Happy zeroth anniversary of that time we decided to all die of bird flu! It’s a fitting way to go out, honestly.
While we’re still here, though, there’s plenty of other stuff to keep getting wrong in the meantime:
- A company affiliated with the Kansas City Royals has bought the mortgage to a potential stadium site in Kansas’s Johnson County, and … guys, you know that buying the mortgage isn’t anything like buying the land, it just means the property owner makes their payments to you instead of to the original mortgage issuer, right? Sure, if the property owner defaults, you get the land, but that’s a slim thread on which to hang a potential stadium plan — unless of course you’re just looking for easy ways to get “Royals” and “Kansas” into a headline to throw a scare into Missouri, in which case, nice outside-the-box thinking there.
- Speaking of moving to Kansas, two economists have looked at that state’s STAR tax diversion deal and determined that there’s no way the state can build even one stadium, let alone two, without cannibalizing existing revenue. “A majority of Kansas lawmakers disagree,” reports the Kansas City Beacon, meaning “whether STAR bonds can support one or two teams depends on who you ask” — if you ask people who know what they’re talking about, you get one answer, if you ask people just grandstanding on behalf of the edifice complex you get another, whoda thunk it!
- Over in Missouri, meanwhile, a group of Republican senators are refusing to consider Chiefs and Royals stadium funding unless the state approves new tax cuts, while Democrats are objecting to spending billions on stadiums when the state is only providing $25 million to tornado relief. “It’s not coming together just swimmingly as of right now,” summed up state Sen. Lincoln Hough.
- At least one Missouri legislator is still on board: Republican Sen. Mike Cierpiot said spending on stadiums is worth it because “we’re not giving this money to billionaires. We’re giving it to the stadiums, which is owned by the county.” That’s not how stadium ownership works, unfortunately — owning stadiums just costs you property taxes, what’s important is to own the revenue streams from them, and here those would be controlled by the team owners — and isn’t how number agreement works either, this really isn’t going swimmingly.
- Over on the other side of Missouri, meanwhile, a state audit has found that the Dome at America’s Center — that’s the former home of the St. Louis Rams, not a missile shield program — needs $155 million in maintenance over the next decade, and while that’s not all that much all things considered, the dome is losing money just hosting St. Louis Battlehawks UFL games and the occasional concert, so, you guessed it, the St. Louis Regional Convention and Sports Complex Authority is considering asking for state money. If they can find a way to increase that maintenance price to $500 million, they could qualify for funding under Gov. Mike Kehoe’s everybody-gets-a-stadium plan, I bet diamond-encrusted cupholders would go a long way toward meeting that requirement.
- And to answer your question, yes, there was some news this week that was not in Missouri or Kansas! Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis vowed not to provide any state money for a Tampa Bay Rays stadium — except for “roads and exits,” of course, gotta have roads and exits. And stairs and ramps are really exits of a kind, right? Not that any local governments are really proposing a new stadium for the Rays at this time, so DeSantis is unlikely to get called on his promise, but it’ll be interesting to see what happens if he’s in office long enough that he does.
- This New York Times op-ed is getting a lot of likes for its headline (“Sports Stadiums Are Monuments to the Poverty of Our Ambitions”), but fewer seem to be reading down to the part that argues that “cities build stadiums in part because it’s so hard to build almost anything else,” which is presented without evidence and isn’t really historically true, but it’s of the moment because something something Ezra Klein.
- Does everyone who plays at the don’t-call-us-Sacramento Athletics‘ ad hoc stadium still hate it? You betcha! Sports Illustrated speculates that John Fisher could consider relocating the team again, perhaps to Salt Lake City, but notes that then he wouldn’t be able to get sweet Northern California TV money, and … remind me what size TV market his intended destination of Las Vegas is again? Hmm.
- And finally, this week in one-sentence media criticism:
Why investigate the public financing of a billion-dollar stadium when you can post pictures of Trisha and Garth with hardhats and shovels?
— J.C. Bradbury (@jcbradbury.bsky.social) 2025-05-30T12:31:50.461Z
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/05/29/bears-stadium-pritzker-team-consultants/
Article in Chicago Tribune about the Bears stadium. It is behind a paywall, but everything you would expect is in there: Gov Pritzker hired an advisor who previously worked for an NFL team, the Bears hired an advisor who previously worked for Gov Pritzker, unregistered lobbyists, etc.
I think the dome in St. Louis might prove that an empty dome loses less money than a dome with a football team. $155 million is nothing compared to the billions they were proposing to build a new stadium for the Rams.
I was wondering the same thing… are they losing more or less a year now than they were attempting to keep the Rams ownership – already with one foot out the door – something close to “happy”.
Context is everything. See? I made it all the way through this without a UFL related jok- oh dammit!!!!
Neil – I’m surprised you and Don’t Puck Tempe haven’t commented on Alex Meruelo‘s latest endeavor in Reno!:
https://nevadasportsnet.com/sports/wolf-pack/shovels-up-gsr-arenas-public-money-request-passes-redevelopment-board-via-a-5-2-vote#
If Reno is dumb enough to pay millions to put lipstick on Meruelo’s 50 year old pig of a copy of the casino that burned down in Vegas, ugh. Reno will never be more than a backwater for Bay Area gamblers too cheap to fly to Vegas and too dumb to realize how many casinos they’re passing in California.
Jim Dangle seems to like it.
Yeah, this particular property seems to go through at least one major, loudly trumpeted renovation/expansion plan per decade. It was Bally’s when I was a kid, then the Hilton for a while. I’m somehow not surprised that they’ve managed to swindle tax money this time.
I haven’t been back in years, but from afar, seems like the only thing doing any business in downtown Reno proper is the El Dorado/Silver Legacy/Circus Circus triad, and everything else is somehow seedier than it was even 30 years ago.
Technically the Reno economy has kind of diversified beyond gaming/tourism.
I’m no fan of this tif or Meruelo but a new arena in Reno is more for locals then anything. Reno has grown to the point it could get certain arena acts and the UNR basketball arena is outdated to the point it’s holding the program back. Would be nice if the city council told UNR and Meruelo to finance it themselves but it’s disingenuous to say the region doesn’t need an arena.
Do casinos have a future? Has anyone looked into that?
I have no evidence, but I feel like they might end up like suburban malls – something that seemed fun and novel in the 20th century but eventually just lose their appeal.
After all, in states that have gambling, you can gamble on your phone. And I don’t sense that casinos are especially appealing to the young people.
Is it all going to come crashing down?
These casinos are really more about being resorts now with a casino attached. So I’m not sure the competition from other states opening up gambling will kill them. Sometime not long after the year 2000 non gaming revenue started outstripping gaming revenue in Las Vegas which would have been unforeseen 40 years ago.
The arena in Reno is being built as part of the GSR (Grand Sierra Resort). UNR will also make use or the arena. I’m not sure how the financing is happening for the reno arena. In Las Vegas the casino resorts sometimes build their own arenas (mandalay bay has its own arena and IIRC the T mobile arena while not attached to a resort was privately financed)
“Schieve repeatedly made the case for approving the project’s public money in an effort for Reno to stay ‘relevant’ and seen as an ‘innovative’ city.”
I keep trying to tell everybody about small cities/markets and their complexes…
I would love to cover all the college and minor-league stadium and arena deals out there, but sadly my contract for a team of research interns was canceled by DOGE.
No one is defining what “a company affiliated with the Royals” means. My guess is a couple of very minority owners bought the mortgage hoping the land owners will eventually default. I seriously doubt it has anything to do with sports teams.
It’s extremely likely the mortgage purchase is happening *now* because of the special legislative session. I would be very surprised if it’s part of a serious plan to acquire land for a stadium, though.
Assuming the land holds its value, it seems like a smart play.
Best case, for the buyers, the mortgage defaults and they get the land at a discount.
They will probably try to create a fake haunting to drive off the current owners. And they might get away with it…
I enjoyed this quip in response to a comment on StL Post-Dispatch site:
jusdfacts
The dome has been a financial failure and a waste of County public cash ever since the earliest days. We do NOT need another 20 years to know that at least every ten years somebody demands a major upgrade to a facility that has never been state of the art or provided a sustained transformational impact on the region. Just say NO to any public money going into the ancient downtown dome. Stop all public funding of stadiums anywhere in the state of Missouri. We are broke as evidenced by the low quality of core government services to citizens.
proengineer
> Stop all public funding of stadiums anywhere in the state of Missouri.
That train already left the station and then blew up.
Has there been any momentum behind a plan to blow it up and replace it with something more useful?
Andrew Nixon forgot to mention that bird flu research is unnecessary because birds aren’t a real thing anyway.
The sleepwalking general public needs to wake up.
https://www.amazon.com/Birds-Arent-Real-Surveillance-Campaign/dp/1250288894
Bird flu is real, it’s just a computer virus.
“Over in Missouri, meanwhile, a group of Republican senators are refusing to consider Chiefs and Royals stadium funding unless the state approves new tax cuts”
— So, they will only agree to spend billions on new stadiums after they first reduce the amount of money they have to spend by an even larger number of billions.