Friday news dumps may not work anymore in their original purpose of hiding bad news, but they can still be useful when someone wants to influence the social media discourse without risk of anyone in an official capacity picking up the phone until three days later. That looks to be what just happened with the Chicago Bears, whose execs announced on Friday that, in the wake of Illinois not passing tax subsidies for a stadium there, they plan to “advance our stadium development project in Hammond,” Indiana. “Advance” meaning what exactly? Sorry, our offices are closed now, please call back during business hours!
Even the NFL, though, immediately made clear that just because the Bears owners say they’re moving to Indiana doesn’t mean they’re moving to Indiana:
A league source cautioned the announcement didn’t eliminate Arlington Heights as an option, were the state to find a way to give the Bears property tax certainty on the 326-acre plot they own. In fact, the source said, there was “still a lot of ballgame left to play” for Illinois lawmakers. It’s unclear whether waiting until the Senate and House reconvene this fall would be too late for the Bears, though.
And if that’s not enough, here’s consummate NFL insider Mike Florio of NBC Sports:
Of course it’s a leverage play. If it wasn’t, a deal would already be done to build in Hammond.
Instead, the Bears keep talking to Illinois even as they supposedly focus on Indiana.
It makes sense for the Bears to try to persuade members of the media that Indiana isn’t a leverage play. (It doesn’t make sense for members of the media to swallow the hook, unless it’s a part of a broader quid pro quo for scoops and/or access.) For a leverage play to be effective, it has to be viewed as real. If it’s not viewed as real, the leverage won’t move the needle in Illinois.
Florio goes on like that for a while, talking about how a bluff only works if you don’t admit it’s a bluff, which, yes, we know.
The Indiana legislature has approved the outlines of a stadium deal that could provide billions of dollars in state subsidies, but there are lot of details left to be filled in, including: how big the omni-TIF tax diversion district within which property, sales, income and other taxes would be siphoned off for the Bears; whether a stadium would be built on a Hammond site described as being atop a “giant slag heap” or elsewhere; and whether Lake and Porter counties will vote to increase food and beverage taxes (by 1 percentage point) and hotel taxes (by 5 percentage points) to help fund the plan, which they would have to do by the end of June 2027. Both counties are holding elections this fall, so who takes office then could end up influencing how any potential stadium deal plays out.
That is, if the Bears owners even want to move to Indiana, which they don’t have to definitively decide for a while yet. Please tattoo this on your arms, state legislators of the nation: Stadium deadlines are for suckers.
It’s the meatball Bears fans that are falling for the news dump on a Friday, posting moronic statements condemning the legislature for “not getting it done for the Bears!!!” Or another prevalent comment “The Bears aren’t asking for taxpayer money!!! Get it done for them!!!”
It never ceases to amaze me how many of these meatheads see no correlation between a billion dollar organization asking for taxpayer funds…and not seeing that it means, you, meathead, will see your taxes go up, and the Bears aren’t going to thank you with discounts or free tickets.
The Bears wanting “property tax certainty,” is the repeated quote that really infuriates…what property owner doesn’t want that?!? But we don’t get it!
Let me introduce you to the meatheads who populate Hillsborough County, Florida. I went to school with many of them.
I think it’s an inevitability at this point that the Bears end up in Indiana, and that’s sad.
I just don’t see any way the people running Illinois let alone Chicago will cave an inch because this is entirely about image for them and getting sound bites they can play on their social media and in campaign ads.
The Bears obviously won’t cave an inch because they don’t have to. Right or wrong, they don’t have to.
The biggest problem with places like Chicago and Houston and Dallas and LA is they’ve never really experienced decline, and it’s made them arrogant. Sure individual neighborhoods have declined but the city itself in all of those cases has never experienced anything but being on the right end of things. Chicago has always grown and prospered at the expense of its regional neighbors. It’s like a giant vacuum sucking all of the companies and resources from the rest of the Midwest and Plains.
I only hope Chicago and Illinois politicians are banned from the new stadium that Indiana will eventually have to pay for. I’m pretty sure the people of Indiana would much rather travel to Chicago to see a game but instead they’ll have to pay increased taxes to pay off a two billion dollar or however many billion dollar stadium in the middle of nowhere in their state for a team that in no way will embrace their state.
Ah yes, Chicago, that city that is constantly growing and has “never really experienced decline…”