A shooting war has broken out between the owners of the Dallas Mavericks and Stars, with the Mavs owners filing suit yesterday against the Stars owners for … well, it’s complicated. But suffice to say that it all looks to have to do with two elements that are increasingly common factors in sports arena scheming: an expiring lease, plus a battle for dominance between a city’s NBA and NHL franchise owners.
When the Minnesota North Stars first relocated to Dallas in 1993, they shacked up with the Mavericks in Reunion Arena, a then 13-year-old arena owned by the city. The two teams convinced the city to spend $420 million to replace that arena with the American Airlines Center in 2001, and have been co-tenants there ever since, paying $2.2 million a year each in rent and other payments. (No, you are correct, that does not come close to paying off a $420 million construction cost.)
Ever since Sands casino owners Patrick and Sivan Dumont (along with Miriam Adelson) bought majority control of the Mavericks from Mark Cuban in 2023, however, they’ve been increasingly focused on building a new arena-and-casino complex somewhere in the Dallas area. (Casinos aren’t legal in Texas, but the Mavs owners aren’t sweating that part just yet.) Stars CEO Brad Alberts said at the time of the sale that he was fine with going it alone at the current arena, possibly with some renovations, but needed to wait to hear the new Mavs owners’ plans first.
Since then, things have deteriorated fast. Late last year, the two teams failed to reach agreement on a planned $300 million renovation of the current arena — to be paid for half by the city of Dallas, the rest either by the two teams jointly or the Mavs owners alone, depending on who you ask. This was immediately followed by the Mavs seizing the Stars’ half of the arena operating company and withholding their arena revenues. The conflict only escalated with yesterday’s lawsuit filing, in which the Mavs owners charged the Stars owners with breach of contract for moving their corporate headquarters from Dallas to nearby Frisco — in 2003 — and with obstructing improvements to the current arena.
Why the Mavs owners would want to pay to renovate an arena they want to move out of is an excellent question; there’s some speculation that they were simply hoping to lock the Stars into the current arena to keep them from building their own new one. And sure enough, since everything fell apart the Stars owners have begun talking up the possibility of building a new arena themselves, possibly in nearby Plano, or possibly in Frisco, The Colony, Arlington, or Fort Worth.
If all this is starting to sound familiar, it’s likely because of the recent throwdown in Philadelphia between the Flyers and 76ers owners. That was a slightly different scenario — their arena is privately owned, solely by the Flyers owners — but it played out similarly: Sixers owner Josh Harris launched plans to build his own new arena to outcompete the Flyers for concerts, and eventually used this as leverage to get the Flyers owners to agree to jointly build a new arena at the current site. (There’s since been talk of a similar possible dispute in Boston between the Celtics and Bruins.) Two arenas in even a moderately large market can be tough on the owners, who are left needing to compete for concert dates and may even have to offer discounts to land them; but threatening to build competing arenas can be a lucrative game of chicken if you think you can force your fellow team owner to agree to an arena deal that benefits you to avoid being second fiddle in their own city.
Both team owners are playing their arena leverage plans close to the vest, but this whole situation is well worth watching, especially as the teams’ leases expire in 2031 and they’re both hoping to use that to their advantage. Each has several Dallas-area cities they can try to play off against each other for arena subsidies, but at the same time both need to outmaneuver each other, something that the city governments could themselves use as leverage, if they play it smart. Hoping that city officials play things smart is usually a bad bet and early indications aren’t great, but there’s at least a chance here, so fingers crossed!
“Two arenas in even a moderately large market can be tough on the owners”
Indeed. And on the taxpayers especially.
It seems no matter how this plays out (except the part about enough Texas pols being bought off to ensure Casinos suddenly become a wonderfully beneficial thing for all Texans….), the Dallas Metro area will be subsidizing it’s third arena for pro sports teams in less than 50 years. Surely that is some kind of record for stupidity?
Considering the NHL’s almost comical history regarding team ownership, perhaps the owners of the Stars could move the team to Minnesota, and Craig Leipold, the owner of the Wild can move the Wild anywhere he wants, or sell it to someone in another market. The Wild haven’t done squat in 25 years of existence, and a lot of people here would be ecstatic to have our North Stars back. It’s the NHL – stranger things have happened.
NY has The Prudential Center in Newark, MSG in NYC, Barclays in Brooklyn, and UBS in Belmont. If four can work in NY why can’t two work in Dallas?
Because the NYC metro area has almost three times the population of the Dallas metro area. If NYC could support six arenas, Dallas could easily support two, but ask the Meadowlands Arena and Nassau Coliseum how that’s working out.
Don’t forget Dickies Arena in Fort Worth.
If D/FW gets a third arena it would rival the Bay Area in terms of arena glut.
https://fwtx.com/culture/dickies-arena-top-venue-2024/
Does the Bay Area have an arena glut? Chase is busy, Oakland arena has had record setting revenue years since the Warriors moved out. San Jose is for many promoters a separate market completely, concerts will play Chase and SAP.
Are you counting the Cow palace? Haas Pavilion? If so you can’t really be a serious person.
If they split, you’ll see one in downtown Dallas, and the other in Plano? These places aren’t remotely close to one another. Yes they share a market, but they would go after events that fit their own space in the metroplex.
Dickies arena doesn’t host major pro sports, but they get a lot of concerts (many of them will also play American Airlines center too). They host a ton of college tournaments in a bunch of different sports.
Are there enough concert dates to satisfy all of the arenas? Probably not, but the metroplex has become the de facto capitol of the NCAA (D1 football playoff committee is there, 5 D1 conferences have their HQs in the metroplex), and the current Mavs/Stars arena has very few available dates from October to May. In theory the new arenas would have more open weekend dates that concert promoters would pay a premium for and you could supplement revenue with conference tournaments, tractor pulls etc. Those fancy folks in Collin county think of themselves as being better then Dallas and are unlikely to punish politicians for luring a team up there.