Search Results for: Nets officially headed to Newark for next two seasons

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

access_time personNeil deMause

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

access_time personNeil deMause

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

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

  • The Portland Trail Blazers owners are about to ask that Oregon hand over all state income taxes paid by home and road players and staff to help fund a $600 million renovation of their 30-year-old arena. (The cost is estimated at $20 million a year, which if salaries rise enough could easily end up amounting to $600 million worth of future taxes.) The Oregonian notes: “Team employees, notably players who earn millions, have been paying into the state’s general fund for decades, dating back to the franchise’s founding in 1970. Will lawmakers have the stomach to divert those funds from essential services to rebuild an arena that is home to a team that will soon be owned by a Texas billionaire?” Then it says that “the income tax dollars the general fund would lose in this proposal will vanish anyway if the Blazers relocate,” which, no they wouldn’t, not if Portlanders spent their basketball ticket dollars elsewhere locally, which the numbers show is what would mostly happen. Securing approval of the tax money before Tom Dundon (the aforementioned billionaire) officially steps in as owner, one source told the Oregonian, “guarantees the Blazers’ future,” though they didn’t say what kind of lease extension Dundon would agree to in exchange, so it’s always possible it would only guarantee the Blazers’ future until it’s time to ask for more tax money again.
  • Hillsborough County is discussing paying for $250 million in renovations to the Tampa Bay Lightning‘s arena in exchange for a six-year lease extension until 2043, which has some Tampa Sports Authority officials worried the Buccaneers and Rays owners may make similar demands if the arena project is approved. Also that would be $41.7 million per year of lease extension, which would be close to the record for most expensive ever.
  • New Jersey’s proposed $300 million Devils arena subsidy only has a few days left of the legislative session for approval, and “some lawmakers,” per New Jersey Digest, have “raised concerns” that rushing a major tax break through in a lame-deck session with a lame-duck governor might not be the best of ideas. Not that state legislatures don’t do it all the time, but not the best of ideas does check out if you’re a fan of transparency and due diligence and all the other democracy things that are out of fashion right now.
  • Kansas officials want to make clear that the state could still build a Kansas City Royals stadium, just not with STAR bonds since the deadline for those expired at the end of 2025, so they’re just for the Chiefs and for Barbie/Hot Wheels theme parks. And the state doesn’t really have many other good revenue sources, says house speaker Dan Hawkins: “It would be tough to use those and develop enough money to really support a stadium, and so, I just can’t see that happening.”
  • The Ohio judge who issued a 14-day temporary restraining order against the use of unclaimed private funds to pay $600 million toward a new Cleveland Browns stadium has extended it indefinitely while he hears arguments on whether to issue a permanent injunction.
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NJ bill would give Devils $300m for arena renovations, amid $1.5B state budget shortfall

access_time personNeil deMause

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Stadium questions the media shouldn’t even bother asking

access_time personNeil deMause

If you’ve been reading this site for any length of time, you’ll know that I’m a big fan of Betteridge’s Law of Headlines, which states, to save you from having to click through, that “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.” It’s not 100% accurate — sometimes the answer is yes, and sometimes even definitely maybe. But most of the time it’s a sign that a reporter spent a bunch of time on investigating a question, realized the answer was boringly obvious, and their editors decided to post the query as the headline instead, hoping to at least get clickthrus from readers curious to find out the details. (Which is pretty much how most headlines are designed to work these days anyway.)

Which brings us to these two recent, I’m going to call them “news stories,” though one is an item accompanying an All Things Considered radio item and the other is a repost of a Substack post:

Downtown Minneapolis is struggling. Would a new Wolves and Lynx arena help?

Pretty easy to guess no here, given that the Timberwolves and Lynx already play in a downtown Minneapolis arena, even if it’s one where, as one fan told Minnesota Public Radio, has “restrooms [that] look like they’ve been there for 20 years.” (Presumably whenever her own restrooms get too old, she moves to a new house?) And in fact, the author of the piece knows the answer, because there’s Kennesaw State University economist J.C. Bradbury down in the later grafs saying the answer is no, and it “isn’t some rogue opinion I have. It’s something that’s shared by the entire disciplin. If you ask doctors, ‘Is smoking bad?’ They’ll universally say yes. If you ask economists, ‘Are stadiums bad public investments?’ They’ll universally say yes.”

The article then pivots to talking about how much expensive arenas are to build these days (true), and how the “aging Target Center is mostly upper deck seats” which makes tickets more affordable (possibly slightly true, but probably not so much). It’s not clear why any of this story exists, though the accompanying radio piece does feature T-Wolves co-owner Alex Rodriguez (yes, that one) describing a new arena as “an anchor to the community,” so presumably this was pitched as an investigation of that claim — though if so, sticking in one quote from an economist halfway down saying this question has been asked and answered and then running a headline making it seem like an open question … that’s a choice, certainly.

Then there’s whatever you call this, which ran last week in the Rochester Beacon as a reprint of local reporter Gary Craig’s Substack column:

Is the new Bills stadium really such a bad deal for taxpayers?

Going to go with yes here, because (waves hands generally at everything that has been written about it on this website and elsewhere). But sure, let’s hear how spending $750 million in state money and $250 million in county money to move the Buffalo Bills across the street could be a good deal for taxpayers:

Tucked away in New York’s 2021 analysis of costs for a new Buffalo Bills stadium is this tidbit: “Personal income tax, primarily related to Bills team payroll, is the largest single fiscal revenue source, generating approximately $19.5 million per year for the State of New York.”

That number was likely low then, and with the increasing salary cap in the NFL, is certainly low now. Experts with whom I’ve spoken estimate the annual income tax revenue likely will be upwards of $30 million from the Bills and visiting teams…

These income taxes are numbers not often talked about in the debate over public financial support for a new stadium.

Uhhh, is this for Substack’s new posting-while-smoking-crack vertical? The benefit of getting income taxes from player payrolls is talked about all the damn time by team owners and pro-stadium-subsidy politicians — in fact, here’s then-Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker doing so about a new Milwaukee Bucks arena 10 years ago. The problem is threefold:

  1. Math: Even $30 million a year in new income tax revenue isn’t enough to cover $1 billion in public spending — it’d be worth a little less than half of that in present value. So even by Craig’s own logic, the answer to his question is yes, it’s a bad deal for taxpayers.
  2. New vs. existing revenue: The Bills already play in Buffalo, so this is income tax money that the state and county will be getting regardless of what stadium they play in. It would only become a windfall if you assume the Bills would have moved without a $1 billion stadium subsidy, which LOL.
  3. The but-for: Even if the Bills did move, the money Bills fans currently spend on tickets would likely be spent on something else within Erie County and certainly New York state, and would go to pay other salaries that would generate income taxes. It wouldn’t be a 1:1 replacement, no — a portion of the Bills salaries are paid by TV rights money, and that would indeed depart — but some of the tax revenue would remain, making the $1 billion taxpayer expense look even worse.

“I’m still trying to do a deeper dive on the stadium financing,” concludes Craig, and maybe he should have finished his research before posting this, or at least before letting the Rochester Beacon reprint his off-the-cuff thoughts. Anyway, hope this helps, not sure honestly why I’m still trying to critique a journalism world that is invariably headed slopwards, I’ll have to do a deeper dive on that impulse someday.

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Would Mamdani aide’s plan to limit stadium food prices cause ticket prices to rise? The answer may surprise Matt Yglesias

access_time personNeil deMause

New York City, you may have heard, has a new mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani, who is currently working with his transition team to assemble a staff for when he takes office in January. While most of his team is made up of city political lifers, its co-chair is a somewhat unconventional choice: Lina Khan, who as Joe Biden’s chair of the Federal Trade Commission worked to find new ways to use antitrust law to rein in the power of big corporations. And as atomic news unit redesigners Semafor reported last week, one of her targets for New York, according to “people familiar with the transition,” will be “sports stadiums charging nosebleed prices for concessions.”

Semafor’s grasp on sports metaphor notwithstanding — “nosebleed” typically refers to how high seats are above the ground, not how much they cost — this is a reasonable enough goal, if maybe not the most important one to New Yorkers in making the city affordable. (Semafor did add that the Mamdani administration also plans to police hospitals that overcharge for drugs and companies that violate a new state law requiring transparency about algorithmic pricing.) And, citing no sources at all this time, the article said Khan has identified one old city law that prohibits “unconscionable” business practices as a potential route to banning the $8 pretzel.

Yesterday, though, Semafor followed up to report that “economists are fighting” on X over whether trying to reduce prices is even a good idea, with noted scholars like philosophy major Matt Yglesias arguing that “Price controls for in-stadium beer so that sober sports fan pay higher ticket prices to generate cross-subsidy for drunks is a very bad idea!!” while Columbia law professor Tim Wu replied, “This is just dumb and shows a failure to understand buyers.”

Like those two, I am also not an economist, and odds are neither are you, but we can think this through easily enough. One main reason food and drink prices at sporting events are so high is monopoly power: If you want a beer at a game, you have to buy it at a concession stand, you can’t run across the street to pick up a cheaper one at a bodega. (You can bring in your own pretzel to Mets and Yankees games, but not to Knicks and Rangers and Nets and Liberty games.) So sports fans have to make a decision before attending a game: Am I going to eat and drink beforehand and/or stuff my pockets with contraband granola bars and alcohol gummies, or am I going to factor in the cost of a trip to the concession stand before deciding whether to go to a game?

Matt Yglesias, being Matt Yglesias, doesn’t specify why he thinks “sober sports fans” will pay higher ticket prices if concessions prices are lowered — it’s possible that he thinks that sports team owners have a big number written on a whiteboard somewhere of how much money they need to bring in, and if they can’t get it from gouging on hot dogs, they’ll get it by jacking up ticket prices. If so, that’s easily enough answered: I wrote a whole book chapter about how that’s not how ticket prices work, either in theory or empirically, since team owners will always jack them up as far as they can regardless of what other money they have coming in (or going out).

If, however, Yglesias means that sports fans would celebrate the end of the $17 beer by using some of their savings to buy more expensive tickets, thus allowing team owners to jack up prices, sure, maybe? As much as sports fans also don’t have a whiteboard somewhere with their game budget written on it, as a sample size of one, I know that I have absolutely factored food costs into ticket-buying decisions: In particular, I’ve started skipping concerts when I didn’t want to pay a table food and drink minimum on top of the ticket price, especially when $18 will only get me a small plate of figs and goat cheese.

So, yes, it’s possible bringing down concession prices would allow team owners to raise ticket prices some. (It doesn’t appear that anyone has done an empirical study of this; I’m still digging.) Whether you think that’s a bad thing will largely depend on how you feel about price controls — economists generally hate them, on the grounds that they lead sellers to cut back on supply, though it’s less clear if team owners used to monopoly pricing would really start closing concession stands if forced to sell $5 beers. (Some teams have already voluntarily cut concession prices to get people to buy more food and drink, and possibly to spend more on tickets as well, it’s hard to tell from the limited examples.) And even if forcing teams to charge something closer to competitive market prices would put more money in fans’ pockets, allowing them to spend more on tickets if they want, that hardly seems like a burden — let alone a “subsidy” for fans who have the temerity to get hungry and thirsty.

Anyway, this is all for Mamdani and Khan and the corporation counsel to sort out, along with lots of other affordability promises the new mayor is going to have to figure out how to implement. In the meantime, bring in a turkey sandwich to your next baseball game, it’s allowed. In fact, maybe outlawing sports venue bans on outside food and drink would be something that everyone, economists included, could get behind? Undoing the K-shaped economy would probably do more to provide real affordability — $8 pretzels are also a byproduct of a society where $8 is no object for a significant minority — but one unconscionable system at a time.

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Friday roundup: Rays plan return to upgraded Trop, soccer stadiums in every city not working out so well

access_time personNeil deMause

This was a light posting week, as I was traveling and the airline mayhem as the result of the government shutdown … didn’t actually affect me at all, my flight was uneventful and actually landed ahead of schedule. The cab ride from the airport hit a lot of traffic, though!

Stadium and arena news was light as well, presumably everyone was distracted by one scandal or another, but there’s still plenty to chew on:

  • The Tampa Bay Rays confirmed that they’ll return to Tropicana Field next spring after roof repairs are done, along with “an expanded main videoboard, new video displays behind home plate and along both foul poles, a new sound system and updated suite interiors.” The city is, as required in the team’s lease, paying for $59.7 million in repairs ($7.65 million has been covered by insurance); the team owners are paying for upgrades, though they haven’t revealed how much they’re spending, and determining things like whether replacing the interior of a flooded luxury suite with a nicer interior is a repair or an upgrade could get dicey, hopefully someone either in city government or in the local media is keeping an eye on that, please?
  • “Can Soccer Stadiums Revitalize American Cities?” asks the New York Times, with the big reveal being: Nope. “Mixed-use development components, particularly ones that include housing, are often delayed or, to date, are incomplete,” reports the Times. “And those projects, experts say, don’t always bring in the revenue and economic activity that are promised.” Ian Betteridge is shocked, shocked.
  • The owner of the Des Moines Menace is seeking state money for a $95 million soccer stadium for that minor-league USL team as well as a yet-to-be-created women’s pro soccer team, and the Des Moines Register is asking if it will revitalize Des Moines like soccer stadiums have other cities, guess they couldn’t get past the Times paywall. (Psst, use archive.ph.)
  • The Los Angeles City Council officially voted to oppose the Dodger Stadium gondola project, with one councilmember calling it “an insult to our communities, and the process has been an insult to our collective intelligence,” yup, that tracks. The ultimate decision is up to the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which wrapped up its public comment period on the proposal yesterday.
  • The Philadelphia 76ers arena plan for the edge of Chinatown is dead, but the controversy over how the site will be “revitalized” lives on, with Sixers owner Josh Harris planning to start demolitions soon and neighborhood advocates saying that’s only “going to make the situation worse with no real guarantees that it will get better.” But blight is good for getting development projects approved, so it could end up being better for Harris, why doesn’t anyone ever think of the poor little rich boy?
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Friday roundup: Royals “poll” fans on why they need a new stadium, plus still more soccer teams, so many soccer teams

access_time personNeil deMause

I’m posting this week’s roundup from the road, so apologies if any news slipped through the cracks, and I’ll try to catch up with it next week. But at least I’m not shutting down my site to take a full-time editing job: While I’m very happy for Tom Scocca’s bank balance and health coverage, he’s one of the best writers and most astute political analysts in an increasingly threadbare media landscape, and his writing at Indignity and elsewhere will be sorely missed.

In happier news … hahaha, what am I saying, most of this news is dismal as always. But anyway in LOLdemocracy news:

  • Kansas City Royals officials are surveying selected fans about their thoughts on three potential stadium locations — Downtown/Near Downtown, Clay County/North Kansas City and Johnson County/Overland Park — some of which surely is meant to serve as a push poll, given that it only includes one positive option about the team’s current home (“Kauffman Stadium is still a great place to watch a game; There is no reason for the Royals to leave”) and two negative ones (“Kauffman Stadium is past its prime and needs to be replaced by a modern ballpark that is surrounded by an entertainment district with shops, restaurants and bars” and “I love the ‘K’, but it lacks the amenities of modern ballparks and our region would be better served with a brand-new ballpark in a different part of town”). And while surely team owner John Sherman will use the actual responses in some way, you know that his main concern is who he can extricate the most public money from — and by naming three potential locations, he also creates leverage to get the most public money from whichever site he or fans might prefer otherwise, so really win-win-win for him!
  • Raleigh may be asked to build a new stadium for the NC Courage and North Carolina F.C. (currently about to go on hiatus before jumping to the USL’s new top tier intended to compete with MLS) soccer teams, and Green Bay may build a stadium for new minor-league soccer teams, and Rancho Cordova may get tax incentives to help build a $175 million arena for an indoor soccer team, hands up everyone who knows where Rancho Cordova is or that the U.S. has an indoor soccer league! In any event, everybody still gets a soccer team, cities really don’t have to rush to pay for stadiums to get one, you have to beat them away with sticks at this point.
  • Tampa Bay Business and Wealth (?) headline: “The data is in: Mixed-use stadiums win big for cities and fans.” Actual report (?) by consultants JLL (“We believe in the power of real estate to shape a better world”) linked to in the article: “Attendance trends from the 2025 MLB regular season show that stadiums in Lifestyle Market ecosystems drive elevated attendance, even when team performance is poor” (mostly based on the success of the Atlanta Braves, who drew well in 2025 despite sucking largely because people still  bought tickets thinking the entire starting rotation wasn’t going to get injured) and “By 2040, we predict that at least half of MLB organizations will announce plans to develop a new stadium or perform a major redevelopment of their existing venue” this seems to be more winning big for team owners than for fans or cities, you know?
  • MLS commissioner Don Garber is headed to Vancouver to complain that the Whitecaps don’t get first dibs on dates for playoff games and have to share food and beverage revenue with their government landlords, can you imagine the nerve of those Canadians?
  • On Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb’s proposal for a sales tax surcharge district to fund Guardians and Cavaliers upgrades, Cleveland.com reports that “on Reddit, users on r/cleveland and r/cavs were largely united around the same message: billionaire team owners should pay for their own stadiums. They rejected the idea that beers or hotdogs should cost more,” while “on Facebook, the reaction was more skeptical — and often sarcastic.”
  • We already knew that the Baltimore Ravens were working on a nearly-half-billion-dollar renovation funded mostly by tax dollars, but “The Ravens are investing an additional $55 million for the improvements, with the stadium authority set to reimburse the team up to $35 million of that amount” is a new twist, not to mention a new definition of “investing.”
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Worcester stadium red ink shows dangers of hoping to cover taxpayer costs with housing magic beans

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s now been more than seven years since the Pawtucket Red Sox owners cut a deal to get $105 million in public cash to move to a new stadium in Worcester, sparking a throwdown between economists Andrew Zimbalist (a paid team consultant), who said it w0uld all work out great, and Victor Matheson and a whole bunch of others (not collecting any consulting checks), who warned that building a stadium in order to spark economic gains from new housing next door was a bad gamble. As of last year, city tax revenues were falling short because the promised new development was lagging — so how are things going now?

A report from the city auditor to the City Council states that the Polar Park Ballpark District Improvement Financing fund has an anticipated deficit of $390,000 for the current fiscal year, and that by the end of the year will owe the city’s general fund over $2 million.

Not great, especially after the Worcester city auditor promised specifically that this would never happen! Also not great: Though Worcester Chief Financial Officer Timothy J. McGourthy said he expected the tax fund would eventually have enough revenue to cover the city’s stadium costs (including $40 million in overruns), that’s just regular taxes that any development would pay — meaning if the ballpark-adjacent housing ends up cannibalizing construction that would have taken place anyway, it’s not really a net gain. That’s something that Matheson, who teaches at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, warned about seven years ago, along with the fact that planning on a housing windfall didn’t take into account the added city costs of supporting new residents: The price tag for providing schools for even a few dozen new kids would quickly eat up any new tax revenues. In that case, even if the ballpark district fund eventually shows a profit — CFO McGourthy swears it will, someday — it will be canceled out by new losses in the city schools budget.

The Worcester city council was all set to discuss the WooSox ballpark situation at its Tuesday meeting this week, but scrapped the agenda item at the last second. Residents still turned out to testify on the subject, though, including Nicole Apostola, who had previously petitioned the council to at the very least provide more transparency about what Worcester taxpayers would be on the hook for. Apostola made clear that she would still like some questions answered, namely:

“One, why has no one been held responsible for the horrible contracts this city has been saddled with? Two, why has there never been a reckoning for the misconstruction of the doors at the park that prevent certain events from being held there? Three, why has the city not been able to take advantage of any of the revenue-generating days we were supposed to have? And most importantly, number four, exactly which services are being cut so we can subsidize multimillionaires?”

Oh, yes, the doors, we should probably talk about the doors. Three years ago, after Worcester’s new stadium had been open for two years, people started noticing that the promised flood of concerts had turned out to be, actually zero concerts. It turned out that the reason was Worcester had copied Fenway Park’s feature where the only direct access to the field is a large roll-up door in center field — and that door was built 12 feet high, whereas concert production trucks are 13 feet high. If only there could have been some way of knowing!

So LOLWorcester, sure. But this also should serve as a warning to other cities where sports projects are promising to pay back their costs with tax revenue from new surrounding development (cough San Antonio cough) that, first, there’s no guarantee the new housing will get built on time, and second, taxes on new development aren’t a free windfall, they’re needed to pay off the new costs that come with new development. After all the cautionary tales so far (cough Brooklyn Nets cough), you’d think people would have caught on by now, but yeah, nope, editorial boards are still writing how special sports district taxing zones would “shield residents from bearing the cost of development.” Shout louder, not-on-team-payroll economists, it’s hard for newsmakers to hear you with their fingers wedged so deeply in their ears.

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Friday roundup: Spurs owner wants arena subsidies so he can be “scrappy,” A’s owner gets closer to unlocking county stadium cash

access_time personNeil deMause

Some weeks, when all the work of this website feels like an endless repetition of the same stories over and over and over again, I try to remind myself that while the general shape of the stadium swindle has remained the same over the last 30 years — boy meets stadium dream, boy uses standard playbook to demand that someone else to pay for stadium dream, elected officials cough up the dough to boy — there have been some discoveries and innovations along the way: The Casino Night Fallacy. The grift that keeps on giving. The kitchen sink gambit. Reusable entourage. Sure, it would be nice for whatever showrunner is in charge of this accursed timeline to quit reusing the same plotlines — helicopter registration fraud was a surprise season-ending twist, but that was three years ago already — but if nothing else we’re getting a deeper understanding of the intricacies of how sports billionaires funnel taxpayer money into their own pockets, and who can put a price on that? Other than the literal price of “billions of dollars of tax money a year,” obviously, but enlightenment doesn’t come cheap.

Also, no one has taken away our god-given right to point and laugh (yet), so may as well enjoy it. And on that note, here’s some fresh meat for your inner Nelson Muntz:

  • San Antonio’s KSAT-TV asked Spurs owner Peter Holt why he can’t just pay for his own arena his damn self, and Holt said “it’s a great question” and San Antonio’s small market size has “pushed us to be scrappy” and “the underdog” and “we want to continue [our] partnership with the county and the city” and the arena project will use “visitor taxes that have no impact on our local citizens” and “there’s no extra fees.” That’s neither really an answer nor exactly true, but Holt is already off and not-answering whether the team would potentially move without a new arena: “You know, we’re not focused on this election not passing. I mean, I think our belief has always been, whether it’s on the court or off the court, we have excellence and we have winning in our DNA. And so we’re confident and optimistic that this will pass, and that’s our plan.” It’s easy to be confident when you’re spending $2 million on ad campaigns to convince voters to go your way, but just in case, may as well employ the “You don’t want to find out what’ll happen if you make Dad mad” strategy as well.
  • The Clark County Commission officially approved the Athletics‘ ballpark development agreement for Las Vegas(ish), which is mostly notable because it allows A’s owner John Fisher to finally tap into $380 million in public funds that was approved way back in June 2023. Or at least Fisher can get the money once he sets a guaranteed maximum price for the stadium and spend $100 million out of his own pocket first, maybe that’s what all the concrete pillars are about? Would Fisher really shell out $100 million of his own money in order to get $380 million in public money in hopes all that will somehow unlock another $1 billion or so of somebody else’s money? He’s done dumber things before, don’t put it past him!
  • Interim Jackson County Executive Kay Barnes says she doesn’t see herself as “taking on any kind of strong initiative” on major issues during her short time back in office, but that’s not stopping her from saying she wants to see stadium projects for the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals move forward, she’s not made of stone, people.
  • The St. Petersburg city council is looking at ending the city’s Community Redevelopment Area (i.e., a TIF that kicks back property taxes to developers) for the Historic Gas Plant District now that the Tampa Bay Rays aren’t using it for a stadium development, probably. “I was very hesitant to do this,” said council chair Copley Gerdes. “More and more, I’m becoming open to it.” What’s next, hugging?
  • A couple of big-market MLB teams might be showing openness to increased revenue sharing to make MLB TV deals more like the NFL’s, which would reduce budget disparities between rich and even-richer teams but also make it easier for teams to threaten to move from big markets to smaller ones like in the NFL. Color me skeptical — big-market team owners have never willingly given up revenue before, and this could all just be openness to new kinds of TV deals while still trying to preserve the biggest slice for themselves, but we’ll see where things go once negotiations for the next collective bargaining agreement begin in earnest after next season.
  • Yes, the latest owner of the Ottawa Senators is still hoping to build a new arena at LeBreton Flats and still hoping for a taxpayer “investment” to help him along, let’s all check back in another decade or so and see if anything has changed.
  • Camden Yards’ public owners won’t get any money from the Los Angeles Rams renting out the stadium for practice before their game in London, just like they didn’t get any money when Paul McCartney played there, who needs money when you have a pro baseball team whose owner wants money more than you do?
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Dallas Stars owners start shopping for new arena, that’s officially everybody now

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s rare for a major pro sports team to have no entries in the Field of Schemes “posts by topic” list, given that pretty much every team owner out there has at least hinted at demanding some kind of public money for something at some time. That’s the situation for the Dallas Stars, though — or was until this post, because we just can’t have nice things:

The Stars’ 21-person ownership advisory group met on Wednesday night and zeroed in on Plano as one of the likeliest destinations, Front Office Sports has learned.

The team is eyeing a purchase of land in Plano, but has not signed anything yet. It operates a youth hockey facility there, and has a practice facility in Frisco. Arlington is also in the mix, and has appeal as it’s already home to an MLB and NFL team. Each of those cities is roughly 20 miles from the team’s current home.

Team ownership also hasn’t ruled out staying in Dallas, either in the American Airlines Center or in a new arena.

So, the Stars are moving to Plano, unless they’re moving to Arlington, unless they’re moving to The Colony or Fort Worth, unless they’re building an arena in Dallas or staying in their old Dallas arena while the Mavericks build their own arena maybe. That’s pretty much all the options other than Greensboro, so maybe not really rising to the level of “news,” but you do you, Front Office Sports.

The news, such as it is, is that Stars owner Tom Gaglardi is clearly entering the kicking-tires-to-gin-up-a-bidding-war phase of his arena dreams, especially given that the team CEO followed up with some decidedly on-the-record comments:

“I don’t deny we are in discussions with Plano,” team president and CEO Brad Alberts told FOS when reached by phone Friday. “Have we decided on where our future is? No. We’ve gotta decide, are we staying or are we going to build somewhere. Certainly Plano is part of that, but we haven’t decided. We are going through due diligence to make sure that if we are going to leave, we have the right spot.”

And to the Dallas Morning News:

“We do not have a deal with Plano,” Alberts said. “We don’t have any of that. We are in discussions with them. We’re also in discussions with other cities. Arlington would love us to come to Arlington. They’ve got two of the four already. We’ve got a really good relationship with those two franchises there and the city.

“There’s no favorites at this point. We’re all just doing our work.”

The Stars’ lease expires in 2031, but there’s nothing stopping them from extending it, and in fact team officials have previously suggested that as one option. So beyond vague “discussions,” there’s not much going on here, so hopefully Dallas officials won’t be suckered into bidding against themsel—

Said council member Chad West, chairman of the ad hoc committee on professional sports recruitment and retention: “Dallas needs to [do its] part to ensure we keep our teams in the city.”

Hope you enjoyed that blank space on the topic list while it lasted, because https://www.fieldofschemes.com/category/nhl/dallas-stars/ is almost certainly about to start growing like crazy.

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