One year ago today, this site ran an item headlined “Was the Carolina Panthers’ $650m renovation deal really the worst of 2024? An investimagation,” in response to the Center for Economic Accountability declaring Charlotte the winner of that dubious distinction. The conclusion: The Panthers deal was bad, but there were plenty of other contenders, like St. Petersburg’s attempt (eventually rejected) to give over $1 billion to the owners of the Tampa Bay Rays, the Washington Capitals and Wizards owner landing $515 million from D.C., plus non-sports megadeals for everything from an Eli Lilly drug plant in Indiana to expansion of film and TV production tax credits.
All that seems like a million years ago. The year 2025 will be remembered for lots of things, but one is that it was the year where stadium subsidies blew way past the billion-dollar mark, with Washington Commanders owner Josh Harris landing a stadium-plus deal worth at least $6.6 billion in cash, land, and tax breaks, then Kansas City Chiefs owner Clark Hunt following that up with a preliminary agreement for around $4 billion in goodies for a stadium development in Kansas. Otherwise notable events of the past year like the state of Ohio gifting Cleveland Browns owner Jimmy Haslam $600 million (or more) to move from one part of the state to another and even San Antonio providing $1.3 billion for a new San Antonio Spurs arena project — easily an NBA record — feel like chump change by comparison.
And that’s the bigger concern here: While in a sane world, elected officials would sit down and figure out how much the presence of a sports team is worth compared to having money for public services, or at least how much they need to offer to outbid other prospective host cities, if any, in this timeline it’s more about what the next guy down the road has established as the going rate. It’s impossible to say, for example, how the Chicago Bears owners’ perpetual game of footsie with both Chicago and every suburb within driving distance will turn out, or if Kansas City Royals owner John Sherman will replicate the Chiefs’ tax windfall — but when owners can point to previous deals and argue that giving 99 years of free rent or all future sales tax increases from a 300-square-mile area is just the cost of doing business, it makes it easier for state, county, and city officials to say “sure, I guess, do we at least get a luxury box?”
And on that note, let’s wrap up the final news from 2025, and the early returns from 2026:
- Kansas state senate president Ty Masterson said the “worst case scenario” for a Chiefs stadium is “nobody buys the bonds, the bonds don’t get sold, the project doesn’t happen,” but it seems far more likely that if nobody is interested in buying the bonds, the state would make its sales tax increment district even bigger than 300 square miles, which seems like it would be considerably worse. Or the state could have to sell bonds at an interest rate of as high as 8.5% to lure bond buyers, which would definitely be worse. Let only your imagination be your limit, Ty!
- Count newly elected Kansas City, Kansas mayor Christal Watson, who is also CEO of Wyandotte County (counties got CEOs?), among those eager to look the Chiefs stadium deal in the mouth: “If the numbers aren’t there for us to maintain the services that are needed for the community, then we’ve got to reevaluate and renegotiate,” said Watson this week. It ain’t over until it’s over!
- Meanwhile, Kansas speaker of the house Dan Hawkins says with the clock turning over to 2026, “time’s up” for the Royals to use STAR bonds that were approved last year. Though technically the legislature can still change its mind and approve new bonds until the end of June — if it can find some bits of eastern Kansas that aren’t already part of the Chiefs stadium tax district — this seems like a good opportunity for Missouri officials to recognize that they’re the only bidder for the Royals and drive a hard bargain, though vowing to do an end run around voters doesn’t seem like a great start.
- The Minnesota Timberwolves owners are still dreaming of a new arena that will feature augmented reality, and Wild owner Craig Leipold wants to make sure he’s in line for arena upgrades too, because “in order to survive in the NHL” you “need to be in a really good building,” and his building is a whole 25 years old and the team is only turning $68 million a year in profits, this is clearly St. Paul’s problem to fix.
- San Antonio mayor Gina Ortiz Jones says she’s not done trying to renegotiate that Spurs deal, on the grounds that “non-binding means non-binding.” She likely needs a majority of the city council to back her up there — San Antonio has a weak-mayor form of government — but props to her for knowing how to read a dictionary.
- The New England Revolution owners reached an agreement this week to pay Boston $48 million over 15 years to compensate for traffic and transit problems caused by a planned new stadium in Everett, as well as $90 million over 20 years in parks and transit upgrades in Everett. With team owners the Kraft family covering the $500 million stadium construction cost, I’m tempted to say this is actually a pretty fair deal and a sign that at least some local politicians can still drive a hard bargain, though it’s equally like that this is mostly a sign that nobody in the U.S. cares as much about MLS as about the other football.
- Wahconah Park in Pittsfield, Massachusetts is set to be torn down and replaced next year, which will come as a sad note to anyone who read Foul Ball, Jim Bouton’s book on how he helped temporarily save the old ballpark 20 years ago.
- There’s another interview with me up about the Chiefs deal, which you can listen to here — there doesn’t appear to be a way to link to particular timestamps in a YouTube short, but enjoy the whole thing anyway, it may be the last thing on the platform that’s not AI-generated!
Yes all counties (except a handful in states where they’ve been rendered ceremonial) have CEOs – most just don’t call them that. County Judge is a common, if antiquated term, even in places where they perform no judicial function. Some give the title literally as CEO or County Executive (Kansas looks to have a mix of top county officers being called Chairman of the Board of Commissioners and CEO, as is the case in Wyandotte which has a unified government with KCK, hence the duel title.) Some call the position Mayor of _____ County which is probably the best description for a voter to understand what the function of the job is although it can confuse people as to why they have two mayors if they live in an incorporated city within a county (i.e. Knoxville, TN and Knox County, TN.)
My county in PA has three commissioners (and the number of thine counting shall be three, etc). No one is in charge, but usually two (the ones in the same party) will agree.
Reed, that sounds similar to Indiana where most counties are run by county commissioners (executive branch; 3 in my county) and the purse strings are dictated by a county council (legislative branch). IMO one county executive is a better structure.
The more Neil writes about them, the worse the subsidies get. Correlation, causation, or coincidence?
Decline in pirates:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Pirate_Global_Warming_Graph.gif
The last 17 pirates bought sports teams with their booty. Better cash flow and less work.
Can you explain how you got to the $1.3B for the Spurs? $1.3 is the total cost of the arena, and the direct public subsidy (City + County) is $800M, with the Spurs kicking in $500M. The $800M doesn’t include land or infrastructure, so th public subsidy could well reach $1.3B, but there are no hard numbers on that yet.
i’m definitely not a fan of the deal, but want to understand the facts you’re citing.
If you click on the “$1.3 billion” link, it’s all explained there.
Okay, the MLS New England Revolution are building a new soccer stadium. The NWSL Boston Legacy should play in the same stadium, instead of getting public money to build another stadium, right? There are easily enough available dates to accommodate both teams.
You’d think, right?
The problem is having the Krafts as your landlord, which is not optimal.
The slightly longer answer is that non-cooperation is a hallmark of American soccer and has been since the 1920s.
And if the public spigot has apparently been stuck open with no plumber in sight, teams are going to try to put their buckets under there. Denver’s thing is silly, too, but having Stan Kroenke as your landlord is probably not desirable, either.
Revenue capture and retention is a key to making a soccer-specific stadium work, and that goes back to whatever it’s called in Carson, California now.
All true, KT, and on point.
However, the revenue capture angle only exists as a key financial metric because the capturer of that revenue does not have to pay for the facility that generates it.
As many, many people have pointed out, if the team owner had to pay for the facility, that facility would only include the features that legitimately earn them more revenue and, at that, only enough additional revenue to more than pay for the feature itself.
At that point what the europeans call groundshare would become much more common and financially prudent. Doing so only ‘doesn’t make sense’ because the facilities are either heavily subsidized by taxpayers or even completely free.
It’s a madhouse, as Charlton Heston once said…
You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!
“Dignity Health Sports Park”, the Galaxy’s stadium in Carson, is a good example of a soccer stadium that has been used by many teams in addition to the primary tenant.
But, as you noted, there’s little incentive for primary tenants elsewhere to maximize the use of their building if they paid little or none of the cost of construction.
I’m paying taxes to AZSTA for State Farm Stadium and the #$%^& Bidwells and their doormat football team won’t allow the state football championship to be played in “their” stadium. Dealing with jerks like Bidwell, whether you’re the state, city or a tenant is a pain in the backside. The cities that lose their bloodsucking professional sports teams are the winners.
Here in Indiana, the high school football championship games are held in Lucas Oil Stadium, which the Colts control. I recall reading a comment by the IHSAA (high school sports organization) about perhaps moving the games due to cost pressures (presumably the rent). The next thing you know, the Colts are the sponsor for the championship games. I don’t think it take a genius to figure out what happened – the Colts waived their portion of any rent in exchange for looking like good guys by sponsoring the games. Or at least that’s my guess.