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Friday roundup: Friends don’t let friends read stadium news coverage, Bears’ list of places not to move to keeps growing

access_time personNeil deMause

One of the things you learn if you read enough articles with the word “stadium” in them, as I am condemned by an ancient mummy’s curse to do, is how very many news reports are just about nothing. For every article that tells us some actual information, there are easily five to 10 that are just meant to fill pixels with something easily reportable, regardless of whether it qualifies as “news,” let alone “reporting.”

Just this week, we’ve had: MLB commissioner Rob Manfred is in favor of the Tampa stadium plan that his co-bosses the Rays owner wants and he’s “optimistic” about getting it done; a Baltimore soccer stadium is “gaining momentum,” according to a headline describing a press conference by Baltimore’s mayor, who didn’t actually even say that; Denver Broncos president says team leaders are “laser-focused” on building the tax-subsidy-funded stadium in a rail yard they already said they want; the Broncos president says actually the rail yard is only the “preferred” site and team execs are still considering other options; Minnesota Timberwolves co-owner A-Rod says a new arena is a “necessity” for the 6th-in-the-Western-Conference, $3.6-billion-valued franchise “to compete”; Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas says he’s determined to build a new Royals stadium that will create “economic development” in a way that’s “fair and transparent for our taxpayers,” no details provided.

That’s a whole lot of Important People giving press conferences in order to get their message out in the news media, which the news media is happy to oblige for them. For normal people, meanwhile, the only option is to try to get space on an op-ed page, if you can convince the op-ed editors that you should be allowed to have an opinion that diverges from that of Important People. It’s also an awful lot of reporters’ time spent on this when they could be trying to investigate all the open questions about what these stadium deals would actually entail for taxpayers and why elected officials are pushing them — but asking questions takes up valuable time that could be spent transcribing press statements. As the old journalism adage goes, “if your grandmother says she loves you, take her at her word and put it on the front page, so long as she owns a local sports team.”

Enough whining about the news media, time to attempt to do some actual reporting by, uh, seeing what’s in the news media:

  • The Chicago Bears have almost as many places now in neighboring states wanting to be their new home (without offering any money toward it) as they do in the Illinois suburbs: In addition to Gary, Indiana, there’s now Portage, Indiana, plus the entire state of Iowa. While the Bears moving to Iowa sounds like a joke and probably is, at least there’s a bill there to provide actual state tax credits toward a stadium; in Indiana, meanwhile, even the bill to create a stadium authority with no funding attached now isn’t going to move forward, Indiana legislators say, until the Bears owners first commit to moving there if it does. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and state legislative leaders might want to just bide their time and see if all the new Bears move threats evaporate just like the last round did, though it sure sounds like they’re more interested in throwing state money at the problem while the move-threat iron is hot.
  • Tampa Bay Buccaneers owner Joel Glazer still wants the major stadium renovation he asked for last April before he’ll sign a five-year lease extension, and Hillsborough County Commissioner Ken Hagan has assured Glazer that the county’s plan to divert more than a billion dollars in tax money to a Rays stadium won’t get in the way of diverting money for the Bucs. In exchange for only a five-year extension, by the way, it would only take about $220 million in subsidies to break the record for priciest per-year lease extension in U.S. sports history, you can pretty much take it to the bank that that’ll be the plan.
  • On the subject of that Baltimore soccer stadium, D.C. United owners said on Thursday that they’re planning to build a 12,000-seat venue on the site of Carroll Park Golf Course, to host a minor-league MLS Next Pro franchise and a pro women’s team owned by former NBA star Carmelo Anthony. And by “planning to build” I of course mean “hoping to receive $216 million in state money to build.” One of the state lawmakers sponsoring bills to provide the cash says “the stars have aligned” now that Carmelo Anthony is on board, maybe somebody should call a local economist to see if studies have found that involving Carmelo Anthony increases economic impact? If nothing else, it would be interesting to see what they’d say if they could ever stop laughing.
  • Foxborough, Massachusetts officials say they may not issue a permit for men’s World Cup games to be played at the New England Patriots stadium in June unless someone helps cover $8 million in security costs that the town is currently faced with paying, Asked why Patriots owner Robert Kraft, whose team is worth an estimated $9 billion, couldn’t just cut a check, FIFA World Cup Boston 26 organizers said the Krafts are offering up the use of their football stadium for two months in “peak period” of the NFL offseason, what do you want from them, blood?
  • The Center Square is a libertarian-leaning news site that has generally been pretty skeptical of stadium subsidies, so for it to run the headline “Seahawks’ Super Bowl win temporarily jolts local Seattle economy” is pretty notable — or would be if the gist of the actual article weren’t “U.S. Chamber of Commerce claims Seattle will benefit from the Seahawks winning the Super Bowl, economist Victor Matheson says one study found a short-term bump in per-capita income from Super Bowl-winning cities but it may have just been a spurious finding because ‘when you test 100 different things, even if all those things are random, one of them is going to end up being the best.'” At least the Center Square called an actual economist, unlike those corporate stooges at Al Jazeera in their article on how the Super Bowl will be a windfall for the San Francisco Bay Area despite the 49ers not being in the game and also economists consistently saying no it won’t be.
  • If Cleveland Browns owner Jimmy Haslam can’t get money to build roads and pedestrian bridges around his new Brook Park stadium from the state of Ohio, he’ll ask for $25 million from the federal government instead, there’s got to be someone to stick with the bill that isn’t named Jimmy.
  • Also in K.C. Mayor Quinton Lucas news, marginally more newsworthy edition: The mayor wants to cut spending on everything except a Royals stadium and more cops.
  • Plans for an Indianapolis MLS stadium have gone from on hold to pretty much dead, according to Indiana legislative leaders, though in stadium deals just like in comic books, only Uncle Ben ever stays dead for good.
  • The Oakland/Sacramento/Las Vegas Athletics just applied for another billion dollars in building permits for their planned Vegas stadium, everyone gets that applying for a permit doesn’t mean you’re actually committing to spend the money on the project, right? Maybe requiring personal seat licenses to buy some A’s tickets in Vegas will help raise the needed funds to employ the permits, anything is possible.
  • Nope, nobody got back to me from Wyandotte County about how their Kansas City Chiefs stadium subsidy numbers were arrived at, I’ll just assume it was the traditional “dart board and add lots of zeroes” algorithm.
  • If you have time to kill next Thursday at 3 pm Eastern/noon Pacific, tune in to Alissa Walker’s Torched Talk with me and Chris Tyler from Strategic Actions for a Just Economy on whether it’s worth it to Los Angeles to host the 2028 Olympics, and what the city could do to try to extricate itself if it’s not. Zoom link is here, calendar it now, see you then!

 

 

 

 

 

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Wyandotte County claims it will totally make money on $180m+ subsidy of Chiefs stadium

access_time personNeil deMause

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.

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Oregon bill offers Blazers owner all income taxes from in and around arena in exchange for not threatening to move yet

access_time personNeil deMause

The Portland Trail Blazers are in the middle of being sold to Carolina Hurricanes owner/subprime auto loan baron/“glass chewer” Tom Dundon, and apparently the threat of the team’s expiring lease in 2030 and Dundon’s reputation for playing hardball has Oregon elected officials moving toward spending a ton of money on upgrading Portland’s arena to avoid the team from moving to (Oregonian staffers throw darts at giant wall map of the U.S.) Nashville or Kansas City. What would Oregon taxpayers give up, and what would they get in return? As usual, it’s complicated:

  • According to a bill introduced on Monday by state Senate President Rob Wagner, the state would take all income taxes collected in and around the Blazers arena for the next 30 years and make them available for Dundon to use on arena upgrades. That would include not just taxes on Blazers players and staff, as team execs were previously reported to be seeking, but income taxes paid by any entertainers who perform at the arena, and even by the construction workers performing the upgrades.
  • This income tax money would be used to pay off $360 million in state bonds, as part of an overall $600 million public funding package. The rest would come via $75 million from a city climate fund meant to be used on projects that reduce carbon emissions and help residents at risk of climate change impact, $75 million from county car rental taxes, and $50 million from city business taxes and $40 million from county business taxes on the sale of the team to Dundon. All of these look to be present value, meaning the nominal amount of taxes redirected over time would be considerably more, if you prefer to count that way (I do not); the bill itself helpfully informs us that it “may have fiscal impact, but no statement yet issued” and “may have revenue impact, but no statement yet issued.”
  • In exchange, Dundon would agree to keep the Blazers in town for “a specified term” of time, which isn’t vague at all. If the Blazers’ eventual lease extension ends up concluding anytime before 2044, it could break the Charlotte Panthers record for the most expensive per-year lease extension in sports history.

That’s significant chunk of change for an arena that Portland taxpayers already helped then-Blazers owner Paul Allen build in 1995 and then took off the hands of Allen’s heirs in 2024, saving them about $1.2 million a year in property taxes. Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek is on board, though, calling the arena subsidy “an opportunity for the city and the state and the county to put their best foot forward and say, ‘Look, we want to be a partner with the new owner to keep the team'” and meeting with NBA commissioner Adam Silver last month to argue for the deal. Then there’s Oregon U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, who took in a Blazers game on Saturday and wandered the arena telling anyone who would listen that he wants to “help anybody who wants to keep us in town” and calling the privately owned NBA team valued at $4.25 billion “infrastructure” and “a huge economic development opportunity” and “a big economic force in the state” when he wasn’t too busy exchanging hugs with former Blazers player Buck Williams.

The biggest stumbling block right now appears to be Multnomah County, where county leaders have expressed a desire to use their $40 million business-tax check from the Blazers sale to spend on actual resident services, or at the very least to backfill the car rental tax money the county would be giving up. That’s relatively small potatoes, though — the biggest piece, the $360 million in income tax money, is expected to be voted on by the Oregon legislature by the time it wraps up its session on March 8.

That leaves less than four weeks for public discussion, which would be plenty of time to go over the dubious theory that businesses should keep the income taxes paid by their employees because if they skipped town all that tax money would go away, which 1) it almost certainly wouldn’t and 2) pretty much defeats the whole economic purpose of luring and retaining businesses regardless. Tune in Monday at 8 am PT to watch the state senate rules committee discuss the income tax diversion bill, sorry, looks like no public testimony at this one as it’s a committee “work session,” but surely there’ll be time for the public to be heard, at least minutes before the legislature takes its ultimate vote.

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MLB has lockout and more revenue sharing on deck; what will it mean for the stadium game?

access_time personNeil deMause

For the purposes of this site, I’ve been mostly ignoring the coming end to MLB’s union contract (and expected lockout) following the 2026 season, in part because it’s a bit tangential to Field of Schemes’ coverage area and in part because it’s just too damn depressing to think about how I’m going to spend my time next spring. (Watch the MLS transition season? Shoot me now.) Money stuff is money stuff, though, and as Marc Normandin pointed out in his newsletter yesterday, team owners’ stadium revenue strategies are affecting how they’re thinking about revenue sharing with players:

I believe there are owners who genuinely want a [salary] cap. I also believe there are owners who have not fully considered what having a cap would mean for them, in terms of having to argue with the MLBPA again and again about what actually constitutes baseball revenue. To go back to the WNBA again for a second, there has been a salary cap in place there for ages, and now that the players are in a position where they have more bargaining power, the two sides are arguing about what should count as revenue toward revenue sharing. There is much more money involved in MLB’s side, and just as significant of a grift — hello, baseball stadiums that are also real estate bonanzas of “non-baseball” revenue.

That’s a bit in the weeds if you don’t regularly follow sports CBA negotiations, but rather than me try to explain it, let me get Normandin to do so, since he’s the expert. Hey, Marc, get over here a minute!

Can you explain, briefly if that’s possible, what the pros and cons of a salary cap are for baseball owners?

MN: The pros are pretty simple. Owners will say that a cap would level the playing field, even though the parity of MLB is no worse and in some cases better than that of capped leagues, but the actual reason for one is to slow or outright inhibit spending. And with it, the expectation of spending to compete. It maybe wasn’t noticed enough in the negotiating for the existing CBA, but the owners offered a salary floor of $100M and a cap of $180M attached to it before dropping the subject.

My guess as to the low floor and ceiling there is less “this is the cap the owners expect to institute” and more checking the temperature on the Players Association in general. It’s either that or the owners don’t understand how a salary cap is actually calculated, based on revenue, which is where the con lies. The books are never opened for a reason, and MLB teams insisting that real estate revenue made at a baseball stadium isn’t baseball revenue is another reason to keep them closed. Having to open the books and argue about what is or isn’t revenue would take longer than the rest of bargaining combined, and it’s not even clear if the owners would agree with each other, never mind the players, about what constitutes baseball revenue.

So do you have a sense whether team owners have been hot for “non-baseball” revenue from mixed-use districts like the Atlanta Braves‘ Battery because that revenue is easier to hide from players (and other owners)? Or do they just want them because they’re free money, but then it becomes a reason to keep the books closed? (Also, wondering if you know how this works for, say, the NFL, which both has a salary cap based on total team revenue and is equally gung-ho about turning stadiums into real estate deals.)

MN: Being able to hide it is a plus, but that there’s simply more of it is a win, too. Get a city/county/state to pay for the land and the stadium, build a mall there financed with the kind of low-interest loans a billionaire can take out, profit. It’s a great deal for everyone involved besides the taxpayers, as you know!

The NFL breaks things into three sections (league media, postseason/NFL ventures, local) with the percentages going into sharing varying for each. Concerts held at NFL stadiums don’t count towards local revenue, though, so I imagine the league has successfully argued itself out of counting real estate around stadiums as football revenue.

Of course, the NFLPA hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory over the years, so “well the NFL does it this way” might not be a convincing argument in the MLBPA’s eyes.

Do any of these revenue-sharing machinations have anything to do with teams like the Pirates and A’s signing actual players to actual contracts all of a sudden? I know they have a reason to try to avoid grievances for cashing their revenue-sharing checks and never spending them, but this seems like more than the token efforts of the past where they’d sign a guy or two with plans to trade them come July.

MN: My read on this uptick in activity — from two organizations that literally could not be threatened into spending by the PA for years — is that they know it’s likely revenue-sharing is going to see an increase in the near future, via the next CBA. Which is not a move that requires a cap, either, as the existence of revenue-sharing in the present reminds.

But like in the late-90s and early aughts, the newer (or just more successful) streams of revenue some teams have access to and others do not in the same quantities means a rebalancing is in order. Bud Selig had to convince George Steinbrenner to agree to a system The Boss felt was socialist, but he got there. Rob Manfred probably has it a lot easier since the system is already in place and just needs redefining by nationalizing, as it were, local revenue streams to the same degree that the NFL has to eliminate some portion of the advantage that the Dodgers et al have. While (at least in theory) inspiring teams like the Pirates and A’s to spend their newfound funds, too. The Dodgers and Yankees and so on aren’t agreeing to a new system where they cut checks to teams that won’t use them, so this is teams showing they can be trusted with very large bags of money they otherwise won’t have access to.

So this gets us back to the central contradiction of revenue sharing of any kind: It makes it easier for small market teams to compete with big market teams if they want — but any leveling of the playing field also means that teams can be a lot more footloose, because it doesn’t matter if they play in Green Bay if they still get a cut of those national checks. Obviously we don’t know how revenue sharing will look exactly under a new CBA, but do you see a real possibility of a kind of NFLization of MLB, where market size doesn’t matter as much either for competitiveness or for relocations?

Or to put it way more simply: Does any of this make it more likely that the A’s will move to Las Vegas?

MN: Someone would still have to foot the Vegas stadium bill, and it sure doesn’t seem like it will be John Fisher. But hey, MLB already waived the relocation fee for the A’s, maybe they will let him off the hook with the stadium costs, too.

You bring up a good point related to that, which is that this opens up the possibility for some new markets that previously had limitations, which in turn would mean expansion is finally on the table again and the expansion fees that come with it, never mind the larger shared revenue pools that can come with additional broadcasting deals, gates, merch sales, etc. Revenue-sharing getting a huge revision would impact so much on its own, which is another reason the cap talk just doesn’t seem realistic to me. Not when there is a solution that wouldn’t endanger 2027, or the broadcasting negotiations of 2028, and requires full player buy-in, too.

Thanks! Still more reasons to dread next spring, just what I needed!

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Boston women’s soccer stadium to cost taxpayers 2.5 times as much as value of team

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s been a few months since we’ve checked in on Boston’s plan to spend $100 million to rebuild White Stadium for NWSL club Boston Legacy F.C., how’s that going?

The city of Boston’s project to overhaul Franklin Park’s White Stadium will cost taxpayers $135 million, up from a previous $90 million estimate — an increase Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has attributed to inflation and the rising costs of materials and labor….

She also said that Boston Legacy FC, the new professional women’s soccer team that is partnering with the city to pay for the project and will share the space with student athletes, will put in more than $190 million for its portion of the redevelopment.

That puts the total cost of the project at more than $325 million — an eye-popping increase from the $200 million total the project was thought to cost last year.

Awesome. Wu’s criticism of New England Patriots heir Josh Kraft, who back when he was running for mayor last year claimed the stadium would end up costing the city $170 million, as not “grounded in reality” does not look so great about now — politicians of the world, you should have learned always to take the over on stadium cost predictions.

Wu didn’t only blame inflation for the rising price tag: She also said the “primary driver” was “we heard from community members that there were all of these dreams and hopes and goals and we decided to make the project better, and therefore more expensive, in response to that.” You little people with your big dreams for things like public water fountains, we did this for you! For you, I say!

Spending $135 million in public money toward a $325 million stadium could be worse — it could be $325 million toward a $325 million stadium — but it’s still pretty bad: The expansion fee for the women’s soccer team was only $53 million, meaning the city is now spending 155% more on a stadium than the franchise itself is worth. Boston will also get a snazzier place for high school soccer teams to play, sure, but the city could have skipped such Legacy-demanded expenses as a beer garden and just rehabbed the stadium for school sports for an estimated $20 million, so, yeah, not great. There’s still a lawsuit ongoing against the project, but given that vertical construction of the stadium structure is set to start next month, it’s going to take a ruling really soon to keep taxpayers from being on the hook for the full cost, whether that’s $135 million or wherever the bouncing price tag eventually lands.

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

access_time personNeil deMause

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

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

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

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

  • The Wyandotte County Commission followed suit with its neighbors in the city of Olathe and voted 7-3 to approve devoting local sales and hotel tax revenue to pay off part of the state’s $2.775 billion in bonds for a new Kansas City Chiefs stadium and surrounding development. The county, to be clear, gets absolutely nothing out of kicking in its own funding (total price tag still TBD), given that the state has indicated it will go ahead with the stadium deal regardless. Kansas City, Kansas mayor and county commission chair Christal Wilson, who didn’t vote because no ties needed to be broken, wrote on Facebook that she thinks kicking in county money is warranted because it gets the county “a seat at the table” — okay, though it’s questionable whether getting to sit at the table is worth having to split the check.
  • Indiana state Rep. Earl Harris Jr. on his bill to create a sports authority to build a Chicago Bears stadium in northwest Indiana with money from (feigns coughing fit until you go away): “Indiana does sports things like this very well. When you look at the Pacers, the Colts, the Speedway, we’re very good at figuring out a good financial plan that does not hurt the taxpayer.” Um, about that…
  • Will the Portland Trail Blazers move if the city and county decline to spend $600 million on upgrades to their arena? It’s an “urgent race against time” and “the clock continues to tick,” writes The Oregonian, citing a deadline of … huh, seems like they didn’t mention any deadline, must have run out of room. (Though there was room for “Are you ready for the Nashville or Kansas City Trail Blazers?” to cite two cities that are not particularly shopping around for NBA teams.)
  • Tampa sports radio host JP Peterson insists that spending upwards of $2 billion on a new Tampa Bay Rays stadium is warranted because it “will produce millions in tax revenue and bring major events, Super Bowls, National Championship games, World Baseball Classic, MLB All-Star games” — [citation needed], my man. Also, I can save you some time: Even if a new baseball stadium does bring in millions in tax revenue, from hosting, uh, football games, when it costs hundreds of millions a year in tax expenditures, maybe that’s … not good?
  • Speaking of the Rays, fresh Rays vaportecture! I’m sticking with my comment from yesterday: Glad to see the Rays acknowledge that even after a future stadium is built, fans still won’t buy jerseys with player names because they know they’ll be sold off as soon as they reach arbitration.
  • And if you want still more Rays commentary from me, I spoke with both WMNF radio and Tampa Bay 28 TV about the ongoing dispute this week; the former is much longer, the latter offers a view of what I have on my living room walls, pick your poison.
  • Just in time for the Super Bowl (what time does it start again?), here’s a Top 40 list of things the NFL demands from Super Bowl host cities. It’s impossible to pick just one favorite, but equally impossible to beat “three championship-level 18-hole golf courses and two top-quality bowling alleys, free of charge.”
  • Plans to build an Indy Eleven a soccer stadium for a new MLS team on Indianapolis’s former heliport are on hold because something about not rewarding a city that “continues to thumb its nose” at ICE; the FAA will soon be weighing in on the matter.
  • Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson has met with NBA commissioner Adam Silver, though not in the sense of actually meeting meeting like in person, and “offered to be helpful in bringing back the Sonics” as an NBA expansion team. Seattle already has a practically brand new arena, though by the time the NBA is ready to expand it could be pushing 10 years old, is that too soon to ask for upgrades?
  • San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones says Spurs owner Michael Dell donating $6 billion to Donald Trump’s “Trump accounts” savings plan “really pissed me off” because “if you can give $6 billion for these accounts, you could have paid for your own arena.” But then Dell wouldn’t have those billions he saved by getting taxpayers to build his arena! Sounds like somebody doesn’t understand what the whole point of being a billionaire is. (Hint: It’s getting billions of dollars, not spending it.)
  • And finally on the Rays front, Frank Nockels of Land O’ Lakes, Florida asks: “If we pay for half of the Rays’ new stadium, can we get free tickets?” Ian Betteridge has some bad news, Frank.
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Hillsborough County considers raiding infrastructure fund to give $1.15B to Rays

access_time personNeil deMause

With the Hillsborough County Commission set to meet to discuss plans for a new Tampa Bay Rays stadium yesterday, on Tuesday Rob Manfred showed up in Tampa to meet with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and generally do Rob Manfred things. “Baseball belongs in Tampa Bay. Baseball can succeed in Tampa Bay,” DeSantis told reporters, while Manfred took on the more difficult jobs of trying to impose a sense of urgency in a stadium battle that’s been going on for decades, saying, “We’re at a point in the history of the club that something needs to get done.” DeSantis also said that he would be “looking to help” fund new Hillsborough College buildings on one portion of its Dale Mabry campus with state money, so the rest of the site can be handed over to the Rays.

As for how the public’s expected $1.15 billion share of the $2.3 billion stadium would be paid for, DeSantis didn’t breathe a word. So when the county commission sat down to discuss the plan yesterday, they had some questions. In particular, commissioners wondered if it would be kosher to use money from the county Community Investment Tax — a half-cent sales tax surcharge first approved back in 1996 — for a Rays stadium, given that when the CIT was renewed in 2024 two years before its initially planned expiration, it was designated “to fund infrastructure for transportation and public works, public safety, public facilities, public utilities and public schools” and the commission specifically promised that it wouldn’t be used for new sports facilities:

“We promised everyone on the public record that the CIT numbers would be ineligible,” [Commissioner Joshua] Wostal said. “We have not even began to collect that tax, and here is a suggestion that we already deceive the taxpayers that we made a promise to no less than two years ago.”

Commissioner Chris Boles echoed the concern.

“When voters approved the CIT, the discussion language primarily focused on maintaining the existing facilities, strengthening public safety and supporting core infrastructure,” said Boles, who was not on the board at the time. “And that, I believe, intent still matters today.”

Both Wostal and Boles stressed that they still might vote for a stadium deal, and indeed the commission voted unanimously to move ahead with negotiations with Rays ownership. But with Commissioner Ken Hagan already declaring that “this agreement does not happen without the CIT,” it looks like the first negotiations will be among county commissioners about whether it’s okay for a county without a ton of tax revenue streams to scrounge up $1.15 billion by first raiding the infrastructure and schools budget.

The Tampa Sports Authority, meanwhile, also met this week to discuss the Rays plans, and revealed that it will eventually release two, let’s call them “reports”, by their favorite consultants Skanska and AECOM — one on whether the $2.3 billion stadium will actually cost $2.3 billion, the other reviewing the Rays’ own economic projections for the project. (The AECOM report is expected to be ready by April 1, the Skanska one will be sometime later.) Board member Andy Scaglione also asked if anyone had appraised the value of the Dale Mabry campus (nope) and how much money was available in hotel tax funds for tourism spending that could go toward a stadium ($11-12 million, which won’t go far toward that $1.15 billion nut).

There’s still a lot to be worked out here, in other words, and while there’s no real deadline, presumably Rays owner Patrick Zalupski wants to get everything settled while his pal/$250,000 campaign PAC donation recipient DeSantis is still in his last year in office. Resolving a decades-old stadium demand by having a county with limited tax resources fund the biggest MLB subsidy in history will be no easy needle to thread, but you can bet that everyone involved is busy warming up their needle-threading fingers.

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Olathe council unanimously approves Chiefs subsidy after just two hours of discussion; Wyandotte County to follow tomorrow

access_time personNeil deMause

Both Wyandotte County, where a new Kansas City Chiefs stadium would be built under a proposal by the state of Kansas, and the city of Olathe, where a Chiefs training facility would go, held hearings yesterday to hear from residents on whether they should kick in local tax money to help the state pay off what could total $4 billion in subsidies for the combined project. Despite only having since Friday to look over the plans, residents turned out in force to speak their minds:

  • In Olathe, the hearing was “standing room only” as “many spoke against the ordinance, while a few spoke in support of the proposal,” according to KSHB, with many wondering if the city will be able to make up for the lost tax revenues and complaining about the rushed timetable for the proposal to give the Chiefs virtually all city taxes from a 165-acre sports district: “I feel this is not a public hearing, this is a presentation of what has already been decided,” said one resident, Pete Marsh. This proved to be foreshadowing, as the city council listened for two hours, then promptly approved the tax district in a unanimous vote.
  • In Wyandotte County, which under its proposal would kick in all of its future sales and hotel taxes from a 200-acre district around a new stadium in Kansas City, Kansas, more than 50 residents testified, many likewise expressing concerns about the cost in lost taxes and the lack of information on the hastily arranged deal: “I think the people need more information,” one speaker said. while another pleaded, “Please, be transparent.” Unlike in Olathe, Wyandotte commissioners said they would put off a vote — for two whole days, with a final decision on the tax district to be made in another hearing tomorrow at 5:30 pm.

To be clear, neither of the new local tax districts would increase the total amount of money going to Chiefs ownership. Rather, city and county tax money would defray some of the state’s costs of paying off $2.775 billion in bonds for the stadium and surrounding development, which otherwise will come from state taxes collected across a mammoth 293-square-mile swath of Wyandotte and Johnson Counties. (This is a different tax district from the Olathe and Wyandotte County tax districts, something one article in particular seems very confused about.) And while some may insist that redirecting all the tax money collected by the county and city in and around the stadium and practice facility for the next 30 years is bonkers, local officials insist that the lunch will be entirely free:

“As I see it, we’re not currently generating any sales tax on this otherwise empty spot of land, there’s really nothing to lose here,” Olathe Councilman Matthew Schoonover said.

Yes, it’s the Casino Night Fallacy again, where any money that is so much as touched by a team is considered to belong to the team, even if it’s tax money that any normal business would pass along to pay for government services. To follow Schoonover’s argument to its logical extreme, no one should ever pay any taxes, because if you didn’t exist, the government wouldn’t collect anything — try telling the IRS that “I should owe no income taxes this year, because if I had quit my job I wouldn’t have earned any income” and see how far that gets you, but when you’re a sports billionaire, suddenly this is standard business practice.

Instead of Schoonover’s “What if nothing were built?” thought experiment, let’s consider this in terms of two other hypotheticals:

  • What if the city and county held on to the land and it were used for something else? Once the Chiefs tax districts are carved out of local budgets, that land and any money it could generate is gone forever. Losing the opportunity to make future tax revenues off a parcel of land may be a bit more abstract than losing tax dollars that are currently being collected, but it’s just as much of a cost to local taxpayers.
  • What if spending in the Chiefs tax districts gets cannibalized from elsewhere in the local area? If somebody builds a restaurant across from a Chiefs stadium and the only people who eat there are fans who otherwise would have spent their money across the border in Missouri, that’s indeed a net positive; if anybody eats there who would otherwise be eating somewhere else in the county, though, that’s money coming directly out of local government’s existing budget, no future hypotheticals needed.

Or looked at yet another way: Chiefs owner Clark Hunt wants to get the benefit of intercepting all the taxes paid in and around his team facilities and spending it on himself, while all costs associated with any new development — roads, police and fire protection, any schools needed to educate the kids of new residents in a mixed-use district — will fall entirely on city and county taxpayers.

Exactly how much city and county tax money is at stake here? We don’t know, as neither Olathe nor Wyandotte County appears to have tried to calculate the total tax expenditure during the four whole days legislators had to think about it. Wyandotte commissioners promised more information at tomorrow’s meeting; hopefully residents will have time to read it before the commission votes to rubber-stamp the deal.

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Rays owner now demanding $2.25B in public stadium spending, land, and tax breaks

access_time personNeil deMause

We finally have a price tag on how much Tampa Bay Rays owner Patrick Zalupski wants in spending by Hillsborough County to help build a $2.3 billion stadium in Tampa:

A notice for the meeting says the Rays would pay at least half the cost of a stadium. The rest could come from tourist bed taxes or increases in property taxes collected from the surrounding area after a stadium is built.

So if Zalupski is asking for the county to cover half the cost of building a $2.3 billion stadium, that’s $1.15 billion. (Whether county hotel tax receipts plus increased property tax proceeds would be enough to raise $1.15 billion is a question no one appears to have asked yet, though I suppose they could always just make the stadium tax district the size of the entire county, as one does. WUSF also suggests several other funding options that could be on the table, including a Community Development District and hotel and car rental tax surcharges.) The cost of providing state-owned land has previously been estimated to be at minimum $250 million, plus the Rays would duck out of $839 million worth of future property taxes and parcel fees over the course of their 99-year lease. Add it all up, and you’re at something like $2.25 billion in taxpayer subsidies that Zalupski is requesting, which would be by far the biggest public spend on a stadium deal in MLB history.

Or, if you’re the Tampa Bay Times, you go with this glass-half-full headline:

Rays tell Hillsborough they’ll cover at least 50% of Tampa stadium cost

Focusing on the fact that the billionaire who just bought the local sports team plans to cover half the cost of a stadium that he’ll receive all the revenues from, instead of the fact that he’s asking the public to cover the other half, is certainly a choice. (As is describing the team as having “honed in on” Hillsborough College’s Dale Mabry campus, which is not the actual phrase, but that’s a separate issue.)

The meeting referenced above is tomorrow’s Hillsborough County commission meeting, which kicks off at 9 a.m. — the official agenda doesn’t actually mention anything about a Rays stadium, though it does helpfully include a link to a giant image of an American flag. With any luck, we’ll get some questions then about why the county should gift Zalupski more than $2 billion just so the baseball team he bought for $1.7 billion can increase in value; maybe we can even hope to get some answers, but we probably shouldn’t push our luck.

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Chiefs practice field in Olathe would break new ground in siphoning off city tax money

access_time personNeil deMause

Two local Kansas governments will be holding public hearings tomorrow on possible subsidies for a new Kansas City Chiefs stadium to defray the state’s possibly insurmountable costs. Wyandotte County holds its first public hearing at 5:30 pm, and the city of Olathe in neighboring Johnson County, where a Chiefs practice field would be built, will follow at 6 pm. Olathe apparently plans to vote on stadium funding at its meeting, and accordingly has published its plan, which is a doozy:

  • The legislation would create a 165-acre tax district around the new facility for diverting city taxes.
  • Within that area, all city sales tax revenues, the city’s share of county sales tax revenues, and 7% of the 9% city hotel tax — except for any money already pledged to paying off other projects — would be redirected to the Chiefs to cover the team’s development costs.

Economist J.C. Bradbury weighed in over the weekend to call this “bonkers,” and it indeed would break new ground in siphoning off tax money for a stadium: Olathe wouldn’t be just giving up increased tax revenues like in a TIF, but all sales and hotel tax revenues within the tax district, for the next 30 years. (At least the tax district is smaller than the state’s incredible 293 square miles, but that’s a low bar for comparison.) The likely practice field site is currently undeveloped, at least, so Olathe wouldn’t be losing much in existing taxes; unless, of course, a Chiefs development lures away businesses that would otherwise locate elsewhere in Olathe and moves them to the tax-subsidy district, which is pretty likely.

Meanwhile, economist Geoffrey Propheter chimes in to note that rezoning the practice field site as exempt from property taxes would cost the city about $37 million in present value of lost future tax revenue. No one has yet attempted to calculate how much Olathe would give up in future sales and hotel tax money.

At this point, the best-case scenario for Olathe might be that it turns out no one wants to open a ton of hotels and restaurants and other businesses around a practice field that’s only open to the public a handful of days a year, and there’s not so much local tax revenue to lose. Or the city council could just say, “We get all the hassle of hosting a Chiefs practice field but the Chiefs keep all the tax money? No thanks.” We’ll find out tomorrow night.

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