Before we get to this week’s news roundup, some old business from last week: I shamefully forgot to give a shoutout to John Mozena for his outstanding liveblog of the stadium-related papers at University of Maryland-Baltimore County’s annual sports economics conference after I was unable to attend. Please check out John’s work at the Center for Economic Accountability and throw some coin his way if you like, or at the very least get some of his free “Pay For Your Own Damn Stadium” stickers.
Back in the present, you’re stuck with me, and I’m stuck with this week’s avalanche of news items:
- The North Carolina legislature is debating whether to set aside unspecified hundreds of millions of dollars in its final budget for a stadium for a potential future MLB expansion team “in or near Wake County,” which would mean the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill “Triangle” area, as distinct from the Greensboro-Winston-Salem-High Point “Triad” area that voted down paying for a stadium to lure the Minnesota Twins back in 1998. The state has a $700 million Economic Development Project Reserve that it can designate for “high-yield” development projects, and while sports stadiums are nobody’s idea of high-yield in terms of actual measurable impact, there’s got to be somebody somewhere willing to write a consulting report claiming otherwise.
- Former Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Charlie Batch says team ownership is ready to get back on line for a new or renovated stadium now that their current home is 25 whole years old: “Thirty years is the expiration date. Guess what Acrisure Stadium is? Twenty-five years. So I promise you, conversations are happening behind the scenes to figure out kind of what the next move is as the Rooneys are looking for an upgrade in their stadium.” The next move, apparently, is to send your former-players-turned-YouTube-creators out to talk up how stadiums just straight-up become obsolete after 30 years and somebody has to build you a new one and see if that flies.
- Illinois’ efforts to retain the Chicago Bears in the wake of team execs’ announcement that they’re absolutely, definitely (maybe) moving to Indiana remain very much undead, with Gov. JB Pritzker saying his state is ready to act but first needs “the Bears to focus on what they want,” adding, “they have not been clear about what is the bill that they need, and how do they need to look, and then, can they get the votes necessary to get it done in the House and the Senate.” State house stadium bill sponsor Kam Buckner noted that both that body and the state senate have passed competing bills — there’s also now a third one, filed by State Rep. Martin McLaughlin despite the legislature not even being in session, that would raise the size thresholds on a “megaprojects” bill to where it would only apply to an Arlington Heights stadium — and “the Bears have to decide what makes most sense for them, which one of those bills is the bill they can get behind and wrap their arms around that can help them remain here in the state of Illinois,” adding, “We cannot have a special session until we have a deal. You don’t call a special session to draw up a flight plan. You call a special session to land the plane.” The hope here seems to be that if Bears officials pick a favorite tax break bill and declare that it’ll be enough to get them to stay in Illinois, that’ll get legislators in both houses to vote for it, which is absolutely the kind of bootstrapping your own momentum thing that you try to do when you’re pushing legislation that just got nowhere.
- Building a stadium district in Denver’s Burnham Yard railyards may be easier said than done for Broncos ownership, given little details like the land is mostly zoned only for industrial use. This is Broncos owner Greg Penner’s problem, of course, except that, as the lengthy Denver Post article on this only reveals down in its 28th paragraph, Penner could end up asking for TIF property tax breaks to pay for his larger development. “The track record for delivering on these promises by teams in development,” noted University of Colorado Denver economist Geoffrey Propheter, “is shaky. And that’s being super generous.” (Credit where credit is due to the Post: “The naked man, in retrospect, was the least of Sean Herman’s worries” is an excellent teaser lede, though still not quite up there with “The freighter captain, the cop, the guy from the private security firm, the Swiss Army major, and the reporter never saw the pirates coming.”)
- Athletics owner John Fisher now says his mistake in announcing a stadium plan in Las Vegas was not talking to the media himself enough about it: “Not hearing from me, I think, led to frustration from, frankly, the media. Like, who is this guy? Is he hiding? Who’s the real John Fisher?” He then went on to tell The Athletic absolutely nothing about how he plans to make a $2 billion stadium (with $600 million in public subsidies) in what would be MLB’s smallest market work out, especially when his development partner Bally’s may bail on its part and leave Fisher to fund such additional amenities as a $100 million parking structure. Hearing from John Fisher, it turns out, also leads to frustration, who’da thunk it?
- San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones would like Spurs minority owner Michael Dell (net worth: $246 billion) to pay for some or all of her city’s $489 million share of a downtown arena. Dell hasn’t responded to her request, and Stanford University Roger Noll says that’s likely because the multibillionaire knows spending your own money on new sports venues is a dumb idea — “the incremental benefits of having a new arena are not as big as the cost” — which is why it’s only worth it if you can stick taxpayers with the bill.
- The Minnesota Vikings‘ 10-year-old stadium needs a new roof because it got damaged by hail three years ago, but insurance should cover it, or at least the Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority does not believe “substantial use of public funds” will be required, which is slightly less reassuring than “insurance should cover it.” Anyway, it’ll probably never hail this bad in Minneapolis again, right?
- The first of the Buffalo Bills‘ family of stainless steel buffalo statues has arrived, and fans are excitedly pointing out that bisons don’t really look like that! They’re not even usually made of steel!
Nobody wants to hear from John Fisher today
As opposed to any other day?
IF we needed any more proof that he has no clue how bad he looks when he speaks to the media (or really anyone else), and we absolutely don’t, this latest hinderview was it.
The man is clueless.
Dammit, why did you make me click on The Scum?
Apologies, but it did do a good job of collecting the week’s finest buffalo trolling.
Fisher is trying to look good for investors. It’s kinda funny what a pickle he’s in. Bally’s is going to be forced to sell their lease and gaming license. They’ve devalued the property by filling 9ish acres with stadium. Whoever buys it will probably wait to build when interest rates are lower. Wouldn’t be shocking if the lease/license gets traded back and forth like the fountainbleu for a decade or so
Saying stuff like this is looking *good* to investors?
It’s very much Baghdad Bob, “nothing to see here, everything is under control”
But it’s not and this is what happens when a poorly run sports franchise joins forces with poorly run gaming company.
Fisher wants to sell a minority share of the franchise to raise money to cover the (now-increased) construction cost and that still might not be enough. He will almost certainly go back to the state legislature and ask for more public money.
And you’re right, Bally’s has hurt the value of the property by giving so much of the land fronting the Strip to a ballpark that will sit unused seven months of the year.
Driving by it’s very clear the stadium and its ancillary structures will take up over half the property. The land for a casino is kind of an L-shaped. It’s such a tremendous waste of the land, and the egress is going to be awful.
That “Buffalo” statue does not look like a buffalo. It’s more of a futuristic buffoonalo!
At first sight it reminded me more of the Imperial Walkers from Star Wars… although they manage to not really even look like those either.
What? A statue of OJ Simpson would have been in bad (even worse) taste?
There are USC football fans who still wear OJ’s USC jersey to games.
The Bears released their initial vision for a new stadium and development back in 2024. I guess Illinois politicians have short memories.
https://www.chicagobears.com/news/bears-release-plans-for-stadium-project-in-chicago
I, for one, would prefer not to call a special session of halfwit on-the-take politicians to EITHER create my flight plan or land the plane.
I would ask a pilot to do both because they are actually, you know, professionally trained to do these things.
If there’s one thing we have learned about elected officials it is that they seek out their areas of greatest incompetence and then operate in those areas as much as they can.
Da Bears have zero leverage, the Indiana location is so terrible on multiple levels, that da Bears value will go down, and also drag the values of the other NFC North teams down. Chicago is in the center of the Big 10 conference. The NFL won’t allow da Bears to alienate the Chicago market with a stadium guaranteed to fail in a post industrial wasteland.
“Guaranteed to fail” is overblown. “Guaranteed to waste Indiana tax money”- for sure.
The fact is that NFL stadiums, especially these domed monstrosities, are television studios. The Bears won’t lose value unless the next NFL tv deal is bad.
60,000 or so seats, most of them “premium”, in a climate controlled environment is the new normal for the NFL. The Hammond Bears will be fine just like the East Rutherford Giants and Jets, Santa Clara 49ers, Glendale Cardinals, Miami Gardens Dolphins, Landover Commanders, Arlington Cowboys, Foxborough Patriots….
Probably time for us all to retire the “da Bears” thing, given it originated in…1991.
What actually ‘is’ failure in the modern NFL (or pro sports in general) context?
The Bears certainly won’t go broke in either Hammond or Arlington Heights (or if they stay at the lakefront in a new or in the existing facility).
The question we can never answer (about any franchise) is whether they could have made even more money/spent less and satisfied more fans by doing something other than what they did.
Are the Braves better off in Cobb County than they were at Turner Field? Financially, yes.
Is Cobb County the best place they could have built (by whatever metric you’d like to use)? That question is harder, if not impossible, to answer.
Pro sports leagues/commissioners/owners like to characterize every move (even within a given team’s exclusive region) as a win. But is it? I can think of plenty that might have made the team more money in the short term, but weren’t long term improvements overall.
Never ask the person who made a given decision how great a decision it was.
I think a good example of a disastrous move has been West Ham moving to the London Olympic stadium. Yeah it’s been great financially for the club, but you’ve lost something intangible. West Ham is now just like every other club that plays in a shiny newish stadium. Long famous for their hooliganism, they don’t really have that anymore. So what exactly is West Ham?
In the US we’ve had some Braves to Cobb-type moves in AAA baseball recently, with the 51s moving to summerlin and becoming the Aviators and the SLC Bees moving to South Jordan. Both these moves are to extreme edges of their metro areas, after being relatively central. Since there’s so few passionate AAA baseball fans to begin with, these teams are self sorting within their metro areas. It’s worth it to the owners to be real estate developers on the edge of town and attract wealthier suburban people. People on the other side of the region are just not going to jump through the hoops necessary to go.
In Atlanta when the Braves moved, those first few summers there were huge crowds at Mercedes Benz for MLS games. The team was new and pretty good, but really there were a lot of people in the central and southern part of the metro area that wanted to go to sports and the Braves were just not a reasonable option anymore
What was great financially for West Ham United was being in the Premier League. Much of their fanbase have never forgiven the club for leaving Upton Park, mainly as the London Stadium is an athletics (track and field) facility on which they have to pay rent. West Ham were relegated from the Premier League so now they have to sell their best players and sharply reduce their expenses in the EFL Championship.
And it gets more unsavoury: West Ham’s co-chairman David Sullivan made his millions in pornography and started a sleazy red-top tabloid. He resigned the weekend before a TV documentary outed him as a sexual predator.