The Indiana state house ways and means committee approved a bill for a Chicago Bears stadium this morning after what was surely minutes of discussion, and while it still needs approval from the full house — and the latest changes from the full senate — it reportedly now has somewhat more detail than the “form a sports authority and figure it out later” bill previously passed by the senate:
- The site of a new stadium would be in Hammond, not Gary or Portage. Sorry, guy who thought he could build an entire $5 billion stadium with “non-football revenue”!
- According to NWI.com, “Senate Bill 27 also now details on how a Hammond stadium would be financed, including tax revenues from a special stadium district in Hammond, a 12% ticket tax on all stadium events, potential countywide 1% food and beverage taxes in Lake and Porter counties, doubling Lake County’s innkeeper’s tax, and a variety of other funding mechanisms.” That’s different from the SB27 approved by the senate last month, which only said that a sports authority could use “proceeds of local excise taxes” and “applicable proceeds of food and beverage tax and innkeepers tax.”
- There’s no total price tag provided for all those taxes, though Indiana speaker of the house Todd Huston reportedly says it would be “similar to Lucas Oil Stadium,” which received $620 million in public money toward its $720 million construction cost.
Bears management has responded with a statement that this represents “the most meaningful step forward in our stadium planning efforts to date” and they “look forward to continuing to build our working relationship” with Indiana. We’ll see if that’s enough of a commitment for house members approve the bill at a final vote a week from tomorrow, as they’ve previously demanded “sign off” from the Bears before okaying the money, so as not to be used as mere leverage against Illinois.
As all the articles say, this is a developing story, so I’ll be updating later today if anything else happens, including over at the Illinois legislature where a hearing is being held today on allowing property tax breaks for a potential Bears stadium in Arlington Heights. Much still to be determined, but if Bears CEO Kevin Warren wants at least the appearance of a bidding war, he seems to have got one.
UPDATE 10:50 am ET: The Illinois committee hearing scheduled for this morning was canceled before the Indiana house committee even met (thanks, commenter Sam Smith!), so one half of the erstwhile bidding war will have to wait a bit, at least.
UPDATE 2:20 pm ET: A Bears spokesperson has released a statement: “Hammond is the site we are focused on. Work to be done.” That is somewhat short of a commitment, but maybe it’ll be enough for Indiana legislators to start making out a wedding registry.
UPDATE 6:02 pm ET: “Indiana House Speaker Todd Huston said the state’s proposed package involves about $1 billion in public funding” — nope, no source on that or methodology about what that includes, the Indiana Capital Chronicle didn’t even have time to put a period at the end of the sentence, this is that fast-breaking a story!
Illinois canceled all hearings related to the Bears stadium.
https://x.com/BenSzalinski/status/2024497058225234166?s=20
I’d be happier if they had cancelled all present and future discussions about a Bears stadium, but I’ll take this as a start.
I’m a Bears fan who lives in central Illinois 110 miles south of Chicago. Illinois is so broke financially. Take the billion plus the Bears wanted and spend it on schools, roads, attracting jobs, etc. the Bears just announced ANOTHER increase in ticket prices which you knew was coming after a good season. I can’t afford to go to a game. So, if Indiana is dumb enough to saddle the people with that bill, enjoy! Go play in HELL Illinois has bigger issues to worry about rather than the Bears.
It’s not like Indiana ever cares about schools, roads, or attracting jobs anyway. We are that dumb a state.
Ironically, Hammond, Indiana used to have an NFL team which played its games in Chicago.
Circle of life. Or snake eating it’s own tail. Take your pick.
Bring back the Pros!
That’s coincidence or coincidence with a twist, but it surely is not irony.
How many taxed hotel rooms does it take to build an NFL stadium? Because I don’t think Lake County has enough of them.
The brilliance of this for Illinois is that most people traveling to the game will still stay in Chicago.
They will fly in and out of Chicago too- bonus!
So, they are going to increase taxes on hotels/motels and dining establishments until they all go out of business AND impose a 12% ticket tax on events in the stadium?
I mean the first one the Bears will be fine with, but the second? Gonna need an exemption there….
It seems to me a 12% ticket tax on a stadium like this is going to struggle to raise more than maybe $10-12m from football tickets. And maybe significantly less than that.
How many other events will there be (that attract ticket buying spectators)?
A monster truck show or two. An annual wrestling event. Maybe a College football game/minor bowl game.
Oh! Wait! An expansion UFL team…. now yer talkin’….
$40-50m a year in (probably business destroying in many cases) extra taxes won’t pay for a $1bn stadium development, let alone a $5bn one.
For many of those non-football events they hope to attract they’ll be bidding against Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. So not really bringing in new revenue to the state.
And most of the jobs they’re bringing in are event based jobs that don’t pay that great.
How do I know? I work as event staff at some Lucas Oil Stadium events sometimes. Having events in Chicagoland is going to cannibalize the state as two domed venues will have to fight for interests and the bigger events will want to be closer to Chicago even if there’s zero good hotels within a half hour drive. Most concerts skip Indianapolis anyway and the Big Ten Championship game will want to alternate between Hammond and Indianapolis if possible.
Big 10 championship game might not exist for much longer- but if it is, there are rumblings they’re gonna move it to Vegas or Pasadena
Indiana finally won it, and the Big Ten is gonna kill the whole thing out of spite.
Soldier Field isn’t just going to disappear if the Bears have a stadium in Hammond. Unless something really needs a dome, they’ll just go to Soldier Field. There’s nothing wrong with it.
City of Chicago can do some minor renovations making Soldier Field a better concert and soccer facility. Chicago would be great for team USA friendlies/qualifiers
Fairly certain the White Sox would love to move to the Soldier Field site. Having lost its landmark designation, total demolition is a possibility.
There’s still the issue of funding, though.
By the time the stadium is built, Bears tickets will be about $200 per game. So that’s about $1.7 million per game, so $17 million in the first year. Then add in luxury boxes on top of that.
Then add to that, NFL player payrolls are about $300 million and rising by 10% a year. So let’s say between the players, coaches, and front office, they are at $400 million by the time they make the move, so at Indiana’s income tax rate, that’s another $12 millionish.
So those 2 alone, you’re talking almost $30 million in the first year. Increasing by 10% per year. Depending on the rate you use, the present values of those two streams range from $2-2.7 billion.
Now, what I find interesting is that the ask from Illinois is like $850 million for infrastructure, while the Bears pay for the stadium and surrounding development, and it seems like Indiana is offering to pay a whole lot more.
1. I doubt the average ticket price will be $200. Certainly many tickets will be above that, but there will also be thousands that are well below that. I used $125 as an avg.
2. Where have they stated that ‘all income taxes related to/generate by the team” will be diverted to the stadium?
If they have said that, I haven’t seen it.
3. As I believe we have discussed before, you are assuming that all income earned as part of the team payroll will be taxable (and state taxable at that). Most professional athletes employ tax advisors and accountants to help them shelter a significant portion of their income. The same will be true for executives.
The likelihood that players and execs will ‘voluntarily’ eschew tax shelters so they can pay their full share might seem hopeful. They will not do that. So let’s say they shelter, on average, half their income from state taxes. That pushes the number up to $20m annually… and means that all the other things that resident’s taxes are used to pay have to be paid for by something other than the hundred + team employees taxes because their payments are going to the stadium/district. Income taxes are not profit.
Add in maybe another $20-30 from all other sources (as i did) and we still aren’t close to making payments on a multi-billion dollar stadium ($50m would cover interest/construction mortgage on maybe $750m, depending on how favourable the interest rate is).
Indiana is free to ‘lose’ money on the Bears if they wish. But they should not be trying to promote this as any kind of ‘win’ for taxpayers.
A 10% annual growth rate in ticket prices would be a LOT. An even then, $30m a year increasing by 10% a year comes to $1.5b-$1.8b in present value (5-6% discount rate), not $2B-$2.7B.
Also, not all of the player payroll is new money — some share of it comes from spending by Indiana residents, so you need to discount that.
They have been increasing by more than 10% the past couple of years. They were already at $130 per ticket in 2023 https://www.statista.com/statistics/197961/nfl-average-ticket-price-for-chicago-bears-games-since-2006/?srsltid=AfmBOooKmX5T2eH902_9vv4DVKcK9NRLDnFbo4QVCYOHez8K-2CGEy_G
Factor in a new stadium bump and $200 is not hard to see 3-4 years from now.
We’d have to see how much Indiana is planning to cover.
Also I am curious about the infrastructure costs. Both the Arlington Heights and Hammond Indiana sites are right off the highway. So you’d be talking about exit ramps and widening a couple of streets. What else is needed?
The player’s payroll is currently taxed in Chicago would now be taxed in Indiana. The $2-2.7 billion present value figure I used 4% discount rate. If we used your rate and go with $1.5B its still more than the $1B Indiana is talking about spending.
Now we disagree with the $30 million figure, but I only included 2 revenue streams.
Now, when you have teams moving from one part of a metro area to another, you will most likely will have all the economic activity moving with it. You’re talking about the Bears moving 20 minutes from their current spot. So you’re not going to have the so-called substitution effect of people taking their Bears spending and instead going out to dinner and movies. So, it’s straight up moving from downtown to Hammond. So if it’s not $30 million in taxes, what number do you think it is?
You will absolutely still get a substitution effect — see the Chiefs moving to Kansas for a comparable. It’s small than if the team were moving to a whole new metro area, but it’s not zero.
I don’t think we have anywhere close to enough information to calculate the total net cost to Indiana. But we also don’t have any idea how much the gross cost will be (Huston says $1B, but that’s presumably not counting forgone property taxes), so really, there’s no point in trying to guess right now.
In any move (in city, across the river, into an adjacent municipal zone) you are going to see a certain percentage of people not following the team there. Whether they ‘quit’ because they are mad or the trip is just too far/traffic too bad, or they just can’t afford the tickets in a new stadium anywhere, there will be a change in the fanbase.
When the Pistons moved to Auburn Hills, their fan base changed a lot. Not sure about the Jets leaving Shea, but it would surprise me if a significant portion of their Flushing fans didn’t make the move with them on game days.
If the Bears move to either AH or NW Indiana, not all their fans will move with them. I question whether the locals in NW Indiana have the same spending power that Bears fans who currently trek to Soldier field do. I don’t think that would be an issue necessarily in Arlington Heights, but there are still some for whom the extra commute makes it not worthwhile (and some on the north end for whom getting their will be quicker and easier).
It made sense for the Athletics to try to get closer to the wealthy fanbase in San Jose. It made sense for the 49ers to build in Santa Clara.
The Bears in Indiana really doesn’t make any financial sense to me. Other than ‘free stadium’, it is a marketing dept step down in every way.
You’re talking literally 18 minutes from the current location to the new one. If any fans stop going to Bears games as a result its more likely to be because of the cost going up (new stadiums always raise ticket prices) then being angry over the move. I sincerely doubt many fans are going to be upset over an extra 18 minutes (thats assuming those fans even pass Soldier Field on their way to the new stadium for some it won’t even be that).
As far as forgone property taxes go, the site right now doesn’t seem to be generating any so your cost there is $0.
“As far as forgone property taxes go, the site right now doesn’t seem to be generating any so your cost there is $0.”
Let me know how it goes when you tell the IRS that you shouldn’t have to pay income taxes because if you quit your job you wouldn’t pay any.
Full Disclosure: I literally do property tax policy for a living, and I have rejected every request for property tax subsidies except 1 over the course of the last 8 years. The one I pushed through was a discount for rental housing because we have a housing affordability crisis in the area where I work, and no purpose-built rental housing was getting built.
However, that being said, when making the decision, we have to consider what the revenues would be if the thing didn’t get built. So something that generates zero revenue now, and there are no other possibilities for revenue than, yeah I am playing with house money to charge lower or no taxes.
Wish I could post an attachment, but to summarize: 2026 Bears tix are over $200/game for anything in the 100/200/300 except 300 end zone. Club seats are $300-600/game. 400 level $115-$165/game. Average is already way over $200. That’s for STH, single game tix are always higher.
Chicago has a 9% amusement ticket tax, so 12% is kinda comparable.
Right now (ok yesterday) on Ticketbastard, the cheapest ticket for the Bucs visit next fall (date tbd) is over $300. I really doubt they will get that, but hey, when your job is to suck the maximum amount of blood out of every single fan who even thinks about walking through the door….
Any engineering firm or construction company involved with the construction of a Bears stadium in Indiana will never again do business in the city of Chicago. Any project they are associated with would face endless hassles from building inspectors, permit delays and general hassles… forget about any zoning changes or local financing.
Why? If I’m Chicago business leaders, politicians I’m psyched the hicks down south are paying for this.
Chicago Politicians want to control of the jobs, contracts, and tax revenue associated with the new stadium… if it’s built in Indiana, they won’t get it. Thus those involved in defying them will be punished to the maximum extent possible
There’s very little tax revenue made at these stadiums.
Chicago politicians get to avoid doing something super unpopular. This is a big win for incumbents.
There is an enormous amount of tax revenue associated with a new stadium. Bonds backed by tax revenue are used to do finance the stadium. Packaging and selling such buns is quite a lucrative endeavor.
Empirical evidence shows that this is not the case: Cities and states that gain new stadiums, even for teams relocating from elsewhere, show no measurable bump in sales tax receipts or other economic indicators.
Is there some impact? Almost surely, yes. But given that a football stadium is only in operation 10 or so days a year (maybe 20 if it’s super-successful hosting concerts and such) and only a few hours of those days, it’s fighting an uphill battle and having more tax impact than pretty much anything else you could do with that land other than building a cemetery.
It’s much closer to Soldier Field than Arlington Heights is. Plus, you literally get all the intangible benefits of having an NFL team with none of the costs. Sounds like a win-win.
For Chicago, absolutely. And if I were a Chicago city taxpayer, or an Illinois state taxpayer in general, I would feel very good about the Bears leaving.
But I can see how the ‘city’ would still feel aggrieved and take any spiteful action they think possible.
Maybe, but plenty of the stadium jobs will be filled by Illinois residents. There’s always been a lot of cross border work in that area. Just look at the traffic on interstate 80/94.
Are Indiana politicians expecting major development around the stadium? Might want to visit East Rutherford or Landover to see what to expect.
Seems Bears might drop or modify “Chicago” unlike Giants, Jets and now-Commanders who kept the mire recognized name.
Ah, Indiana – it’s okay to spend $1 billion on a football stadium but let’s ban public funding for light rail.
Yes, the politicians said the Bears mentioned $2 billion in additional investment around the Stadium. However, I doubt anyone got that in writing.
The IN legislature has no problem increasing taxes for the Bears but reduces funding to schools and cities/counties for roads, etc.
1% F&B tax adds up over time and, unlike Indianapolis, won’t hit a lot of out-of-town visitors in Lake and Porter counties. The locals don’t yet realize this.
I can’t stand driving across Lake and Porter counties on 80 94. Forget stopping at a Dennys or whatever else qualifies as a gourmet restaurant in Northwest Indiana.
You’re much better off stopping at Culver’s or even White Castle.
As a Chicago taxpayer I support the Hammond bid strongly.
BYW – before being hired as coach of the then Decatur Staleys in 1920, George Halas was in 1919 an end for then Hammond All-Stars. As the Hammond Pros they would be a charter member of the APFA (now NFL).
In an early stadium scam, Hammond did not have a stadium in Hammond but was a traveling team and played most of their “home” in Wrigley Field
Hammond is playing the long game here. 19-dimensional chess.
…. and our beloved “Pros” set a record that can never be broken:
They once went an entire season without scoring a point (six games… in 1922 IIRC. I looked this up a few years ago for another NFL related reason).
Insert your own Bears offense joke (here).
I looked up the season and they managed a tie so they did not finish last.