It’s always fun when you get to see how stupidity breaks out in real time, and so it was with the story growing over the last few days that the Cincinnati Bengals ownership could respond to the looming expiration of their lease by moving, and in particular by moving to Chicago. This, it turned out, was less a rumor — a rumor needs to be spread by multiple people — than conjecture, or maybe just a looming deadline and the desperation of one man, NBC Sports’ Mike Florio:
With the [Chicago] Bears getting nowhere when it comes to finagling taxpayer funding for a new stadium, the solution could come from having a second team play there.
Instantly, the inventory of games would double, from 10 to 20. It would become much easier for the Bears (and possibly the other team, unless it’s just a tenant) to pay for the building with minimal public assistance.
Enter the Bengals. They’re less than three months away from the final countdown to the expiration of their lease at Paycor Stadium. During the league meetings this week, executive V.P. Katie Blackburn said the quiet thing out loud — after 2025, the Bengals can go wherever they want to go.
It’s easy to come up with a list of cities that currently have no NFL teams. But the best outcome for the Bengals, and the Bears, could be to partner up in a new Chicagoland stadium. Lakefront or Arlington Heights. Wherever. The revenue from 20 NFL games each year, along with everything else that could be hosted in a fixed-roof building, should be able to pay for the building.
It’s hard to know where to even begin. Yes, splitting the costs of a $2 billion or so stadium between two teams would make it somewhat more affordable — but there’s little sign that the revenue from 20 NFL games a year plus “everything else” that could be hosted there would pay for a new building. After all, the Bears and Bengals each play 20 combined home games a year (including preseason) right now, so those revenues would have to rise by about $7 million per game — that’s $100 more per ticket sold, in a future Chicago where the two teams were fighting for the same fan dollars — just to break even.
Still, it was off to the news cycle races, as the Cincinnati Enquirer and multiple other outlets repeated Florio’s suggestion without asking anyone if it made any sense; something called Motorcycle Sports even chimed in, calling it a “bold idea.” USA Today’s Bengals Wire at least called it the “worst possible take,” though in doing so the site still managed to amplify Florio’s fantasy by sending clicks its way. (I realize I’m doing the same here; fact-checking bad reporting is always tricky to do without giving more air to the original misinformation, what whatcha gonna do.)
None of which matters for the idea of the Bengals moving to Chicago, because there is zero sign that either the Bengals or Bears owners would ever consider it. But it does help cement the idea in people’s heads that the Bengals might move somewhere, which is exactly what Bengals VP Katie Blackburn was hoping to do last week by saying, “We could, I guess, go wherever we wanted after this year if we didn’t pick the option up. So, you know, we’ll see.” (A statement, incidentally, that was called “a powerful, loaded comment“ by one Mike Florio.) That option is to extend the Bengals’ legendarily lucrative lease for five years, something the Bengals owners are mulling doing unless Hamilton County coughs up a sweet enough renovation deal to entice them to sign a new lease with fewer holographic replay system guarantees. Threatening to move the team at the same time as you’re threatening to stay and extend your sweetheart lease is … I think “bold idea” sums it up pretty well, don’t you?
Florio is a menace. He is a bad take in human form.
Since you brought it up, I’ll entertain the fantasy from the Bears’ perspective. Isn’t having exclusive access to the 3rd largest market worth more in the long run to the Bears than any savings they could get by splitting stadium costs?
Yeah, that’s the big question. The last NFL market to go from one to two teams was Los Angeles when the Raiders moved there to join the Rams, right? Not sure that’s going to tell us much given how much league finances have changed since then, even if we could get our hands on revenue data.
Raiders moving back to the bay in 1995 would qualify, correct (and maybe the Ravens in 1996). But yes, your overall point about the major differences in league finances since then is correct
The Raiders moving to share LA with the Rams, and then moving back to share the Bay Area with the 49ers. Also you could say the Ravens going to Baltimore added a team to the Washington-Baltimore market. And the Rams and Chargers both moving back to LA brought the LA market back from zero to two teams again.
But a key difference with the Raiders/Rams, Raiders/49ers, and Ravens/Washington team was that they all played in separate stadiums and largely separate parts of their market (Raiders at the Coliseum and Rams in Anaheim, Raiders in Oakland and 49ers in SF, Ravens in Baltimore and Washington in Prince George’s County far closer to the District and northern Virginia). And as for the present LA Rams/Chargers, I think the Chargers are obviously the lesser partners in that arrangement.
I don’t think you’d see any NFL team voluntarily share not just its media market but its literal physical location, at least not unless it’s a long-standing association like the Giants and Jets or an unbalanced relationship like the Rams and Chargers. I think the Bengals would rather play in Louisville than to become Chicago Chargers.
Washington and Baltimore are two separate cities with distinct identities and their own news sites. There are people inside the 495 Beltway who want no part of Baltimore and vice versa.
Also, the “Washington” NFL team is called the Commanders with club offices at Northwest Stadium inside the 495 Beltway.
Soldier Field was torn down in 2001, rebuilt in 2002, and reopened in 2003. Around 2007/2008, when Dickie Daley Jr wanted the 2016 summer Olympics in Chicago, he proposed building a dome and getting a second NFL team to play there.
Daley often floated the second team idea. He grew up when the Cardinals played at Comiskey. But the final 2016 Olympic plan featured a disposable track and field stadium to be torn down after the games.
“It’s easy to come up with a list of cities that currently have no NFL teams.”
It’s also equally as challenging, Mike, to come up with a list of cities without NFL teams that actually wants one bad enough to enter a bidding war. Even everybody’s favorite whipping boys for relocation (Jacksonville) was ultimately far more willing to remain an NFL city — and pay the ̶r̶a̶n̶s̶o̶m̶ price required to do so — than any other city in the US was to prise the franchise away from there.
Neither the Bengals nor the Bears have a stadium problem, per se. To the extent they even have a problem at all, it may be that they actually can’t afford to run their 21st century NFL operations with their 20th century wealth.
Da Bears have the same stadium problem they’ve had for 104 years, from Wrigley Field to old and new Soldier Field. After late October, their stadium is too close to frozen Lake Michigan. Sans roof.
Had Ted Phillips still been the Bears’ club president, construction would have been underway at Arlington Park with a planned opening around 2026 or 2027. Kevin Warren is too obsessed with being in the city of Chicago to pay attention to what the Bears’ season ticket holders want.
As a Bears season ticket holder whose seats are adjacent to several other long-term like-minded Bears season ticket holders…What makes you think we want a stadium in Arlington Heights? What makes you think we want to get bent over to pay PSLs again?
The Bears own Arlington Park. In fact, the club held a town hall last year with season ticket holders about a preferred stadium site — they overwhelmingly wanted Arlington Park. Was reported on at the time.
Is this a late April Fool’s prank?
One already can look at Metlife and SoFi to see what “20 games” actually gives us.
To be fair, MetLife and SoFi were built with mostly private money, so at least someone thought they could make it pay off.
To also be fair, NY and LA are a whole lot bigger than Chicago, which is more like a slightly larger Dallas-Fort Worth.
Neil that’s why Dallas is rumored to be where the Chiefs relocate.
When Greensboro is sitting right there?
MetLife Stadium is good enough for Beyonce, Blackpink, Taylor Swift, even Monster Jam and AMA Supercross. It’s the tabloid columnists that hate the venue (and their influence is fading as print circulation dries up).
SoFi Stadium is a showplace as anyone who saw the Taylor Swift concert movie can tell you.
I think it’s “regular people that live in the city or on Long Island or in Westchester County/Connecticut” that hate MetLife. Absolute pain in the ass to get to.
Assuming those “regular people” never said the same thing about the old Giants Stadium that existed from 1976 to 2009.
I’ve been to both Giants Stadium and MetLife a bunch of times, for both sports and concerts, and they’re both pretty bad: hard to get to, lousy sightlines, inconvenient concessions. Nothing awful, but both solidly in the bottom half of stadiums.
That wasn’t what we were talking about though, which was whether MetLife is a huge cash cow for its owners. And it’s not really, even with two teams and a decent amount of concerts — there are only so many Taylor Swifts and Paul McCartneys, so at best you’re still only in the mid-double digits for events per year, whereas a decent arena can be active 150-200 nights a year.
As I understand, for the typical fan MetLife has all the problems that Giants Stadium did, plus some new ones. It’s just as hard to get to and the amenities still stink for general fans, but most of the regular seats are even further from the field and the upper deck is even colder, all for a higher average ticket price.
MetLife is one of my go-to examples for how teams’ whizbang new stadium promises to improve the fan experience are generally empty, because all the actual improvements go to luxury and corporate customers rather than bleacher creatures.
I think those people thought Giants Stadium mostly sucked too.
What is the point of being rich if you can’t get a taxpayer funded concrete moat to separate you from the little people?
Florio is throwing something out there because he has airtime to fill. Its hard to generate NFL content every day during the off-season. Pat McAfee even said that the quote reads different then if you hear it in context. Mike Brown could have moved for more money before making the deal for the current stadium. If they go somewhere it will probably be St Louis, San Antonio/Austin, etc.
Those cities have to actually want an NFL team first — and in STL’s case, it has to show that it’s deserving of a third shot at being an NFL market.
Current NFL cities working on their second or third stadiums are learning the hard way that keeping teams there is an incredible expensive venture. Now imagine being San Antonio or Austin (or even St Louis and San Diego) and seeing what the price tag is for new and/or renovated venues for existing smaller-market teams, and then projecting out what the price tag might be in another 20 years.
None of the cities mentioned have indicated a real “want-to” in about a decade, and they’re all plenty justified in not putting themselves out there like that.
I am not sure about the lack of “want to” when the possibility of a yes is slim. San Antonio still murmurs about it https://www.kens5.com/article/news/local/pro-football/nfl-san-antonio-franchise-expansion-austin-cisneros/273-8f4d36e1-5edb-460a-9d89-0d465f8d5631
But at the same time if you’re the mayor of San Antonio are you going to spend a lot of time if there isn’t an opportunity? Its like Hamilton in the NHL. They tried 3 times to get a team and were always shot down. So when expansion came up in 2015 no one there tried. On the flip side Winnipeg was amount 4-5 cities invited by the NHL to make a pitch in like 2007 so they spent the next 4 years getting ready.
Didn’t stop Quebec City from building an arena for a return to the NHL that never came — or, for that matter, San Antonio from building an NFL-sized stadium during the 90s for an NFL franchise that never came.
Granted, the costs of building those stadiums were nowhere near what the costs of building an “NFL-caliber” stadium would be today — but the idea of becoming a so-called big-league market clearly mattered to those cities when they built their venues.
No one is going to build on spec anymore. The Alamodome cost $186 million to build. Videotron Centre was under $400M. Now you’re talking $1 billion+ for an arena and $2 billion+ for an NFL stadium. That’s too much risk.
Forsyth County, GA has entered the chat…
Forsyth County isn’t going to build unless they are awarded a team. They’ve also had meetings with the NHL who has indicated a desire to be in the area again
There are no places to move to in the US. It is not worth the public money required to build a stadium for 10-ish events a years.
I’m in St. Louis
Brook Park, perhaps …
The Rams (2016) and Chargers (2017) moving to LA would also qualify I would think. Personally I think the municipalities willing to pony up $1B+ is starting to get fairly limited and once cities realize this I think the number will start to fall further.
Btw, I think SoFi stadium was completely privately financed wasn’t it (as was the Chase Center in San Francisco)?
We can’t tell what the effect was on the Rams’ revenues from the Chargers moving to LA, though, since it happened at the same time.
SoFi was sort of privately financed — there were a lot of moving pieces. Chase Center absolutely was. But the Warriors in particular have no competition in their market, and being an arena they can fill ~200 dates a year, which a stadium could never do.
(I ended up in a lot of conversations at least week’s sports economics conference about WTF Stan Kroenke was doing with SoFi and whether he’ll ever see that money back. The tl;dr takeaway was “it all depends on if he can find a billionaire sucker willing to buy the Rams at an insane valuation because they own a shiny object, even if it comes with $6B in debt.)
Now I know posted team valuations aren’t reflective of what they WOULD get if the team was put for sale but based on this list: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/05/official-nfl-team-valuations-2024.html
The Rams are worth $8 billion in LA. If they were still in St Louis I would guess they would be around $6 billion based on St Louis being about the size of Baltimore and Cincinnati wise and Tampa and Nashville GDP-wise. So net the valuation is $2 billion-ish more. He had to pay $550 million in relocation fees alone and whatever portion of the St Louis settlement. That’s before you add in the fact that he spent billions on SoFi vs 400ish million for the proposed St Louis stadium
Surely a Chiefs franchise with a few recent Super Bowl wins would be worth significantly more than a StL team unless, maybe, StL had a shiny new and mostly subsidized stadium. But if the Bungles franchise is actually sell-able for $5 billion or more, as CNBC claims, that is the minimum.
I don’t think Kroenke expects to make back the cost of SoFi itself. It’s partly absorbed by the Chargers, partly by the benefit of profiting off of the surrounding development, and partly (maybe largely) by tax writeoffs. He seems like another egotistical billionaire, but he’s not going to go bankrupt.
Throw in Detroit and you’ve got Lions, Tigers and Bears. Oh MY!
Florio has clearly not seen the forest for the trees here. The obvious answer is to have the Bengals play half a season in Montreal.