Before we start with this week’s roundup, a note about the World Cup: I’m enjoying it! The one-game knockout format, even in its dumb expanded iteration, is great for generating drama, and when you mix in international politics and colonial history, you get even more opportunities for hilarity.
But I enjoy most sports, even the dumb ones. The issue about sports mega-events like the World Cup and the Olympics isn’t whether they should exist, but whether they should exist in their current form, as means for extracting tons of money from host cities and delivering it to corrupt oligarchs. The reports just keep coming in confirming that any claimed economic benefits of hosting the games are overwhelmed by the public costs — look, here’s another one from Atlanta about vendors trying to get their money back after being suckered into joining a city-sponsored program for World Cup-related booths that turned into what one called “a financial nightmare” — and while big public watch parties are fun, you don’t actually need to have the World Cup in your city, or in your country, to hold one. The World Cup, like pretty much all sports at this point (I may be willing to make exceptions for curling and Ultimate Frisbee), has been weaponized to transfer money from the many to the few, which is why we keep complaining about it here every week. If we have to live under toxic capitalism, the least we should get to do it the joy of pointing and laughing.
Anyway, here’s a bunch of dumb stuff that’s gone on recently that is likely to cost you money on the grounds that sports are fun, please enjoy ridiculing it:
- Washington, D.C. is preparing to sell $975 million in personal seat licenses allowing fans to buy Commanders tickets and use the proceeds for stadium construction, which momentarily excited me until I realized it looks like the PSLs will be funding the team’s share of costs, notwithstanding the city’s involvement in doing the sales. Anyway, some quick long division determines that team officials are presumably planning to ask for an average of $15,000 per seat for the mere right to spend hundreds of dollars apiece for tickets, though it’s always possible the team will have to take a loss on the whole transaction if fans aren’t willing to pony up that much.
- Congratulations, everyone in the United States: You now get to help pay for $25 million in road work around the new Cleveland Browns stadium in Brook Park, after that city won a grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation for “reconfigured freeway ramps and streamlined local roads [that] will lead to the stadium and the surrounding entertainment district.”
- The city of Oakland may try to sell the Oakland Coliseum and its neighboring arena in separate deals after concerns that wavering plans for redevelopment of the stadium site are holding up the arena sale. The Coliseum is set to finally be entirely empty next year, after the announced departure of the Roots USL Championship club to, uh, somewhere, they’ll get back to you on that.
- Two contrasting headline styles in reporting on the return of corporate stadium names after FIFA decreed them unallowable during the World Cup because they might compete with their own sponsorship contracts: “Lumen Field returns as Seattle says bye to World Cup and Seattle Stadium” vs “Praise Be: ‘Philadelphia Stadium’ Once Again Bears the Name of Our Corporate Financial Overlords.” Well played, Philadelphia sports site Crossing Broad, even if you do appear to be mostly an excuse to run lots of posts promoting sports gambling.
- Not sure which is more on the nose for 2026, a proposal to have the Bay Area’s Cow Palace host a data center now that it’s been superseded by the Golden State Warriors‘ new arena or a related proposal to have it host a helicopter landing pad. No word yet on whether these would require public money, but given that a data center is involved, probably.
- New Dallas Stars vaportecture renderings, though they’re mostly unspecific and from a great distance, aside from the one that appears to show fans watching a Stars playoff game on a giant video screen atop a new team store, which is maybe even more on the nose for 2026.
Give it time. They’ll find a way to monetize and extract all value out of curling and Ultimate Frisbee, too.
That being said… temporarily renaming stadiums after cities is maybe the one thing that FIFA does get right, even if FIFA’s intent isn’t at all altruistic. “Dallas Stadium” wouldn’t even have sounded out of place all that long ago. We’re just so used to stadiums being named after companies now, so much so that we don’t even bat an eye when those companies go bust and cities have to scramble to find a new name.
The part I love is when one corporation takes over naming rights to a building and fans long for the old corporate name just because it was the old name.
To be accurate the “Dallas Stadium” should’ve been called “Arlington Stadium” since that was the location of the stadium.
And “Boston Stadium” should have been “Foxborough Stadium,” etc. But in a world where Las Vegas Ballpark isn’t in Las Vegas and University of Phoenix Stadium was named after an online university that wasn’t in Phoenix, you take what you can get.
FIFA is corrupt, not pedantic.
Yea, same here in Kansas City. Arrowhead Stadium has been referred to as Kansas City Stadium for all the World Cup Games.
I loved how the Fox announcers in the England-Mexico game threw the memo away and constantly referred to the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City by its real name. It’s a historic stadium and deserved the recognition, it would be like calling the Rose Bowl the Pasadena Stadium.
Coliseum entirely empty? What about Major League Cricket?
Headed elsewhere in 2027:
https://www.cricinfo.com/story/mlc-set-to-expand-from-six-teams-to-eight-by-2027-move-into-canada-being-explored-1469803
I think MLC could do very well, but there are so few grounds suitable for cricket in North America.
And, contrary to what the owners claim, there’s really no effort to sell the game to people who are not already into it.
Their key demographic – the Indian diaspora – is reflected in the makeup of crowds you can see on game videos. That’s a much larger group than the Australian or British Isles cohort in America.
They could probably do well just exploiting that demographic.
That’s no doubt why Mumbai Indians are the ones making the biggest push to start a U.S. cricket league. Though so far I believe all the teams, regardless of their city names, all play in one facility in Texas.
Absolutely true. FWIW, where I live the situation is the same. Cricket is exploding in popularity on public fields/commons, so much so that the cities are drawing up plans for dedicated facilities they can rent to players/groups (rather than have more general ‘common’ parkland used for the sport).
I can’t say it’s 100% the south asian diaspora that are playing, but that is the vast majority.
As you suggest, they are residents and pay taxes… why shouldn’t the public agencies who decide how sports funding is spent take into account the popularity of the game? After all, the most watched sports TV property is still the IPL final right?
In response to Neil’s comment, LA’s MLC franchise, just opened cricket stadium on the site of the old horse race track at the County Fairgrounds in Pomona, about 30 miles east of Downtown LA. The facility currently seats 5000, but will be expanded to 20,000 in advance of the 2028 Olympics, which will use the facility for their cricket competition
I am annoyed that USDOT is going to stop funding bike lanes because of DEI, but is now going to spend millions to increase the value of Haslam’s football team.
Make fun of the Stars all you want, but the Cubs already have a tv on top of the team store and people turn out to watch.
https://southportcorridorchicago.com/2022/03/16/little-cheval-and-foxtrot-coming-to-wrigley-fields-gallagher-way/
Not sure what the concert market is in the Bay Area, but the Oakland Coliseum would make a sweet music only venue. Especially with no sports teams blocking out good dates.
Nah, it’s too big. The Oakland arena does well with concerts, but there just aren’t that many touring acts that need a 60,000-seat stadium.
Are the Oakland Ballers not using the ‘big’ stadium anymore?
I thought they hosted select games there etc.
No, the Ballers are all in on Raimondi Park this season.
Ah, thank you. Is it only this season or are they still considering longer term options?
I seem to recall their long range plan was to build a more suitably sized ballpark on the 155 acre parcel, perhaps along with a soccer facility etc.
I can certainly understand why the partners want to divest some or all of the property, but building additional (smaller) facilities on that parcel to go with the commercial development would seem to make a great deal of sense.
In regards to the Commanders PSLs being used to pay for “their 1/2.” Isn’t that BS? I have often argued the Rays don’t plan on paying squat for their proposed stadium. That is just an accounting trick. If the City puts up $1.2 Billion in cash, the team could then go and purchase a bond against future revenue from a building where all the cash goes to the team.
Right, that’s what I meant: If D.C. were selling PSLs and using them to pay off the public’s share, then that would actually be the district getting something out of this deal. But spending $7 billion in cash and tax breaks to build a stadium district, then telling the team owner, “Any new revenue that comes in from the stadium, that’s yours” is just a giveaway.
I don’t understand. Why is *DC* selling PSLs? Does the team not have a sales and marketing division?
I’ve been trying to find an explanation for that, but none of the reporting has specified — I may need to go back to the original MOU. My best guess would be some sort of tax reasons.
Didn’t the 49ers deal in Santa Clara involve something similar?
Stadium handouts are not capitalism.If they were than free market advocates would not oppose them.In fact if you look nat most economists opposing the handouts they are not mostly free market conservatives.
Correction most economists opposing the handouts ARE free market conservatives.
I’ll give them this, advocates of pro-business-owner policies have done a great job branding a system that funnels money from the majority of people to the wealthy as “free market.” Sure, stacking the deck for the rich isn’t capitalism in the classic Adam Smith sense, but they’ve been an integral part of actually existing capitalism since at least the days of the robber barons, if not the Dutch East India Company.
As for most economists opposing handouts being conservatives, that’s simply incorrect. Pretty much all economists oppose the handouts, from all over the political spectrum — and most will point out the ways that it’s bad that subsidies distort the market — including tons who identify as left of center.
You don’t have to give them anything. They’ve already taken it.