As expected, the Indiana state senate gave overwhelming (45-4) final approval to a Chicago Bears stadium subsidy package yesterday, and Gov. Mike Braun signed it into law less than an hour later. This is still a very preliminary plan — we don’t know, among other things, how big a stadium tax diversion district would be, which could go a long way toward determining if Bears owner George McCaskey would receive $400 million or $1 billion or $4 billion or what in taxpayer money. With the state government having signed off, though, that decision will now be left up to an unelected state sports authority and the city of Hammond, and neither of those is likely to have the best interests of Indiana taxpayers as a whole in mind. (Not that state legislators were necessarily thinking about that either, but at least they’re supposed to, if I’m reading the representative democracy FAQs correctly.)
At the same time, an Illinois house committee responded to events across the state border by moving forward a “megaproject” bill that Bears execs have said they require for any new stadium in Arlington Heights. The bill would allow localities to exempt any project costing over $500 million from local property taxes and instead allow it to pay a lower payment in lieu of taxes rate that developers would negotiate with the local government; for projects worth over $2 billion, like the Bears stadium, the negotiated tax rate would be allowed to be as low as zero. Property tax guru Geoff Propheter estimates the value to the Bears from this measure would be about $67 million a year, which would amount to just over $1 billion in present value. (CORRECTION: Propheter emails to say the $67 million a year was already translated into present value, so this could actually be a $2 billion tax break.)
If the bill succeeds — Chicago-area legislators are trying to block it, as they would, since there’s nothing in it for their constituents — it could also, notes Jon Styf at The Center Square, lead to data centers or battery farms demanding similar tax breaks. And because the value of those projects would count toward the local tax base without paying their usual share of local taxes, other property tax owners would end up getting soaked to cover the difference — something that should put in a slightly different light Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s comments yesterday that Indiana is setting itself up for “massive increases in taxes” while Illinois is having “really positive discussions” with the Bears.
This is going to be a difficult choice for Bears execs, given that there are lots of unknowns with both states’ offers — Illinois has also still yet to decide on how much in infrastructure money to provide to an Arlington Heights Bears project — plus the question of where the Bears owners actually think it would make more sense to play in terms of selling tickets. Fortunately for McCaskey, there’s no deadline to make a decision, so he can sit back and hope the bidding war continues to escalate. For a team owner whose options only a few months ago were a rock and a hard place, to be fielding multiple billion-dollar-plus offers is a pretty impressive an accomplishment, guess leverage really does work!
And this week in the rest of the sports extortion world:
- Members of the Tampa Sports Authority have some questions about a proposed Rays stadium, namely how the authority will staff a stadium if Gov. Ron DeSantis goes ahead with slashing the property taxes that fund its budget, where the city of Tampa and Hillsborough County would come up with about $1 billion worth of stadium funding when the county has $1.5 billion in unmet transportation needs, and whether the planned Rays complex would include any much-needed affordable housing. Replies hazy, ask again later!
- Meanwhile, Rays officials are planning public visioning sessions for their proposed Tampa stadium project, stock up on post-it notes!
- The Franklin County Convention Facilities Authority has asked for $100 million in state unclaimed funds money to help pay for a $400 million Columbus Blue Jackets arena upgrade, joining the Cleveland Browns, Cleveland Guardians, Cleveland Cavaliers, and Cincinnati Bengals as teams lining up to tap that state slush fund, it’s like you can’t even put out a sign reading “FREE MONIEZ!!!” anymore without billionaires lining up to take it.
- Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser told a local business and real estate conference, “We won a World Series, Stanley Cup, hosted an All Star game for MLB and MLS. We’re going to have the NFL Draft. And we will have the Super Bowl, so I think that qualifies as the sports capital.” The result was “a big ovation,” according to WTOP, though whether this is because business leaders don’t understand how sports works or will cheer anything that results in one of their number pocketing a $7 billion check is left as an exercise for the reader.
- Los Angeles Angels owner Arte Moreno determined that his team’s fans don’t care about winning by issuing a survey that didn’t including “winning” among the categories fans could pick as a priority, that’s one way to justify only signing players who are clinically dead.
- Speaking of Jon Styf, he and I had a long talk about the proposed Bears subsidies this week in which I concluded, after seeing NFL owners’ standard stadium subsidy demands climb from $1 billion to $2-6 billion in the course of just a year, “It makes me wonder why teams don’t just ask for $10 billion or $1 trillion. Clearly it’s not like there’s any point at which legislators will start saying ‘No.’” Apologies in advance for giving them ideas.
The Sun-Times piece says that even Buckner, perhaps the biggest Bears booster in Springfield, wants the Bears to pay a ~$500 million breakup fee with Chicago. I presume that will factor into McCaskey’s thinking.
Unless the Bears want competition from Soldier Field for concerts, they will need to buy Soldier Field for what you stated, demolish the flying saucer and place amateur athletic fields between the historic colonades.
The megabill will need to be amended to only include such things as amusement parks, educational facilities, sports stadiums, conference centers etc. The data center craze is a multi trillion bubble, and giving data centers any more encouragement will be an even bigger field of schemes. If the Bears pay billions from private investors for the entire project, and state money is limited to upgrading the Metra station and exit ramps, and a Bronco Ride style service is operated by Pace, Arlington Heights is acceptable. Publicly funded stadiums like State Farm Stadium don’t pay taxes, and drain taxes from public uses. The bill also needs to be written so the Bears can’t extort Arlington Heights the way the Cardinals extort Glendale for more and more parking. Wasting valuable land with an ocean of parking is unacceptable, as is the traffic cutting through residential neighborhoods in every direction. Illinois hands out TIFs like candy, and the suburban school districts are overloaded with administrative bloat need to go on a diet.
I don’t think Moreno is that far off the mark here. I think fans say they care a lot about winning, but their definition of “winning” is somewhat nebulous. The Angels are basically locked in to 30,000 fans per game because it’s fun to go to a baseball game and sit outside in nice weather. Winning a pennant or World Series would probably increase that- but with your floor kind of set it doesn’t make a lot of sense to spend what’s required to make it that far.
I’m sure angels fans would love to win more games but does winning 10-15 more games per year dramatically increase interest in the team? Probably not, nor does winning 70 or so games per year lose you so many fans it affects the club’s bottom line.
Really? People are now going to justify Arte’s reasoning? I have been going to Angel games since my father took in 1967. I am not a Dodger fan. Thank you Neil for pointing out the ridiculous Arte comment and how winning was not an option in the survey.
Arte finally said out loud what Angels already knew. Plus: his comment about affordability is weak. The guy is sitting on a gold mine. Thru his lease, he controls acres of developable land surrounding the stadium. A few years ago he had a sweetheart deal to buy the city owned stadium and parking lot; but the price of was so far below market that the FBI got involved. The mayor is now in prison because he lied about the deal where he negotiated the low price in exchange for a $1 million campaign donation. The deal got stalled and blew up because Arte was too cheap to satisfy the state law requirement for AFFORDABLE housing in gov’t land sales. Now Arte magically cares about affordability?
Normally fan surveys are done to determine how the team/owner can better serve the fan base.
In this case, it seems Moreno is doing the reverse… attempting to find out how little he can spend without alienating the relatively modest number of potential Halos fans he hasn’t already shown the door.
I don’t quite understand how he gets to “don’t care about winning”.
This organization hasn’t won more than 80 games in a season since 2015. Six times in that run they have finished 4th in the AL west and twice they finished last.
When the Angels weren’t being run like an “America’s dumbest executive” contest, fans showed up. Post 2002 WS, attendance jumped from the 2m avg into the 3-3.5m range and stayed there until 2019. It is certainly true that the team has lost 500-700k in annual attendance since then, but I don’t see how that is the fans fault – look at the garbage product Moreno is fielding.
When they were fielding teams capable of winning 90+ games they tended to draw 3.2-3.5m fans. Now mired in a decade of 70x (and sometimes 60x) win seasons, they are drawing under 2.5m. That sure looks like $40-60m in lost ticket and concession revenues to me.
But hey, if Moreno doesn’t care about $50m in lost revenue, we should all keep that in mind next time he claims he ‘needs’ publicly funded upgrades to keep him in a game he has had no interest in competing in for a decade or two.
Upgrades is already an issue. His sweetheart (low rent) lease requires the Angels to maintain the stadium. Its so contentious that Anaheim hired a firm to assess the required repairs needed, etc. Unfortunately, the report keeps getting delayed (its been months/years in the process).
Also, Anaheim is not difficult to deal with. The Ducks obtained permits to redevelop their parking lots. Their new mixed use development (OC Vibe) is scheduled to be completed before the 2028 Olympics (Honda Center will host volleyball). The Ducks arena is across the street (or one block away) from Anaheim Stadium.