Search Results for “florio”

Broncos execs tired of waiting for someone to give them land and money for stadium

August 4, 2026 Neil deMause

It’s been almost a year since Denver Broncos owners Greg and Carrie Penner, Mayor Mike Johnston, and Gov. Jared Polis announced plans for a new stadium to be built by 2031 at Denver’s state-owned Burnham Yard railyards, with the big remaining questions being how much the Penners would pay for the land, how they would get it rezoned for sports use, how much public money they would get for “infrastructure” like new roads, whether they would get tax increment financing to kick back sales and/or property taxes to help pay for construction, who would clean up contaminated soil at the site, and what kind of community benefits agreement to agree to. They’re still figuring most of that out, and last weekend Broncos president Damani Leech went to the hustings to tell reporters that team officials are growing annoyed that things aren’t moving faster:

“I’ve got to be honest, I wish we were further along in some areas than we are now. I think areas where we do control, particularly real estate, you mentioned Burnham Yard, real estate, engaging with the community, we’ve done site tours of the location, the design of the stadium continues to evolve, the master plan continues to evolve. All of those things are moving along really, really well, but we also understand that we can’t do this alone.

“There are certain things we don’t control. I think as an example, the community benefits process is something that we can’t control. We’ve had a lot of initial great discussions with community representatives. More recently here, it’s been on more of a staff level. We’re eager to engage with those community members directly, understand what they’re looking for, what needs and interests they have on the development. Things like that, we have to continue to progress. We said many months ago, this is an ambitious timeline, so for that to happen, we need everybody to be involved. We can’t do it alone in order to get to 2031.”

Leech said opening the stadium by 2031 is “still achievable for sure,” but that “everybody has to be involved.”

Is there frustration with the process?

“I’ll be honest, there are days when I have concern,” Leech said, “there are days when I have frustration because you can’t control it all, so I think that’s fair.”

This all starts off reasonably enough — shit takes time, damn that bureaucracy — and it’s unclear from NBC Sports’ Mike Florio’s recounting whether it was reporters or Leech who introduced the word “frustration.” (Denver Sports’ longer quote makes it seem more like the latter.) Still, taken as a whole, this becomes a clear message to city and state officials and community negotiators: Why doesn’t anyone else share our urgency about giving us what we want so we can open our stadium by our chosen date? It’s like you all have other priorities or something!

The Penners did win an agreement in May with the state Department of Transportation for a right of first refusal to buy the rail yards for $45.8 million, $23.6 million less than the state paid for the land and a track easement between 2021 and 2025. (Under the deal, the team will pay for cleanup costs.) But the sale isn’t finalized yet, nor are the rezoning or the TIFs or the infrastructure money, so the total public cost is still very much up in the air.

Meanwhile, Leech also called requiring fans to buy personal seat licenses in order to buy tickets to be “a pretty likely thing to happen,” which is both unsurprising — most other NFL teams do it, as a way to monetize their season ticket holder waitlist while hoping nobody notices that fans often end up holding ticket rights that nobody wants to buy — and likely to be unpopular given how fans of teams like the Buffalo Bills are growing concerned that they’re being priced out of affording tickets. This is absolutely something that city and state officials could be making part of their negotiations, but negotiating is so tiresome, can’t we get to the fun part already where we get to build our stadium? Go write that down, reporters, we’re trying to build a narrative here!

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Brook Park gives initial okay to stadium authority to provide more tax breaks for Browns owner

June 17, 2026 Neil deMause

The Cleveland Browns are already in the process of moving to a new $2.4 billion stadium in suburban Brook Park with the aid of $600 million in state money and $245 million in city money — they’ve even held a groundbreaking — but that doesn’t mean team owner Jimmy Haslam is done asking for stuff. In the latest, he got the Brook Park council last night to give preliminary approval to creating a stadium authority that would own the stadium and lease it back to him.

Lease-back deals like this are typically associated with property tax breaks: Since the building is owned by a government entity, it’s not subject to property taxes. I can’t immediately tell if Ohio would apply possessory interest taxes to the value of the lease itself — I’m sure Geoff Propheter will chime in soon to school me on this — but even if it does, this is a potential tax break that could increase Brook Park’s costs in exchange for no clear concessions at all from Haslam.

Mike Florio of NBC Sports also cites a savings (“apparently”) of $100 million in construction sales taxes, which was actually already approved last month as part of a development agreement between Brook Park and the team. (How Brook Park can exempt the project from sales taxes when it doesn’t have a city sales tax is an interesting research question.) Approved, but not released, as WOIO notes, so we don’t actually know what’s in the development agreement or whether Haslam would agree to pay rent or share revenues as part of the stadium authority ownership scheme.

The Brook Park council still needs to hold two more votes (the first is today) before the stadium authority becomes official, so maybe we’ll get more information before this whole thing is signed off on. Either way, demanding additional tax subsidies before a stadium has even been built is a pretty extreme example of the Grift That Keeps on Giving.

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Bears announce they’re moving to Indiana, unless they don’t

June 8, 2026 Neil deMause

Friday news dumps may not work anymore in their original purpose of hiding bad news, but they can still be useful when someone wants to influence the social media discourse without risk of anyone in an official capacity picking up the phone until three days later. That looks to be what just happened with the Chicago Bears, whose execs announced on Friday that, in the wake of Illinois not passing tax subsidies for a stadium there, they plan to “advance our stadium development project in Hammond,” Indiana. “Advance” meaning what exactly? Sorry, our offices are closed now, please call back during business hours!

Even the NFL, though, immediately made clear that just because the Bears owners say they’re moving to Indiana doesn’t mean they’re moving to Indiana:

A league source cautioned the announcement didn’t eliminate Arlington Heights as an option, were the state to find a way to give the Bears property tax certainty on the 326-acre plot they own. In fact, the source said, there was “still a lot of ballgame left to play” for Illinois lawmakers. It’s unclear whether waiting until the Senate and House reconvene this fall would be too late for the Bears, though.

And if that’s not enough, here’s consummate NFL insider Mike Florio of NBC Sports:

Of course it’s a leverage play. If it wasn’t, a deal would already be done to build in Hammond.

Instead, the Bears keep talking to Illinois even as they supposedly focus on Indiana.

It makes sense for the Bears to try to persuade members of the media that Indiana isn’t a leverage play. (It doesn’t make sense for members of the media to swallow the hook, unless it’s a part of a broader quid pro quo for scoops and/or access.) For a leverage play to be effective, it has to be viewed as real. If it’s not viewed as real, the leverage won’t move the needle in Illinois.

Florio goes on like that for a while, talking about how a bluff only works if you don’t admit it’s a bluff, which, yes, we know.

The Indiana legislature has approved the outlines of a stadium deal that could provide billions of dollars in state subsidies, but there are lot of details left to be filled in, including: how big the omni-TIF tax diversion district within which property, sales, income and other taxes would be siphoned off for the Bears; whether a stadium would be built on a Hammond site described as being atop a “giant slag heap” or elsewhere; and whether Lake and Porter counties will vote to increase food and beverage taxes (by 1 percentage point) and hotel taxes (by 5 percentage points) to help fund the plan, which they would have to do by the end of June 2027. Both counties are holding elections this fall, so who takes office then could end up influencing how any potential stadium deal plays out.

That is, if the Bears owners even want to move to Indiana, which they don’t have to definitively decide for a while yet. Please tattoo this on your arms, state legislators of the nation: Stadium deadlines are for suckers.

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PA gov is “worried” about spending state money on Steelers, Eagles stadiums but will “dialog” with them

June 23, 2025June 23, 2025 Neil deMause

Two headlines from today:

Pennsylvania governor to work with Eagles, Steelers on stadium needs

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro says there will be no state money for sports venues

Yeah, that’s not confusing at all. What did Shapiro actually say?

“I’m very worried about the overall budget,” Shapiro said Sunday ahead of the scheduled NASCAR Cup Series race at the track. “I’m very worried about the overall economic situation given the federal cuts. You want to balance investing in tourism, investing in sports, investing in great arenas and facilities, with making sure that you’re also investing those dollars in things that Pennsylvanians need most.

“I will tell you that we want to make sure the Steelers, we want to make sure the Eagles, and all of our pro teams have outstanding places to play. That are welcoming for fans. That generate revenue. We’re going to continue to dialog with them about what they need and what’s possible.”

That’s noncommittal in the extreme, and exactly the kind of middle-groundism that is de rigueur for elected officials when asked about their stadium subsidy plans: Of course we want to keep the team owners happy, but not if it means spending unnecessary taxpayer dollars. There’s still plenty of wiggle room there to endorse necessary taxpayer dollars, or tax breaks or whatever that can be waved off as not really public money — don’t forget that Pennsylvania was one of the first states to use tax-increment financing to fund stadiums (for Philadelphia and Pittsburgh’s NFL and MLB teams), leading to the memorable quote, “It’s not a grant. It’s not a loan. It’s a groan.”

The news coverage leaves unclear why Shapiro was even talking about the Eagles and Steelers — as noted, he was at a NASCAR event at Pocono Raceway, and was mostly talking about how to potentially bring NASCAR to Philadelphia without undermining the state’s existing NASCAR track before veering into NFL stadium talk. Regardless, he seems to have left at least some of the assembled reporters convinced that he is ruling out state money for football stadiums even while not actually committing to ruling it out, which is some boss level governoring right there.

UPDATE 4:38 pm ET: NBC Sports’ Mike Florio, who ran the article under the second headline above after reading the AP story under the first headline, has gone back and actually watched the video of Shapiro’s interview and realized that he got it completely wrong, though he’s blaming AP for the screwup. In any case, Florio has clarified that Shapiro was asked by a reporter about state money for the Steagles, and ducked the question. Further updates never, hopefully.

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WTH is up with that “Bengals should move to Chicago” story?

April 7, 2025 Neil deMause

It’s always fun when you get to see how stupidity breaks out in real time, and so it was with the story growing over the last few days that the Cincinnati Bengals ownership could respond to the looming expiration of their lease by moving, and in particular by moving to Chicago. This, it turned out, was less a rumor — a rumor needs to be spread by multiple people — than conjecture, or maybe just a looming deadline and the desperation of one man, NBC Sports’ Mike Florio:

With the [Chicago] Bears getting nowhere when it comes to finagling taxpayer funding for a new stadium, the solution could come from having a second team play there.

Instantly, the inventory of games would double, from 10 to 20. It would become much easier for the Bears (and possibly the other team, unless it’s just a tenant) to pay for the building with minimal public assistance.

Enter the Bengals. They’re less than three months away from the final countdown to the expiration of their lease at Paycor Stadium. During the league meetings this week, executive V.P. Katie Blackburn said the quiet thing out loud — after 2025, the Bengals can go wherever they want to go.

It’s easy to come up with a list of cities that currently have no NFL teams. But the best outcome for the Bengals, and the Bears, could be to partner up in a new Chicagoland stadium. Lakefront or Arlington Heights. Wherever. The revenue from 20 NFL games each year, along with everything else that could be hosted in a fixed-roof building, should be able to pay for the building.

It’s hard to know where to even begin. Yes, splitting the costs of a $2 billion or so stadium between two teams would make it somewhat more affordable — but there’s little sign that the revenue from 20 NFL games a year plus “everything else” that could be hosted there would pay for a new building. After all, the Bears and Bengals each play 20 combined home games a year (including preseason) right now, so those revenues would have to rise by about $7 million per game — that’s $100 more per ticket sold, in a future Chicago where the two teams were fighting for the same fan dollars — just to break even.

Still, it was off to the news cycle races, as the Cincinnati Enquirer and multiple other outlets repeated Florio’s suggestion without asking anyone if it made any sense; something called Motorcycle Sports even chimed in, calling it a “bold idea.” USA Today’s Bengals Wire at least called it the “worst possible take,” though in doing so the site still managed to amplify Florio’s fantasy by sending clicks its way. (I realize I’m doing the same here; fact-checking bad reporting is always tricky to do without giving more air to the original misinformation, what whatcha gonna do.)

None of which matters for the idea of the Bengals moving to Chicago, because there is zero sign that either the Bengals or Bears owners would ever consider it. But it does help cement the idea in people’s heads that the Bengals might move somewhere, which is exactly what Bengals VP Katie Blackburn was hoping to do last week by saying, “We could, I guess, go wherever we wanted after this year if we didn’t pick the option up. So, you know, we’ll see.” (A statement, incidentally, that was called “a powerful, loaded comment“ by one Mike Florio.) That option is to extend the Bengals’ legendarily lucrative lease for five years, something the Bengals owners are mulling doing unless Hamilton County coughs up a sweet enough renovation deal to entice them to sign a new lease with fewer holographic replay system guarantees. Threatening to move the team at the same time as you’re threatening to stay and extend your sweetheart lease is … I think “bold idea” sums it up pretty well, don’t you?

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Friday roundup: Bucs want “major renovation,” won’t say yet who’d pay for it

April 4, 2025 Neil deMause

Today’s main event will be the liveblog of day two of the sports economics conference at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, which tons of presentations on stadiums and stadium-adjacent topics, but first here’s the regular Friday weekly news r0undup, written entirely on Thursday! If anyone’s roof blew off this morning, it’ll just have to wait till Monday.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers owner Joel Glazer wants a “major renovation” of his stadium once the Bucs’ lease expires in 2028, funded by, uh: “We’re going through a phase right now where we’re assessing the stadium and what might be needed. And I know [Hillsborough County and the Tampa Sports Authority are] assessing the stadium and what might be needed, and once both of us are done with our assessments, then we come together and go talk about it, work through things.” Asked last summer about Bucs stadium funding, Tampa city spokesperson Adam Smith said team execs “haven’t approached the city about anything like that” and “we don’t expect them to”; either that was code for “paying for this is the county’s problem” or Smith really believes in the power of positive thinking.
Unlike the [Sacramento] Athletics, the Tampa Bay Rays have managed to sell out their 10,000-seat minor-league stadium in their opening series, even at prices running more than $100 for every seat that comes with an actual seat. Tampa Bay Times columnist John Romano blames this on the Rays needing to make up for “a potential loss of revenue from ticket sales, concessions, luxury boxes and the associated costs of relocating for a year,” not the desire to capitalize on artificial ticket scarcity. It’ll be interesting to see if those high prices hold up once the Florida summer heat hits — for what it’s worth, there are still plenty of seats available for next week’s series against the Angels.
Speaking of the Rays, the clock officially ran out on their St. Petersburg stadium deal on Tuesday, and now owner Stu Sternberg is free to shop around for another city that wants to give him a billion dollars. Anyone? You in the back? You were just stretching your arms? I see.
Cincinnati Bengals VP Katie Blackburn was asked what’s up with the team’s lease that’s set to expire in 2026, and replied, “We could, I guess, go wherever we wanted after this year if we didn’t pick the up option up. So, you know, we’ll see.” NFL move-threat stan Mike Florio of NBC Sports called this “a powerful, loaded comment“; one might also argue that it’s exactly the kind of vague non-threat threat that you issue when you don’t actually want anyone noting that no cities have newer stadiums ready to offer. Potato, potahto!
The Jacksonville Jaguars need a place to play for two years while the city of Jacksonville is paying for stadium upgrades, so they’re asking Orlando to play them to play there, cool, cool.
A Massachusetts judge ruled that the demolition and reconstruction of White Stadium for the Boston Legacy F.C. can move forward, though opponents say they’ll continue to fight against it. (Boston Legacy, btw, is the new name for the much-derided BOS Nation F.C. women’s soccer team, presumably meant to honor the easiest way to get into Northeastern.)
Chicago Bears president Kevin Warren says the team is now focused on building a stadium in Arlington Heights, except for the portion of its focus that is on the Chicago lakefront. More news as actual news comes in, not just attempts at leverage plays.
Los Angeles elected officials are finally starting to get steamed about how the 2028 Olympics are being planned in a city that is recovering from disastrous fires, though so far it seems to be mostly about where the sailing competition will be held. If history is any guide, the real outrage won’t come until the Games actually begin.
Wondering how the affordable housing promises attached to the Brooklyn Nets arena are going? Does “Empire State Development (ESD), the gubernatorially controlled authority that oversees/shepherds the project, says it might enforce the $2,000 a month penalties for each unbuilt apartment, though that process may be fraught” answer that question? If you’re wondering why ESD only “might” enforce the penalty clause that was designed to make sure developers actually build what they promised, ESD VP Arden Sokolow says that if the state fined them, “you wouldn’t be getting any housing there,” whereas this way … oh, would you look at the time, we’ll have to cut off questions there!
Former Anaheim mayor and illegal helicopter registrant Harry Sidhu was sentenced to jail time for deleting emails to hide them from an FBI investigation into soliciting bribes related to a proposed Los Angeles Angels stadium deal — if you had “two months in federal prison plus a $55,000 fine” in the betting pool, you’re a winner!

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Friday roundup: Flames’ $1B-ish arena subsidy approved, Jaguars’ $1B-ish stadium subsidy termed something “everybody” wants, plus the world is literally on fire if anyone cares

October 6, 2023October 6, 2023 Neil deMause

Welcome to the first Friday of October, following a September that was the hottest on record, so much so that one climate scientist called it “gobsmackingly bananas.” It’s all fun and games to joke about cities building stadiums that will soon be underwater or for populations that will have to flee unlivable conditions, but it’s also super-weird sometimes to be writing about a now four-decade-long trend of erecting ever newer sports venues with ever larger construction carbon footprints, often prompted by the need for roofs and air conditioning to protect from the hostile air outside, to draw fans who are expected to fly in from out of town via the most climate-worsening mode of transportation ever invented — and especially weird to then read articles that end with a note that researchers say “overwhelmingly pointed to one action as critical: slashing the burning of fossil fuels down to zero.” That … does not seem to be happening? Is there a point at which journalism that drily reports on the cliff that humanity’s car is about to drive off of is maybe not the most responsible journalism? Discuss.

And with that, on to the latest ways in which rich dudes are plotting to make off with taxpayer money while the world burns:

A “finalized agreement” for a new Calgary Flames arena was approved yesterday, with no new details about how the financing would work. So we’ll just have to assume it’s still an $837 million public subsidy, plus of course the cost overruns, obviously the public is going to cover the cost overruns, duh. Maybe it’s best just to assume that every stadium and arena deal involves around a billion dollars in public cash, give or take? That certainly seems to be where we’re headed.
Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan gave an exclusive interview to Action Sports Jax while in London for a Jaguars home game — oh man, this sentence is already not starting out promisingly — and said “the buck stops with me” in terms of spending $1 billion on upgrading the team’s stadium, and “I think everyone wants to see this work.” Does everyone, though? NBC Sports’ Mike Florio reports that Deegan went on to say that “80 percent say [they] don’t want to spend the money, 80 percent don’t want to lose the Jags,” but actually well over 80% of those polled don’t approve of the $1 billion public expense and well under 80% are afraid of losing the Jags. “Basically, she hopes to not be the mayor who lost the Jaguars to London,” concludes Florio, but more so it appears that she hopes to be the mayor who ginned up fear of losing the Jaguars to London to cover her butt for delivering a much-hated $1 billion handout to a billionaire.
The Wisconsin legislature held a hearing yesterday on the somewhat less than a billion dollars in tax money being proposed for the Milwaukee Brewers, at which Republican state Rep. Rob Brooks defended his plan to hand out tax money on the grounds that it’s not really tax money because some of it would come from the income taxes paid by players who are currently paying it now into the state treasury. Meanwhile, a Milwaukee community advocate complained way down in the 17th paragraph that it was an “insult and degrading” to ask Milwaukee residents to pay $200 million toward a stadium most of them never visit, and also that it was disrespectful to make them wait hours to speak while team officials and members of the legislature got all the early speaking slots; whether other people testified along the same lines, who knows, journalists gotta get back to their desks to bang out copy, they can’t be hanging around hearing rooms all day long.
Golden State Warriors owner Joe Lacob says he “might be interested” in buying the Oakland A’s if John Fisher gives up on moving them to Las Vegas and sells them, which is pretty lukewarm but still likely to boost the spirits of the “SELL” crowd. It also raises the question of whether MLB can legitimately approve the A’s move when there’s a local buyer interested in keeping the team in town, though hahaha MLB can make up whatever rules it wants, it’s not like a court would hold the league financially liable for disobeying its own rules to allow a team to move … hmm.
Whoa, the Tampa Bay Times actually ran an article expressing some criticism of the proposed Rays stadium! Admittedly, they still got it wrong — adding up future interest costs as if they’re part of present costs is bad financial logic, just like you wouldn’t calculate the price of your new house by adding up all your future mortgage payments over the next 30 years — but hidden costs could yet end up pushing the deal’s public cost over $1 billion anyway, so I’ll be generous and give the Times credit for being half-right.
The TB Times also ran a 2,200-word article this week about the company building out the Rays’ surrounding development that quoted no one except the developers and their current or former business partners, so at least some things about the world are still predictable.
Some people who live near the former site of RFK Stadium want a new NFL stadium to bring the Washington Commanders back, and some want them to stay the hell away. The answer clearly must be somewhere in the middle, sure as the sky is green.
Kansas City voters could be forced to vote twice on an extension of a sales tax hike to fund Royals and Chiefs stadiums, because reasons. How would that work, exactly, if it’d be the same sales tax hike? Article too short, ask again later.
One of the plaintiffs suing to block a proposed referendum to overturn the Las Vegas A’s stadium deal is also a lobbyist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which failed to disclose that in its reporting on the lawsuit. Whoopsie!
The city of St. Louis ended up spending $19.6 million on a Rams stadium that was never built, and it may have been the least costly part of the whole St. Louis Rams experiment.
The Philadelphia 76ers‘ proposed Chinatown arena faces an “uncertain future” amid opposition from local residents, according to WHYY, and while this falls squarely into the “one thing’s for sure — no one knows” school of reporting, the local opposition part certainly checks out.

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Friday roundup: Vegas A’s lobbyists used loophole to duck registering as lobbyists, Bears stadium plan sparks mayoral recall effort

July 7, 2023 Neil deMause

It was a short week due to the placement of the holiday, but still there was news that demands recapping:

Oakland A’s consultant Jeremy Aguero and Las Vegas tourism chief Steve Hill, who were the main twosome lobbying for the $600 million deal to fund a Las Vegas A’s stadium, managed not to have to register as lobbyists because the post-COVID world meant you could lobby people without actually going into the legislative building, and the legislature didn’t want to force anyone who called their legislator to register as a lobbyist, and so here we are. “If you’re saying that that’s totally fine within our current laws, then yes, the laws need to be updated,” Nevada Assemblymember Selena LaRue Hatch told the Nevada Current. Also, “Aguero’s firm, Applied Analysis, serves as staff to the Las Vegas Stadium Authority, which will negotiate agreements with the A’s,” wait, what? Isn’t Aguero a paid A’s consultant? Perhaps the Fox Guarding the Henhouse Act of 2022 might need to be updated as well.
A guy in Arlington Heights has launched a petition drive to recall Mayor Tom Hayes and village trustee Jim Bertucci over their support of a Chicago Bears stadium, mostly because of traffic concerns and because he’s upset about the demolition of the Arlington Park racetrack grandstand. The village doesn’t actually have much say over the stadium plans — which are currently on hold because Bears ownership wants a giant property tax break and Cook County don’t wanna give it — but somehow it led to consummate NFL insider Mike Florio writing about how voters approve stadium referendums less often than elected officials approve stadium funding bills, so Geoffrey Propheter should be happy, at least.
Rep. James Comer, chair of the House Oversight Committee, is preparing to introduce legislation to allow Washington, D.C. to build a Commanders stadium on the RFK Stadium site, something incoming team owner Josh Harris would really, really like, if only as a negotiating chip with Virginia and Maryland. A committee spokesperson told the Washington Post that any use of the RFK land “would not be a land sale,” of course it wouldn’t be, Josh Harris doesn’t want to pay property taxes, he just wants to use the land. Members of the D.C. council still “have differing opinions about how the site should be used,” according to the Post, but D.C. councilmembers have a history of getting to yes, so this one certainly bears watching.
A new St. Petersburg stadium for the Tampa Bay Rays “could generate up to 17,782 sustainable, annual jobs in Pinellas County over 30 years,” according to two guys with no economics background but who definitely own a football and a basketball.
A billionaire who dropped out of the University of Rhode Island in the 1990s to focus on the family business of being filthy rich says he wants to buy 81-year-old McCoy Stadium in Pawtucket and bring back professional baseball; Pawtucket Mayor Don Grebien says thanks, but that ship has sailed now that the city is preparing to turn over the site for a new school. Terrible timing by Stefan Soloviev? An attempt to get his foot in the door of any future efforts to bring baseball back to Rhode Island? You have all weekend to debate this, that’s what the comments section is for.

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Friday roundup: Reds exec says team will only demand renovation money, threatens to move if fans ask for better players

April 15, 2022 Neil deMause

This has officially been the longest week ever. Scientists agree! And so does the news:

Cincinnati Reds president Phil Castellini said it’s his “opinion” that neither the Reds nor Bengals will demand new stadiums when their leases are up soon, just renovations, and shouldn’t he actually be in a position to say more than just an opinion? Anyway, given that the Baltimore Orioles and Ravens just got $1.2 billion for renovations, maybe Castellini is thinking, hmmm, we can still get hundreds of millions of dollars and not have to spend anything of our own on building from scratch, huh?, so yeah, checks out. Castellini also spent the week telling fans that they shouldn’t complain about the Reds getting rid of all their best players to save money because “what would you do with this team to have it more profitable, make more money, compete more in the current economic system that this game exist? It would be to pick it up and move it somewhere else. Be careful what you ask for.”
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul added another defense of her $1 billion public cash giveaway to the Buffalo Bills owners, saying that people upstate complain about her spending money on the New York City subways, and isn’t that the same thing? Looks like somebody wants to give Crystal Peoples-Stokes a run for her money this year!
Speaking of fire sales and dumb reasons to build things, the San Jose Mercury News has looked at the Oakland A’s ownership’s insistence that only a new stadium can stop them from continually selling off their best players and noted that A’s owner John Fisher isn’t spending on payroll for his San Jose Earthquakes despite a new stadium. Which isn’t quite the same thing thanks to MLS’s single-entity ownership structure, but it’s at least more investigation than most news outlets have done into this argument.
And speaking of baseball teams cheaping-out of player spending, it was revealed this week that the Pittsburgh Pirates bring in enough in ticket sales and concessions alone each year to pay for their entire player payroll. Add in at least $100 million a year in national TV revenue, plus local TV revenue, plus league revenue-sharing, and “not having money” isn’t really an excuse for either not signing free agents or demanding new stadiums. (“Wanting more money” is, but that’s not quite the same thing.)
“Developers and analysts” in Las Vegas aren’t concerned about glutting the market for arenas now that Tim Leiweke’s Oak View Group wants to build one to go along with the 23 others (estimated) that the city already has, because 1) Leiweke “knows what he’s doing” (Vegas convention authority CEO Steve Hill), 2) Leiweke “is following the blueprint that he’s done in the past” (Oak View partner Marc Badain), 3) some performers may prefer a newer arena to an older one (Macquarie Securities gaming analyst Chad Beynon), 4) “we need to make sure that demand matches supply” (Vegas-based advisory firm B Global managing partner Brendan Bussmann), 5) “what a lot of people don’t realize is how many events we actually say no to just because of the lack of availability” (MGM arena manager Dan Quinn). That doesn’t quite add up to “there’s plenty of room for another arena” so much as “if an arena fails due to glut, it probably won’t be the new one that Oak View builds,” but at least Leiweke is talking about using all private money so far, so that’s a relief — at least until one of the other arenas demands public money to compete with the new one.
In that same Nevada Independent article, Gov. Steve Sisolak backed away from his unsourced-reported refusal to provide public money for an Oakland A’s stadium, saying “there are other things that can be done that can help on the funding” such as a tax-kickback district or infrastructure money. How much money? Maybe that would be a good followup questions, Nevada Independent? No? Okay, it’s your paper, I guess.
Washington Post columnist Sally Jenkins says Washington Commanders owner Daniel Snyder doesn’t deserve public funding for a new stadium because he may have illegally cheated fans out of ticket deposits and other NFL owners out of revenue-sharing money. Which, those aren’t good things, certainly, but 1) doing not-good things is already Snyder’s brand, and 2) the contrapositive of this would seem to be that if he weren’t doing anything illegal, Snyder would deserve public funding, which is a dubious corollary to hitch your newspaper column to.
NBC Sports’ Mike Florio says Nashville’s $10-20 million a year in hotel taxes could pay for $700 million worth of Tennessee Titans stadium, which is definitely not how math works, but then understanding how things work has never been Florio’s strong suit.
The Kansas City Royals could use the Atlanta Braves stadium district as a model for a new downtown ballpark, according to … whoa, Kevin Collison, where’s he been since he stopped being the Kansas City Star’s go-to stadium-boosting columnist? Something called CitySceneKC, apparently, guess times are tough all over. Anyway, arguing that a pretend urban neighborhood in the middle of the suburbs could be a model for moving a team from the suburbs to downtown makes no sense, but you keep doing you, Kevin.
The Lerner family is considering selling the Washington Nationals, which normally might bring up fears of a move threat and new stadium demands, but the Nats’ stadium is only … huh, 14 years old already? That still seems a little soon, but as economist Rod Fort memorably said, there’s nothing wrong with demanding a new stadium every year if you can get away with it.
Pawtucket’s $400 million soccer stadium and development project is facing cost overruns thanks to inflation, and nobody knows yet who’ll pay for them, or if the project will be scaled back, or what. Rhode Island is already kicking back $46.2 million in taxes for the project, or, no, WPRI-TV says it’s actually $70 million? If a cost overrun falls in the forest and there’s no one around keeping track, does it count?
Speaking of cost overruns, Durham will now be paying $10.6 million toward upgrades for the Bulls‘ minor-league baseball stadium, double what it was originally expecting but still little enough compared to the numbers being thrown around in other cities as to sound absolutely insignificant. (Note to readers: $10.6 million is still $10.6 million. I checked.)
Here’s a fun one: The Wichita Wind Surge have started adding an 8% “ballpark development fee” to all sales at their new publicly funded ballpark, a surcharge that doesn’t appear anywhere on the pricing until you actually get your receipt. This sounds like a tax, but it’s not, as Wichita Mayor Brandon Whipple said it’s the first he’s hearing of it, and suggested that the state attorney general should look into it as “a consumer protection issue.” Sports team owners really do do the craziest things!
Add Hawaii to the list of states momentarily flush with COVID relief cash that have decided now’s a great time to spend on stadiums, as a bill to dump $350 million on a replacement for Aloha Stadium is making its way through the state legislature.
The Seattle Mariners are making $55 million in improvements to their stadium, and actually paying for it themselves, which shouldn’t be cause for celebration or anything since that’s what normal businesses do normally, but we’ll take what we can get these days.

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NY Gov. Hochul says she “lies awake” worrying Bills will leave Buffalo for [gestures around vaguely]

January 25, 2022 Neil deMause

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said a bunch more stuff yesterday (to the Buffalo News editorial board, naturally, where she was sure to find a receptive audience) about how she’s “confident” about getting a Buffalo Bills stadium done just in time for the April 1 budget deadline, though she still isn’t revealing any details of how talks or going or who would pay what for how expensive a stadium. But buried way down in the News story on Hochul’s non-announcement was this:

“I know that they are a very valuable asset,” she said. “For them to be in a market as small as Buffalo is rather extraordinary, and I don’t take that for granted. That’s why I have to work out a deal that is beneficial to them, knowing that there is other competition out there. I’m aware of that, and it is something that I lie awake and think about sometimes.”

Hochul referred to reports from last summer describing the possibility that the Bills could move to a larger market if a stadium deal doesn’t happen.

“There are other cities that were making at least a play for the Bills, and I’m very cognizant of that,” Hochul said.

There were? Digging back through this site’s archives, I see a tweet from an ESPN reporter that an “ownership source” told him Austin “would pay handsomely” for an NFL franchise, and a whole lot of saber-rattling from friend of the NFL Mike Florio about the team relocating somewhere, and that’s pretty much it.

NFL teams in cities of any size are a lot more footloose than teams in other sports thanks to the league’s generous national TV deals that pay out whether you play in New York City or Walla Walla — something we’ve discussed at length here — but if Hochul genuinely has evidence that other cities (cough, cough, Greensboro) have been “making a play” for the Bills, you’d think she would have provided details. Or, you know, the Buffalo News editorial board might have asked her what she was talking about. Ha ha, just kidding, that’s not what the News editorial board is there for, please go elsewhere to seek your actual journalism.

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