Search Results for: everybody soccer

Friday roundup: County commission approves $100m in Blazers arena money, doesn’t actually have $100m

access_time personNeil deMause

One of several remaining shoes dropped in the Portland Trail Blazers arena renovation saga yesterday, as Multnomah County commissioners voted 4-1 to approve team owner Tom Dundon’s term sheet for $100 million in county funding for the project. Or maybe just half a shoe, as three of the five commissioners voted not to use $35 million in county taxes from the sale of the Blazers to Dundon to pay for the county’s costs, and the commission doesn’t have a substitute source of those funds. “How real is this commitment for money, if we can’t agree on a way to fund it?” asked commissioner Meghan Moyer, the only no vote. Next up is the Portland city council, which yesterday debated its own term sheet and failed to come to any agreement; several councilors said the term sheet needs more revenue going to the city and more costs being paid by the team, with councilor Angelita Morillo (last seen during Wednesday’s stadium economics webinar, a recording of which is now available online) arguing: “We are not in a negotiation, we are in a hostage situation. How does adding amendments to this term sheet make it worse?”

And in this week’s non-Portland news:

  • San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones wants city residents to get to vote this November on whether to spend $489 million in city funds on a new Spurs arena; councilmember Marina Alderete Gavito argues that a majority of city residents already voted in favor of a Spurs arena funding referendum last year; sports economist Geoff Propheter says that’s “silly” reasoning given that that vote was on county spending on the arena, not the city’s larger share. Voters are split on whether to vote, reports KSAT, or at least whichever voters were at yesterday’s public listening session were split. Maybe there should be a city vote on whether to take a city vote? Somebody should vote on that.
  • The Kansas City Planning Commission unanimously approved zoning changes for a new Royals stadium. The plan must next go to the city council, which also has to find $600 million in city funds to help pay for the public’s $1.35 billion share of a $1.9 billion stadium — details!
  • The owners of the Orlando Dreamers (note: not actually owners, because the Dreamers aren’t an actual team yet) are still asking Orange County to approve using $975 million in tourist tax dollars to build their non-team a new stadium. “Investing $975 million and getting $32 million a year, we lose money in that investment as a return,” replied Michael Poole of the county’s Tourist Development Tax Citizen Advisory Task Force. “Where can you help us make up that loss?” An excellent question, but I have another one: Do the Dreamers really plan to build their lineup around a 52-year-old Johnny Damon?
  • The Cleveland Guardians‘ stadium needs repairs to its elevators and hot water tanks, and its public owner doesn’t have the tax money to spend on them. If only there were someone around who’d already received at least $300 million in public money to help build and improve the stadium and could be asked to help chip in, hmm.
  • FIFA management told World Cup 2026 host cities that they’d get $1 million in payments to spend on soccer infrastructure and other “legacy” projects, but has so far stiffed them. Can you really say you’re surprised?
  • The latest Denver Broncos stadium renderings are all of people out and about enjoying new neighborhoods while the stadium itself is just a shapeless egg — seems like somebody’s got the message that people would rather their tax dollars go to things that they don’t have to buy PSLs to access, even if the lesson they’ve learned is “Shhh, ixnay on the uxury-boxes-lay.” Denver Gazette sports columnist Mark Kiszla is eager to lend a hand, with a long column saying it would be a “grave mistake” not to give Broncos owner Greg Penner what he wants, in which Kiszla calls the stadium’s proposed Burnham Yard site “blighted,” “dusty,” “a dump,” and “dilapidated” — everybody drink, several times!
  • Vancouver is “ready to build [a] new ballpark” for an MLB expansion team, according to a talkSport article that is actually about how the city authorized a local real estate developer to try to propose a way to do so, which isn’t the same thing at all.
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Friday roundup: Everybody needs a soccer stadium for a pillow

access_time personNeil deMause

Soccer! All the kids today are digging it! It’s the future! And also the past! Your city is nothing without a genuine, bona-fide, electrified, 10,000-seat soccer stadium, which is why Mesa is creating a “theme park district” to kick tax money back to a soccer stadium district that nobody wanted to give to the Arizona Coyotes but this is soccer, and Oklahoma City is spending $121 million on one so that Oklahomans can raise their fists to support of not nearly enough players spread out over way too much of the pitch, and MLS commissioner Don Garber says Vancouver had better give the Whitecaps a “better lease” or it’ll be “untenable” if you know what he means, and the co-chair of the Congressional Soccer Caucus — of course there’s a Congressional Soccer Caucus, get with the times, bruh — wants to allocate $50 million in federal tax money for cities to use for transit programs during big events like the (soccer) World Cup and the Olympics (one event: soccer)! Soccer!

There are only a limited number of soccer teams, though (a number that is thought to exceed the number of Planck volumes in the observable universe), so some cities still must, sadly, spend public money on pro teams in other sports instead. Not that elected officials are sad, they seem downright psyched:

  • The Columbus Blue Jackets have gone from thinking about maybe asking for public arena renovation money from the state now that the Browns and Bengals are getting it to receiving $200 million in state money plus $25 million each from the city and county, all in the course of less than five months. “I think this is an incredibly important community asset, and we have an opportunity to advance this …. and ensure the future of the facility for the next 30 years,” arena authority director Ken Paul said; if you think the Blue Jackets owners are going to wait 30 years for their next grab at the brass subsidy ring, you can place your prop bet at the arena’s gambling kiosks.
  • Cleveland Browns fans are not psyched about having to pay personal seat license fees for tickets at the new Browns stadium. Many say they’ll give up their season tickets before paying for PSLs, and yeah, that’s what Bills fans said too, and now the Bills PSLs have almost sold out, though to be fair things may be different once Browns fans realize that buying Browns tickets obligates them to actually watch Browns games.
  • YouTube channel entrepreneur (?) Ashkan Karbasfrooshan says he has a plan for bringing the Expos back to Montreal, and “money is not the constraint.” Rather, doing so “requires capital, political alignment, real estate vision, a winning outlook, patience, and a lot of humility.” Note to Karbasfrooshan: “Capital” is another word for “money.” (You can look up “humility” while you have your dictionary open.) Rob Manfred did say recently that he might like a second Canadian team, but reportedly he meant Vancouver and not Montreal, if baseball is even going to expand at all, maybe Karbasfrooshan meant that money is not the only constraint, that tracks.
  • The Philadelphia 76ers and Flyers owners are still planning on building a new arena … maybe? They’re not saying anything publicly about any moves to get legislative approval, what on earth could they be waiting fo — “[Governor’s office spokesperson Kayla Anderson] didn’t address questions regarding the state’s role in the project and whether incentives or tax breaks will be involved,” oh I see, never mind then.
  • The Tampa Bay Rays‘ Tropicana Field is starting to look more like itself again, which is, to be clear, to be taken as a good thing. The brown and white alternating roof panels are expected to be all bleached white by the sun by opening day, at least, so it will still look like the dome that Rays fans have come to know and, I’m going to go with “love.”
  • No disrespect to sports barons, but they still can’t hold a candle to Amazon when it comes to wielding monopoly power to get rich at someone else’s expense. This week: Forcing school systems to use dynamic pricing solely so Amazon can charge the public more for supplies, presumably only because the infinity gauntlet is no longer available.
  • The Athletics of Nowhere In Particular have opened a new Las Vegas “interactive space” (read: room) where fans can view a scale model of their planned stadium, plus also enter an “Immersive Cube” (read: room with lots of video screens on the walls) where they can view what it will look like from the inside, if it’s ever finished, and it will be, team execs swear. Early reviews on social media from fans who probably didn’t get personally immersed are that the design is “garbage” and an “abomination” and “the f*** is this ugly thing?” Me, I’m wondering how the A’s architects managed such a distant upper deck at a stadium with only 33,000 seats, plus whether at the real stadium everyone who enters will have to remove their shoes like in the simulation.
  • Sad, soft caves for indoor sportsmen, check.
  • Ex-AEG/Oak View Group stadium developer Tim Leiweke won’t be going to jail for bid rigging after all — no, not because he’s necessarily not guilty, the other reason this happens these days.
  • New York Mets owner Steve Cohen is getting his stadium-side casino, saw that coming.
  • The 2026 Winter Olympics hockey arena in Milan is running behind schedule and has the wrong rink dimensions for international standards. Defector doesn’t report whether this will lead to it going over budget, but c’mon, you know how this movie ends.
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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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Friday roundup: Spurs, Bengals owners to seek even more public money, Olympics could cost LA $1.5B for security

access_time personNeil deMause

Congratulations, we once again made it to the end of another programming week, as well as the end (presumably) of the “Will Washington Commanders owner Josh Harris get to pocket billions of dollars of cash and tax and land subsidies?” saga. (Answer: He sure will.) Which cities’ sports funding debates could be the next to absorb the eyes of a nation, or at least the eyes on this website? Let’s run down some contenders from this week:

  • We’ve already covered the ongoing San Antonio Spurs arena debates here this week, but that earlier report on the city council’s Wednesday hearing missed the tidbit that right now the plan is for San Antonio to provide $500 million, Bexar County to provide $311 million (really only enough to pay for about half that in up-front costs, since the money would arrive over 30 years), and team owner Peter Holt to provide $500 million, which is less than the potential $1.5 billion arena cost. Spurs chief legal counsel Bobby Perez said (in the San Antonio Report’s paraphrasing) that’s “something the Spurs would have to figure out,” but that the team would pay for any overruns above the final public price tag, whatever it ends up being, which is maybe not as reassuring as he meant it to be. Perez also said that the team would not consider sharing any arena revenue to help pay the public’s share of costs because Holt will be using it to pay off his own share of costs, the public will just have to make it up in volume or something.
  • The Cincinnati Bengals owners finally signed their new lease with Hamilton County that will include at least $700 million in public subsidies, everybody relax. Though the Bengals and the county said they’re still planning on asking for even more money from the state, exact dollar figure TBD, so maybe don’t relax just yet.
  • Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Mike Sielski wrote that if Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeff Lurie wants a new stadium, he should pay for it himself, and got a flood of agreement back from readers, including that it’s a bad time to ask for public money “with hospitals closing, SEPTA broke, and schools struggling” and that “many people think that Camden Yards created the Inner Harbor, but the Inner Harbor was booming long before the Orioles left Memorial Stadium. And now the Inner Harbor has collapsed.” Good thing for Lurie that it’s almost certain none of these people will get to vote on any stadium plan, because that’s not how cities east of the Mississippi roll.
  • The owners of Boston Legacy F.C. (née BOS Nation F.C.) faced an August 1 deadline to figure out how they will pay for their share of stadium costs on top of the city’s $100-millionish, but they blew that deadline so now they get a new one of September 15. Meanwhile, mayoral candidate Josh Kraft is accusing Boston Mayor Michelle Wu of not being transparent about the total cost of the women’s soccer project, at the same time as Josh’s dad Robert is fighting with Wu about his plan to build a new men’s soccer stadium for his New England Revolution in neighboring Everett, which Wu has warned could subject Boston to increased traffic, this is the most convoluted HBO Max series plotline ever.
  • When the Los Angeles Olympic host committee promised that the 2028 Games would come at “zero cost” to the city, apparently it didn’t include security costs, which could amount to maybe $1.5 billion. There’s now growing talk of getting L.A. to pull out of the 2028 games altogether, especially now that Donald Trump has threatened to send in the military during the event; that doesn’t sound very likely, but the Unite Here hotel workers’ union has proposed a ballot measure that would require many Olympic venues to get voter approval to be used for the Games, which looks to be mostly a tactic to head off attempts to overturn the $30/hour “Olympic wage” passed by the city council in May — I take it back, maybe this is the most convoluted HBO Max plotline ever.
  • ESPN is about to own part of the NFL’s media package and the NFL is about to own part of ESPN, don’t see any potential problems there. I do greatly look forward to every football highlight on SportsCenter being accompanied by a disclaimer that “the National Football League is a part owner of ESPN,” surely a company with such a great ethical record as ESPN wouldn’t skip over that.
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Friday roundup: Rays, Coyotes, A’s fiascos keep on fiascoing

access_time personNeil deMause

All kinds of news of the week to cover this morning, and I already lost a couple of hours getting up early to yell at my senator’s window about this fiasco. Let’s start with the Tampa Bay Rays‘ own fiasco, and then work backwards:

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Friday roundup: St. Pete gives initial okay to Rays’ record $1.6B stadium subsidy, final vote set for July

access_time personNeil deMause

Happy Friday, everybody — we’ve made it to the end of another week again, which seems to keep taking longer and longer, I blame the Moon.

And on to the news briefs, starting with a not-so-brief to cover what would get its own item if this were any other day of the week:

  • The St. Petersburg city council took its first vote on the proposed Tampa Bay Rays stadium project yesterday — St. Pete is one of those cities where the council has to vote on things twice, just to be sure — and as expected, it narrowly passed, with five out of eight councilmembers in favor. The official city expense is $212.5 million in property-tax kickbacks on the stadium site plus $130 million in infrastructure spending, but this leaves out a ton of hidden subsidies that Rays owner Stuart Sternberg would be getting:
    • About $300 million (present value) in future tax money from Pinellas County
    • $320 million worth of future property-tax reductions from the city and county
    • $700 million worth of land in exchange for payments worth just $80 million, making for a $620 million public gift

    That comes to a public subsidy of roughly $1.6 billion, which would shatter the Tennessee Titans‘ record of $1.26 billion, at least until the next stadium project comes along. There’s still a final council vote to be taken on July 11, before which the city still needs to provide final documents — a local Sierra Club organizer called the process a “runaway train,” while Southern Poverty Law Center lawyers asked the city to “reconsider this rushed and chaotic timeline” — but the writing does seem to be on the wall. MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said, “I think they’ve done a phenomenal job in Tampa Bay, competing, and I think enhanced revenue streams just provides flexibility that can only make things better,” which I think means he’s happy, my universal translator doesn’t do Manfredese.

  • A consulting report for Washington, D.C. estimates that a new Commanders stadium in the district could create $1.26 billion in “yearly economic output,” and while I haven’t read the full document yet, economist J.C. Bradbury has the best response anyway: “I fear going into the details grants some legitimacy to the idea that there is some debate over the economic impact of stadiums. If the consultants feel the decades of economic research on the subject is in error, they are free to submit their challenges to peer review.” (The city also commissioned a second report on how to finance said stadium, but has no plans to release it, so you know it’s got to be juicy — fire off the FOIA requests!)
  • Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles spoke yesterday about why she thinks a $650 million Carolina Panthers stadium renovation subsidy in exchange for just a 15-year lease extension would be good deal despite Charlotte residents apparently thinking otherwise, and one thing she said was: “This is an investment in our future. That’s why is strongly support what we’re doing with Tepper Sports. Yes, I wish we had the ability to do this on our own. But we have to partner with Tepper Sports and our hospitality industry.” We wish we could pay for the whole stadium renovation, but sadly we have to let the team owner who would benefit from it chip in is certainly a choice, let’s just say that.
  • MLB is apparently requiring all teams’ new nonrelocation agreements to allow playoffs games at a neutral site, and Athletics stadium czar Dave Kaval says that’d be great for Las Vegas, which could be in line to host a neutral-site World Series if baseball ever decides to do like the NFL does with the Super Bowl. Given that it’s going to take decades for every team’s nonrelocation agreement to expire and be rewritten, and that Las Vegas could be uninhabitable by then, that’s maybe not the most convincing argument, but Kavals gonna Kaval, especially when he needs to distract from the mess that is the team’s Vegas stadium plans.
  • R.J. Anderson wrote a super-long look at the public ownership model for pro sports teams for CBS Sports this week, and while I have some quibbles — in particular, it tends to conflate community ownership by fans (the Green Bay Packers, German soccer teams) with public ownerships by municipalities (several Canadian Football League teams and minor-league baseball teams) — it’s a good, in-depth overview. Whether either fan ownership or public ownership would necessarily put an end to stadium subsidy demands is an open question: The Packers did demand money to upgrade Lambeau Field, and sports leagues have leaned on municipally owned teams to build new stadiums. But as Anderson notes, at least fans and municipal officials have other priorities than just squeezing every last penny of profit out of teams, so there would be some benefits like cheaper tickets and fewer move threats, which would at least be a start.
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OKC’s $41m soccer stadium hits $30m of cost overruns, city to raid other tax revenue to pay for it

access_time personNeil deMause

First post of the year, first day back from a long weekend, definitely want to land with something sexy that will get lots of eyeballs. Let’s see, we have … ooh, cost overruns for a minor-league soccer stadium in Oklahoma City, that’s sure to be of interest to literally dozens of people!

And now that I’ve sold it short, this is actually kind of notable: OKC approved $41 million in money for a stadium for the USL Championship’s Energy FC in 2021 as part of its $1.1 billion MAPS 4 laundry list of projects — which included $116 million in upgrades for the Thunder‘s arena, some of which has now been redirected to help build a $900 million new one. It turned out that $41 million was just enough to build “a high school stadium,” though, according to Energy FC co-owner Bob Funk Jr., so whoopsie, somebody needs to find another $30 million! And that somebody will not be Funk:

Kenton Tsoodle, president of The Alliance for Economic Development of Oklahoma City, said the proposal to cover the gap will include $20 million in tax increment financing and $10 million from funding used to build the Omni Hotel…

The stadium and the land, which will be owned by the city, is in a yet-to-start “Core to Shore” TIF district. The project itself won’t generate property tax increment due to it being a public property. Tsoodle said the downtown TIF district, set to expire in 2026, is on track to end with a remaining balance of $20 million — funding proposed to help cover the cost gap of the stadium.

Follow all that? Since the soccer stadium will be exempt from paying property taxes, the city will take tax money kicked back from other downtown land into a pool for downtown development and redirect it to the soccer stadium, plus tax money left over from building a private hotel. I suppose this is good news in that it doesn’t require new tax kickbacks on top of those already committed to, though “Hey, instead of using leftover tax money from our giant development subsidies to fund actual public needs, we’re giving it to the local soccer team” is hard to exactly classify as good news.

The stadium would be built on a former cottonseed oil mill site near downtown. From the Oklahoman’s reporting, it’s not entirely clear how the city would be getting the land — at one point it refers to the land as “donated,” at another to the soccer team owners buying it. Or maybe it just means that Funk and his partners will buy the land and then donate it to the city to get out of paying property taxes on it? Yeah, it probably means that. Welcome to 2024, everybody, it’s starting out looking a lot like 2023!

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Mets owner asks fans and Queens residents: What side order would you like with your casino?

access_time personNeil deMause

I covered New York Mets owner Steve Cohen’s “visioning session” for a new casino-plus-other-stuff-but-mostly-a-casino development on Saturday for Hell Gate. And as with most of these things staged by developers, it turned out to be equal parts fact-finding about what local residents would like to see and PR campaign for why the project absolutely must happen, cost and legality be damned:

The presentation included very little information about Cohen’s actual plans—the man himself put in a cameo but stuck to generalities—preferring to stick to open-ended questions about what local residents would like to see built; handwritten suggestions from the masses included a “jobs training center,” “soapbox derby track,” and “community cannabis gardens.” (There were a lot of Post-its, but a quick scan of those on display revealed no one actively requesting a casino.) These were accompanied by some more subtly coercive elements, such as video screens asking what people think of the Citi Field environs today and what they would like to see in the future, displaying sample word clouds highlighting “barren” and “empty” for the before scenario and “welcoming” and “community” for a Cohen-redeveloped future.

“It’s kind of a push poll, in that it’s presupposing that you want something done,” said one Mets fan from Great Neck who gave his name only as Tom. “There’s a smorgasbord of possibilities, and they’re all nice, and they all sound interesting. But you don’t see the word ‘casino’ anywhere, and everybody knows that’s what this is about.”

The problem with a casino — aside from the fact that it would bring more car traffic to an area that’s already badly snarled when there are Mets games or tennis matches at the nearby U.S. Open or soccer matches at the soon-to-be-built-maybe nearby NYC F.C. stadium — is that it’s currently illegal to build one on the stadium parking lots that Cohen has in mind for the project, since those are technically public parkland. This means that the state legislature would need to pass a law to okay the plan, which means convincing a bunch of elected officials from all over the state that the parking lots are a blight upon the land that cannot stand, and which must be replaced by new parks/cannabis gardens/oh-did-we-forget-to-mention-a-casino?

The casino approval process itself was spelled out in a Request For Applications issued last week by the state Gaming Facility Location Board, and involves applications first to go to the location board, then through a community advisory committee, then zoning approvals, then back to the location board, so nothing is likely to be final for a couple of years. That gives Cohen plenty of time to try to build a groundswell for his casino dreams, or at least the appearance of one to counter the community groups that are already opposing it — not to mention to figure out what, if anything, he would pay to the city for the right to build on public land, on top of the $500 million minimum bid to the state for a casino license. Gentlemen, start your lobbyists.

Some photos from the event, including those 100% unbiased word clouds:

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Friday roundup: VA proposes spending a damn billion dollars on Commanders stadium, all other news pales in comparison

access_time personNeil deMause

That Virginia bill to create a football authority to build a Washington Commanders stadium isn’t just authorizing legislation, it turns out — last night it also got financing details during a senate committee hearing, and the numbers are jaw-dropping: $1 billion in state money toward a $3 billion stadium, to be paid off from “a projected $3 billion dollars in tax revenue from the new stadium” over 30 years.

The first question to ask, obviously: Would this be actual new tax revenue, or money kicked back from existing taxes in a stadium district (a TIF), or what? WUSA-TV, which appears to be the only news outlet that was paying attention to last night’s state senate finance and appropriations committee hearing, cited bill sponsor Sen. Richard Saslaw (D-Fairfax) as promising that borrowing $1 billion for a stadium “does not create a penny of debt.” (Yup, he said that.) WUSA also cited George Mason University business professor and former Commanders exec George Perry as saying this “doesn’t appear” to be taxpayer funding, though in an accompanying video Perry also warned that a football stadium open only a handful of days a year shouldn’t necessarily be expected to spark a ton of surrounding development, so who the hell knows, man.

The bill’s financing plan doesn’t look to have been posted to the senate committee’s website yet, despite a promise there that “presentation materials are posted to our Web page at the beginning of each meeting,” so this one news report is really all we have to go on so far. Further updates on Monday, I hope; in the meantime, settle in from the sticker shock over maybe the biggest NFL stadium subsidy proposal in history with some other news from the week that was:

  • The Arizona Board of Regents approved the plan for the Arizona Coyotes to rent Arizona State University’s 5,000-seat arena for the next three seasons, though the team will have to start the 2022-23 season on an extended road trip since the arena won’t be open until December. Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo will have to spend $20 million to build a new outbuilding with separate locker rooms for the NHL team, and will pay an undisclosed rent on the arena.
  • NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said “the bottom line on it is we have to get a new [Bills] stadium in Buffalo,” and MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said there’s a “sense of urgency” for a new Tampa Bay Rays stadium because not having one “hampers the ability of the business to operate,” and NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said “the sooner people figure out how to get a new [Calgary Flames] arena, the better it’ll be,” everybody drink!
  • Check out what $50 million in renovations (half paid for by public tax dollars) to the Carolina Panthers‘ stadium to accommodate the new Charlotte F.C. MLS team buys you: If you had “new locker room with a giant team logo on the ceiling and a special room just for the soccer players to store their stinky cleats in,” you’re a winner!
  • The Baltimore Sun editorial board is fine with spending $1.2 billion on Baltimore Ravens and Orioles stadium upgrades because spending state lottery revenue is “not a taxpayer bailout” (yup, they said that), but wants the state legislature to get more details on what exactly the renovations would look like and cost before cutting a check. Yay, bare minimum of democracy!
  • Lexington, Kentucky, already home to the indie-minors Atlantic League baseball team the Lexington Legends, is going to get a second team in the same league that will play in the same stadium while the Legends are on the road, and it will be called the Kentucky Wild Health Genomes after a local genomics-based medical clinic. I have lots of questions and I’m sure you do, too, but suffice to say that putting your corporate name in the actual team name and not just the stadium name (the genome people are doing that as well) will make it an awful lot harder for those of us who don’t bother using corporate-branded stadium names to not mention their company. Though I suppose we could always say “Lexington Atlantic League Baseball Team” — no, wait, that’s not specific enough, pretty sneaky, sis!
  • If you would like a “Pay For Your Own Damn Stadium” sticker, the Center for Economic Accountability has got you covered. If you would rather have a billion dollars in cash, please buy an NFL team and then contact your local state legislature.

 

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Friday roundup: Sports team owners saying stuff, and the journalists who love to reprint it, Episode #736

access_time personNeil deMause

That wasn’t a swing, was it? It sure didn’t look like a swing to me.

Sorry, right, enough about actual sports, back to the business of sports business:

  • The owners of the new St. Louis City SC MLS team want a new parking garage built next to their new stadium, arguing that the stadium “will have a magnetic quality that draws people to the district 365 days a year,” according to the garage’s lead architect. Team officials already demolished several century-old mixed-use buildings to make way for the garage, which would seem to be a lost opportunity for things like stores and restaurants that might more likely be in use year-round, but far be it from me to argue with an expert in economagnetism.
  • Albuquerque city officials say they won’t decide where to build a New Mexico United USL soccer stadium until voters approve the money for it — which makes total sense, because the cost of a project doesn’t depend at all on what land needs to be acquired, and also no landowner would ever jack up the price of property knowing that the city needs it for an already-approved project. Today is Opposite Day, right?
  • Arash Markazi no longer works for the L.A. Times after being exposed for promoting friends’ projects in his columns and reprinting press releases almost verbatim, but Substack and Twitter don’t care if you’re ethical so long as you get eyeballs, so we have Markazi announcing, unsourced, that “The Oakland Athletics are expected to announce a handful of finalists for a potential $1 billion stadium in Las Vegas after the World Series,” and that getting turned into entire news articles elsewhere. Never mind that A’s exec Dave Kaval already said as much last month, or that “narrows down sites for stadium that nobody has proposed to pay for” isn’t really breaking news anyway, a famous reporter guy said a thing about famous business guys maybe saying a thing, everybody quick post updates at once!
  • Tennessee Smokies owner Randy Boyd says he’ll pay stadium construction workers at least $15.50 an hour but won’t sign anything making that promise enforceable, and won’t promise to pay concessions and other stadium workers anything above the cheapest the labor market will let him get away with. The Knoxville News Sentinel reports that Boyd says since he’s “a longtime community member, a community benefits agreement won’t be necessary,” a sentence that it’s amazing the News Sentinel production staff could type without busting out in visible lolsobs.
  • Pawtucket’s McCoy Stadium is in bad shape after the Pawtucket Red Sox left for Worcester and took all the kitchen equipment and office chairs with them. The city is considering whether to rehab the stadium for an indie-league team, but the two that kicked the tires said that at 10,000 seats it’s too big for them; or to redevelop the site for something else, but there are worries it will sink into the swamp.
  • Charlotte officials have noticed that they’re paying city police officers to provide security at Carolina Panthers games instead of having the team hire off-duty officers, because no off-duty officers want to work for the $42-an-hour rate that the team offers. I spent a bunch of time reading local articles to try to figure out if it’s the Panthers or the city or someone else chintzing on security wages, and felt bad that I couldn’t figure it out until I saw a quote from Charlotte’s police chief saying, “Listen Panthers or whoever, enough is enough?” and decided that if he doesn’t know, I shouldn’t be expected to either.
  • Do you really want to read NFL uber-insider Mike Florio speculating about whether the NFL will settle the city of St. Louis’s lawsuit against the league for moving the Rams by offering the city an expansion team? Even though Rams owner Stan Kroenke has promised to cover any losses the league is stuck with, and Florio doesn’t provide any sources at all other than “an acknowledgment in league circles of the possibility”? Probably not, but you’re a grownup, make your own decisions.
  • The Tampa Bay Rays may have been eliminated from the postseason, but that’s not going to stop the Tampa Bay Times editorial board from taking the opportunity to stump for a new stadium on the grounds that, um, let’s see, “far too few people will buy tickets to watch them play at their current stadium” and “the hard work needs to be done now to ensure the team stays in the Tampa Bay area, even if it’s part time.” One could point out that there’s no solid evidence that significantly more people would buy tickets at a new stadium, especially for a team that would disappear to Canada all summer, but the Times also says that “this is not the time to clam up or for grandstanding or unhelpful posturing,” so I guess they wouldn’t want lots of people writing them about this, huh?
  • Did you know that the USL is creating a new women’s soccer league, to be an adjunct to/compete with the NWSL, currently reeling under a sexual harassment scandal that has already brought down its commissioner and forced the relocation of its championship game? I had not, but more women’s pro teams can only be a good thing both in terms of growing the women’s game and providing more teams so that cities don’t have to outbid each other for them, though also more opportunities for teams to demand that cities outbid each other for them, because city officials are pretty much morons when it comes to this stuff.
  • Lots of times sports team owners argue that there’s no way to fund venue construction and repairs without public subsidies, but did they ever consider growing and selling soybeans? On free public land, oh, Canada, you just had to ruin this feel-good story, didn’t you?
  • Tokyo’s Olympic white-elephant stadiums are facing increased maintenance costs because they’re under attack by oysters. That is all.
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