little similarity between Cleveland and Phoenix. Even if 10% are from outside Ohio, and stay one night in a hotel, that’s 30,000 room nights a year. That would generate at most 1.5 million in taxes for Cleveland and Ohio. I’m sure Cedar Point and Kings Island are bigger contributors. But those are fans coming to the current stadium, how many more would come to a shiny dome? Football fans dedicated enough to drive hundreds of miles would attend the game regardless of the stadium. Net tourism contribution to Ohio, almost zippo.
Cleveland isn’t Chicago. It doesn’t get a lot of tourists in the summer and fall. Its was having a bit of a resurgence pre-Covid. But on weekends downtown was mostly dead. You had a couple of party districts that draw on Friday and Saturday nights. So not only are you talking about hotels from people who aren’t within a couple of hours drive but even those who live in the area aren’t going to the city proper on a weekend if not for a sporting event. Even during the week downtown empties out after 5 unless there is a game.
Now could Cleveland replace that if they ever developed the lakefront absolutely. Leadership is too stupid to figure that out.
I went to Cleveland once.
The Bears have season ticket holders in 48 different states. I’m one of them and know many others. I’m not sure where you get the idea that the bulk of the season ticket holders are that local, but it doesn’t jive with conversations I’ve had with Bears employees about this. They are spread all over the five County Chicagoland area, Northwest Indiana and beyond.
Twenty years is the entire lifespan of stadiums nowadays. The current playbook is to agitate for upgrades starting around year 5, getting them in year 7 or 8, and going through a couple of upgrade phases before agitating for a replacement to the “outdated crumbling dilapidated uncompetitive” structure in year 17-18 then getting it around year 20.
As economist Rod Fort said to me 20 years ago, “From the perspective of a sports team owner, I don’t see anything wrong with getting a new stadium every year” … so long as they’re not the one paying for it.
Way to swing for the fences Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis, jeesh
Connecticut Sports Group shouldn’t hold their breath on obtaining significant public funding towards this nutty project from the legislature. Sure, there’s a $145 million appropriation to apply some upgrades to the 50 year old XL Center in Hartford, but that’s after the legislature balked at the full $250 million upgrade that would have added a second concourse. They would also need to get in line behind a $63 million plan for 22 year old Rentschler Field (UConn Football) and a proposed $100 million renovation of 35 year old Gampel Pavilion (UConn Basketball).
Buy the whey, the vaportecture rendering of the proposed soccer stadium on the waterfront of Bridgeport in the HBJ article is as wack as they come. The open ribbon will just funnel in wind off the shore and wreak havoc on the pitch and in the stands. I hope the team would be named the Bridgeport Bernoulli’s because via that principle, it may be the only hope for the damn place to actually take off!
They can sign shorter centre forwards then… the lift will help them rise to meet (ok, miss, it’s USL after all…) high crosses.
What? Oh yes, it will help opposing forwards and defenders also. Stop injecting rationality into sports cartel shakedowns, it just just muddies the water…
The Brook Park contribution surprises me. I don’t see how Brook Park has the capacity to take on $422 million in debt. I figured the state contribution would be a lot higher than $600 million given that DeWine was talking about a $1 billion.
Maybe the $1bn includes his vig? Also, don’t rule out the possibility that the Haslams think Cleveland should pay the $422m to have the Browns move out.
Hey, if I had that kind of cash and could pay it to have Deshaun Watson move further away from me, I would absolutely do so.
Cleveland wouldn’t be paying the Browns $422 million to move out. That would be Brook Park’s contribution to the project. I don’t see how Brook Park would have the ability to borrow that much
I figured the state contribution would have been closer to $1 billion and the county would be lower.
Sounds like an illegal contract, no fair consideration, without an equity stake it’s a gift.
They’re better off investing in 5,400 teachers, police, firefighters., etc. to come up with the 5,400 in jobs created.
But, see, teachers, police and firefighters actually help the majority of a city’s residents. We’re talking about helping billionaires here.
Pro soccer in the US is hilarious. The fact that they’re not too far away from having two co-first division soccer leagues on the men’s AND the women’s side is utterly absurd, and it’s mystifying that the likes of FIFA have yet to intervene.
If only there was a simple system that would allow for the football pyramid in this country to be fully streamlined, and to ensure smooth movement up and down the divisions for the massive cluster of teams that exist here. If only…
If only, indeed. The dirty secret is that the richest clubs in Europe also hate the pyramid system and would love to have locked-in top pro leagues like we have in North America. Pro-rel only continues to exist there because their fans have (literally) rioted every time someone floats the idea of scrapping it.
I always wonder what could’ve been had baseball somehow adopted pro-rel back at the turn of the 20th century when it was still a bunch of independent leagues. Maybe it would’ve caught on to other sports and stopped all of this publicly funded stadium madness.
Ian hinted at a European Super League of brand-name teams that got shot down thanks to opposition from government, federation, and fan interests.
Yeah, even most of the teams that were originally behind the Super League quickly pivoted to “No, that wasn’t us, surely you must be misremembering.”
They are still working on it. They have been for nearly three decades… the idea will come back. The ex$panded champions league might sate their thirst for money for a couple of seasons, but they will be back for more.
The only hope I have is that when the ESL does rear it’s ugly head again, the domestic leagues have the gumption to say “in or out, you can’t play in both”. While it would make the domestic competitions considerably poorer (at least in the short term), it would actually improve the overall competition to have the super teams playing solely in the ESL.
The USL is suppose to have promotion and relegation between the various USL leagues. Not sure how USL statement about having teams in “big cities and small” jives with the requirement of having 15,000 seat stadium and be in cities ( or area?) with more than 1 million in population.
The latest announcement is they’ll be working toward pro/rel, but not instituting it right away.
They’ll still have the same problems, just on a slightly smaller scale. It would be (slightly) easier now for a team to go from D3 to D2 and would be a little harder for a team to go from D2 to their D1 Lite, and that would be much easier than going from D2 to MLS.
People forget, the D2 teams that moved up to MLS took, on average, nearly two years to do it. Doing it from November to the following February would be ridiculous. It couldn’t be done.
I know there are people here who long to be European (without what they consider the icky, socialist parts) when it comes to this, and don’t think it through, but the operational gulf between the first and second divisions in this country is big. It’s too big to bridge in 90 days.
Also, leagues get to determine their memberships. No one is going to force that on them without, as Sunil Gulati once said, a lot of people with very high LSAT scores having something to say about it.
Pro/rel does not actually “work.” It just ensures the money concentrates at the top. Europe already has a superleague, their fans just refuse to acknowledge it.
Just because they do it that way in Europe does not make it better.
It also will not work in a league that spans four time zones.
Hmmmn. Either that is an old picture of Mr. Matheson or he hasn’t watched Toronto FC play lately…
$3.4 billion? With a b?
The same city shut down the ballpark and has some of the lowest attendance in the AHL. Bridgeport doesn’t support local, so why build a soccer stadium?
Trillion with a t sounded too implausible.
Hey kids! Here’s a preview of next week’s FoS as the Rays continue to alienate anyone who still thinks they are sooo committed to the fans in Tampa Bay.
[link deleted]
Sorry, can the link be deleted? Thanks.
I was trying to link to an article in the Tampa Bay Times….the Rays execs did an interview Thursday that blamed the County and City again for delaying the stadium project (fact: no they didn’t). This time, the Mayor, City Council, and County Commissioners fired back right away and basically said put up or shut up.
Glad Rob Manfred has been working so hard with Stu. Apparently he’s been giving PR lessons to his minions.
I’ve deleted the link. Here’s the direct one to the TB Times article:
https://www.tampabay.com/news/st-petersburg/2025/02/14/st-petersburg-pinellas-pro-stadium-politicians-hit-back-rays-presidents/
Thanks!
Hey Neil, it is unfortunate that the two of the newest stadium in England were build with tax payer cash. London paid for some of Tottenham’s stadium and all of West Ham ( which I understand that London owns it and West Ham rents it). Not a great trend for those guys across the pond.