You probably noticed, but it’s Friday! Which brings us, with no further ado, to the rest of the week’s news:
- MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has said that he’s “hopeful” that a Tampa Bay Rays stadium in Tampa will win final approval, given that “we think the polling runs about 60-40 in favor of the stadium.” Actual polling shows that residents would like a new stadium in the abstract by a 58-29% margin, but oppose the Rays’ funding scheme by 59-34%; congrats to Manfred, I guess, on figuring out how to dispense with the actual asking-people-questions business and pioneer vibe polling.
- Meanwhile, the Tampa Sports Authority has issued a letter saying the Buccaneers should get first dibs over the Rays on any available public stadium money, which isn’t going to make any easier the already difficult road to approval of the couple billion dollars in stadium subsidies Rays owner Patrick Zalupski is seeking from the city, county, and state.
- People in Wyandotte County is worried that the state of Kansas may try to bigfoot it into expanding its STAR district to redirect more county sales taxes to a Chiefs stadium; in other news, Wyandotte County included a poison pill in the STAR district legislation that if the state tries to expand it, the county automatically rescinds it. It looks like at the very least the county would have to go back and revote on a larger tax district, at which point hopefully residents would re-up their concerns like whether siphoning off more county sales taxes could force the county to, say, raise property taxes to make up for any resulting budget gap.
- The province of Quebec is already spending $870 million (Canadian) to put a new roof on Montreal’s Olympic Stadium because it’s too big to tear down, but MLS commissioner Don Garber wants even more public money to make it a “best-in-class experience” for CF Montréal. The MLS team mostly doesn’t play at the Big O — it occupies the 18-year-old open-air Stade Saputo for all but big matches like the home opener and playoff games — but may need to more once MLS switches to a fall-to-spring schedule next year, plus Garber says the smaller stadium is “an MLS 1.0 stadium” and the team needs “an MLS 3.0 stadium.” Why any of this is Quebec’s problem to solve, Garber didn’t say, beyond insisting that CF Montréal’s owners are committed to staying in town but need to “have a best-in-class facility to be able to drive revenue,” hint hint.
- Records obtained by Crain’s Chicago Business show that Bears attorneys called or met six times with their city counterparts in April, even as team officials insisted that remaining in Chicago was off the table by then. The team says these calls were all about their current lease at Soldier Field; a city source told Crain’s their lawyers wouldn’t have taken six calls on that. This all matters because Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson is still holding out hope for keeping the Bears in Chicago while team execs insist they won’t consider it — if nothing else, it’s going to make for an even more complicated decision by team owner George McCaskey in coming weeks about whether to pull the trigger on a move to Indiana or keep pushing for public funding for a stadium somewhere in Illinois.
- The start of the men’s World Cup is only a week away, and already fans are excited to maybe have to cross a picket line if they want to go to games or at least dodge flaming naked mannequins and certainly not be allowed to bring in water bottles during the peak of North American summer! It’s not great! At least a member of the L.A. Host Committee has described the deal U.S. cities got from FIFA as a “very tough, one-sided agreement,” and … oh, he means one-sided that way. Welp.
- “Portland’s own study said the Moda Center needed $500M in repairs — so why are the Trail Blazers asking for more?” asks the Oregonian, and the answer appears to be that the $500 million figure was just to “maintain the building in its current configuration in good working order,” while $600 million is to conduct a “transformative renovation” that can “support the power, technology, and production demands of tomorrow’s largest concerts and events.” In exchange for which, Blazers owner Tom Dundon has agreed to extend his lease on the newly transformed arena by … oh, he hasn’t said how long, or agreed to a new lease yet at all? Welp.
- And if even after all those bullet points you still want more stadium content for your weekend, I was interviewed this week by Heartland Labor Forum’s podcast about the Kansas City Royals stadium plans, check it out here.
I noticed the land where Hawthorn Race Course sits is for sale. Since tearing down tracks is popular with NFL teams, I wonder if the Bears might want to get in on that too. It’s far closer than Arlington or Hammond. Although it’s in Stickney, that’s practically Chicago. And like Hammond, it has a refinery nearby.
Google maps shows there is not a lot of land around the Hawthorne track like there is around the Arlington Heights track: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Hawthorne+Race+Course+%26+Fanatics+Sportsbook/@41.8280899,-87.7519657,1120m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x880e33daef3ce2f1:0x4c8a604072aa245b!8m2!3d41.8286336!4d-87.7511181!16zL20vMDh0Y21s?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDYwMS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Arlington+International+Racecourse/@42.0930661,-88.0136326,1115m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x880e346619e18823:0xd0902950b29cbde0!8m2!3d42.0931855!4d-88.0101135!16zL20vMDRxc3cx?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDYwMS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D
Also, the Bears Board of Directors just voted to “advance talks with Indiana”
https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/48976141/bears-edge-closer-move-new-stadium-northwest-indiana
Welp.
The Bears are going to (but maybe not, who knows? It’s all empty threats) move to Indiana.
https://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2026/06/05/the-chicago-bears-move-forward-with-indiana-stadium/90422011007/
Yeah, I’m trying to figure out exactly what “move forward with” means. Love those Friday afternoon news dumps where they get to control the discourse all weekend before anyone can call for comment!
Praise be! I’m glad to live in the state that is finally standing up to these sports owners.
Let Indiana pay for it.
I agree with you about letting Indiana pay for the stadium, but I am not sure our politicians are really standing up for taxpayers.
Pritzker is publicly saying he wants the Bears to stay in Illinois, and is wishy-washy on how these deals are bad for taxpayers. He is also still pushing for that Peotone airport and was a big proponent for data centers before it became apparent how much voters are opposed, so he loves the idea of spending money on white elephants.
Johnson tried to get the Arlington Heights deal killed only because he is trying to spend billions on a new stadium within city limits.
Plenty of legislators voted on the funding proposal in both the House and Senate.
Fair enough.
I also didn’t like it when the stadium went from “not a priority in 2026” in the legislature to being debated on the same *last day of session* as the budget.
Still, Pritzker is threading a budgetary needle with the money the the feds cut off (while we disproportionately fund the country). I’m glad he (the legislators, actually,) on both sides of the aisle, said no.
If Indiana wants to pay $3,200,000,000 for a parking lot in the middle of a swamp that will sit empty 350 days, go ahead. Will the Bears still be able to use the name Chicago Bears if they move to Indiana? The West Valley around Glendale is growing fast, and access off the 101 is easy ( there isn’t a single toll road in Arizona, unlike the Skyway). The population of Hammond, East Chicago and Gary is less than half what it was 75 years ago. Really promising for a mega development, right?
Maybe a mildly hot take, but Canadian MLS markets, and maybe even Canadian soccer itself, could be better off in the long run by divorcing themselves from MLS altogether. Canada already has a domestic league in place, which the current MLS franchises would lend immediate credibility to, should they join. And even outside of that, there’s already a pipeline for domestic players (especially younger ones, and particularly those in the academy) to move to nice European landing spots for promising players and highly-regarded youth setups.
Professional soccer — perhaps even more so, youth soccer — in the US is oriented entirely around how much money can be made from the game. Canada can theoretically chart its own course where it can more be profitable and be about genuinely growing the game at the most basic level.
Canada has a crap Division I league.
The league had envisioned it would be double it’s size within five years of it’s inception.
It has since folded two teams and has stayed at eight clubs.
The problem is that Canada doesn’t like building sporting venues compared to the United States which will usually, but not always, write a blank check for any sports project. Vancouver and Montreal aren’t going to want to swap out MLS for a more insular league that has struggled to grow and a weaker Canadian dollar, even if the United States is… Well, the United States.
To be fair, they launched pre-COVID. But, yeah, if their football league can’t get past nine teams their futbol league is going to struggle. They couldn’t even pull off a team in Saskatoon. Good luck.
(And one of their teams – Toronto – is on its third identity since 2019. And they already have two British Columbia teams and a team in Quebec.)
There’s no way Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal can generate the type of revenue in the CanPL that they can in MLS.
It’s silly.
(The other part – that in the US, it’s all about the money – is true, but we don’t have a monopoly on that.)
They technically don’t really generate their own revenue now. MLS controls everything. The “owners” of the Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal “teams” merely own shares of MLS
Seems to me every professional sport in the US – and I include both NCAA football and basketball under that rubric – is oriented entirely around how much money can be extracted from it.
This is true.
To be fair, it’s been true for a while. It’s not more prevalent so much as more obvious now.
Looks like Don Garbage is now threatening to move *two* MLS franchises out of Canada.
The Saputo family doesn’t give a shit about Montreal. I’m surprised they weren’t the first to threaten relocation.
The whole “you don’t own your team in MLS” canard is more than 25 years out of date. (I could not respond to the actual comment because there is a limit to nesting of comments.)
YES, investor/operators own stock in MLS, LLC and share in league revenues.
But that’s not “merely” it.
Each of the 30 clubs is literally also its own company, responsible for its own P&L, and the amount of locally generated revenue that gets tithed to the collective has gradually been reduced over time.
That absolutely generate their own revenue. They absolutely pay their own bills.
It is simply not true and a gross, archaic misunderstanding of the original single entity setup that some people have never chosen to update themselves on.
Ok KT- show me an MLS team that is free to sign whatever players it wants. Somehow there’s a “cap” but MLS tells the teams what players are allowed to exceed it, and then pays for that player’s salary/bonuses.
Its a Ponzi scheme propped up by Messi. 80% of the teams are bottom feeders completely reliant on SUM and MLS revenue sharing.
It’s unfortunate that “The Big O” is too big to tear down because it was built during a really unfortunate time for stadium building. There’s a reason pretty much none of those 1970s stadiums are around anymore. They were groundbreaking stadiums in their own time that paved the way for modern domes and retractable roof stadiums but unfortunate nonetheless.