“Actual peer-reviewed studies by real economists show no tangible impacts of new stadiums on local economic activity. It’s basically the one thing all economists, from Marxists to the Chicago school, agree upon.”
“Economist Allen Sanderson said you generate more economic activity by throwing a billion dollars out of a helicopter.”
Sanderson actually didn’t put a price tag on how much money you’d have to throw out of a helicopter to generate more economic activity than building a stadium, but given that he said this as early as 1997 with regard to a Minnesota Twins stadium at a time when stadiums cost a lot less than a billion dollars, he probably would have accepted tossing even fewer moneybags. TRUE ENOUGH.
“Money that could be spent in or around the stadium is money that is currently being spent doing something else in the area.”
Probably not all of stadium spending is cannibalized by spending elsewhere in the area, depending on how you define “area”: In Bradbury’s studies of the new Atlanta Braves stadium in Cobb County recounted in his new book, he found that around one-third of the spending in and around Truist Park was reallocated from elsewhere in the county. And that didn’t include spending reallocated from the rest of the Atlanta metro area, or the state of Georgia as a whole — the larger a circle you draw around an attraction, the more entertainment dollars are just being shuffled around within it. So while Hillsborough County will likely steal some economic activity from Pinellas County if the Rays move across the bay, it’ll still be Florida spending replacing other Florida spending, which isn’t a net plus for Florida taxpayers. MOSTLY TRUE.
“The new stadium has a negligible effect on total tourism numbers.”
Hurtak notes that even the Rays selling out every game would be a drop in the bucket compared to existing Tampa tourism numbers, but there’s an even better case for this argument: Studies of what happens when spring training is canceled because of strikes and lockouts have found that there’s no measurable negative impact on Florida tourism. IF ANYTHING, UNDERSTATING THE MYTH.
“Lots of stadium projects over the past few decades have been mixed-use, and none of them have paid back the taxpayers.”
I can’t confirm “none of them” without a lot more research than I have time for this morning, but there are certainly tons of examples of mixed-use projects that have been seas of red ink for taxpayers. In fact, some of the stadium projects that promise to be the costliest for the public are mixed-use developments, if only because the scale of the subsidies is even larger when team owners receive tax and land breaks on the non-stadium portions as well — as would be the case for the Rays stadium complex in Tampa. PRETTY DARN TRUE.
“A loan is when you give someone money and they promise to pay it back. The Rays have not committed to paying anything back. The current proposal is no different from the previous one, other than that the money being committed from your tax dollars is coming from a different bucket — the same bucket that we currently use to pay for renovating fire stations, fixing police cars, and paving roads.”
Yup. I hadn’t actually realized that Rays stadium proponents were arguing that the city spending $80 million toward a stadium and paying it off by siphoning off property tax revenues was a “loan,” but if so that’s completely bonkers — even Oscar Madison could tell you that. EXTREMELY TRUE.
“Even if you live in Tampa, the majority of your property taxes go to the county, which is poised to spend almost $700 million on this.”
Yup yup. (I actually have it as slightly over $700 million in county money, but it’s possible the county price tag has come down slightly in the latest iteration of the deal.) TRUE.
“The contract puts Tampa taxpayers on the hook for a blank check to pay for any additional costs of stadium renovations and repairs in the future.”
The proposed stadium development and funding agreement isn’t all that clear about how the “waterfall fund” of additional tax moneys to be used for future upgrades would work, and in fact pushes off a lot of the details around this to a future TIF district agreement that hasn’t been negotiated yet, but GENERALLY TRUE.
As a (sometime) professional fact-checker, my overall rating of Hurtak’s six-minute video report is: MORE ACCURATE THAN MOST NEWS ARTICLES BEFORE THEY GO TO A FACT CHECKER. The problems with handing over $2 billion in tax dollars in order to get the Rays to play home games in one part of Tampa Bay rather than another should be self-evident at this point, but if you want proof, Hurtak’s research checks out. Or you could be like councilmember Bill Carlson and declare that he knows “the best economists in the world” and the ones who are against stadiums are probably just “politically biased”; I’d love to fact-check those statements, but Carlson refuses to answer questions about any of his voluminous tweets on the subject, so we’ll have to settle for hopefully watching Hurtak ask him at today’s council hearing, which kicks off at 9 a.m.[EDIT: the Rays agenda item actually starts at 10 a.m., sounds like] and will be viewable online here.
I unfortunately had to cancel my trip to this year’s sports economics conference at University of Maryland-Baltimore County starting today, but friend of Field of Schemes John Mozena of the Center for Economic Accountability generously offered to liveblog from there instead. Take it away, John, I will be following eagerly along with other readers! —Neil deMause
8:30 a.m.
Good morning, everyone. I’m deeply honored to be trusted with the virtual keys to Field of Schemes, which is a daily read for me and an invaluable resource for anyone who wants to make sports team owners pay for their own stadiums. I feel a bit like a Wish.com or Temu “No honey, we have Neil deMause at home” but I’ll do my best.
(Also, I’m fully aware that I’m the dumbest and least qualified person in this lecture hall and it ain’t even close. Last night, I was embarrassed to suddenly realize that I was debating the economics of promotion and relegation in American soccer at the bar with someone who literally wrote the book on the economics of soccer.)
8:45 a.m.
The first two papers are on non-stadium-related topics, but I’ll try to summarize them regardless.
The first paper is “Whistle Politics: Nationality Bias and Own-Nationality Favoritism in a Multinational Basketball Officiating Setting,” by Georgy Shukaylo* and Veronika Dolar of the David and Nicole Tepper Department of Sport and Entertainment Management at the University of South Carolina. Their question was whether American players are refereed differently in the AdmiralBet ABA League, the top-tier professional league for teams from the six former Yugoslav republics.
(Editorializing for a moment: The irony of a “Department of Sport and Entertainment Management” being named after someone who has been responsible for the 2019 and 2024 recipients of my organization’s “Worst Economic Development Deal of the Year Award” is left as an exercise for the reader.)
Shukaylo and Dolar hypothesized a few different ways that refereeing bias toward American players might present itself in Balkan basketball: Did Americans get whistled more by local referees because of lingering animus over America’s role in the first and second Yugoslav wars? Or because of resentment over America’s basketball dominance? Or did they get fewer calls because the league wanted to keep higher-profile American players in the game to keep fans happy?
It turns out that the data suggests that final option: U.S. players got a slightly lower whistle rate, roughly half a foul less per 40 minutes than comparable players. The authors determined that this was the result of ‘passive leniency’ by referees calling fewer incidental “touch” fouls on Americans, not more fouls on local or other international players.
* Georgy recently completed his Ph.D at the University of Michigan, where he had the good fortune to celebrate national championships in football and men’s basketball during his time in Ann Arbor. Go Blue.
9:25 a.m.
Petr Parshakov presents a paper by himself, Dennis Coates, Dmitry Dagaev and Sofia Paklina on “Compatriot Bias in Evaluation of Football Players,” looking at the role that national and racial bias play in people’s assessment of soccer players, using the crowdsourced rankings from the EA Sports FIFA/EA FC video game as a starting point. The results are more complex than I’m competent to summarize, but broadly come down to “Yeah, people do have some bias towards people who are different but there’s a lot of other issues at play including rooting interests and player popularity.”
9:55 a.m.
On to stadiums and economic impact, which will be the focus of the rest of the day!
From UMBC colleagues Mike Andrews and Dennis Coates, we have early-stage work on “Estimating Local Effects of Stadiums Using a Runner-Up Design.”
Andrews describes the question as “How does a new stadium affect the local economy,” which he admits is a question that’s been asked a lot by economists in the room (and elsewhere), but that they are trying to use some different tools to answer the question “What would have happened if the stadium had not been built?” and then compare that to real-world post-stadium outcomes.
The interesting thing they’ve done is to look at winning and runner-up NFL stadium sites according to local decision-makers, figuring that sites that would be appropriate for stadiums should have had relatively similar trajectories if not for the stadium being built on one of them, so comparing the differences in outcomes should let you identify the stadium’s impact.
The first result is that they found no significant economic differences between the immediate areas around stadiums versus the immediate areas around runner-up sites, which is consistent with *gestures around at everything everyone in this room has been publishing for years*.
More interestingly, they then went on to look at what happened to growth in areas further away from the stadium and runner-up sites – two, four, six, eight and ten-mile rings. While the data is very preliminary and has issues with small sample size, there seem to be signs that growth in the immediate neighborhood of a stadium comes at the expense of areas a few miles away from the stadium in a way that doesn’t take place at non-stadium sites.
10:10 a.m.
Brief note while we prep for the next paper: As a non-academic, one of the most fascinating things about this kind of environment is the way that the post-presentation Q&A sessions are a combination of politely brutal critiques and collaborative suggestions for how to improve or follow up on research. I’ve heard some people argue that the research consensus on stadiums’ economic impact is an effect of “Oh, they all just agree with each other,” but once you hear economists holding each other’s feet to the fire on things like whether they should have accounted for a city’s grid design in their use of a circular radius for stadium impact it becomes pretty obvious that in this room, getting the answer right is more important than being polite.
Sample question: “I totally want you to be right, let me be clear on that, but…” followed by a sharp observation that the researcher had to admit was a potential issue with their conclusion.
10:20 a.m.
From UMBC master’s candidate in economic policy Bradlee Kilgore, we have “Impact of Stadium Projects on Nearby Home Prices.”
Using Zillow home price data in the areas around 67 stadiums and arenas across the country, Kilgore did a bunch of complex statistical work that flies several thousand feet over my head to find that on average, home prices around stadiums are 8% lower than similarly situated homes further away from the stadium, with arenas (as opposed to open-air or domed stadiums) having an outsized effect on that negative outcome. Kilgore finds the worst effects from NBA arenas, second-worse from shared NBA/NHL arenas, followed by NFL stadiums, with very slightly positive effects from NHL and MLB stadiums.
Basically, what this tells us is that the hassles of living near a stadium – crime, traffic, noise, parking pressure, etc. – outweigh the benefits for enough people that it drives down housing prices in the area.
11:25 a.m.
Next up are Jeffrey Carr, Jessica Morschakov and Mark S. Rosentraub from the University of Michigan (Go Blue!), with “Legacy Central Cities and Fragmented Governments: Which Principles Shape Policies To Change the Spatial Distribution of Regional Economic Activity?”
(In the past, Neil has described Rosentraub as a “sports subsidy apologist.” I am not informed enough about his body of work to agree or disagree.)
Rosentraub and his colleagues are promoting a concept they call “Municipal Capitalism,” which (as I understand their definition) encourage elected officials to make investments in stadiums that generate more in tax revenues and other tangible benefits than they cost to finance. ‘Each community has to look at their own assets and needs, we know what the sports owner cartel wants to achieve, how can cities design stadium deals using market-based criteria to get a tangible return on taxpayers’ investment?’
They use the Las Vegas Raiders’ Allegiant Stadium project as their test case.
They claim $58.5 million in new tax revenues as a result of Allegiant Stadium, with most of that going to Nevada state government, generating $15-20 million more in tax revenues than are necessary to fund bond obligations.
Their conclusion was that it was a Municipal Capitalism success, arguing that its fiscal benefits exceeded the fiscal costs, that elected officials “faithfully executed their obligations to voters” by making a capital investment in the stadium that created a new revenue stream, and that the project provided intangible “big-league city” benefits to local residents.
They reference a Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority claim that 61.8% of visitors at Allegiant Stadium were out-of-town visitors who identified the event as the primary reason for their trip to Las Vegas, which does not pass my personal sniff test.
They admit that Las Vegas is an unusual market, and there are some hard questions on whether anything learned from Allegiant Stadium has any real value to stadium projects in all the other cities that are not entirely driven by the tourism industry.
“Are you asking me to think of this as simply a description of how municipalities work…or are you claiming that this is a normative framework and that the world is better off if municipalities behave in this regard. Because if so, I’m not going with you,” asks their University of Michigan colleague Stefan Szymanski, pointing to negative externalities that the Municipal Capitalism model doesn’t seem to capture in its ROI calculations.
Rosentraub responds that it’s a hybrid, to which Szymanski says it can’t be, that it’s either normative or positive. Rosentraub’s ultimate response is that it’s largely normative, but “We’re not saying that there aren’t bad deals made, but let’s learn what we can from the good deals to improve future deals.”
10:35 a.m.
Quick note: The running joke this morning is “That was sarcasm” after something sarcastic is said, referencing a Q&A during an early presentation on whether an automated assessment of how soccer players are discussed on the Internet had correctly captured the potential that Internet users might, occasionally, be sarcastic about something.
11:55 a.m.
Next up is University of Colorado Denver’s Geoffrey Propheter, who has done useful work on the intersection of the real estate industry, property taxes and sports.
Propheter is presenting some of an upcoming “labor of love” book on the Oakland Coliseum, discussing his efforts to assess the facility’s total lifetime cost to taxpayers from 1963 to 2024.
He points out that many now-standard government finance mechanisms were first launched in California.
“TIFs were invented in California. You’re welcome!”
Propheter looked back at the at-the-time promises in 1963 of stadium boosters promising that (among other things) the subsidy from the city/county would go from $1.5 million/year to $536,000 by 1970, that it would be self-sustaining within 22 years and that it would be profitable by Year 30.
While the stadium subsidy did drop, mostly, to the promised levels five years late, and it most certainly never got self-sustaining or profitable.
12:05 p.m.
I studied philosophy and political science. When I see a slide like this, I get a loud vacuum cleaner noise in my skull.
But seriously, it just drives home how much hard work, expertise and care goes into answering a question as simple as “Do hotels do more business when a world-class sports superstar is playing in town?”
(More on that question in a moment)
12:25 p.m.
So, superstars and hotels.
Chan Hyeon Hur at Florida International University is presenting his work with Badr Badraoui of FIU and Timothy Webb of the University of Delaware: “Do Sports Superstars Generate Local Tourism Gains? Evidence from Hotel Markets after Messi’s MLS Arrival.”
Lionel Messi, they say, created “an uncommon natural experiment” in coming to Inter Miami FC, and that the demand to watch him either at home or away created a “rare, high-intensity league-wide demand shock” for MLS tickets that would not have existed without him. (Shohei Ohtani is the other current example of a superstar with this kind of drawing power.)
The research question they asked was whether the demand to see Messi play in Miami had any measurable impact on local-market hotel revenues.
Using a lot of math like the slide I shared above, they found a “transient novelty premium” generating a short-term spike immediately after Messi’s arrival, but no evidence of any long-term structural growth in hotel stays. They suggest this should be relevant for local government officials using projected growth in hotel revenues to justify dedicating hotel taxes to stadium projects.
(One criticism from the crowd is that the authors did not capture AirBnB and other similar non-hotel lodging services, which they said is something they are hoping to do in a followup paper.)
12:30 p.m.
Lunch!
I have asked presenters to check out this blog and let me know if I missed or misconstrued any of their work. If I get asked for edits, I’ll note them in the interest of transparency.
2:00 p.m.
A break from stadium stuff, with Dave Berri of Southern Utah University and Stacey Brook of the University of Central Florida presenting their paper “Does it Matters Who Swings the Bat? Player Exploitation in College Softball and College Baseball.”
Berri, who has been involved in a number of legal cases by athletes against universities and/or the NCAA: “The NCAA receives more than $1 billion per year from media rights for college basketball. It spends more than $60 million of this on legal fees defending its arbitrary rules.”
He argues that saying “college sports are not profitable” is meaningless, as colleges and universities are nonprofit institutions and departments within those schools – academic or athletic – will spend “as much money as they’re allowed to.” He also pointed out that college sports are tiny, from a budgetary perspective, using the example that the University of Maryland has a $2.98 billion budget, and its athletic department had $124 million in revenue in 2025.
Berri presented some evidence that the NCAA is doing a terrible job at maximizing revenues for ‘non-revenue’ sports – which he points out is a terrible name, since they do bring in revenues – thanks to its focus on maximizing its basketball and football media revenues. He presented a model to measure the value of NCAA baseball players and other similar players to university athletic revenues, and to use that to develop a structure to get an appropriate percentage that money to players, whom he argues are being badly under-compensated compared to the value they generate for their schools.
2:30 p.m.
University of Michigan doctoral candidate Jeff Carr returns with “Changes to Franchise Supply and the Effects on Teams in the Same Market: Niche Markets or Limits on Discretionary Spending?”
He’s attempting to measure the “substitution effect” for sport within a market, looking at what teams arriving or leaving did to incumbent teams’ attendance. If an MLB team shows up, what does that do to the local NFL or NHL team’s attendance? (He used the example of the Orioles’ attendance when the Ravens came to Baltimore.) If an NFL team leaves for someplace else, do jilted fans console themselves with tickets to the local MLB or NBA team?
There are a lot more pro sports teams out there than there used to be.
Cities have more pro sports teams than they used to.
His finding is that the arrival or departure of teams doesn’t tend to change the attendance of existing teams by a meaningful amount. The one meaningful outlier is WNBA teams, which Carr posits is a function of that league having a fanbase that is more likely not to be fans of other sports.
2:55 p.m.
Because of a scheduling issue, conference organizer Dennis Coates is filling in to present a previously published study from himself, Sabina Kosimova and Gleb Vasiliev titled “Performance Under Pressure in Elite Curling.”
Their findings generally confirm sports consensus that players make better shots when they’re either way ahead or way behind and there’s no immediate pressure, but perform worse in late, close games. They found a small amount of evidence that women (at least in curling) may do slightly worse than men in general, but better than men on common (as opposed to unusual or highly technical) shots.
I will admit that I did not expect a curling-specific paper today. (The Q&A has become an opportunity for those in the audience who actually understand curling to politely flex on their fellow attendees.)
3:30 p.m.
Pete Groothuis from Appalachian State University *pause for instinctive shudder from Michigan football fan* asks what he describes as “a philosophical question” about the ways that applied microeconomics papers use and define their population data, how they check their work to determine whether the results they’re seeing are truly statistically significant…and what “statistically significant” means in the first place.
Groothuis himself describes the issue as a “highly theoretical” exercise in econometrics, so your humble correspondent was deeply out of his depth around the third slide – and the first two slides were a title card and a photo of a mountain.
Leaving the details of the question to those more competent to explain it, I will say that yet again I’m struck by the way that the researchers in this room and their colleagues across the country are putting brain-meltingly intense intellectual effort into trying to get as close as humanly possible to the capital-T ‘Truth’ of what’s actually happening in the real world with their research.
As someone who’s a consumer of this work and relies upon it to form the foundation of advocacy for good public policy, it’s incredibly heartening to see this rigor in action.
4:15 p.m.
Clay Collins from the University of Georgia presents “Family Violence and Football at 15: A Review and Re-Evaluation of Card & Dahl.” It’s a revisiting of a famous paper from 2011 finding connections between domestic violence (now more commonly known as intimate partner violence) and NFL games, where “seemingly irrelevant events” such as an NFL team’s upset loss drives someone to violently lash out at a partner.
(Conference organizer Dennis Coates: “I would consider this an ‘economic impact’ topic.”)
Collins is using modern, more-comprehensive datasets to update the 2011 paper, which (among other things) used crime data that only covered roughly a fifth of the U.S. population.
“I run this, and I’m not getting any significant results,” Collins says. “So what’s going on here?”
His first take is not that Card & Dahl were wrong — “they don’t give out Nobel Prizes for nothing” — but that something else must be in play. Maybe the prevalence of gambling and fantasy sports is changing the emotional for NFL fans, so the “your team blows a game” trigger is less…triggering? There’s some research out there that suggests this is playing a role. Maybe people are venting on social media rather than via violence? In the Q&A, attendees are suggesting potential answers, data sets, statistical tools, etc.
4:50 p.m.
Doctoral candidate Aiden Powell of West Virginia University presents a very interesting investigation into sports externalities: “Professional Sporting Events and Emergency Medical Service Response Times: Evidence from San Francisco.”
Researchers (including some in this room) have documented increased police response times near stadiums during events, but Powell has focused on EMS response, specifically for people having “cardiovascular events” where delayed treatment can result in death or other adverse outcomes.
Powell’s research uses data from San Francisco Giants games in 2024 and 2025.
He finds that in the hour before a game, EMS response within a quarter-mile of the ballpark is delayed 4.7 minutes on average, a 51.6% delay. He estimates an additional seven seconds of additional EMS delay for each 1,000 attendees at the game.
After the game, it’s delayed 2.6 minutes; a 28.4% delay, with three seconds per 1,000 fans.
5:15 p.m.
Victor Matheson of College of the Holy Cross presents “The Impact of Mega-Events on Gambling Revenues – Evidence from the Las Vegas F1 Race.” The economic impact question he’s asking is deceptively simple: What did the creation of a Las Vegas Formula 1 Grand Prix in 2023 do to gaming revenues in Las Vegas casinos?
(As a supporter of Detroit City FC in the USL, I need to shout out the deeply esoteric Hartford Athletic USL jersey that Matheson is wearing. So he’s the person who bought one.)
The up-front $500 million cost of the race’s permanent infrastructure was largely private, but there are per-race costs for infrastructure, police, etc. to Las Vegas, plus negative externalities headlined by a 10-week closure of The Strip.
Matheson puts up a slide where F1’s CEO predicted $1.7 billion in economic impact in the first year alone, asks “How many years have we been doing this?” as the room chuckles wryly.
Gambling revenues on the Strip are way up, $66.8 million. That’s almost entirely from high-stakes table games. However, revenues from slot machines and other lower-tier gaming are significantly down, as are gaming revenues overall in non-Strip casinos and casinos elsewhere in the state.
Matheson’s take is that the Las Vegas Grand Prix is “remarkably successful” for the large casinos on The Strip, that booked an extra $70 million in gross gaming revenue. However, that boom for the big, fancy casinos has come at the expense of a bust for the non-Strip casinos and casinos elsewhere in the state, which have gaming revenues down almost the same proportional amount.
“It might be up a bit in total,” said Matheson, “But it’s certainly not up enough to reach that billion-dollar economic impact figure.” He also noted that excitement over the race seems to be waning, with that bump in gaming revenues shrinking each successive year.
5:45 p.m.
Doctoral candidate Murad Latifov of Texas Tech University presents a paper on a fascinating question I’ve never seen asked, “The Impact of Professional Sports Franchise Movements on Crime Rates in Urban Areas.”
He’s not looking just at crime on gamedays, but in general at long-term baseline crime rates. Do new stadiums and/or teams make cities more or less law-abiding? Does it change if it’s the fourth or fifth team in a city, versus the first or second?
It’s especially interesting because stadium subsidy supporters often point to “uncaptured benefits” that sports teams bring to a city, including things like civic pride and a more robust civil society, which could, maybe, be seen in crime rates. (The crimes he’s looking at in the FBI data are rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft.)
This theory considers sports teams to be “Civic Anchors” around which a society organizes itself in a virtuous, upright manner that discourages crime. The counter-argument is that stadiums “concentrate motivated offenders and suitable targets” in a way that promotes crime.
It turns out that the latter seems to be true. Latifov’s work unearthed some meaningful, statistically significant results: “A city’s first franchise significantly raises violent and short-run property crime. The loss of a city’s last franchise lowers crime, especially for rape.”
Gaining a second, third, etc. team doesn’t seem to have any impact, and losing a team doesn’t seem to change things until a city loses its last team.
One relevant question that was asked and that Latifov had not investigated was whether this effect exists for cities that had major college sports teams before they had professional teams, such as Columbus, Ohio before the arrival of the NHL Blue Jackets.
5:50 p.m.
The last presentation of the day is an early-stage exploration by Shirin Mollah, Josh Davila and Jonathan A. Jensen of Texas A&M into “Why are stadium lifetimes getting shorter? Findings from a semi-parametric hazards model.”
One unusual finding is that a growing economy keeps older stadiums around, rather than pushing replacement. A 1% growth in GDP in a market reduces the probability that a stadium will be replaced by up to 14%.
The larger the city, the less public funding they offer — every 1 million in population decreases subsidies by $8 million.
The more expensive the stadium, the longer they’ll get kept around. Every $10 million spent on a stadium lessens the chance of it dying by 3.96%.
6:30 p.m.
And that’s it! Thank you again to Dennis Coates and the entire team at UMBC for gathering together such an excellent group of presenters, and for being wonderful hosts.
Thank you to the presenters, and I apologize for any errors or omissions I made in describing your work.
If you have any questions, comments or criticism, please feel free to email me directly.
Lots of state legislative sessions are wrapping up this week, but it’s been oddly quiet around actual stadium news, leaving room for lots of spin doctoring and other questionable takes:
Turns out today’s conclusion of the Florida legislature’s special budget session won’t be a deadline for a Tampa Bay Rays stadium deal, as everything appears to be getting pushed off to even specialer sessions. Gov. Ron DeSantis said Wednesday that though there’s only $50 million in the state budget for relocating Hillsborough College buildings to make way for a stadium district on what’s now its Dale Mabry campus, there could be more state money later sometime: “We can do more on the infrastructure,” said the governor, adding, “I think maybe over time you would do more to spruce up the campus because I think it could be something meaningful. And I’m happy to support it.” (Ed. note: Yes, DeSantis leaves office in January. Yes, presumably he knows this.) Hillsborough County Commission chair Ken Hagan, meanwhile, said his “goal” is to hold county and city votes on a binding deal by a scheduled July 15 board meeting, “or maybe have to call a special meeting right around there,” which gives him around seven weeks to flip one of the four “no” votes on the Tampa city council. Rays owner Patrick Zalupski has remained silent on the current stadium stalemate, but DeSantis stepped in to levy a threat on his behalf, declaring: “Maybe if they don’t want to do it, I know Orlando’s ready, willing and able. I think you have Raleigh-Durham, Nashville, and those are great cities, but I’d hate to see us fumble a team and have it end up in some of those other areas.” Now that’s what friends and/or campaign donation recipients are for!
Sacramento Mayor Kevin McCarty and West Sacramento Mayor Martha Guerrero say they want an MLB expansion team once the Athletics leave town for Las Vegas, and West Sacramento is set to provide $1 billion in money for a new stadium from property tax kickbacks, hotel taxes, and “additional sources.” The city could spend $1 billion and it “would not impact the City’s general fund or require a taxpayer vote,” explained a joint press release, because it would “be generated solely by activity in the ballpark district,” citing a figure that over 40 years, a ballpark district “is projected to lead to $1.77 billion in new tax revenue.” Citation extremely needed, but also even $1.77 billion over 40 years wouldn’t be enough to pay for $1 billion in stadium costs up front, why can’t our elected leaders math?
Portland Trail Blazers owner Tom Dundon will “do everything in his power” to move the team if he doesn’t get the full $600 million in public arena renovation money he wants, according to (checks notes) a sports talk radio host who runs public relations and crisis counseling firms. And other NBA owners would allow it, he claims, because “if he does relocate, there’s a relocation fee attached to that.” No, don’t ask why Dundon would readily agree to forgo the $365 million already approved by the state of Oregon and also pay an expansion fee to move someplace that isn’t offering a newer arena even after saying he has no intention of moving the team, PR isn’t about answering your questions.
The Seattle Seahawks are for sale, which means it’s time to ask if a new owner will want a new stadium, apparently. Answer (courtesy of me as quoted in the Puget Sound Business Journal): A new Seahawks owner would be dumb to pay to build one themselves when they have a perfectly good old one, but “if somebody else is going to buy you a new car, you’re not going to say no.”
Spending $600 million to help move the Cleveland Browns from one part of the state to another was a pretty bold move by Ohio, but saying it was giving the state’s data centers $136 million in tax breaks in 2025 alone and having it turn out to actually be $1.6 billion in tax breaks is even more impressive, way to go, Ohio.
It’s Friday! But because of other commitments, I’m writing this from Thursday evening! So if there’s any breaking Friday morning news, complain about it in comments, and we’ll get to it on Monday, which for me will probably be Sunday. You following all that? Doesn’t matter, just read your bullet points, they’re good for you:
The Chicago Bears stadium war burbles on, with Indiana having passed a bill to throw $1 billion or $4 billion or maybe more at a stadium in Hammond (details are still very TBD), and Illinois working on a bill to allow property tax cuts for “megaprojects” such as a Bears stadium development in Arlington Heights, which could end up being a $2 billion tax break for the team owners. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker is also still talking vaguely about passing state “infrastructure” spending on an Arlington Heights stadium (also very TBD) once the legislature comes back in session in a couple of weeks, which would add even more to Illinois taxpayers’ tab. And to get Chicago legislators on board, Bears ownership will likely have to offer at least a $90 million payout for breaking their Soldier Field lease, though with what they’d likely be getting from taxpayers, they could more than afford it. Meanwhile, some people in Indiana, or at least a radio talk show host and an anti-tax group, are unhappy with the Indiana stadium funding plans, which still must be finalized and signed off on by both the newly formed state sports authority and the city of Hammond. Tune in next week for more exciting non-decisions, probably!
Willamette Week ran a long article about the Oregon legislature’s consideration of a bill to give Portland Trail Blazers incoming owner Tom Dundon $365 million in state income tax money, along with another $235 million in city and county funds, toward renovations on the team’s 31-year-old arena. It ends with a quote from yours truly on the subject of Oregon legislators having both the right and the responsibility to use their leverage to negotiate the best deal possible for residents — which does not seem to be what’s happening when they’re rushing into a subsidy package without first calculating what will cost taxpayers — but read the whole thing if you want the nitty-gritty of the deal, including a last-second amendment to establish a “sports and entertainment district” to siphon off taxes for the project, because that’s how everyone rolls these days.
The state of Ohio has rejected eight applicants for unclaimed private funds money for sports projects, but is still considering 14 other projects: upgrade requests from the Cincinnati Bengals ($234 million), F.C. Cincinnati ($136.3 million), the Columbus Blue Jackets ($100 million), Cleveland Guardians ($65 million), Cleveland Cavaliers ($40 million), Toledo USL ($20 million), Atomic Speedway ($14 million), Dayton Dragons ($8 million), Toledo Mud Hens ($4.5 million), Akron Rubberducks ($1.8 million), Columbus Clippers ($737,000), Mahoning Valley Scrappers ($562,000), and Lake County Captains ($100,000), as well as a new Cleveland soccer stadium for pro men’s and women’s teams that don’t currently exist ($19.9 million). Add in the $600 million in money toward a new Cleveland Browns stadium and that’s almost $1.3 billion in state-controlled money being handed out to local sports team owners, just because they were the first ones to notice it sitting in an Ohio account and ask for it. Sorry, schoolkids, you should have raised your hands faster, better luck next time!
Kansas state senator Cindy Holscher is running for governor, and really wants you to know that she thinks the Kansas City Chiefs stadium deal will be lousy for Kansans. “Economists from the left, right and center all agree that stadiums simply don’t generate enough economic activity to warrant taxpayers footing the bill.” Yup! “More than anything else, the stadium deal reminds me of the disastrous Brownback tax experiment.” Inasmuch as that was also about giving away tax revenues and hoping to make it up in volume, also yup! Holscher is currently the Democratic frontrunner, though with a ton of undecided voters as yet — it’s unlikely the Chiefs deal will remain unfinalized long enough for the next governor to weigh in, but you never know.
There’s fresh reporting on the flow of dodgy lobbying (certainly) and/or bribe (possibly) money in the now-dead Los Angeles Angels stadium deal, it’s convoluted to follow but if you’re a fan of stories of an “otherwise shadowy world where lobbyists collect big bounties for influencing legislation or securing contracts for clients from local government agencies without full disclosure,” then boy, does the Los Angeles Times have a story for you. (Me, I’ll wait for the inevitable David Simon HBO series.)
Wisconsin is considering a bill to cap concession prices at 120% of cost at publicly financed sports venues, and Colorado rejected a bill to cap food and beverage prices in “captive audience” situations like stadiums and airports to the average in the surrounding county. As I’ve written before, it might be more effective to rein in crazy stadium food and drink prices by requiring publicly supported buildings to allow in outside food, or by reducing income inequality so there are fewer fans for whom a $15 beer is no object, but it is interesting to see that this is an issue elected officials feel like they can grandstand on, if nothing else.
We finally have a number for how much tax money Wyandotte County could hand over to Kansas City Chiefs owner Clark Hunt following last Thursday’s vote to funnel virtually all sales and hotel taxes from a 200-acre stadium district in Kansas City, Kansas to help pay off $2.775 billion in state STAR bonds for stadium and related construction. Or rather, a couple of numbers:
The local tax breaks could total $350 million to $450 million. The Unified Government expects the project to generate $488 million in revenue, netting the county at least $38 million over 30 years.
I have questions! So many questions:
How did the county estimate $350-450 million in tax expenditure (over 30 years, it sounds like, which would be more like $190-230 million or so in present value) when it’s unknown exactly what the Chiefs plan to build on the 200 acres?
How did the county come up with that $488 million estimate for new tax revenue, and did it account for money cannibalized from other spending that would have taken place in the county even without a stadium?
Since the state is planning on going ahead with the stadium regardless of whether Wyandotte County chips in, wouldn’t it get any new tax revenue either way, making the tax breaks a net loss?
Todd LaSala, a private attorney who serves as an economic development consultant for the Unified Government, attempted to answer the last question, at least, speculating that Hunt could build his stadium in a different part of the state if the county didn’t agree to the funding: “If you voted no, it sends an interesting, if not a dismissive message to the Kansas City Chiefs, who want to choose Wyandotte County as their home.” LaSala didn’t indicate why the Chiefs owner would balk at a Wyandotte stadium site when he’d be getting the same amount of STAR bonds for it regardless, but it is important to remember that if you want to remain attractive to the local billionaire, you must never speak your mind and learn how to light his cigar right.
As for the other questions, I’ve gone through all the documents presented for last week’s county commission vote, and I can’t find anything giving details about how those tax break and tax revenue projections were calculated. Given that when the state of Kansas tried a similar exercise with its own $3 billion-plus in Chiefs tax breaks, economists deemed the resulting figures to be “incredibly optimistic,” “insane,” and “just not credible,” it’s probably a good idea to take these latest numbers with a grain of salt — even before considering that these tax subsidies look to be money that Wyandotte County is voluntarily giving up to land a stadium it would get regardless. I’ve reached out to both the county and LaSala with the above questions, and will post an update here if I hear back from them.
The Statehouse News Bureau asked three budget watchdogs what they thought of the idea of spending perhaps $600 million or more in state money on a new Cleveland Browns stadium, and the headline that resulted was “Possibility of state money for new Browns stadium leaves Ohio funding experts skeptical.” Read the actual quotes, though, and you’ll see that that significantly underplays the actual story: Two conservative budget groups and one progressive one all said that this would risk throwing perhaps $600 million or more down a hole:
“We’ve taken a look at a lot of stadium proposals over the years, and we’ve never been supportive of any of them,” said Greg Lawson, a research fellow at conservative Buckeye Institute. “When you look at a lot of the literature that’s out there, the academic literature from a lot of economists, what they and almost invariably say is these don’t really end up with true benefits.”…
“Moving this outside of downtown for a project just to line the pockets of the Haslams is not really a great idea for the taxpayers to fund,” said Bailey Williams, a researcher focusing on tax policy with Policy Matters Ohio.
“You’re trying to hope for a lot of economic gains on the back or down the road. That’s really just an IOU to the taxpayers,” Williams said. “I don’t really trust that, and especially when we have other needs and issues that the state could be addressing.”…
“Stadium projects are great ideas,” said Donovan O’Neil, state director for Americans for Prosperity-Ohio. “Where the concern comes in, I think, we need to have a robust conversation around the taxpayer obligations here.”
“These are multi-million dollar businesses. The NFL is a large enterprise. The Browns franchise is a large enterprise,” O’Neil added. “We have a lot of concerns and a lot of hesitation about early conversations around taking money from the taxpayers in the state of Ohio and investing it in the new Browns Stadium.”
Lawson added that he’s also concerned about the “cascading effect” of sending a signal to other Ohio sports team owners that the state treasury is open for their business. “You do something in Cleveland, what’s the next thing to happen?” Lawson said. “Because I’m assuming that at some point Cincinnati is going to want to add something, and you got the baseball teams that are going to ask for things.”
This is one of the rare articles that doesn’t try to “balance” economists who know what they’re talking about with consultants who are paid not to, and props to Statehouse News for not doing that. Still, “skeptical” is not quite the right way to describe these three groups’ positions, and the headline also leaves out the fact that this is multiple budget analysis from across the ideological spectrum. Still, if the headline writers only had 87 characters to work with … nope, I did, you could have done it too, only partial credit for you!
The Missouri Independent ran a long article on Friday about the current border war between Missouri and Kansas over the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals, much of which is about how throwing money at sports teams to move to your state is pointless, which you can probably skip if you already read this website. What’s more interesting, to me anyway, is what it says about how and why elected officials in both states are totally chill about engaging in a bidding war despite agreeing to a binding ban on interstate bidding wars just five years ago:
“I do not like this. It feels gross,” Kansas state Rep. Jason Probst said during a caucus meeting of House Democrats in June. “This whole show that’s going on feels disgusting to me. And it’s still the right thing to do.”
In an interview, Probst, who is from Hutchinson in central Kansas, said the reality of professional sports requires governments “to play the game” and offer public assistance, lest they risk losing teams altogether.
“You can stand on your principles. … But if another state isn’t playing by the same set of rules you are, then they’re going to make that investment and they’re going to take that away,” he said.
Yeah, that whole “this is bad policy, but if we don’t do it somebody else will” thing is precisely why development subsidy watchdogs have been saying there’s a need for cross-border nonaggression pacts for almost 30 years now. And Kansas and Missouri did just that in 2019, but unfortunately it only seems to have applied to Kansas’s payroll-tax-kickback program, not the sales-tax kickback program it plans to dip into for $1.4 billion or more of state stadium spending, so oh well! Also, apparently legislators back in 2019 forgot to say out loud that they were including an unstated “sports teams don’t count” clause:
“The sports teams are sort of in a special category of their own. I don’t think that’s what that legislation really was meant for,” [Missouri House Majority Leader Jonathan] Patterson said of the truce.
The article also includes some dirt on the STAR bonds program that Kansas has approved for use on new Chiefs and Royals stadiums, noting that it is “often-criticized” and has mostly “failed at its goal of increasing tourism” and has even led to defaults on one project’s bonds when sales tax revenue came in slower than expected. Kansas officials point out that since these are revenue bonds, the state can just let the bondholders swing in the breeze if the bonds default; University of Colorado-Denver economist Geoffrey Propheter counters that that’s never going to happen:
“In the real world, there’s a huge risk to Kansas state taxpayers,” he said. “They’re going to have to decide to either bail out the project or do nothing. And if they do nothing, their credit, the state’s credit worthiness, will take a hit. And that will make all future borrowing more expensive.”
All of this is an excellent example of why relying on states and cities to agree to stop raiding each others’ businesses is a hopeless cause: As the 1995 Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis paper cited above notes, there have been lots of attempts at interstate nonaggression pacts, and they’ve always ended up being broken by one state or another. The only solution is for Congress to step in — which U.S. Rep. David Minge tried to get it to do back in 1999 by taxing local level subsidies out of existence, only to find that his colleagues in the House had no interest in even giving it a committee hearing, doubtless because business leaders in their states wanted to keep those subsidies flowing.
The next best hope is that local officials on one side of the state border or the other decide to say “too rich for our blood” and let the neighboring state “win” the team and all the stadium costs that go with it, knowing that those can never be paid off by whatever small bump results in local tax revenue. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like anyone made this point in the Independent article, but hang on, I’m not to the end yet, oh look:
But this sort of jockeying between states only benefits team owners, said Neil deMause, a journalist who has written a book about stadium subsidies. Taxpayers and fans, he said, stand to gain little, especially if game tickets become more expensive at new facilities.
“All the economists I know say the best thing you could do is reject it for your state and have the stadiums get built in the other state,” deMause said. “You still get to go drive across the border and see the games the same way as you would otherwise … but you don’t have to pay for building the thing.”
As promised, Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan finally released her Jaguars stadium plan yesterday, in the form of a presentation to the city council. Let’s get straight to answering your questions about it — no, no need to ask actual questions, I’ve got that covered for you:
How much would the stadium renovation cost, and how much public money does Jaguars owner Shad Khan want?
$625 million from the city for the stadium renovation
$625 million from Khan for the stadium renovation
$150 million from the city for “maintenance costs on the existing structure,” which Deegan claims the city would have to spend either way
$150 million apiece for “community development projects” including affordable housing, homelessness programs, and parks
Is that a lot of public money?
That all depends on how you look at it. Even if you count the deferred maintenance costs, $775 million is less than the $800 million to $934 million that was previously floated. And Deegan was quick to note that it’s less than Tennessee and New York taxpayers are spending on new stadiums for the Titans and Buffalo Bills, though those are whole new stadiums, not just renovations.
All that’s just anchoring, though. Some other ways to look at it:
In exchange for a 30-year lease extension, $775 million comes to $25.8 million in present-day cost for each additional year Khan would promise to keep the Jags in town. That would be the third-highest cost per year of any pro sports renovation, behind only the Baltimore Ravens‘ $40 million a year and the New Orleans Saints‘ $30 million a year.
That $775 million could build about 13 new schools, even at the inflated prices Jacksonville has been paying.
It’s $775 million more than most Jacksonville residents or business owners would get from the city if they wanted to renovate their homes or offices.
The city and Khan would be (roughly) splitting renovation costs evenly, but Khan would (presumably) continue to receive all revenues from the building, including naming rights.
Are there any hidden costs like tax breaks?
We don’t know yet, as Mayor Deegan didn’t include lease details in her presentation. We also don’t know, crucially, if there are any state-of-the-art clauses or other provisions that would allow Khan to demand more public money before the 30 years were up.
Is there a slideshow with lots of really big numbers?
That is number is indeed really big, in both value and type size! But is that real city revenue or just one of those “impact” numbers that means money changing hands anywhere in the city?
Mayor Donna Deegan says the deal will provide a whopping $26 billion of economic impact over the length of the 30-year lease. [Action News Jax reporter Ben] Becker pressed her on that number because economist’s says economic impact is not revenue for a city, revenue is tax dollars.
“Do we have a number on that, guys?” Deegan asked lead negotiator Mike Weinstein from the podium, but the number was not available.
“I think they did a really good job marketing it,” says Kristi Sweeney who is a sports finance professor at the University of North Florida… “That is over-estimated I would say.”
Where will Jacksonville get the $775 million it would be spending?
Deegan has posted a really confusing explanation to her site, but it comes down to: If the city keeps a 0.5% sales tax surcharge to fund capital projects in place through 2030 instead of allowing it to end in 2026, that would let it pay for around $600 million in city projects to be funded by sales tax receipts instead of by borrowing. So the city could use the borrowing for Jaguars renovations instead, making that free money!
Does that make any sense?
No, and doubly not since once the capital projects sales tax expires, a different 0.5% sales tax to fund city pension costs will kick in. So extending the first tax just means an extra $600 million worth of pension money that the city has to come up with somewhere, eating up any windfall.
What does the city council think of all this?
Unclear. One councilmember, Jimmy Peluso, told Action News Jax that the community development money is a nice carrot, because “this is something that’s going to benefit the whole city.” Another, Rory Diamond, called it “exactly the same as it was last year, except now we have a new $150 million of spending that has nothing to do with the stadium” and called the pension fund switcheroo “both dangerous and just dishonest.” Most of the other 17 members of the council apparently weren’t available for comment, or were just distracted by the slideshow.
Would the Jaguars at least have to stop playing one home game a year in London?
“We will have the option — not the requirement — to play up to one home game a year” in London, [Jaguars President Mark] Lamping said.
Do we have a photo of Shad Khan showing the guy who’d be collecting the $775 million in tax money? Preferably on a yacht?
Council president Ron Salem says he wants to pass at least the stadium renovation portion of the deal by the end of June, “but not at the expense of people still uncomfortable with the deal,” whatever that means. Also, does Salem mean the stadium part might pass without the community benefits part? If so, what would Khan’s incentive be to agree to the additional spending once he gets his stadium money?
I thought I was asking the questions here?
You’re right, sorry. But there are a whole lot of questions left to be answered, so one of us had better get cracking.
[Grand Canyon Institute research director Dave] Wells believes the Coyotes’ departure will have “close to zero” economic effect, because of how consumers behave regarding entertainment spending.
“Most people have a limited leisure budget to start with. So, they’ll just reallocate it. You might see an uptick in attendance at ASU basketball games or something like that,” said Wells. He added that a “small core of people” in Arizona may now shift some of their spending to Utah to follow the Coyotes.
And:
[Arizona State University Seidman Research Center director Dennis Hoffman] pointed to three factors related to the Coyotes’ departure that could have an impact:
Canadian snowbirds choose to vacation in Florida or another warm state with NHL hockey, rather than coming to Arizona and spending cash here.
The loss of the roughly $200 million in revenue he expected the Coyotes would generate, plus the broader economic activity that initial income drives.
The loss of the NHL franchises employees who both spend money here and pay state income taxes.
Hoffman said “we could be losing significant money” because of the cash Canadian retirees have invested in Arizona’s economy. Hoffman said that money could “migrate” out of the state, if snowbirds chose Arizona because of the Coyotes.
“How many Canadian winter visitors have historically chosen to locate in Arizona as opposed to Florida because they can go to NHL games?” Hoffman asked. “It’s unknowable. But I think it does a disservice if we just say we’ll ignore it because it’s unknowable.”
And:
Nope, sorry, two economists is all we have time for today! All the better for framing this with a heading reading “Experts are divided” and a framing about how this has “reignited an old disagreement between two experts” over the Coyotes’ proposed Tempe arena deal, albeit a disagreement where one side (Hoffman) was being paid by the Coyotes for his time.
While this may be news to the Republic, there are other economists out there, many of whom have looked at things like what happens when a team leaves a city! As a public service to Kmack, I spent 30, maybe 40 seconds crafting an email to several of them yesterday, and here’s what I got back:
J.C. Bradbury, Kennesaw State University: If Dennis Hoffman honestly thinks that the Coyotes generate a significant economic impact on Phoenix, then he needs to write that up and submit it to peer review where it will be vetted by other economists. That’s the normal process for academic researchers. You don’t get to dismiss the academic consensus by flippantly stating the opposite to the media, especially after producing the estimates for a fee. That’s completely inappropriate, and it does a disservice to the community, which is largely ignorant of rigorous economics research standards. I’m at a total loss to understand why a PhD economist with an academic appointment thinks a pro sports team has such a large economic impact on the community. I mean, maybe I’m wrong; but the burden of proof is on him to demonstrate it to his economist colleagues who have found the exact opposite.
Victor Matheson, College of the Holy Cross: Anytime an economist says there are “untold benefits” from hosting a franchise, either the economist is too lazy to estimate them or is afraid of calculating them for what they might show.
As for actual losses, the state income tax losses from a group of highly paid athletes leaving the state is real, in my opinion, so that is a few million a year. There is an actual “feel-good” loss for the actual fans. (Of course, the fact that the Coyotes are moving suggests there aren’t many of those fans.) Other than that, pretty much no losses.
And the idea that Canadians might not relocate to AZ is absurd. Small numbers in the first place and no consideration that people bring costs not just benefits when they live in a community.
Geoffrey Propheter, University of Colorado: I agree with Victor’s take. It’s silly on its face that people from anywhere outside the state, let alone the country, travel to Arizona strictly because of the Coyotes and for no other reason in such large and frequent numbers to justify the cost of a consultant’s economic impact study, let alone the subsidies for the Coyotes themselves.
I’ll add that the income tax loss is a loss to state public goods. Players pay about $1.8m in state income tax this season, and based on anecdotes about salaries for non-players from NBA teams, I’d put the total (non-players + players) at $2.5-$3.5m. Which on a per capita basis means the hit to state public goods is less than 50 cents per person. The state’s general fund budget is $17.8 billion, or $2,405 spent on state public goods per person. So the income tax loss of the Coyotes leaving the state is at most 0.021% of the state’s total per capita spending on state public goods. Yes, there is a state income tax hit, and yes that translates in theory (ignoring fiscal illusion/obfuscation issues) into lower quantity and quality state public goods, but the magnitude of lost state public goods is so tiny I frankly have a hard time trying to figure out a practical comparison to make it meaningful.
But a little algebra tells me 235 people working 20 hours a week for 52 weeks at the state minimum wage will generate $3.5m in state income tax too. So if folks really care about that couple million dollars of state income tax, there’s other ways to get it.
Matheson: Yeah, I agree with Geoffrey about all of this. I like to put it this way regarding the potential $3.5 million in player taxes. At current interest rates, that amount is sufficient to finance roughly $50 million in stadium construction. So, if you propose a $1 billion stadium deal where the team pays $950 million in construction costs and the state offers up $50 million in subsidies, I probably wouldn’t argue too much.
And there you have it: Economists are actually very much in agreement on whether the Coyotes leaving will have a significant impact on the Arizona economy (LOL, no), except for the one guy who used to work for the Coyotes. The answer must lie somewhere in the middle!
It’s still weird, though, that nobody at the Republic thought to call any other prominent economists to ask — wait, what’s this, also dated yesterday?
What does losing a pro sports team like the Coyotes mean for the metro Phoenix economy?
By Corina Vanek
Arizona Republic
[Phoenix’s] status as a sports hotspot translates little into economic activity, two sports economists said…
[Kennesaw State University professor J.C.] Bradbury said there is “no evidence whatsoever that communities are harmed when teams leave,” when looking at economic activity…
[University of Michigan professor emeritus Rodney] Fort said there are other, measurable benefits that come with sports teams, however. Those are outside ripple effects, Fort said, such as increased sales for businesses near stadiums, making a market more attractive for people to move to and creating a sense of value for fans. The benefits can be small, like if someone goes to a bar to watch the game and buys a drink, but they could add up to notable economic activity…
But, Fort said, it is important to note that those effects are “a drop in the bucket” to a place like Phoenix, which has an annual budget of $6 billion. The economic impact of a sports team annually is about the same as the impact of a large anchor department store, he said.
So one economist says there’s no evidence that economies are significantly harmed when a team leaves, however, another economist says that communities may be harmed, but not significantly. The answer must lie somewhere in the middle!
Anyway, Arizona Republic left hand, meet Arizona Republic right hand. You two clearly have lots to talk about.
It’s been another nutty week in stadiumland, but let’s give thanks for the small things — in this case, for the WP Dark Mode plugin, which has been updated so that it again gives FoS readers the option to avoid eyestrain while still navigating the site as you’re meant to. If you haven’t clicked the little crescent moon in the corner of the screen, give it a try, it’s fun!
Or you can read about the news of the week, which is less guaranteed to be fun, but is still … interesting? Informative? One of those:
Fox 13 in Salt Lake City claims that both the proposed MLB stadium and NHL arena would create entertainment districts where sales taxes would be kicked back to pay for the projects. We knew this for the baseball stadium, but for the arena the legislation says “authorizes a qualifying local government to levy a sales and use tax within the local government’s boundaries and for use within the project area” and caps the amount at 0.5%, so it looks like this would actually be a citywide sales tax hike? Either way, it’s a lot of money, and still more money would be required to pay the full $1.4 billion combined cost — including, notes University of Colorado economist Geoffrey Propheter, $1 million a year in kicked-back “possessory interest taxes,” more than half of which would come out of school budgets — but it sure would be nice to see some clarity on this before the legislature wraps up its session … wait, today? Well, that’s suboptimal.
NBC Chicago obtained emails showing that Mayor Brandon Johnson and Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf had their comms departments work together to concoct a press statement about the team’s stadium plans in January, and while it’s sort of understandable given that it was about a meeting between the two, it’s also maybe not the best sign of a mayor being interested in driving a hard bargain for his constituents that when the White Sox asked the mayor’s office to vet their press release, the response was “Could we do a joint statement?” Especially when the resulting statement referred to a meeting “to discuss the historic partnership between the team and Chicago and the team’s ideas for remaining competitive in Chicago in perpetuity” and didn’t mention anything about the $2 billion public price tag.
Chicago political consultant David Axelrod tweeted that the White Sox stadium plan would be “a game-changer for the city” and immediately got piled on for “peddling disinformation” (The Athletic’s Keith Law), told “You’re not an economist, so how about trust the economists who are” (economist J.C. Bradbury) and “Claiming stadiums catalyze economic development is like arguing vaccines cause autism” (Bradbury again), among many, many others.
Comcast Spectacor, the owners of the Philadelphia Flyers, are talking about doing a $2.5 billion redevelopment of the parking lots around their arena, to include “hotels, residences, restaurants, shops and a 5,500-seat performance stage.” Funding for the first phase would come from Comcast and its development partners, while the second phase would be paid for by “yet to be determined,” according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, which isn’t a red flag at all.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill handing over the RFK Stadium site to Washington, D.C. for redevelopment which will likely mean a proposal to build a new Commanders stadium there. Every representative from Maryland but one voted against it, as did four of 11 members from Virginia; “It’s most certainly not a level playing field when one interested jurisdiction receives a free transfer of federal government subsidized land,” said Rep. Glenn Ivey of Maryland. We’re still a long way from actual stadium plans or price tags, and the D.C. council may yet vote to use the site for something other than a stadium, but it definitely adds one more potential competitor to what’s been a mostly quiet of late three-way bidding war.
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred called the Oakland A’sLas Vegas relocation plans “solid” and immediately got piled on for damning it with faint praise. Manfred also acknowledged that “to most effectively build the [2025] schedule, we need to know at some point in the spring exactly where they’re going to be,” which isn’t exactly giving A’s owner John Fisher a deadline, the commissioner knows who signs his checks. Fisher is apparently hoping that if he agrees to sell his share of the Oakland Coliseum site to the local group that wants to develop it, the city of Oakland will grant him a lease extension to play there through 2027, which isn’t the deal the Oakland mayor’s office has been talking about at all, so we’ll see what the reaction there is.
Tennessee’s tourism department has asked the state legislature for the right to deny public access to public records about how much it offers the NFL for the right to host the Super Bowl at the new Titans stadium under construction. “The Super Bowl deal is often embarrassing for the NFL because of the demands they make and for the politicians that agree to give the league things like free high-end hotel rooms and police escorts,” notes College of Holy Cross economist Victor Matheson.
Toronto is now expecting to spend $380 million on hosting six 2026 World Cup matches, which is, let’s see, $63 million per match. It says it expects an economic boost of $392 million in GDP and tax revenues of $119 million, which seem both optimistic and mismatched unless Toronto has a 30% sales tax rate, but since World Cup impact numbers are generally garbage anyway — Matheson once called them “so outlandish as to defy common sense” — we can safely ignore them entirely.
