Lots of other news this week while we were off on Portland Trail Blazers watch:
- The Tampa city council has made two moves to throw the brakes on Tampa Bay Rays owner Patrick Zalupski’s proposed $2 billion stadium subsidy, voting 4-3 to not send a land-use amendment to the state for approval, while also removing a vote from their August 20 meeting agenda on taking $100 million in property taxes from a neighboring tax district to use on the stadium project. Councilmember Lynn Hurtak said of putting the land-use measure on hold, “I think it’s a waste of time to send it to the state if I’m just going to vote against it,” and given that three of her colleagues agreed, it sure seems like the Tampa council has no intention of approving their piece of the financing plan. Council chair Alan Clendenin, who backed the Rays stadium plan, said earlier this week, “They’re looking at, if for some reason they can’t get that fourth vote on Council, how can we continue to move this project forward?” — they should be fine so long as they can find $180 million under the sofa cushions (or in Zalupski’s bank accounts, ha ha, just kidding, nobody ever asks the billionaire who would benefit from the project for more money, don’t you know he already pays taxes?).
- Zalupski, meanwhile, has kept the pressure on by releasing more renderings, this time of the “premier” office space that would surround the Rays stadium, which would apparently involve everybody working in Apple Stores.
- As the first trusses for the Athletics‘ Las Vegas stadium “armadillo” roof start being put in place, team owner John Fisher has finally landed the investor he’s been long waiting for: a private equity firm led by Mark Cuban, which just bought a minority share in the team amounting to … okay, Cuban didn’t say what percentage of the team, but he’ll be spending … well, he didn’t say that either. The Athletic said this makes the A’s ownership picture “a bit clearer,” which is an innovative use of the word “clearer”; it also said Fisher said he’s no longer looking for additional minority owners, so presumably this isn’t just an attempt to drum up more investor interest, meaning Fisher indeed plans to spend $1.5 billion or so of his family money (less whatever Cuban is kicking in) on building MLB’s smallest-capacity stadium in its smallest market, this should be interesting to watch.
- Okay, fine, here’s even more Trail Blazers news: Multnomah County put off its vote on arena subsidies until at least August 6. “The goal, commissioners said, was to gather more information about the deal’s direct benefits to county residents,” reported the Oregonian, which, asked and answered.
- Local elected officials probably don’t back stadium deals just in order to get campaign contributions — the amount of money at stake isn’t all that much — but that doesn’t mean Buffalo Bills owners Terry and Kim Pegula aren’t leaving New York Gov. Kathy Hochul a nice tip for her finagling $1 billion in public money for their new stadium: The Pegulas gave $36,000 this year to Hochul’s reelection campaign, plus $138,600 to the state Democratic Party’s campaign fund.
- Charlotte Panthers owner David Tepper is kicking in an extra $500 million toward stadium renovations to go along with his initial $150 million plus the $650 million he got from the city of Charlotte for a stadium it doesn’t even own or operate. This doesn’t really make the winner of the Center for Economic Accountability’s 2024 “Worst Economic Development Deal of the Year” award any better of a deal for Charlotte residents, but at least it hasn’t gotten any worse.
- Kansas City construction union leader Ralph Oropeza says letting people vote on whether to fund a Royals stadium with tax dollars would be bad because “people are misinformed on what this is all about,” which is “thousands of jobs for our men and women of the building trades.” Is it possible that not spending the money on a stadium could create more jobs, union ones even, in other government services that could then be funded? Who can say!
- New Kansas City Chiefs stadium to feature acres of tailgating space, plus a stealth bomber for some reason.
The Chiefs vaporware shows a B2 because the fleet is based at Whiteman AFB about 75 miles southeast of Kansas City. That puts them in Missouri though, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the idiot politicians here take some time away from discarding the will of the people to screw around with some pointless resolution discouraging them from crossing state lines for ceremonial flyovers.
“The Chiefs vaporware shows a B2 because the fleet is based at Whiteman AFB about 75 miles southeast of Kansas City. That puts them in Missouri though”
Maybe they are just continuing to pit Kansas and Missouri against each other in hopes of extracting even more public money!
The Tampa video of the stadium through the vision of the high rises makes me think of a Vonnegut story in which nobody ages and the world is so overpopulated that everyone lives in super high rises.
FYI- your book was briefly mentioned on today’s episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast (around the 118/119 min mark on Spotify) in a discussion about the Blazers demands for new arena in Portland.
On the chiefs, I also enjoyed reading that hunt said “the new stadium will hold 70,000 fans and will be built with the idea of amplifying the crowd noise”
You can’t put a price on that!
JP Peterson is on the receiving end of the SchadenBoner
Love this for him.
Did Mark Cuban film the negotiations with Fisher for an episode of “Shark Tank”?
The fact that they’re not revealing how much Cuban has invested is weird. Now a group led by Chan Ho Park has invested $70 million. I guess that’s good for Fisher? But he’s still about a billion short.
He seems to be (if not more. The cost keeps going up at least as fast as he raises money through equity sales…).
Either way, it seems to me he’s spending his own money either by diluting his share or borrowing. He hasn’t stumbled across some magical way to create free lunches…
I think he’s just borrowing while he crowd sources the rest with these small time deals. If Cuban was a major investor- you’d hype that up a lot more. He’s famous with a fairly high approval rating and would be a better face of the franchise than Fisher. My guess is Cuban’s contribution is rather small. Maybe he’s just involved to keep Las Vegas Sands out of it since they screwed him with the Mavs?
If Cuban bought 25% of the franchise for $400 million- MLB would be hyping that to the moon. “Baseball is cool, Shark tank star Mark Cuban wants in!”
I know it’s well past Friday, but I just saw that Tampa’s mayor is “beyond frustrated” with the city council over the stadium deal.
https://baynews9.com/fl/tampa/news/2026/07/24/tampa-mayor-voices-frustration-with-city-council-over-rays-stadium-deal
Oropeza is just another mouthpiece that thinks that the public can’t make good decisions because they’re misinformed chumps. No, he’s afraid that they’ll make decisions HE judges to be misinformed. But, are going to be GOOD decisions. Create thousands of jobs BS followed by thousands of lay-offs once everything is built and these workers are no longer needed.
Neil, do you have any sense just how much the world’s most famous failson has raised through equity sales of his moribund franchise?
I know numbers aren’t often available, but is it possible he could have raised, I dunno, $4-500m through equity sales?
To raise that much (even based on fairly rosy projections of the club’s value in Vegas) you’d think he would need to sell 15-20% of the asset.
Regardless, he’s still spending his own money whether he takes on debt, sells GAP shares or sells part of the Athletics.
As majority owner, I guess he could squeeze his new partners once the stadium is built to regain their shares in the club (in a way he probably couldn’t with GAP shares, if he can even sell those on the free market). But some of his new partners aren’t exactly novice investors…
We have no idea how much much he’s raised (other than that it’s at least $70m) or what % of equity he’s sold. So the sales announcements are fairly meaningless.
Government-owned sports stadiums are giving off disease vibes, at least in Spain.
“La Liga side Rayo Vallecano have been barred indefinitely from playing at their home stadium less than three weeks before the start of the new season because of the risk of supporters contracting Legionnaires’ disease.
“Rayo rent the Estadio de Vallecas from the regional government of Madrid but have had their licence to host matches suspended after an audit highlighted serious health and safety issues.”
https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/articles/c1w1p797q7qo