The term sheet for San Antonio’s proposed Project Marvel development that would include a new Spurs arena goes up for a city council vote tomorrow, and to see the local news media headlines tell it, it’s a (checks list of appropriate sports metaphors) slam dunk: The term sheet ensures “no tax impact on families” (KENS-TV)! Voting no “could risk losing Spurs to another market” (News4SA)!
Neither of those things appears to be so much true. The actual term sheet, which is buried at the end of a PDF attached to an item on tomorrow’s council agenda, spells out more than $630 million in tax impact, including $311 million in county hotel and car rental taxes (over 30 years, so more like $150 million in present value) if that’s approved by voters in a November ballot measure, plus $489 million in city bonds (or a bit less if the total arena cost comes in at less than $1.28 billion) to be paid off with property taxes from future development on the site — surely money that wouldn’t be needed to, oh, provide schools for all of the project’s new residents or anything.
As for losing the Spurs, sure, the team “could” move without a new arena. The team owners are making money hand over fist in San Antonio, however, and are currently the 18th-most valuable franchise in the NBA (per Forbes) despite playing in a relatively small market; relocating to Seattle or Las Vegas likely wouldn’t improve those numbers, plus would step on the toes of the NBA’s plans to rake in big expansion team prices from those cities. And Spurs owner Peter Holt hasn’t even hinted at a move away from San Antonio, instead sticking with the usual mealy-mouthed declarations that he sure hopes the team stays put, as if the matter is entirely out of his hands. So who is it warning News4SA about the team leaving, exactly?
Some city council members like District 3’s Phyllis Viagran have serious concerns about delaying a vote for the city to move forward.
“If a pause is approved, I think we are seriously facing losing the Spurs to another market outside of Texas,” Viagran said.
Say no more! Better get the checkbook.
For anyone familiar with Chapter 4 (“The Art of the Steal”) from Field of Schemes, this will all be painfully familiar: promising illusory economic benefits and warning of phantom move threats are two of the eternal staples of sports owners’ subsidy playbook. The only slightly new twist is adding in the argument that spending over $600 million in public money isn’t really public money because it’s money that the Spurs will have touched first, and therefore something something isosceles triangles.
The San Antonio council actually has two items on tomorrow’s agenda, the first being a proposal by Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones to not enter into any term sheet until the city commissions and receives “an independent economic impact study for the arena by a firm with no association with the Spurs organization or ownership” and each councilmember has held public meetings to get feedback on the plan. All indications are that the council majority is going to say “LOL, no, we’re going to approve the 600 mil on the basis of what the clown consultants say” — but just in case any councilmembers might be tempted to think otherwise, it’s nice that the media members of San Antonio’s growth coalition are there to remind them of the company line.
As someone who lives in another one-horse pro sports town and roots for a team in yet another… this is totally normal. This is just what happens in cities that only have a a single “big league” team and isn’t really capable of supporting a second one. Protecting the city’s “major league” status becomes paramount, an existential crisis for places that usually don’t have much else to hang its hat on in terms of its identity or national presence.
(Even though much of the existential crisis is imagined, and smacks of some deep insecurity about being a small(er) market. Not to mention that some of these cities might have even seen their reputations *improve* by putting its foot down on denying massive subsidies for a new venue — but those are obviously different conversations altogether.)
Like I said in the last tidbit on this, San Antonio will manage to “keep” the Spurs in town (as if they were ever leaving) by bidding against itself and doing whatever is asked of its one team and its owners. Because this is the price of doing business in the American sports sphere, and specifically in places that only have one team.
And, you know, I get it: Teams do move, if rarely, and the idea of the Spurs leaving San Antonio has got be scarier than for a city with less of an inferiority complex. But still, is it really so much to ask that city councilmembers at least haggle a little, rather than just taking the first team request and saying “Well, this all seems to be in order, we’ll have the $630 million check ready for you at close of business”?
I am forever reminded of Jim Nagourney’s story about how his boss at the L.A. Rams suggested throwing every possible demand into their proposed agreement about a new stadium to get the team to move to St. Louis, because it can’t hurt to ask — and then was stunned when St. Louis officials said yes to all of them, even the ridiculous ones.
Isn’t that ‘sort of’ what Fisher and his spokesmodel Kaval did with Vegas too? I mean, they didn’t get ‘everything’ from Vegas… they got significantly less than they had in Oakland. But they pretty much accidentally forced their own move to LV by being stupid and, in attempting to leverage their existing host city, leveraging themselves into a move to place that isn’t as good and which they shouldn’t be in.
Spanos’ move to LA also smacks of unenlightened self-disinterest… he wanted a new stadium in SD and got an offer but not one that he and the NFL “liked” enough. So they dangle an LA move threat… which produces no additional subsidy offer… and leaves them in a position of having to either admit their threat against the city of San Diego was a bluff or go through with it… which they did.
And now Spanos is complaining that he never wanted to be in LA and really wanted to stay in San Diego… but…. poor, poor me.
Sports owners seem to have developed some version of the “freemen on the land” strategem…
‘this business that I own and control operates completely independent from me and I have no control over it’s decisions, though I make them in my capacity as owner. The team will do what it must do in pursuit of it’s own best interests. It is not up to me to make these decisions, except in my role as sole owner and governor of said business in which I make such decisions’.
Does anyone actually believe any of their bullshit?
And the other piece of this is… none of the cities that *did* have a team walk out on them became worse-off for not having it around anymore, despite the proclamations of, “We would never, ever recover from losing [Team A].” Places like Seattle, San Diego, St. Louis, and Montreal didn’t collapse on themselves just because they lost a team. They largely just moved on, and that’s perfectly okay.
Agreed. They survived. Having a sports franchise or any other entertainment attraction in your city/town is a benefit, but not at any cost.
You don’t “lose your identity” when the local team owner elects to move his/her team any more than you lose it when another business elects to relocate.
There is a cost. But that cost has to be measured before it can be managed. It may be that once measured that cost is not worth any subsidy, let alone billions.
Increasingly, we start from the position that “no matter what” the team owner must be bribed not to leave… even when there is no evidence that s/he wants or intends to depart.
It’s just madness.
Found the article: https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/why-do-mayors-love-sports-stadiums/
Do only dumb people run for public office? Is that what happens?
Some have dumbness thrust upon them…
I ask myself the same question about journalists, too. Seems they spend four years in college so they can accurately transcribe the lies Americans tell themselves about themselves.
LOL. Well, it’s a skill, I guess….
Is it journalism schools that do this or just the employers that a small subset of J school grads get hired by that demand it?
Or have we crossed the boundary to “vocational journalism” schools and I just don’t know about it?
You’re assuming that being dumb is their excuse for not doing the right thing. It’s at least equally possible (probably more likely) that they just don’t care about doing the right thing.
The country is now suffering because we’ve proven unwilling to punish those who fall into the latter category.