After a summer where the owners of the Kansas City Royals and Tampa Bay Rays each landed, in quick succession, about $2 billion apiece in public stadium funding despite widespread public opposition, I’ve been thinking even more than usual about what this site is hoping to accomplish. To report on and analyze sports subsidy shenanigans, obviously, but to what end? Over the years, the implicit objective has gradually shifted from “expose the scam so that people are empowered to stop it” to “inform people so that if ever there comes an opportunity to make change, they can take action” to “reassure people boggling that this is still going on that we’re not crazy.” And while the earlier goals are still around at least aspirationally, it’s becoming pretty obvious that, as the old Straight Dope tagline had it, this is going to take longer than we thought.
When Joanna Cagan and I set out in late 1995 to research the first article that ultimately became Field of Schemes, I could not have conceived that I would still be writing about sports subsidies 31 years later; I couldn’t have conceived that the public-money-for-private-stadium-profits game would still remain largely unchanged 31 years later. It still needs writing about — now more than ever, probably — but any hopes that calling out the emperor’s new clothes would result in prompt reforms are fading just a bit. Maybe the publication of J.C. Bradbury’s This One Will Be Different next month will be what it finally takes to shift the balance; probably not, given [waves generally at all of history], but sometimes things do get better, even if seemingly not lately.
Where am I going with all this? Venting, mostly: Continuing to do the same thing and hoping for better results may not always be crazy, but beating your head against the same wall does lose some of its charm after a while. But also thanks to those of you who continue to read and support this site, and to debate where all this is going and what it means for both sports and society in general. Hopefully someone somewhere is learning something useful enough to make a difference eventually, even if progress seems elusive much of the time.
Or maybe it’ll just let us laugh to keep from crying until the idiot robots kill us all. Either works!
- Hillsborough College students are just now finding out they’re going to have to start holding classes in temporary trailers so the Tampa Bay Rays can demolish much of their campus for a stadium, and they are not pleased. “It’s kind of strange that we got to be in a trailer for classes,” said one student who claimed not to have received any word from the community college about the plan. “I’d say that’s definitely not really ideal for college students paying a lot of money to come to college.”
- U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden is reportedly threatening to get Congress to consider rescinding federal tax-exempt bonds for sports projects unless NBA owners talk Portland Trail Blazers owner Tom Dundon into sitting down by the end of the year to negotiate how many hundreds of millions of dollars in public money he’ll accept for arena renovations. Given that Wyden is supposed to be acting on behalf of the American people at large and using tax-exempt bonds for sports venues is of zero benefit to the nation as a whole, if he has the power to get rid of them, he probably should just do it; if he just wants to get to keep meeting former Blazers players courtside, though, you do you, Ron.
- What the headline says: “Chiefs’ stadium move already showing impact on real estate in Wyandotte County.” What the article says: One local real estate agent says one (unnamed) client got an offer on a property (unspecified) he’d been trying to sell for years after the Kansas City Chiefs stadium was announced. Surely a commercial realtor would have no reason to try to goose the market by inventing fake anecdotes, so I guess we’re all fact-checked here!
- The Kansas City council is fine with holding a public vote in April on the Royals stadium funding plan, so long as it doesn’t actually affect anything. Construction is slated to have already begun by then, but ballot measure sponsor Missouri Workers Power says the vote could impact further city actions needed for the project.
- I don’t know if “Ohio Democratic state minority tells the Republican gubernatorial candidate to fund his ineffective and regressive gas tax holiday scheme by using the money that would otherwise go to a Cleveland Browns stadium” is serious or a troll, but even if it’s the latter it’s a pretty funny one.
- Jacksonville Armada F.C., a former NASL minor-league soccer franchise that’s been “on hiatus” since 2018 but is supposed to join the MLS Next Pro minor league next year, has failed to build a new stadium (likely having something to do with the previous clause in this sentence) on land it got from Jacksonville for $1, and now the city would like to be paid for the land, please. This is a pretty minimal ask — the land is likely valued at less than $1 million — but if this is a week for appreciating baby steps, at least it’s something.
- The public park built next to the new Yankee Stadium to make up for the new Yankee Stadium being built atop a public park is falling apart, and it’s up to the city to find $54 million to fix it. “Everyone was excited about a new additional park in the community but no one thought about how expensive it is to have and maintain,” remarked city councilmember Althea Stevens, who may not be remembering quite right.
- Las Vegas could build yet another arena for an NBA expansion team, because the umpteen it already has aren’t shiny enough.
Just because we’re long past the point where being on the “wrong side of history” carries any real-time weight or consequences, and where urging people and entities to “do better” can actually compel them to any meaningful degree, doesn’t mean their misdeeds shouldn’t be reported on. There’s still a good amount of value in pointing out absurdities and public disgraces, even if the parties perpetrating them no longer feel any guilt or shame for doing so.
FOS in that sense can be viewed as one of the portals into, and one of the ongoing chronicles of, America’s overall transformation — or descent — into a shame-free and accountability-free society (for the super-rich and the super-powerful). Maybe it won’t be one of the first places that people inside and outside of Merica will refer to when they talk about the things that ultimately led to collapse of US society, but… you know what, I think maybe it should be.
Kei nails it. FOS isn’t just about sports subsidies, it’s about The System as a whole, and allows the subsidy situation to be seen as a detailed critique of that system. It’s all part of the big fight. Thank you, and onward!
“FOS in that sense can be viewed as one of the portals into, and one of the ongoing chronicles of, America’s overall transformation — or descent — into a shame-free and accountability-free society (for the super-rich and the super-powerful).”
Wow, 31 years! I’m sure it’s maddening to see how much more ridiculous stadium funding has got. It probably feels powerless, but as a reader I still think it’s valuable. Ive learned so much reading your blog over the last few years that has informed my debates with friends, family and acquaintances here in kansas city. It’s comforting to find analysis that matches some of my observations. It’s been enlightening to see the connections to what teams are doing across the country. I doubt much will change.
I am amazed that 31 years after your book came out, your daily blog often has significant updates on stadium boondoggles in multiple cities (or multiple projects in the same city).
This site is a valuable resource, if only journalists would avail themselves of your archives. Instead, it seems like each reporter writes about their local stadium debates as if they are unprecedented local issues, when your site provides proof daily that the same hustles are playing out across the country, and that stadium projects turn out to be massive bonfires if public cash, every time.
Just to be clear: The book came out 28 years ago. (And again 27 years ago in expanded paperback, and again 18 years ago in even more expanded paperback.)
Thirty-one years ago was when Joanna and I started researching what we thought would be a simple little 1,000-word article and then we would get on with our lives…
edit: “massive bonfires OF public cash, every time.”
Also, it should give you comfort that the folks at Missouri Workers Power surely read your stuff regularly. Keep up the good, if Sisyphean, work. There is nowhere else keeping track.
I bet Sisyphus’s blog got really dark after the first 31 years…
Have you ever looked at how current stadium building compares in public funding to the 1960s multi use stadium era? Such as, were the costs of the round stadiums in St. Louis, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh etc, a bigger hit on the taxpayers than later stadiums. In percentage of local budgets. Obviously inflation has increased them many times over. Of course in those days the stadiums were not outright gifts to the teams. I think they expected rent would help recover the costs. But it must have still been a good deal for the teams since they all left stadiums they owned outright for city owned facilities.
The complete apathy and sometimes strong antipathy toward building another one of these in Illinois can likely be traced back to your work.
Neil: congrats on your anniversary of sorts. And yeah, maybe it seems like it’s a lot.
Kei stated it well, and I can’t add much to it.
You are doing yeomans work, and those of us who care do thank you.
Thanks Neil.
I try to imagine a future in which the only thing that survives the impending AI/Financial/Nuclear apocalypse is the server that hosts FoS. And the cockroaches… my god, the cockroaches…
Anyway, billionaires buying influence and elections while stealing money that should be used for feeding and educating children is nothing new.
And it won’t end until the cockroaches (AI or otherwise) take over, creating a uniquely egalitarian (albeit exclusively cockroach) society.
I, for one, welcome our new cockroach overlords.
“This isn’t the college experience I signed up for,” says guy who enrolled in community college.
Stadiums have a surprising skill for dexterity and strategy. A few years ago, a stadium beat me at a game of connect four
I think I got you beat. I first a new article in 1978 on the formation of the local sports authority in Pinellas County Florida that become the Tampa Bay Rays twenty some years later. I’ve been following this saga ever since. You are wrong about one thing: the giveaways have not gone unchanged. They have gotten more and more outrageous. Keep up the good work.
The amounts have gotten more and more outrageous. The playbook is almost hilariously unchanged, in an “I can’t believe Lex Luthor keeps getting away with this” way.