Search Results for “Louisville TIF generating next to no arena money”

Friday roundup: Blazers threatened councilmembers’ careers if they didn’t subsidize arena, Rays stadium tax vote planned for April 1

March 13, 2026March 13, 2026 Neil deMause

Would love to have a witty introduction for you here, but it’s late enough already and this week’s bullet points are far too juicy to wait any longer!

Lobbyists for the Portland Trail Blazers worked to get city councilmembers on board spending $600 million on a renovation for the team’s arena by threatening that their political careers would suffer if they didn’t, according to one councilmember, who said team representatives “made it clear that elected officials will be blamed if the team leaves Portland.” History shows that elected officials are far more likely to be removed from office by voters angry that they gave public funds to sports team owners, but when did lobbyists ever let facts get in the way of a good extortion scheme?
Hillsborough County commissioners could vote April 1 on using $467 million in sales tax surcharge money on a new Tampa Bay Rays stadium, just two years after voters approved extending the tax on the condition that it not be used for new stadiums. “We have not even began to collect that tax,” Commissioner Joshua Wostal told the Tampa Bay Times, “and here is a suggestion that we already deceive the taxpayers that we made a promise to no less than two years ago.” If the county commission approves that money, the Tampa city council could be asked to vote the next day on the stadium plan, which would involve a total of $2.25 billion in public cash, land, and tax breaks.
Once the A’s (presumably) move to Las Vegas in 2028, Sacramento will be ready to host an MLB expansion team — just as soon as it has a stadium and an owner and an expansion team. “I think MLB is going to give a hard, hard look at Sacramento with only one team in Northern California,” said Sacramento Mayor/self-proclaimed “sports guy” who read Field of Schemes but missed the part about why tax breaks are the same as cash gifts Kevin McCarty.
The former Ford engine plant where the Cleveland Browns want to build their stadium complex is too polluted to use for housing, but Browns officials are convinced they can do cleanup at the site and get the needed approvals. They may also need to find a new source of $600 million, of course, but Cleveland.com assures us that “state lawmakers from the governor on down have already shown their willingness to find a way to fund the project,” and being willing to pay is the same thing as having the money to pay, right?
Former L.A. County supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who wrote the premier report on why the 2028 L.A. Olympics needed to secure an agreement with the IOC for L.A. not to be on the hook for Olympic losses, says now that city officials moved ahead without such an agreement, “I don’t believe that anyone in the city knows what the books are now.” He’s very likely not wrong!
The Orange County Tourist Development Council voted unanimously last week to set aside $20 million to host either the 2029 or 2030 NBA All-Star Game and $15 million to host the 2028 Olympic qualifiers, if it’s picked for either of those, because surely those will work out well.
New England Revolution owner Robert Kraft will guarantee $8 million in security costs for 2026 men’s World Cup games in Foxborough, Massachusetts, ending a standoff that was threatening to prevent matches from being held there.
Is the USL really going to be able to launch a new top-tier division to compete with MLS at the same time as teams are folding? The Guardian looked into it and came back with a decided “uhhhh, maybe?“

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Kansas bill would cap off $4.1B in stadium subsidies by letting Chiefs vote to approve own lease

March 12, 2026 Neil deMause

Sure, the state of Kansas already passed a bill to provide Kansas City Chiefs owner with $2.775 billion in state-backed STAR bonds and another $1.3 billion and change in additional tax money, and the city of Olathe and Wyandotte County voted to chip in their own tax revenues toward paying off that debt. But the state hasn’t actually created a sports authority yet to own the stadium so that the Chiefs can get out of paying property tax! (Yes, the linked Beacon News article says “income tax.” Why does it say that? Do I look like the king of the Beacon News here? Go do your own research!)

Where was I? Oh, right, new bill to create a sports authority. That’s straightforward enough, shouldn’t be any new wrinkles that—

The proposal appoints nine voting members, plus the mayors of Olathe and Kansas City, Kansas, in a non-voting capacity.

Non-voting capacity? That’s not great. Maybe the sponsor of the bill could be talked into—

State Rep. Sean Tarwater, R-Stilwell, is sponsoring the bill. He seemed open to giving KCK voting authority — on a condition.

He would like KCK to change a law it passed last month so that Kansas can collect increased sales tax dollars from more of Wyandotte County to pay off the stadium, instead of from a district around the stadium.

“The resolution in Kansas City probably needs to change because when they passed it, they limited [the state’s] district to the little teeny area that they drew for themselves,” Tarwater said.

Huh? No, that’s not what happened. Kansas City, Kansas, and Wyandotte County of which it is a part, only voted to limit its local sales tax district to the area just around the stadium. Kansas can still siphon off state sales taxes from 293 square miles of land, including all of Wyandotte, as originally planned. If Tarwater wants to hold KCK’s seat on the sports authority hostage in order to get more local tax money kicked into the stadium pot, that’s his right as an exortionist office holder, but at least try to get the details right, this isn’t the Beacon News here.

And anyway, how important is a sports authority seat, really? Even if KCK doesn’t get a spot at the table, the other members will surely have state residents’ best interests at—

The authority board includes “a representative of the professional sports team” using the facility as a voting member. This means the Chiefs would have a vote on such things as negotiating its lease, financing, and operations. Having the team oversee itself is a crazy conflict of interest and uncommon in other similar authorities if not absolutely unique, for obvious reasons.

The bill, according to the analysis by the Show Me Institute — which is based across the border in Missouri, so feel free to blame sour grapes if you like — also exempts the stadium project from oversight and competitive bidding rules, amid other sweetheart provisions. Kansas state senator Mike Thompson warns that this will set up “an unaccountable ‘Shadow Government,'” but you know, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. What other alternative is there, getting enough votes together to defeat the bill? HAHAHAHAHAHA BWA HA HA HA. HA. Ha.

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Judge blocks Ohio from giving unclaimed private funds to Browns and other sports teams until trial is complete

March 10, 2026 Neil deMause

All the Ohio sports teams angling for a cut of the state’s unclaimed private funds pool got a dose of cold water yesterday when a Franklin County judge issued a preliminary injunction against the money being disbursed, on the grounds that a lawsuit charging that state’s use of private money was unconstitutional is substantially likely to win. The injunction replaces a temporary restraining order the court issued in December, and will now be in place for the remainder of the trial.

To recap briefly: The unclaimed private funds first became an issue last June, when Ohio state senators announced they’d be using the pool of money — dormant bank accounts, uncashed checks, and other stuff that didn’t belong to the state but was sitting in its bank accounts — to temporarily fund a Cleveland Browns stadium while waiting for tax money from the development itself to roll in, after which that would be used to replenish the private funds. Then it turned out last July that the state actually planned to just raid the unclaimed cash fund and never replenish it, prompting the class action lawsuit from former Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann and former state Rep. Jeffrey Crossman on behalf of those whose money was being held by the state.

In issuing the injunction, Franklin County judge Jennifer Hunt pointed to two possible violations of the state constitution by the state’s use of the unclaimed funds. First, by failing to require that the state notify property owners that it was seizing their funds, lawmakers may have violated due process requirements. Second, and even more interestingly, Hunt warned that using the money specifically for sports stadiums could be an issue, as the benefits of private sports venues aren’t enough to satisfy state constitutional requirements that private funds can only be taken for “public use.”

So what happens now with the Browns stadium? Nothing immediately — preliminary excavation has already begun, even with the state funds having been blocked already by the restraining order. If Dann and Crossman win their suit, though, things start to get interesting: Eventually Browns owner Jimmy Haslam isn’t going to proceed with construction without that $600 million in state cash. Would Ohio go back to its old plan of redirecting state taxes from the stadium district? Would it dig around for some completely new revenue stream, like Minnesota had to do when its initial plan to fund a Vikings stadium with video tablet gambling at bars fell massively short of its goal? Is it possible it could go back to the drawing board entirely and reconsider whether giving $600 million to Haslam to move his team from one part of the state to a neighboring one is really such a great idea?

All the other team owners scrambling for a piece of the unclaimed private funds pie, meanwhile — which is pretty much every sports owner in Ohio — will need to cool their jets and wait for the lawsuit to play out. The Ohio attorney general’s office is “reviewing the decision and determining next steps,” spokesperson Bethany McCorkle told Cleveland.com. Stay tuned.

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Blazers owner-to-be lands first $365m of arena renovation tax money, still hasn’t agreed on lease

March 9, 2026March 9, 2026 Neil deMause

The Oregon state house voted 43-13 late Friday to approve $365 million in state income tax funds toward a renovation of the Portland Trail Blazers‘ arena, a project that will ultimately cost $600 million, 100% of that coming from public coffers. And it did so before a lease extension with presumptive incoming team owner Tom Dundon, something that prompted The Oregonian to lead off its coverage like so:

While some legislators argued that it was unwise to volunteer Moda Center funding without first negotiating a lease, the Oregon House overwhelmingly passed a bill that clears the way for the state to pay for nearly two-thirds of the renovations that lawmakers hope will keep the Trail Blazers in Portland for at least two more decades.

Because The Oregonian is, by all evidence, a pretty bad newspaper, it then smash cuts to House Majority Leader Ben Bowman asserting that “the Blazers are proof that something can be emotionally meaningful and economically strategic at the same time.” (Say it with me now: “[citation needed]!”) But it did at least highlight the biggest problem with starting the ball rolling on a possible $600 million taxpayer subsidy for a man who made his billions in subprime lending before starting to buy up sports teams (and Major League Pickleball for some reason): Is “hoping” the Blazers will stay in Portland for two more decades enough of a return on that public spending?

This isn’t even a question of whether Dundon will spurn the Oregon taxpayer cash and refuse to sign a lease extension. Rather, as we’ve seen time and again, what a city actually gets out of a lease commitment depends very much on the details, as one cleverly worded state-of-the-art clause, say, can lead to either the team breaking its lease and skipping town or using the threat of that as leverage to gain even more taxpayer cash. The only way that $600 million in taxpayer money is useful, in other words, is as a carrot to extract good lease terms; if Oregon gives the milk away for free, Dundon has no reason to lease the cow, or something like that, it’s a pretty terrible proverb that doesn’t even make much sense where it originated in East Africa.

Still to be decided: another $235 million in redirected county car rental taxes and foregone city and county business taxes on the team’s sale to Dundon. It’s always possible that Portland and Multnomah County could hold out on those in order to try to bring Dundon to the lease negotiating table, but that’s an even smaller cow, more like a calf — you know what, I give up, abandon metaphor. The state of Oregon just promised a big bag of cash to a billionaire who’s buying the local NBA team in exchange for nothing, that’s the only thing you need to know here.

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Friday roundup: Bears battle drags on, Blazers subsidy heats up, 15 teams now angling for Ohio unclaimed funds cash

March 6, 2026March 9, 2026 Neil deMause

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.
I’ve complained about John Romano’s Tampa Bay Times columns before for being overly bothsidesy about the Rays stadium debates, but credit where credit is due, he recognizes that it would be good to know how much taxpayers would be spending before signing off on a stadium deal.
Alberta premier Danielle Smith revealed that her province has committed $15 million to trying to become the host of the 2028 World Cup of Hoekcy (it’s a thing! sometimes), and she certainly used an interesting podium and backdrop while explaining it.
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.)
This summer’s men’s World Cup might be without the Iranian team if their country is too busy being invaded by the U.S., and might be without some Mexico venues because of fears of violence, and might be without some U.S. venues because the Trump administration is holding up security funding, and could yet be boycotted by other nations upset about the recent U.S. proclivity for invading places. You can’t buy publicity like this!
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.
Plano, Texas is offering an abandoned mall site for a potential Dallas Stars arena, wait, we knew that already, why are you reporting it as if it’s new news, KDFW FOX 4?
Sporting Club Jacksonville says its planning to build a new 15,000-seat USL stadium with private money, let’s hope it’s true!
Glub. Time to revise the “Which teams will be lost first to climate change?” rankings?

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Rays, college officials assure Tampa that spending $2B+ to build a stadium atop their campus is good, actually

March 4, 2026March 6, 2026 Neil deMause

Tampa Bay Rays officials and their Hillsborough College partners in a proposed $2.3 billion Tampa stadium plan held the first of three planned community feedback sessions yesterday, and the theme appeared to be it’s all cool, man, don’t worry yourself over the details:

“We took a no-harm approach to the work that we’re doing. No part of our financial proposal will take funding away from other priorities that the city and county have committed to,” [Rays CEO Ken] Babby said. “No part of our financial proposal will take money away from other sports teams in the community that desperately also have asked for resources around an opportunity. The Rays will take on 100% of cost overruns on the ballpark.”

That’s nice about the cost overruns and all, but vowing that “no part” of $1.15 billion in city and county spending — actually more like $2.25 billion counting free land and tax breaks — would take funding away from any other spending priorities is quite the claim, especially when the WUSF article acknowledges two paragraphs later that “where that money will come from still needs to be worked out.” And especially especially when one possible option on the table — raiding a county infrastructure and schools fund — would in particular seem to take away from those other priorities. (Presumably Babby meant that the stadium will be such a cash cow that there will be enough money to go around for everyone: He asserted that the project could generate $55 billion over 30 years, presumably in “economic impact,” also citation needed.)

Hillsborough College President Ken Atwater, meanwhile, tried to reassure students that building a pro baseball stadium and surrounding development for Rays owner Patrick Zalupski on top of most of their campus wouldn’t disrupt their studies too much, because there are lots of other colleges that have classroom and athletic fields and stuff for however many years construction is underway:

“It may mean instead of moving to temporary, we move to rental facilities or some other location or we share locations for some of our other sister institutions like the University of Tampa or like USF, which may be a possibility,” Atwater said. “We will adjust accordingly, but believe me we will remain open and available to deliver the instruction we do.”…

“There are deals that we’re making in order to maintain all of our program, especially our athletic program. You will see that we’ll be using community gyms, high school facilities, and other facilities here in the area to help support making that happen.”

Some students raised questions about all this, with Hillsborough student government member Echo Durham asking why the college needed to turn over most of its campus to the Rays instead of simply renovating its campus itself. Atwater, according to the Tampa Bay Times, replied that the campus is heavily dependent on state funding, which seems to be a way of saying that Gov. Ron DeSantis wanted this for his pal and campaign donor Rays owner Zalupski, nobody’s gonna stop him from bigfooting his way to this project, even if his feet are growing smaller by the day during his last year in office.

If all this wasn’t enough distraction, the Rays also introduced a new vaportecture video featuring creepy AI-generated people doing barely sports-related things in slow motion. I’m not sure which is my favorite bit, the seemingly 10-foot-tall performers moving about a distant stage or the lovingly generated steam emerging from coffee cups and food truck items in the Florida chill (?), but I can assure you I will be rewatching it with awe, if maybe not precisely the kind of awe that Rays officials were hoping for.

Two more public sessions are on the calendar, next Tuesday and Wednesday evenings — can’t wait to see what tricks team and college officials pull out of their hats for those.

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Wild owner asks Minnesota for $362m in renovation money, because his arena is so busy

March 3, 2026 Neil deMause

Good news, everyone! Minnesota Wild owner Craig Leipold is no longer asking for $394 million from the state of Minnesota for upgrades to his now 26-year-old arena, as he was last year at this time. Instead, he’s only asking for $200 million in state money, some unspecified share of which will go toward St. Paul’s convention center, along with $162.5 million in money from the city.

That’s not a lot better, but it is better! Unless, that is, you instead compare it to the plan that Leipold and city officials downgraded to last year when their initial demand went nowhere at the statehouse, which would have involved only $50 million in state money, something this deal would be worse than. But at least Leipold — who has a net worth of $3.6 billion, according to, and I am not making this up, Superyachtfan.com — is promising to extend the Wild’s lease (by an unspecified number of years) in exchange for the renovation cash, though since his current lease is not set to expire until 2035 anyway, that wasn’t exactly an urgent problem.

What is an urgent problem, apparently, is that the Wild arena needs to “remain competitive — attracting top performers, cultural events, and, of course, sports,” as St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her was quoted saying in a press release issued this morning. Leipold clarified last year that this meant “competitive within our local market,” which takes at least a little chutzpah when the whole reason you have to compete with the Timberwolves‘ arena across the river is because your franchise didn’t want to share it with them and demanded its own. Leipold also proclaimed that his arena is “booked 150 nights a year with events and entertainment – more than any other venue in Minnesota,” which sounds pretty competitive in its local market, though it’s true that the T-wolves owners have been talking about upgrading their arena for years to incorporate such things as “augmented reality,” you can’t afford to let A-Rod open a Google glass gap!

The state legislature summarily ignored Leipold’s ask last year, but clearly hope springs eternal, especially with the state budget in somewhat less dire shape than it was a year ago. Mayor Her said she plans to fight hard for the state subsidies, while “above all” being “committed to being a good steward of taxpayer dollars,” who said comedy was dead?

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Hamilton County asks Ohio for $234m for Bengals stadium upgrades, just for kicks

March 2, 2026 Neil deMause

As mentioned on Friday, pretty much every pro sports team in Ohio is racing to grab a chunk of the state’s $1.7 billion unclaimed funds pool, which really everyone should have expected would happen as soon as the state made clear that it planned to use the money for sports projects instead of leaving it in place until the people whose money it really was could claim it. So far we have had the Cleveland Browns in for $600 million, the Guardians and Cavaliers seeking $105 million combined, and the Columbus Crew hoping for $100 million; now Hamilton County has put a price tag on its ask to the state for the Cincinnati Bengals, and it is $234 million:

In its application, the county estimated the cost of the project at $936.7 million. That’s different from the $830 million figure the county has floated as the cost of a complete renovation package. So far, the county is funding $350 million, while the Bengals are chipping in $120 million.

So that would be $350 million from the county, $234 million from the state, and $120 million from the team, which comes to $704 million — on a project costing $936.7 million. Huh. You’d think someone would notice a $232 million funding gap, but maybe they have big plans for a GoFundMe?

The most eyebrow-raising part of the county’s request to the state, meanwhile, is that the Bengals already signed an 11-year lease extension in exchange for the $350 million from the county. (The county also agreed to take on about $300 million in future stadium operating expenses, making it nearly $60 million per year that of the lease, which just might be the worst deal ever.) As the Cincinnati Business Journal deadpanned, “The county’s application to the state does not say anything about the Bengals extending their lease in exchange for an additional $234 million. … Typically, when the state makes a major outlay of taxpayer-funded incentives to companies that create jobs, it requires them to stay beyond the term of the incentive the firms will receive.” But not the Bengals, nuh-uh — which would make a state donation of $234 million in exchange for a zero-year lease extension be the single most expensive per-year stadium subsidy in history, at $∞/year.

Of course, if the state of Ohio doesn’t give the money to Bengals owner Mike Brown, the original owners might come claim it, so maybe they’ll just hand it over, no questions asked. (Using the money for some public use other than privately occupied sports venues doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone.) Also of course, there’s still a lawsuit pending against the use of the fund for sports purposes, and if that succeeds, a whole lot of holes could get blown in a lot of stadium budgets, including the Browns stadium project that is set to break ground today. Many, many ways this can end, pretty much none of them good, which would make it the most 2026 story of 2026, except for all the others.

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Friday roundup: Bears face choice which state’s $1B+ in cash to accept, Rays stadium plans face growing questions

February 27, 2026March 5, 2026 Neil deMause

As expected, the Indiana state senate gave overwhelming (45-4) final approval to a Chicago Bears stadium subsidy package yesterday, and Gov. Mike Braun signed it into law less than an hour later. This is still a very preliminary plan — we don’t know, among other things, how big a stadium tax diversion district would be, which could go a long way toward determining if Bears owner George McCaskey would receive $400 million or $1 billion or $4 billion or what in taxpayer money. With the state government having signed off, though, that decision will now be left up to an unelected state sports authority and the city of Hammond, and neither of those is likely to have the best interests of Indiana taxpayers as a whole in mind. (Not that state legislators were necessarily thinking about that either, but at least they’re supposed to, if I’m reading the representative democracy FAQs correctly.)

At the same time, an Illinois house committee responded to events across the state border by moving forward a “megaproject” bill that Bears execs have said they require for any new stadium in Arlington Heights. The bill would allow localities to exempt any project costing over $500 million from local property taxes and instead allow it to pay a lower payment in lieu of taxes rate that developers would negotiate with the local government; for projects worth over $2 billion, like the Bears stadium, the negotiated tax rate would be allowed to be as low as zero. Property tax guru Geoff Propheter estimates the value to the Bears from this measure would be about $67 million a year, which would amount to just over $1 billion in present value. (CORRECTION: Propheter emails to say the $67 million a year was already translated into present value, so this could actually be a $2 billion tax break.)

If the bill succeeds — Chicago-area legislators are trying to block it, as they would, since there’s nothing in it for their constituents — it could also, notes Jon Styf at The Center Square, lead to data centers or battery farms demanding similar tax breaks. And because the value of those projects would count toward the local tax base without paying their usual share of local taxes, other property tax owners would end up getting soaked to cover the difference — something that should put in a slightly different light Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s comments yesterday that Indiana is setting itself up for “massive increases in taxes” while Illinois is having “really positive discussions” with the Bears.

This is going to be a difficult choice for Bears execs, given that there are lots of unknowns with both states’ offers — Illinois has also still yet to decide on how much in infrastructure money to provide to an Arlington Heights Bears project — plus the question of where the Bears owners actually think it would make more sense to play in terms of selling tickets. Fortunately for McCaskey, there’s no deadline to make a decision, so he can sit back and hope the bidding war continues to escalate. For a team owner whose options only a few months ago were a rock and a hard place, to be fielding multiple billion-dollar-plus offers is a pretty impressive an accomplishment, guess leverage really does work!

And this week in the rest of the sports extortion world:

Members of the Tampa Sports Authority have some questions about a proposed Rays stadium, namely how the authority will staff a stadium if Gov. Ron DeSantis goes ahead with slashing the property taxes that fund its budget, where the city of Tampa and Hillsborough County would come up with about $1 billion worth of stadium funding when the county has $1.5 billion in unmet transportation needs, and whether the planned Rays complex would include any much-needed affordable housing. Replies hazy, ask again later!
Meanwhile, Rays officials are planning public visioning sessions for their proposed Tampa stadium project, stock up on post-it notes!
The Franklin County Convention Facilities Authority has asked for $100 million in state unclaimed funds money to help pay for a $400 million Columbus Blue Jackets arena upgrade, joining the Cleveland Browns, Cleveland Guardians, Cleveland Cavaliers, and Cincinnati Bengals as teams lining up to tap that state slush fund, it’s like you can’t even put out a sign reading “FREE MONIEZ!!!” anymore without billionaires lining up to take it.
Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser told a local business and real estate conference, “We won a World Series, Stanley Cup, hosted an All Star game for MLB and MLS. We’re going to have the NFL Draft. And we will have the Super Bowl, so I think that qualifies as the sports capital.” The result was “a big ovation,” according to WTOP, though whether this is because business leaders don’t understand how sports works or will cheer anything that results in one of their number pocketing a $7 billion check is left as an exercise for the reader.
Los Angeles Angels owner Arte Moreno determined that his team’s fans don’t care about winning by issuing a survey that didn’t including “winning” among the categories fans could pick as a priority, that’s one way to justify only signing players who are clinically dead.
Speaking of Jon Styf, he and I had a long talk about the proposed Bears subsidies this week in which I concluded, after seeing NFL owners’ standard stadium subsidy demands climb from $1 billion to $2-6 billion in the course of just a year, “It makes me wonder why teams don’t just ask for $10 billion or $1 trillion. Clearly it’s not like there’s any point at which legislators will start saying ‘No.’” Apologies in advance for giving them ideas.

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Bears owner set to get multibillion-dollar Indiana stadium offer, now will he take it?

February 25, 2026 Neil deMause

The Indiana bill to approve taxpayer funding of a new Chicago Bears stadium in Hammond passed the state house by a 95-4 vote yesterday, and it seems inevitable that it will pass the senate as well and be signed into law by Gov. Mike Braun by the end of the week. At which point … what, exactly?

Senate Bill 27, as the Indiana stadium legislation is known, would create a sports authority with the power to sign an agreement with Bears ownership to provide a huge pile of public money — hotel and food and beverage tax surcharges, a ticket tax, and property, sales, and income and other tax money from an omni-TIF district of indeterminate size — toward the construction of a new stadium. (Economist Geoff Propheter has estimated the total public cost at more than $4 billion, but also says there’s no way to truly know the full number without knowing the size of the tax diversion district.) It would be up to Bears owner George McCaskey to then decide whether to actually sign such a deal with the state, which could happen at any point in the future, at the state stadium board’s discretion; the city of Hammond would then have to vote to create the stadium tax district and the ticket tax.

Why would McCaskey turn down such a lucrative offer? Lots of reasons: He might not actually want to move the Bears so far from their fan base in Chicago’s western suburbs. He might not want to have to put up the reported $2 billion he would have to for a Hammond dome (though it’s likely he’d recoup a bunch of that via the public tax money). Or he might think he can get a better deal in Illinois.

And “better” doesn’t necessarily have to mean involving more public cash. Don’t forget that in 1999, Robert Kraft announced he was moving the New England Patriots to Hartford, Connecticut before switching gears and remaining in Massachusetts. And while it has since been reported that this happened after Kraft discovered it would take longer than he’d hoped to demolish a steam plant on the proposed stadium site, it’s also true that in the meantime he’d used the threat of a move to Connecticut both to convince the state of Massachusetts to give him a somewhat increased subsidy, as well as to arm-twist the NFL into letting big-market teams use money they would otherwise have to share with the league to instead pay for stadiums that would them to stay put in their current markets. (The NFL’s initial version of its G-3 stadium program, in fact, covered the top six TV markets at a time when Boston was #6; it was created by a committee whose chair was Robert Kraft.)

If McCaskey is just leading Indiana on in hopes of winning a bigger dowry from Illinois, he’ll get his first evidence of whether it’s working when an Illinois state committee meets tomorrow to vote on letting Arlington Heights bestow property tax breaks on a Bears stadium pr0ject. That in itself is not likely to get a stadium there done — Bears execs have insisted they also need $855 million in state money for things like new roads and commuter rail changes — unless, of course, this is another Patriots situation where the NFL owner will be happy to grab whatever concessions he can get in the place he wants. If he’s even decided what he wants, of course, and there’s no rule saying he has to until it’s time to put pen to lease paper

That’s a very long-winded way of saying that this is likely only the start of the Bears stadium battle, not the end. Do try to keep that in mind when you read headlines late this week declaring that the team’s move to Indiana is complete; we’ve seen those before, and they don’t always work out the way everyone expected.

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