Search Results for: Baltimore seeks developers for tenantless arena

Friday roundup: Friends don’t let friends host the Olympics, and other cautionary tales

access_time personNeil deMause

Last week I teased a big project of mine that would drop this week, and it went live yesterday morning: a 57-page report, commissioned by Los Angeles economic justice advocacy group Strategic Action for a Just Economy, on whether L.A. can or should be trying to extricate itself from its hosting obligations for the 2028 Summer Olympics — something some local critics have suggested, especially in the wake of the city’s wildfire crisis and budget crisis and  immigration enforcement occupying force crisis. You can probably get a pretty good sense of the report’s findings from its title, “Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t,” but if you want slightly more details, here’s the nut graf:

While there are numerous unknowns—the history of the Olympics shows that budget questions are never resolved until it’s far too late, a path that L.A. has headed down with its agreements for the 2028 Games as well—the available documentation and history of international event hosting shows: Yes, if Los Angeles officials, or voters, decided to withdraw from hosting the Olympics, they could do so. This would come at the risk of potentially billions of dollars in damages from a breach-of-contract lawsuit and losses from expenses already undertaken. However, continuing as host also comes with a potential risk of losses that, if history is any guide, could similarly amount to billions of dollars.

The report also contains a wealth of information about Olympic financial history, including other locales’ attempts to back out of hosting major international sporting events for fiscal reasons (the Denver 1976 Winter Olympics that never happened, plus the 2026 Commonwealth Games that the Australian state of Victoria bailed on in 2023 amid concerns about snowballing costs), as well as mention of my new favorite Olympic factoid: that time they held a Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan and nobody knows how much it cost because the local organizing committee literally set fire to its financial records. It’s all here, dig in if you’re in the mood for a long, enraging read — or if not, you can instead read the excellent summaries in Torched (which includes a quote from me on this week’s revelations about L.A. Olympics chief Casey Wasserman’s history with Jeffrey Epstein) and LAist.

And now that that’s off my plate, I have plenty of time for stadium and arena bullet points, and good thing, too, because this week brought craploads of them:

  • The Wyandotte County Commission followed suit with its neighbors in the city of Olathe and voted 7-3 to approve devoting local sales and hotel tax revenue to pay off part of the state’s $2.775 billion in bonds for a new Kansas City Chiefs stadium and surrounding development. The county, to be clear, gets absolutely nothing out of kicking in its own funding (total price tag still TBD), given that the state has indicated it will go ahead with the stadium deal regardless. Kansas City, Kansas mayor and county commission chair Christal Wilson, who didn’t vote because no ties needed to be broken, wrote on Facebook that she thinks kicking in county money is warranted because it gets the county “a seat at the table” — okay, though it’s questionable whether getting to sit at the table is worth having to split the check.
  • Indiana state Rep. Earl Harris Jr. on his bill to create a sports authority to build a Chicago Bears stadium in northwest Indiana with money from (feigns coughing fit until you go away): “Indiana does sports things like this very well. When you look at the Pacers, the Colts, the Speedway, we’re very good at figuring out a good financial plan that does not hurt the taxpayer.” Um, about that…
  • Will the Portland Trail Blazers move if the city and county decline to spend $600 million on upgrades to their arena? It’s an “urgent race against time” and “the clock continues to tick,” writes The Oregonian, citing a deadline of … huh, seems like they didn’t mention any deadline, must have run out of room. (Though there was room for “Are you ready for the Nashville or Kansas City Trail Blazers?” to cite two cities that are not particularly shopping around for NBA teams.)
  • Tampa sports radio host JP Peterson insists that spending upwards of $2 billion on a new Tampa Bay Rays stadium is warranted because it “will produce millions in tax revenue and bring major events, Super Bowls, National Championship games, World Baseball Classic, MLB All-Star games” — [citation needed], my man. Also, I can save you some time: Even if a new baseball stadium does bring in millions in tax revenue, from hosting, uh, football games, when it costs hundreds of millions a year in tax expenditures, maybe that’s … not good?
  • Speaking of the Rays, fresh Rays vaportecture! I’m sticking with my comment from yesterday: Glad to see the Rays acknowledge that even after a future stadium is built, fans still won’t buy jerseys with player names because they know they’ll be sold off as soon as they reach arbitration.
  • And if you want still more Rays commentary from me, I spoke with both WMNF radio and Tampa Bay 28 TV about the ongoing dispute this week; the former is much longer, the latter offers a view of what I have on my living room walls, pick your poison.
  • Just in time for the Super Bowl (what time does it start again?), here’s a Top 40 list of things the NFL demands from Super Bowl host cities. It’s impossible to pick just one favorite, but equally impossible to beat “three championship-level 18-hole golf courses and two top-quality bowling alleys, free of charge.”
  • Plans to build an Indy Eleven a soccer stadium for a new MLS team on Indianapolis’s former heliport are on hold because something about not rewarding a city that “continues to thumb its nose” at ICE; the FAA will soon be weighing in on the matter.
  • Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson has met with NBA commissioner Adam Silver, though not in the sense of actually meeting meeting like in person, and “offered to be helpful in bringing back the Sonics” as an NBA expansion team. Seattle already has a practically brand new arena, though by the time the NBA is ready to expand it could be pushing 10 years old, is that too soon to ask for upgrades?
  • San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones says Spurs owner Michael Dell donating $6 billion to Donald Trump’s “Trump accounts” savings plan “really pissed me off” because “if you can give $6 billion for these accounts, you could have paid for your own arena.” But then Dell wouldn’t have those billions he saved by getting taxpayers to build his arena! Sounds like somebody doesn’t understand what the whole point of being a billionaire is. (Hint: It’s getting billions of dollars, not spending it.)
  • And finally on the Rays front, Frank Nockels of Land O’ Lakes, Florida asks: “If we pay for half of the Rays’ new stadium, can we get free tickets?” Ian Betteridge has some bad news, Frank.
Share this post:

Friday roundup: Lightning win $250m in tax money for 6-year lease extension, Missouri holds secret talks on Royals stadium

access_time personNeil deMause

We have a bunch of new followers here thanks largely to all the tumult over the Kansas City Chiefs stadium deal, so it’s worth another mention that Field of Schemes continues to exist after almost 28 years thanks to the kindness of its readers. If you have any money left after donating to help the families of government-kidnapped five-year-olds [UPDATE: Or all the other less adorable Minnesotans who can use help], you can chip in to support this site here — you’ll even get some amusing refrigerator magnets in appreciation, if we can still even be amused in 2026.

And speaking of trying to wring amusement from horror, here is your weekly dose of stadium and arena bullet points:

  • Hillsborough County approved $250 million in arena renovations for the Tampa Bay Lightning in exchange for a six-year lease extension, which at $41.7 million per year would be one of the priciest per-year lease extensions in sports history.  Lightning owner Jeffrey Vinik could still request state sales tax money on top of this as well — if he does in exchange for no more years of lease extension, that would be a per-year cost of infinity, which would be an unbreakable record.
  • Officials from Kansas City, Missouri and Jackson County traveled to meet with Gov. Mike Kehoe on Wednesday about the Royals stadium situation, and no you can’t know what they talked about, that’s for Royals owner John Sherman to find out and you not to find out until it’s all been hashed out. Both Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas and Interim Jackson County Executive Phil LeVota said they hope to strike a stadium deal with Sherman by the end of spring training; while we’re hoping things, let’s hope that this threesome focuses on getting a good deal, and not just a deal that is resolved quickly.
  • An Indiana senate committee cast a vote on Wednesday that “establishes the necessary funding to pay for the construction of a new Chicago Bears stadium,” according to WGN, but actually just creates a stadium authority, as we discussed last week. Also the full Indiana state senate still has to vote on it, and then the state house has to, before even this can become law, but don’t let that stop reporters from calling this a “bidding war.”
  • Dallas Mavericks execs have narrowed their arena site search to two locations, one an undisclosed one downtown and one at an abandoned mall site that, uh, is already getting redeveloped? Only having two prospective sites, both in the same city, wouldn’t bode super well for Mavs owners Patrick and Sivan Dumont’s leverage in demanding taxpayer money to build the thing, but they still have land in Irving they could consider using as a threat, as one does.
  • The Buffalo Sabres owners have hired a lobbyist to seek state funding of a $400 million renovation of their arena, good thing New York state has plenty of money for that.
  • The Sphere people want to build another Sphere, this time smaller and in the D.C. suburbs, using a tax increment financing district to siphon off property taxes to pay to build it. That’s okay, though, because Prince George’s County Executive Aisha Braveboy and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore say a Sphere would generate $1 billion in economic impact [citation needed], so everything should be fine [citation needed].
Share this post:

Friday roundup: Rays target stadium site, Bears seek Indiana stadium authority, Chiefs pursue local tax money

access_time personNeil deMause

Sorry for the late post today — I think all the images of people getting shot in the face and pulled screaming from their cars are starting to interfere with my sleep schedule. No matter what else is going on, though, the stadium and arena shakedowns continue, so let’s get to the news that we didn’t already cover this week:

  • Tampa Bay Rays owner and Gov. Ron DeSantis pal Patrick Zalupski is reportedly in advanced talks to buy the state-owned Hillsborough College’s Dale Mabry Campus in Tampa for the site of a new stadium and surrounding development. (The college’s 20,000 students would possibly get a new campus elsewhere as part of a “land swap” for something or other.) How the money for any of this would work is as yet a mystery — the Hillsborough board of trustees will meet on Tuesday to discuss the plan, at which point we’ll learn a bit more, maybe.
  • The Indiana state senate is considering a bill to create a stadium authority in Northwest Indiana to lure the Chicago Bears, which would have precisely the same effect as me opening a bank account to use to buy a yacht: nothing at all, until somebody puts some money in it. (The bill language would give the authority bonding capacity, but no set revenue streams to pay off any bonds.) Bears officials nonetheless called it a “significant milestone” in their talks of getting a stadium in Indiana, guess you gotta celebrate your achievements where you can find them, especially if you want to maintain your leverage.
  • There’s been talk before that Kansas’s $4 billion subsidy offer to the Kansas City Chiefs for a new stadium in Kansas City, Kansas (their current stadium is in Kansas City, Missouri) could involve kicking in future city and county sales tax revenues as well as state sales taxes, and now it’s an official ask: Both Wyandotte County, where Kansas City, Kansas is located, and the city of Olathe, where the Chiefs’ new training facility would be built, are being asked to chip in their share of any rise in sales tax receipts to help pay the Chiefs’ construction bill. (I don’t think this changes the overall public price tag, just displaces some of the money the state might otherwise struggle to come up with.) Why the local governments would want to commit their own tax revenue to pay for something the state otherwise plans to build with its own funds, who knows, but Olathe councilmembers did call the training camp a “wonderful transformational project for us” and “a very exciting announcement,” so maybe the hope is local lawmakers will be so excited they’ll contribute to the project’s GoFundMe.
  • Unite Here Local 49 has estimated that those billboards the city of Sacramento is erecting and giving the revenue from to the Sacramento Republic F.C. owners could end up costing the city $115 million over 34 years — which would be worth less in present value, but also it looks like the union didn’t account for future inflation in billboard rates, so maybe not less in present value? Maybe we’ll find out in the year 2060, if man is still alive.
  • There are new renderings of the planned Washington Commanders stadium on the old RFK Stadium site, and they look kind of like a plus-sized version of the Saddledome, surrounded by a whole lot of garages and buildings strategically shown so all you can see are their green roofs. (No fireworks or entourage at all, Josh Harris isn’t blowing any of that $6.6 billion on the clip art budget.) One thing they don’t show: Any of the homes in the nearby neighborhood, or the grocery stores and other small businesses that residents say they would like to see built there, but aren’t hopeful anyone will be able to afford to once the stadium opens.
  • The Houston Texans just hired a chief revenue officer who last worked on the Buffalo Bills stadium project, guess we’re going to start hearing again about Texans owner Cal McNair’s desires for a new or upgraded stadium.
  • $50 million in public bonds for a cricket stadium? In Oswego? It’s all supposed to be covered by stadium revenue, but I can’t find confirmation in the (checks notes) Fox River Valley press. Anyway, I’m done, have a good holiday weekend, see you back here on Tuesday, if woman can survive.
Share this post:

New Jersey legislature okays $300m Devils tax break just one week after it was introduced

access_time personNeil deMause

Well, that didn’t take long: Just one week after it was first revealed that the state of New Jersey was considering giving Devils owner Josh Harris $300 million in new tax breaks to pay for arena upgrades, both houses of the state legislature signed off on the money this week (49-22 in the Assembly and 33-4 in the Senate) because re-vi-tal-i-za-tion!

Supporters argued that the tax break will nourish Newark’s renaissance.

“This is not a cash check,” said bill sponsor Sen. Teresa Ruiz (D-Essex). “This is ensuring that Newark stays revitalized and becomes the cornerstone or an economic engine and development, and a source of pride.”

It is undeniably a cash check — the only question is what, if anything, New Jersey residents will get out of the deal. Assembly sponsor Eliana Pintor Marin, who represents the district with the Devils arena in it, said that if the Devils “were to pack up and leave, the economic detriment it’d cause the City of Newark — my home base in the Ironbound — would be substantial.” That’s very debatable, but more to the point, Harris hadn’t threatened to move the Devils anywhere, and has a lease in Newark through 2038, and would be hard-pressed to find another metro area the size of New York City’s if he did want to move. But, you know, details!

Moreover, from the looks of the bill language, Harris isn’t required to sign a lease extension or do anything else in exchange for the tax subsidy, so it’s not only a cash check, it’s one with no strings attached. Even if unbeloved lame-duck governor Phil Murphy signs the bill before leaving office on Tuesday, state senate appropriations committee chair Paul Sarlo said Harris will still have to negotiate final details with incoming governor Mikie Sherrill, the state Economic Development Authority, and the city of Newark, so it’s still possible that the state could put some conditions on its $300 million, but probably best not to hold your breath.

 

Share this post:

Hidden subsidies cost taxpayers billions of dollars a year, yet elected officials keep pretending they’re not real money

access_time personNeil deMause

University of Colorado Denver sports economist Geoffrey Propheter, who readers here should be very familiar with as it seems like I cite him every day or so, has an essay up today at The Conversation on how “privately funded” stadium and arena deals can often cost the public big money through subsidies that aren’t counted on the official cost ledger. Propheter estimates, for example, that property tax breaks — his specialty — “have cost state and local governments US$20 billion cumulatively over the life of teams’ leases, 42% of which would have gone to K-12 education.” Likewise, taxpayer spending on infrastructure and operating costs is often discounted, while counting team rent payments as private money ignores the value of the land or property that is being rented.

Put it all together, and you get all-time hidden-subsidy champions like the Washington Commanders stadium deal:

By way of example, the Council of the District of Columbia approved a subsidy agreement last year with the NFL’s Commanders. The stadium would be financed, constructed and operated by the team owner, who would pay $1 in rent per year and remit no property taxes. In exchange for financing the stadium privately, the owner receives exclusive development rights to 20 acres of land adjacent to the stadium for the next 90 years.

The stadium is expected to cost the owner $2.5 billion, with the city contributing $1.3 billion for infrastructure.

But the city also gives up market rental income between $6 billion and $25 billion,depending on future land appreciation rates, that it could make on the 20 acres.

In other words, the rent discount alone means the city gives up revenue equal to multiple stadiums in exchange for the Commanders providing one. It is as if the council has a Lamborghini, traded it straight up for a Honda Civic, and then praised themselves for their negotiation acumen that resulted in a “free” Civic.

The Lamborghini Effect is a great image, and one that really should be drilled into the heads of all elected officials who are faced with negotiating sports deals — which sooner or later is pretty much all elected officials. Already just this week, we’ve seen a bunch of political leaders who seem to be in need of reading Propheter’s warnings:

  • The Sacramento city council approved new city digital billboards whose revenue will all be siphoned off and given to the Republic FC owners to help pay for a new soccer stadium, even though nobody has any idea how much that will be. “These billboard leases are a giant hidden subsidy for the railyards developers,” UNITE HERE Local 49 Aamir Deen told CBS News. “It’s absurd to vote on this billboard deal without even knowing what you’re giving away.”
  • Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who in the ongoing Chicago Bears stadium talks has mostly been holding a hard line against “propping up what now is an $8.5 billion-valued business” with taxpayer dollars, reiterated that he doesn’t count infrastructure spending as a subsidy, because “we help private businesses all the time in the state, and I want to help” and “some of the infrastructure needs that the Bears are identifying” for their proposed Arlington Heights stadium are “projects that we were going to build at one point or another.”
  • Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, in her final state of the state speech, gushed about her new Chiefs stadium deal that could end up costing state taxpayers a second-only-to-the-Commanders-record $4.1 billion according to Propheter’s projections, on the grounds that it won’t raise taxes or divert money from existing budget priorities — ignoring how it will divert billions of dollars from future budget priorities as tax revenue from a 300-square-mile swath of the state gets directed to Chiefs owner Clark Hunt’s bank account instead of the state treasury.

Some of these actions are more worrying than others: It’s still unclear whether Pritzker, in particular, will really be okay with the $855 million in infrastructure demands the Bears owners have levied, or if he’s just telegraphing that he’s open to the state covering a few minor expenses, so please don’t play footsie with Indiana without continuing to haggle with him. Either way, though, they’re all concerning signs that political leaders are continuing to divide public spending on private sports venues into two buckets, one marked “real tax dollars” and one “not really tax dollars because reasons” — and the latter can include pretty much anything from spending on everything around the stadium to handing over selected public revenue streams to just straight-up checks from the public treasury so long as they can be termed “no new taxes.” With elected antagonists like these, team owners don’t need friends — as we’re seeing when the largest stadium subsidies in history are being justified as not costing taxpayers anything. Not like that’s anything new, but when Propheter and I and a lot of other people have been pointing out the pitfalls of hidden sports subsidies for decades now, it’d be nice a few more people started at least acknowledging that public costs are public costs, now matter how team owners attempt to launder them.

Share this post:

Friday roundup: Trail Blazers, Lightning owners join Devils in asking states to fund their arena upgrades because reasons

access_time personNeil deMause

The way this week has gone, you can be forgiven if you just want to avoid the news entirely. If you’ve come here to be cheered up by some less depressing news … that’s never a good idea, but there are maybe some amusing bits, and nobody has gotten killed (so far), so I guess those are pluses!

Feel free to try to find the glass half full in these items:

  • The Portland Trail Blazers owners are about to ask that Oregon hand over all state income taxes paid by home and road players and staff to help fund a $600 million renovation of their 30-year-old arena. (The cost is estimated at $20 million a year, which if salaries rise enough could easily end up amounting to $600 million worth of future taxes.) The Oregonian notes: “Team employees, notably players who earn millions, have been paying into the state’s general fund for decades, dating back to the franchise’s founding in 1970. Will lawmakers have the stomach to divert those funds from essential services to rebuild an arena that is home to a team that will soon be owned by a Texas billionaire?” Then it says that “the income tax dollars the general fund would lose in this proposal will vanish anyway if the Blazers relocate,” which, no they wouldn’t, not if Portlanders spent their basketball ticket dollars elsewhere locally, which the numbers show is what would mostly happen. Securing approval of the tax money before Tom Dundon (the aforementioned billionaire) officially steps in as owner, one source told the Oregonian, “guarantees the Blazers’ future,” though they didn’t say what kind of lease extension Dundon would agree to in exchange, so it’s always possible it would only guarantee the Blazers’ future until it’s time to ask for more tax money again.
  • Hillsborough County is discussing paying for $250 million in renovations to the Tampa Bay Lightning‘s arena in exchange for a six-year lease extension until 2043, which has some Tampa Sports Authority officials worried the Buccaneers and Rays owners may make similar demands if the arena project is approved. Also that would be $41.7 million per year of lease extension, which would be close to the record for most expensive ever.
  • New Jersey’s proposed $300 million Devils arena subsidy only has a few days left of the legislative session for approval, and “some lawmakers,” per New Jersey Digest, have “raised concerns” that rushing a major tax break through in a lame-deck session with a lame-duck governor might not be the best of ideas. Not that state legislatures don’t do it all the time, but not the best of ideas does check out if you’re a fan of transparency and due diligence and all the other democracy things that are out of fashion right now.
  • Kansas officials want to make clear that the state could still build a Kansas City Royals stadium, just not with STAR bonds since the deadline for those expired at the end of 2025, so they’re just for the Chiefs and for Barbie/Hot Wheels theme parks. And the state doesn’t really have many other good revenue sources, says house speaker Dan Hawkins: “It would be tough to use those and develop enough money to really support a stadium, and so, I just can’t see that happening.”
  • The Ohio judge who issued a 14-day temporary restraining order against the use of unclaimed private funds to pay $600 million toward a new Cleveland Browns stadium has extended it indefinitely while he hears arguments on whether to issue a permanent injunction.
Share this post:

NJ bill would give Devils $300m for arena renovations, amid $1.5B state budget shortfall

access_time personNeil deMause

Over the last couple of years, billionaire private equity goon Josh Harris has been among the most active sports owners at winning public approval for new venue projects, first getting Philadelphia’s okay for a downtown arena for the 76ers and leveraging that into a new joint arena plan with the Flyers owners, then landing the most lucrative sports subsidy of all time, worth at least $6.6 billion in cash, land, and tax breaks for a new Washington Commanders stadium. But what of Harris’s third team, the New Jersey Devils? Turns out it’s time for the third shoe to drop:

A bill that would expand the state’s corporate tax incentive programs by billions and extend new tax subsidies to Newark’s Prudential Center was advanced by Assembly lawmakers Monday over the objections of critics.

The measure, which won 10-2 approval from the Assembly’s economic development committee, would pour an additional $2.5 billion into the state’s marquee tax incentive programs and extend up to $300 million in state subsidies for renovations at the Newark arena.

The bill in question was introduced on Friday by state assemblymember Eliana Pintor Marin, whose district includes most of Newark, including the Prudential Center. Pintor Marin said that the Devils’ arena, which is owned by the Newark Housing Authority and operated by the team, “needs to have major renovations” so that the Devils “can continue to play” and also “compete and bring in different spectators and bring in different shows.” Pintor Marin did not explain why these were New Jersey taxpayers’ problems to solve, or why the Devils can’t continue to play in a 19-year-old arena.

Notably, the Devils just extended their lease in 2013 — in exchange for, among other things, revenue from city-built parking garages — until 2038, which you might think would have forestalled any renovation subsidy demands for at least the next few years. But nope, the subsidies are moving forward now, for unexplained reasons. To get around state laws prohibiting special giveaways to particular companies, Pintor Marin even wrote language saying “Prudential Center” without saying “Prudential Center,” limiting the bill’s recipients to building with capacities of “at least 15,000 [that] have operated for at least 15 years in a city with an international airport in a non-coastal county with at least 550,000 residents and a density of not less than 3,000 people per square mile.” (If this wasn’t sufficient, the next item on the list was presumably going to be “and ending in X.”)

The bill also includes one of the more hilarious provisions ever for a sports subsidy, requiring that “the gross economic benefit of the sports and entertainment facility to the State over the duration of the commitment period is at least 150 percent of the overall public assistance provided to the sports and entertainment project”— an effectively meaningless provision, given that “gross economic benefit” just means money changing hands in your locality, not any actual tax receipts that can be used to refill the state budget. Dena Mottola Jaborska, executive director of New Jersey Citizen Action, warned that New Jersey is already facing a “very brutal budget” with a $1.5 billion projected deficit in the current fiscal year, and “you are talking about taxpayer dollars going towards these wealthy corporations, 3 billion dollars’ worth, at a time when we’re going to have a hard time balancing our budget heading into next year.”

Though the Devils subsidy bill was put forward outside of the state budget process, it still needs to go through the Assembly Appropriations Committee before going to a floor vote, as well as passing through the state senate. The 2026 legislative session begins January 13; I’ll report back here if New Jersey residents will have any opportunities for public comment.

Share this post:

Friday roundup: The year that stadium subsidies went completely nuts

access_time personNeil deMause

One year ago today, this site ran an item headlined “Was the Carolina Panthers’ $650m renovation deal really the worst of 2024? An investimagation,” in response to the Center for Economic Accountability declaring Charlotte the winner of that dubious distinction. The conclusion: The Panthers deal was bad, but there were plenty of other contenders, like St. Petersburg’s attempt (eventually rejected) to give over $1 billion to the owners of the Tampa Bay Rays, the Washington Capitals and Wizards owner landing $515 million from D.C., plus non-sports megadeals for everything from an Eli Lilly drug plant in Indiana to expansion of film and TV production tax credits.

All that seems like a million years ago. The year 2025 will be remembered for lots of things, but one is that it was the year where stadium subsidies blew way past the billion-dollar mark, with Washington Commanders owner Josh Harris landing a stadium-plus deal worth at least $6.6 billion in cash, land, and tax breaks, then Kansas City Chiefs owner Clark Hunt following that up with a preliminary agreement for around $4 billion in goodies for a stadium development in Kansas. Otherwise notable events of the past year like the state of Ohio gifting Cleveland Browns owner Jimmy Haslam $600 million (or more) to move from one part of the state to another and even San Antonio providing $1.3 billion for a new San Antonio Spurs arena project — easily an NBA record — feel like chump change by comparison.

And that’s the bigger concern here: While in a sane world, elected officials would sit down and figure out how much the presence of a sports team is worth compared to having money for public services, or at least how much they need to offer to outbid other prospective host cities, if any, in this timeline it’s more about what the next guy down the road has established as the going rate. It’s impossible to say, for example, how the Chicago Bears owners’ perpetual game of footsie with both Chicago and every suburb within driving distance will turn out, or if Kansas City Royals owner John Sherman will replicate the Chiefs’ tax windfall — but when owners can point to previous deals and argue that giving 99 years of free rent or all future sales tax increases from a 300-square-mile area is just the cost of doing business, it makes it easier for state, county, and city officials to say “sure, I guess, do we at least get a luxury box?”

And on that note, let’s wrap up the final news from 2025, and the early returns from 2026:

  • Kansas state senate president Ty Masterson said the “worst case scenario” for a Chiefs stadium is “nobody buys the bonds, the bonds don’t get sold, the project doesn’t happen,” but it seems far more likely that if nobody is interested in buying the bonds, the state would make its sales tax increment district even bigger than 300 square miles, which seems like it would be considerably worse. Or the state could have to sell bonds at an interest rate of as high as 8.5% to lure bond buyers, which would definitely be worse. Let only your imagination be your limit, Ty!
  • Count newly elected Kansas City, Kansas mayor Christal Watson, who is also CEO of Wyandotte County (counties got CEOs?), among those eager to look the Chiefs stadium deal in the mouth: “If the numbers aren’t there for us to maintain the services that are needed for the community, then we’ve got to reevaluate and renegotiate,” said Watson this week. It ain’t over until it’s over!
  • Meanwhile, Kansas speaker of the house Dan Hawkins says with the clock turning over to 2026, “time’s up” for the Royals to use STAR bonds that were approved last year. Though technically the legislature can still change its mind and approve new bonds until the end of June — if it can find some bits of eastern Kansas that aren’t already part of the Chiefs stadium tax district — this seems like a good opportunity for Missouri officials to recognize that they’re the only bidder for the Royals and drive a hard bargain, though vowing to do an end run around voters doesn’t seem like a great start.
  • The Minnesota Timberwolves owners are still dreaming of a new arena that will feature augmented reality, and Wild owner Craig Leipold wants to make sure he’s in line for arena upgrades too, because “in order to survive in the NHL” you “need to be in a really good building,” and his building is a whole 25 years old and the team is only turning $68 million a year in profits, this is clearly St. Paul’s problem to fix.
  • San Antonio mayor Gina Ortiz Jones says she’s not done trying to renegotiate that Spurs deal, on the grounds that “non-binding means non-binding.” She likely needs a majority of the city council to back her up there — San Antonio has a weak-mayor form of government — but props to her for knowing how to read a dictionary.
  • The New England Revolution owners reached an agreement this week to pay Boston $48 million over 15 years to compensate for traffic and transit problems caused by a planned new stadium in Everett, as well as $90 million over 20 years in parks and transit upgrades in Everett. With team owners the Kraft family covering the $500 million stadium construction cost, I’m tempted to say this is actually a pretty fair deal and a sign that at least some local politicians can still drive a hard bargain, though it’s equally like that this is mostly a sign that nobody in the U.S. cares as much about MLS as about the other football.
  • Wahconah Park in Pittsfield, Massachusetts is set to be torn down and replaced next year, which will come as a sad note to anyone who read Foul Ball, Jim Bouton’s book on how he helped temporarily save the old ballpark 20 years ago.
  • There’s another interview with me up about the Chiefs deal, which you can listen to here — there doesn’t appear to be a way to link to particular timestamps in a YouTube short, but enjoy the whole thing anyway, it may be the last thing on the platform that’s not AI-generated!
Share this post:

Cleveland still has no money for Cavs, Guardians upgrades, is resorting to stalling

access_time personNeil deMause

The controversy continues over the city of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County having to cover more than $400 million in upcoming repair costs for the Guardians stadium and Cavaliers arena despite having no money to do it with. And according to Cleveland.com, there’s nothing the local governments can do about it:

Under its lease agreements with the Cleveland Cavaliers and Cleveland Guardians, Gateway Economic Development Corporation of Greater Cleveland is responsible for paying for capital repairs over $500,000 at Rocket Arena and all repairs — big or small — at Progressive Field.

Worse yet, it’s not just genuine repairs that taxpayers are on the hook for; the Guardians leases also contains one of those dreaded state-of-the-art clauses that requires publicly funded upgrades if the Cleveland stadium has fallen behind three-quarters of other MLB ballparks, “as well as any changes required by television networks, the league, insurers or government regulations.” Most recently, this required the city and county to spend $1.3 million to install padded seats behind home place in 2023, on the grounds that all the other kids had them.

Gateway officials have responded by trying to stall on approving the payments, with one board member telling a Guardians official, “We are required to fund it. We are not required to fund it on the schedule that you’re asking.” But ultimately, according to the lease extensions approved by lawmakers in 2004 and extended in 2021, the leases require the city and county to cover these costs in exchange for the Cavs and Guardians staying put through 2034 and 2036, respectively.

The city and county do have a doomsday option, though. As I wrote last December:

The leases say the teams can sue Gateway for damages if they don’t get their repair money on time. However, if Gateway runs out of money — which it would if the city and county stopped giving it more cash — it doesn’t appear that the Guardians and Cavs owners can sue the city and county, so it’s within the governments’ power to shut off the money spigot and dare the teams to break their leases and try to find better ones elsewhere, if they wanted.

That doesn’t seem to be the plan so far: Gateway officials are griping to the city and county that they need a bailout — another bailout, following one for $20 million last year that raided funds for a minority business program and other projects — and Mayor Justin Bibb is muttering about creating tax surcharges in the stadium district to help cover costs. This all seems destined to end with the team owners negotiating another round of lease extensions in exchange for a lot more public cash, like how it’s been done one state to the west; you’d like to think that Ohio legislators could be better negotiators than Indiana ones, but if city and county officials had shown any ability before this to write leases that would protect taxpayers, they wouldn’t need the talcum powder.

Share this post:

How Kansas governor claims $4B Chiefs stadium subsidy will cost “no new taxes,” and whether this makes any damn sense

access_time personNeil deMause

Judging from my email, the proposed Kansas City Chiefs stadium deal with the state of Kansas has set off a wave of cognitive dissonance among sports fans and taxpayers: Gov. Laura Kelly says that the state will spend $1.8 billion on a new stadium — really more like $4 billion, counting tax breaks and subsidies for additional development around the stadium — but also claims that the deal “requires no new funds from the current state budget and no new taxes on Kansans.” How can a stadium both cost taxpayers billions of dollars and also be free?

This is a topic that deserves a full analysis with lots of numbers and math, but those are still being compiled. In the meantime, let’s examine more closely that “no new taxes” claim, what kind of logic it relies on, and whether it holds water.

About $3 billion of the Chiefs subsidy will come from STAR (Sales Tax and Revenue) bonds, which are a kind of tax increment financing, or TIF: A governmental body, in this case the state of Kansas, calculates the current total amount of taxes being paid in a designated district and guarantees that this amount will continue to be collected. (For STAR bonds this is only for sales taxes, making it technically a STIF.) Any additional revenue that comes in — the “increment” — gets diverted to pay off the bonds, which in this case would pay off the stadium.

The idea here is to only spend what new value you get from a project: If moving the Chiefs across state lines increases sales tax receipts by X dollars, then only X dollars will go toward paying off the bonds. State taxpayers, the theory goes, are held harmless: The state is collecting the same amount of taxes as it would without the Chiefs, so the stadium pays for itself. Here’s Gov. Kelly, telling the New York Times how she plans to spend $3 billion paying off STAR bonds without costing anyone anything:

Kelly said Kansas will take tax dollars only above and beyond what was previously generated in the area — thanks to the Chiefs’ arrival — to fund the new initiative.

“So the shopper, the diner, they will not be paying any new tax,” Kelly said.

The problems start to arise when it comes to calculating what “thanks to the Chiefs’ arrival” means. TIFs don’t actually try to calculate how much in tax revenue is actually created by the new development — they just assume that any new spending was caused by the project, and kick that amount back to developers as a presumed windfall. This leaves lots of room for subsidizing projects that would happen with or without the subsidy: Chicago famously created so many TIF districts under Mayor Richard Daley two decades ago that it had to raise taxes on the remaining parts of the city to cover for all the holes it was blowing it its tax base.

It also leaves open the possibility that a lot of the “new” taxes being siphoned off would have been collected regardless, thanks to natural economic growth, inflation, etc. University of Colorado Denver economist Geoffrey Propheter, who has clearly spent a lot of his Christmas week explaining tax increments to reporters, describes it this way:

“I will bet my life on it that somewhere within 300 square miles, in that 300 square mile district, someone’s going to buy a Chipotle burrito, someone’s going to buy a lawnmower, someone’s going to buy a T-shirt, all these taxable goods,” Propheter said. “It’s going to happen whether the Chiefs are there or not. The difference is now; those dollars are going to the Chiefs, even though it has nothing to do with the Chiefs.”

This seems obvious if you think about how spending works: There’s almost zero chance that sales taxes in a district covering most of Wyandotte and Johnson counties would stay flat for 30 years if the Chiefs didn’t move in. But we can also perform a simple thought experiment here: How much Chiefs-related spending would there have to be to pay off the STAR bonds by itself? A $3 billion bond at 4.25% interest over 30 years will cost about $175 million a year in tax receipts. Kansas’s state sales tax is 6.5%. (Liquor taxes also go into paying off STAR bonds, but they’re a tiny fraction of the sales tax total.) That means Chiefs-related new spending would need to be $2.7 billion a year — this for a team whose total annual revenue, including TV money that isn’t subject to sales taxes, is currently less than a quarter of that total.

Looked at another way, if you assume that a new 65,000-seat stadium would sell out ten games a year, that means each and every Chiefs fan would need to spend an additional $4,000 per game in Kansas, over and above what they would spend in the state regardless, for the state to break even. Anything less than that, and Kansas taxpayers will have to make up the difference, just as was the case with Chicago’s TIFs.

This is, on some level, a variation on the Casino Night Fallacy, where any tax money touched by a team is designated as “team-related” and therefore fair game for the team owner to demand to keep. Only in this case, it’s money that the team may never have touched in the first place: All those new lawnmower purchases get credited to the Chiefs’ account regardless of whether they have anything to do with a football stadium being built elsewhere in the county. The net fiscal benefit of luring a pro football team across state lines isn’t zero, but after subtracting out spending that would have taken place regardless, spending that is cannibalized from elsewhere in the state, and tax money that will be needed to pay for new costs like police and fire services to a new stadium development (and schools if it includes residences), the amount of actual new money is certain to be way, way less than the state’s $4 billion expense. We can debate how much red ink Kansas taxpayers will end up swimming in if this stadium comes to pass — and I do hope to have more specific numbers soon — but it’s likely to be somewhere between a lot and a whole hell of a lot.

Share this post: