One of the standards of the sports subsidy playbook has been the grift that keeps on giving: Once a team owner gets a new stadium or arena at public expense, their next step is to go back and ask for more money to renovate it once the new car smell is gone. And one big decision is how long is the right amount of time to wait before going back to the taxpayer trough?
One option is to wait until your lease is about to expire, and demand upgrades in order to stick around longer. (The unstated threat is that the team would leave if the subsidies aren’t approved, but it’s far more common that team owners just sign short-term extensions while continuing to negotiate for stadium cash, especially since for many of them the only other option would be to go play in the street.) That’s the approach taken by Tampa Bay Buccaneers owners the Glazer family, who opened Raymond James Stadium 28 years ago at public expense, and now are seeking unspecified city and county money in exchange for extending their lease another five years:
“I can confirm that we met recently with the Tampa Sports Authority, Hillsborough County, and the City of Tampa to discuss developing a long-term plan that supports the stadium’s ability to continue hosting major events which contribute to the success of our region,” Bucs chief operating officer Brian Ford said in a statement to the Tampa Bay Times. “As Raymond James Stadium enters its 29th year, our goal is to ensure it remains a competitive premier sports and entertainment venue for the Tampa Bay community well into the future.”
Ford didn’t say what the Bucs stadium needs to be “competitive” with, though it’s possible that a new Rays stadium in Tampa could compete for hosting concerts, maybe. (The football stadium currently has 11 concerts scheduled for the rest of 2026, including three by BTS and two by Bruno Mars.) Spending tax money to upgrade Tampa’s football stadium so it can compete with a new Tampa baseball stadium built with tax money may seem like an odd way to run a railroad, but this is where we are.
Or maybe you’re Jerry Jones, who opened the publicly funded AT&T Stadium just 17 years ago, and you don’t want to wait a whole 30 years until your lease is expiring. Well, good news, everyone, there’s no rule against just asking for renovation money now:
Arlington’s city council could soon be asking its residents to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade AT&T Stadium for the Dallas Cowboys.
The agenda for next week’s city council meeting includes a proposal to contribute what will be $273 million in upgrades to the stadium.
The Cowboys’ portion will be $750 million.
A $1.023 billion renovation would be more than half again as much as the $650 million it cost to build the stadium in the first place, half of which was approved as public money by Arlington voters. The city’s next $273 million would come from the same taxes as last time, but no public vote would be required, as the last vote allowed city officials to extend the tax surcharges established then into perpetuity and keep on giving the proceeds to Jones. (No explanation has been provided how this will work when the Cowboys’ car rental tax surcharge is already being used to pay off Arlington’s new Texas Rangers stadium.)
One way to evaluate taxpayer-funded stadium renovations is by how many years of lease extension the city would get in exchange — the record for least bang for your buck there is the $43.3 million per year of new lease that the Carolina Panthers got in 2024. The Cowboys would be extending their lease from 2039 to 2055, so a $273 million expense would come to only $17 million per year of lease extension; for a five-year Bucs lease extension, as noted here in February, it would only take about $220 million in Tampa spending to break the record. Does that make Arlington’s plan to upgrade a stadium that was considered so state-of-the-art just 17 years ago that it set off a wave of other NFL teams demanding new or upgraded stadiums less bad by comparison? Discuss.
$650 million was the original estimated cost for the Cowboys Stadium. Arlington contributed $325 million. The cost wound up being over $1 billion but the Cowboys had to cover that. The estimates on what Arlington makes off the Cowboys Stadium vary because we can’t say how many people who stay at Arlington hotels would be staying there if not for events at the stadium. I know people would say “substitution effect” all day long but if the Cowboys had built their stadium a few miles east or west you could reasonably assume that all the stadium related activity would be there instead of in Arlington.