Slow news week, busy Friday roundup, as the saying goes. (I didn’t say it was an old saying.)
- Roger Goodell and a Chicago Bears minority owner met this week with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and state legislative officials, and if you want to take that as a sign that the league and team want a better option than moving to Indiana, go for it. If you want to take it as a sign that they’re trying to create leverage on Indiana counties to approve all the requested tax subsidies, that works too. Could be both! It’s always important to have a backup plan.
- The Kansas City council has scheduled an April ballot measure on whether future sports stadiums and arena funding will subsequently require ballot measures, prompting an immediate debate on what “future” and “subsequently” will mean for the Royals stadium plans. Missouri Workers Power says a yes vote would apply to a Royals project, Mayor Quinton Lucas says nuh-uh, this seems destined to be resolved by the robot lawyers.
- Buffalo Bills execs say they’re listening to fan complaints about obstructed views and not being allowed to bring in water bottles to refill at their new taxpayer-funded stadium. “We anticipated it would be a bit of a learning process,” said Bills president of business operations Pete Guelli, who never could have expected fans would want to see the game or drink water, these kids today are so coddled.
- Athletics owner John Fisher still hasn’t tapped the $380 million in state money he’s been promised for a Las Vegas stadium, after spending $700 million of his own money and money borrowed from Goldman Sachs and with $1.4 billion still to go. Why? Fisher hasn’t said, but it doesn’t really matter whose dollars get spent first, unless bond rates keep soaring and Nevada ends up having to finance the more expensive part of the stadium debt, that’d be bad.
- MLB is looking at building a temporary stadium in a national park oh never mind they’re not now.
- Sedgwick County, Kansas has run out of sales tax surcharge money to pay for upkeep of Wichita’s arena, leading local officials to try to find other money to avoid dipping into property tax revenues that would otherwise go to the general fund. (The county does collect some arena profits and naming rights money, but not enough to cover maintenance costs.) And since any money that the county spends on the arena is money that could have gone into the general fund, the current plan appears to be hitting up the city for the cash, on the grounds that the county “built the arena as a favor to Wichita,” sure, sure.
- “Cities keep shelling out taxpayer money for sports stadiums, yet the economics almost never makes sense.” Accurate! Most of the Conversation essay by University of Tampa economic professors Abigail Hall and Aaron D. Wood will be familiar to regular readers of this site, but it’s worth bookmarking, if only for all the useful links to studies it contains on everything from how little positive economic impact sports venues have to how most sports spending is by local residents who would spend that money elsewhere nearby anyway.
“‘We anticipated it would be a bit of a learning process,’ said Bills president of business operations Pete Guelli”
Left unsaid: “… we’ll apply those lessons for the next time we raid the county and the state for money to keep the stadium ‘up to date.\'”
Because no one has ever built a stadium before.
“Measure twice, cut once” does the NFL not watch This Old House?
I mean, look, we are just trying to give Chicago and Illinois one last chance to not lose the Bears to another state. It would be, frankly, a tragedy if all that history is lost over just a few (billion) dollars in teeny tiny funding gaps.
We want to make sure that everyone understands what the stakes are and that everyone gets an opportunity to do the right thing (for us).
It may not actually be the league’s obligation to facilitate these opportunities, but we feel honour bound to give everyone one last chance (to funnel more taxpayer dollars into our members’ pockets).
BTW, although it’s not my field, if Wichita had an AFL team they could* drive extraordinary spin off revenues and wouldn’t be in this mess.
Bring back the Wichita Wings, they were the class of indoor soccer, which, admittedly, ain’t all that classy.
There’s still a Wichita Wings! They just play at a smaller arena, just outside of town.
“Yes, the Wings – who won six playoff series in their entire history – were the class of indoor soccer,” said the San Diego Sockers, who won 10 championships in 11 years.
I don’t think Fisher doesn’t want his books opened, once he gets state money it’s all public.
I don’t think that’s true. Where did you hear that?
He has to give an accounting to that board in vegas when public funds are involved. It’s in the bill that passed, it specifically states it.
That doesn’t necessarily mean all of the A’s books have to be opened, i simply meant the stadium financing, which is obviously different.
I could see why Failson Fisher would be embarrassed to have the public know how much he is spending on a ballpark in Las Vegas. It is – at least thus far – his money, however.
I believe the only part of the funding that would be public is what is already public (and has been voted on, sort of, after a fashion, kinda…)
A bit tangential, but one of the issues we always have with these deals is there’s lots of info thrown around “up front” about how great it will be. Very few detailed reports on what these arena deals ACTUALLY cost taxpayers over 10, 20 or 30 years however. It’s fine to say that the public cost up front is capped at $380m (or whatever). But how do we actually know that is true? That number does not, for example, cover providing services (including police, fire etc) to the property tax exempt buildings etc.
Even if all the “ancillary” services only add up to $4-5m a year, that’s still another third on top of the ‘capped’ cost over 30 years.
We don’t know how much Fisher has already spent on the Vegas ballpark site. The Las Vegas Journal Review just takes whatever the A’s spokesman tells them and calls it fact. Doesn’t mean it is fact.