Ever since private equity goon Bill Chisholm and his goon pals bought majority ownership of the Boston Celtics for $6.1 billion in March, there have been little burbles of speculation here and there that Chisholm might seek to build a new arena somewhere in Greater Boston. This started right after the sale, when NBC Sports Boston asked Chisholm if he’d want his own arena, and Chisholm demurred in that well, you know my birthday is coming up way that sports owners seem to specialize in:
“I really haven’t put much thought into that,” Chisholm said Thursday. “I mean, there have been a lot of banners raised in that location that the Celtics are in right now. So that’s a pretty important part of the history. We’ll get to thinking about that. But it’s also a decision that’s down the road.”
Then, in a blind item in July, Boston Globe basketball writer Gary Washburn upped the ante from “haven’t thought about that” to “is believed to be thinking about thinking about that”:
It’s believed that soon-to-be governor Bill Chisholm will look into the construction of a new arena since the Celtics do not own TD Garden. The most profitable means for an NBA owner in today’s landscape is arena ownership.
This Sunday, the Globe’s business section chimed in, with a long article by columnist Shirley Leung about possible arena sites in Everett, South Boston, and other sundry outskirt locations, anchored by similarly non-sourced assertion that this is surely something that Chisholm would want to explore:
It might seem a long shot that the Celtics would ever leave TD Garden and the North Station neighborhood they’ve called home for close to 80 years. But the team’s new owners are keeping their options open.
Sure, a new arena would be a hefty investment, likely $1 billion or more. But it might be worth it, especially if Boston gets an WNBA team that could fill a decent block of nights alongside the Celtics.
That “might” is doing a lot of work, clearly: Yes, having a WNBA team in addition to the Celtics would add more home games (22 per year) to go with the Celtics’ 41, plus however many playoff games each team ended up hosting. But that’s still going to leave close to 300 nights a year where a new arena would need to book concerts or what have you, assuming Chisholm wants to repay that $1-billion-plus price tag. (Which would likely be considerably more, since he would need to acquire land for the arena as well.)
Washburn’s line that “the most profitable means for an NBA owner in today’s landscape is arena ownership” needs some unpacking as well. (It also needs a better subject noun — “means” of what? — but the Globe isn’t paying us to copyedit.) Yes, all things being equal, it’s better to control your own arena than to rent someone else’s, because you get all the proceeds from concerts and other events. But it’s also better not to be left holding more than a billion dollars in arena debt — which is exactly why the Celtics have shacked up with the Bruins for the last 80 years, so as to split the cost of a single arena rather than duplicating efforts.
We’ve just seen this exact scenario play out, in fact, in Philadelphia, where the owners of the 76ers announced that they would build their own arena to compete with the Flyers‘ one — and then as soon as it was approved, quickly negotiated a deal with the NHL team to instead build a new shared arena. The reason, according to one news report: NBA commissioner Adam Silver “believed that having two competing Philadelphia arena projects in the same timeframe would be detrimental to both the city and the teams.”
Outgoing Celtics majority owner Wyc Grousbeck (he’s still holding on to a minority stake), in fact, said something very similar back when he sold the team to Chisholm in March:
“Honestly, there’s room for one arena in Boston, not two. Because you need to have concerts and events to fill out the bill. And if we ever talked to the Jacobs – we all decided to renovate the Garden very seriously; there have been huge, hundreds of millions of dollars of renovations – but if we ever decide to do anything, I’m sure we’d do it together and have both teams playing there.”
Arena glut is a thing! We’ve seen this in places like Minnesota, where a series of arenas have been built and then torn down when it turned out there weren’t enough concerts to fill all the dates; and even in a market as large as New York City, where the opening of new arenas in Newark and Brooklyn led to the closure of the Meadowlands Arena for lack of business. Boston and Philadelphia are similar-sized metro areas, and it’s not out of the realm of possibility that either could support two arenas — but the fact that Sixers owner Josh Harris backed out of a dueling-arenas scenario makes it less likely that Chisholm would attempt it in Boston, and in what would almost certainly be a less central location for transit as well. (Philadelphia, incidentally, will apparently have no problem fitting a WNBA expansion team in with NBA and NHL teams and concerts all in one building.)
So what’s going on here, exactly? It could be that Chisholm is legitimately kicking tires on the idea of a new arena, either to see if he can bigfoot the Bruins by building an arena that would be the first choice for concert promoters or to see if he can shake loose some public money (or at least free land or infrastructure or tax breaks) to help him turn a profit on his Bruins-killer. (Massachusetts hasn’t historically been the most generous when it comes to sports handouts, but you can’t fault a guy for trying.) Or he could be pulling a Harris by hoping that the mere threat of a competing arena can arm-twist Bruins owners Delaware North into giving him an ownership stake in either the current arena or a new shared one.
Or this could be just newsroom gossip that won’t go anywhere at all. So many options, when you’re dealing with stories with no cited sources! The best advice remains, as always: When elephants fight, keep your hand on your wallet.
Shirley Leung, well known from her work boosting the Boston Olympics bid, never met a subsidy to business she didn’t like nor an executive she was unwilling to publish a trial balloon (or more) for. It’s almost surely something that was hinted to her from the top.
Right, but the top of the Celtics? Or the top of the developers-wanting-to-sell-land-to-the-Celtics community?
It’s interesting (at least to me) that the Bulls/Blackhawks figured out the joint venture arena model in 1994 and that teams like the 76ers and Celtics didn’t copy that model and instead agreed to become tenants.
Now the United Center has a near Monopoly on all large (10k +) indoor events (ignoring the 50 year old allstate arena in Rosemont) in Chicago and no real talks of the venue being obsolete.
Only slightly relevant, but I noticed the United Center was charging $70 for parking at last week’s UFC event. Money can ruin friendships, but when it’s that much money, maybe it strengthened the Bulls/Wirtz friendship.
They could charge $70 for parking because UFC fans would be to scared to ride the bus or train to the arena.
You can identify a UFC fan by their fear and hatred of being within 500 feet of a minority.
Union Station and Ogilvie are nearly 2 miles from the United Center, and schedules get really spotty after 10pm. As for the Blue, Pink and Green Lines, good luck, especially if you head west.
The new Damen CTA station on the green line gets you within 4 blocks. But the United Center express bus is still the best option to get back downtown.
The United Center is the perfect example of why this new arena nonsense is so foolish. The 30 year old United Center draws a full house of Blachawks and Bulls fans, the only exception is when they have last place locked up by 20 games. Fans struggle down the parking lot called the Kennedy Expressway from the North Shore. No major new arena has been discussed in Chicago, the Rosemont Horizon and UIC Pavillion pre date the United Center by 15 years. With UIC and the Medical Center expanding, and downtown creeping westward, the parking lots surrounding the United Center MAY finally be developed after 30 years.
Surely the most profitable avenue for ANYONE is to “own” the revenue streams from any $1bn+ development and not to be responsible for any of the payments?
It’s not like the sports ownership cartel has hit on anything novel here… it’s just that no other group has managed to convince local politicians that paying the business’ expenses while allowing them to collect all the revenue is a good idea.
Some have come close – at least so far as construction subsidies for factories or HQs etc – but nowhere has the long con been as successful as in the sports cartel.
Re: “…will look into the construction of a new arena since the Celtics do not own TD Garden. The most profitable means for an NBA owner in today’s landscape is arena ownership.”
Arena ownership wherein the Arena’s owner doesn’t pay for the arena!!! The taxpayers do! If the taxpayers pay, they should get the benefit, otherwise, I’ll insert the usual refrain of “pay for it yourself sports team owner!!”
“The most profitable means for an NBA owner in today’s landscape is arena ownership.” Such an infuriating quote. If only that were close to being true. Taking the quote at face value, yes, all owners, instead of just Steve Ballmer, would build their own arena using their own money. But it turns out they don’t want to do that. They prefer to have government entities build them an arena using very little of their own money, but at the same time they want to keep all of the revenues generated by the arena and, even better, be granted tax-free development rights for the surrounding neighborhood(s).
Also infuriating because NON-ownership of the arena is a key part of the con from the owner’s luxury suite. In addition to being a convenient property tax dodge it also gives the owner the freedom to move the team (or threaten to move it) without being on the hook for the unoccupied white elephant arena they’d be leaving behind and have it be someone else’s problem to deal with.
Well said. All true. (Note here that last year the Trail Blazers “sold” their 30-year old arena to the City of Portland for $1.00, precisely so they could move forward with a sale of the team this year without the burden of arena ownership.)
The Patient Zero of this Celtics arena story was a single tweet from Chris Mannix of SI speculating that the “new owners” would want their own stadium – before the brokerage had even begun receiving bids. Then it got picked up by the clickbait crowd and sports radio hosts in Boston, who amplified it as gospel while conveniently ignoring the fact that the new owners hadn’t even been selected. Washburn’s reference was just a lazy acknowledgement of the buzz. He’s not well-sourced even on basketball matters.
Now you have business writers angling for clicks from the sportsball fans by writing sheer speculation on a slow holiday weekend, and the perpetual motion machine rolls along.
When the outgoing group bought the team, they added a real estate developer (Abbey Group, I think it was) with the thought they would eventually build their own arena. Obviously, they didn’t. Back then, the going rate for an arena was less than $300 million (only Dallas’s arena at $420 million was more than that). They since reupped, and they have 16 years left on their lease. At that point, the arena will be 36 years old.