Congratulations, we once again made it to the end of another programming week, as well as the end (presumably) of the “Will Washington Commanders owner Josh Harris get to pocket billions of dollars of cash and tax and land subsidies?” saga. (Answer: He sure will.) Which cities’ sports funding debates could be the next to absorb the eyes of a nation, or at least the eyes on this website? Let’s run down some contenders from this week:
- We’ve already covered the ongoing San Antonio Spurs arena debates here this week, but that earlier report on the city council’s Wednesday hearing missed the tidbit that right now the plan is for San Antonio to provide $500 million, Bexar County to provide $311 million (really only enough to pay for about half that in up-front costs, since the money would arrive over 30 years), and team owner Peter Holt to provide $500 million, which is less than the potential $1.5 billion arena cost. Spurs chief legal counsel Bobby Perez said (in the San Antonio Report’s paraphrasing) that’s “something the Spurs would have to figure out,” but that the team would pay for any overruns above the final public price tag, whatever it ends up being, which is maybe not as reassuring as he meant it to be. Perez also said that the team would not consider sharing any arena revenue to help pay the public’s share of costs because Holt will be using it to pay off his own share of costs, the public will just have to make it up in volume or something.
- The Cincinnati Bengals owners finally signed their new lease with Hamilton County that will include at least $700 million in public subsidies, everybody relax. Though the Bengals and the county said they’re still planning on asking for even more money from the state, exact dollar figure TBD, so maybe don’t relax just yet.
- Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Mike Sielski wrote that if Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeff Lurie wants a new stadium, he should pay for it himself, and got a flood of agreement back from readers, including that it’s a bad time to ask for public money “with hospitals closing, SEPTA broke, and schools struggling” and that “many people think that Camden Yards created the Inner Harbor, but the Inner Harbor was booming long before the Orioles left Memorial Stadium. And now the Inner Harbor has collapsed.” Good thing for Lurie that it’s almost certain none of these people will get to vote on any stadium plan, because that’s not how cities east of the Mississippi roll.
- The owners of Boston Legacy F.C. (née BOS Nation F.C.) faced an August 1 deadline to figure out how they will pay for their share of stadium costs on top of the city’s $100-millionish, but they blew that deadline so now they get a new one of September 15. Meanwhile, mayoral candidate Josh Kraft is accusing Boston Mayor Michelle Wu of not being transparent about the total cost of the women’s soccer project, at the same time as Josh’s dad Robert is fighting with Wu about his plan to build a new men’s soccer stadium for his New England Revolution in neighboring Everett, which Wu has warned could subject Boston to increased traffic, this is the most convoluted HBO Max series plotline ever.
- When the Los Angeles Olympic host committee promised that the 2028 Games would come at “zero cost” to the city, apparently it didn’t include security costs, which could amount to maybe $1.5 billion. There’s now growing talk of getting L.A. to pull out of the 2028 games altogether, especially now that Donald Trump has threatened to send in the military during the event; that doesn’t sound very likely, but the Unite Here hotel workers’ union has proposed a ballot measure that would require many Olympic venues to get voter approval to be used for the Games, which looks to be mostly a tactic to head off attempts to overturn the $30/hour “Olympic wage” passed by the city council in May — I take it back, maybe this is the most convoluted HBO Max plotline ever.
- ESPN is about to own part of the NFL’s media package and the NFL is about to own part of ESPN, don’t see any potential problems there. I do greatly look forward to every football highlight on SportsCenter being accompanied by a disclaimer that “the National Football League is a part owner of ESPN,” surely a company with such a great ethical record as ESPN wouldn’t skip over that.
You gotta hand it to the NFL, they made their CTE problem go away. At least on ESPN.
Game highlights won’t require a disclaimer. However, stories involving business/legal matters of the NFL, well…
Yeah, I don’t remember seeing any disclaimers when someone from a Disney, Paramount or Universal movie visits Kimmel, Colbert or Fallon.
It’s always been a bit amusing that sports news is often treated more seriously than that of the rest of the entertainment industry. SportsCenter is just the grown-up child of Entertainment Tonight.
Don Van Natta and Pablo Torre aren’t long for Bristol. Might be a good thing for both of them in the long run, tbf.
ESPN has been conflicted since it started carrying the actual games. Everyone knows that and this deal doesn’t change that.
ESPN gave up on investigative journalism a few years ago. It’s expensive and doesn’t work well on social media.
Big Government loves propping up sportsball, even across the Atlantic. The mayor of Manchester could force a sizable tract of land to be sold so Manchester United can build a 100,000-seat replacement for Old Trafford. Said tract is owned by a truck manufacturer that values the land at 10 times what Man Utd want to pay for it.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c39dxdvkepro
A few thoughts to wrap up the week…
I’m greatly … uhhh … entertained by Robert Kraft’s son being involved in the melodrama around the city, the community, and stadia. HBO drama indeed.
And the LA Olympic deal being a giant cluster? That would be the free square on a bingo card. But yes. Definitely a great streaming series.
The story about ESPN and the NFL being bedfellows is a kind of bizarro world. You may recall a few years back that Dan Lebatard was arguably the most popular figure on ESPN. He talked about whatever he wanted, and he was told that he had to stick to sports only. He left and founded meadowlark media and started hiring journalists away from espn, including Pablo Torre who broke the NFL collusion story. That would never have happened if he had stayed at espn (and now torre has some agreement to work at the athletic). It’s all so weird…
You also have what is I guess a fan site asking where the royals stadium is going
https://www.royalsreview.com/downtown-stadium/82503/it-is-august-and-we-still-do-not-know-the-royals-new-stadium-location
And the university of Kansas is accepting handouts for their stadium https://www2.kusports.com/sports/college/football/2025/aug/06/ku-lands-25-million-gift-for-continued-work-at-football-stadium-surrounding-gateway-project/
What a strange time we live in.
2028 Olympics have got to move from LA. MAGA America has made this a dangerous country for people of color. With the new regime, keeping the athletes safe is not a priority.
Arresting them is.
Florida !
Alligator Alcatraz will now be renamed Athlete Housing & since it’s hurricanes season, everyone get’s a Sharpie in their swag bag (replacing condoms)
How can a city prepare for an Olympics in 3 years, unless you pick a place like London who has all the previous venues in tact.
ok maybe Tokyo to make up for the 2020/2021 Covid disaster.
one of the selling points for the LA proposal is that they already have most of the venues in place. they would need to freshen them up, but the LA region is filled with indoor arenae, outdoor stadia, swimming venues and places for weird things like short track cycle racing.
not sure what they would do for kayak races, but they can figure it out.
I really wish they would pull out or that the IOC would pull it from them. the IOC, though has always had a good relationship with fascists, so the latter is not really likely.
The kayak and canoe races are already slated for Oklahoma City, logically enough.
https://la28.org/en/games-plan/olympics/canoe-slalom.html
“Funding for the project is coming from multiple sources, and the city is also eyeing support from the upcoming municipal bond program to help complete the upgrades”
Sorry Neil, you’re back on OKC Muni Duty !
Huh?
Here is a discussion on a new Celtics arena:
http://archboston.com/community/threads/report-celtics-to-look-into-building-new-arena.7299/
“Billionaire bonehead who paid $6bn for a team with an annual operating income of $150-160m demands $7Bn in subsidies for a new stadium. Film at Eleven”.