Search Results for: utah coyotes

Everybody and their sister now wants Utah tax money to build arenas

access_time personNeil deMause

Sure, Utah is set to give Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith $900 million on an upgraded arena for whatever the Arizona Coyotes eventually get renamed following their move to Salt Lake City, and there’s been talk of another $900 million for an MLB stadium for some hypothetical future team, though much of the baseball money remains TBD. But surely the nation’s 29th-largest media market has room for some more sports venues to throw taxpayer cash at, right?

Black Desert Resort in Ivins plans to build an arena that potentially could host a minor league hockey team, NBA preseason games, the Utah Jazz’s G League team, concerts and other events. Patrick Manning, the resort’s managing partner, told The Salt Lake Tribune this week that a bill has been written for the next legislative session, asking the state to help fund the project, which could cost up to $2 billion.

It’s not quite a $2 billion minor-league arena — bill sponsor State Sen. Jerry Stevenson said “we may have to pare it way back and make it not a hotel,” which I guess means right now it’s also a hotel? — and in fact right now no actual legislation has been introduced. But Stevenson says the resort, which hasn’t even opened yet, plans on asking to fund the project with a Public Infrastructure District, which is basically Utah’s version of a TIF, kicking back taxes in an area around the venue to help pay off construction bonds.

How much tax money would get kicked back depends on how big you draw the district, so it’s anyone’s guess what the subsidy ask would be. Stevenson would seem to be in a good position to guess, as the guy introducing the legislation, but apparently no:

“My gosh, $2 billion. I don’t know what they are looking for,” Stevenson told The Tribune.

Try to find out before you sponsor the bill, maybe? Just a thought.

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Arizona cancels land auction for neo-Coyotes arena since owner lacks permits to build one

access_time personNeil deMause

When last we left off with the Arizona Coyotes, the old Arizona Coyotes had moved to Salt Lake City, while old Arizona Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo was still set on winning a June 27 auction for public land in Phoenix so he could get an NHL expansion team and build an arena there with the help of a tax surcharge from a “theme park district” that the Phoenix mayor opposes. And if all that sounds awfully nebulous, things got much, much worse for Meruelo on Friday, when the state of Arizona abruptly canceled the auction on the grounds that Meruelo needs a zoning variance before he can do anything with the land:

“After much consideration, the Arizona State Land Department (ASLD) has determined that it is in the best interest of the Trust to cancel the auction and reorder the steps,” the ASLD said in a release. “ASLD recently confirmed that the proposed arena use will require a Special Use Permit, and as a result we are requesting that the applicant file for and receive a Special Use Permit prior to the auction. This affords the applicant and ASLD certainty that the applicant can build what it intends to build for its anchor tenant. It is not uncommon for ASLD to require applicants to secure zoning/use permits prior to auction.

“We understand the delay in an auction is a disappointment for our applicant and members of the public, but the change in timing is the prudent decision for the Trust. ASLD remains open to working with our applicant to bring the land forward to auction in the future if a special use permit is received.”

That’s all perfectly reasonable, though it does raise the question of why the state land department waited until six days before the auction to go “You know what, maybe let’s not.” Sure, back in March when the land was posted, Meruelo still had an actual NHL team instead of just some logos and the promise of one, but the Coyotes have been Utah-bound for a couple of months now, did it take this long for anyone to realize the state could just call the whole thing off?

Anyway, Meruelo is predictably steamed, releasing a team statement that “this unprecedented action by the State of Arizona seriously jeopardizes the future of NHL hockey returning to the desert” and “by cancelling the land auction, the state is forgoing millions, and potentially billions, of dollars that would have gone directly to K-12 education” [citation extremely needed].

Meruelo still has until 2029 to come up with an arena site, money to build an arena, and $1 billion to buy a expansion franchise so he can cash in the NHL-ownership IOU that he got from the league as part of the deal to move the Coyotes to Phoenix. All signs are that he is extremely unlikely to accomplish all of those things, but no harm for him in trying, right? If nothing else, it gives the few Coyotes employees Meruelo didn’t lay off something to tweet about for the first time in a month.

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Coyotes arena could cost Salt Lake City $670m or more, plus Meruelo keeps on Merueloing in Arizona

access_time personNeil deMause

This may just be the inevitable fallout of a franchise relocation that came pretty much out of nowhere two weeks ago, but there was a lot going on this weekend with the Arizona Coyotes‘ transformation into the Utah Something-Somethings. Let’s take the news items one at a time:

New team owner Ryan Smith doesn’t want a new arena, he wants to renovate his current one. This makes sense, if only because Smith is already plunking down $1.2-1.3 billion on the franchise, so he’ll want to keep construction costs down so that he doesn’t have to cover too much of them. It could be a tricky rebuild, though, as, like the arenas in Phoenix and Brooklyn, the Delta Center was built with the NBA in mind, so it’s going to require significant reworking to accompany a hockey rink, which is a good bit longer than the Jazz basketball court.

Also, Smith claims that if he had his druthers, he’d be building a new arena south of downtown, but elected officials instructed him otherwise:

“Our elected officials,” Smith said, turning to address those in attendance Friday. “I know you guys get dragged every way possible, you guys literally stopped us in the middle of the process and said ‘These both have to be downtown, so go figure out what you have to do.’” The Delta Center remodel plans were the result.

There’s still no reported price tag for a renovated Jazz arena to accommodate hockey, but the Salt Lake Tribune does have a new estimated total for the 0.5% Salt Lake City sales tax hike that would help fund it, reporting that it “would, in the estimation of the Legislature, raise $54 million per year that would go towards repaying bond on the project; over 20 years, it’s a total that sums to over $1 billion.” The better total would be to use the present value of those dollars over time — in other words, figure out how much in 2024 spending it could pay off, like calculating how much house you could buy with a certain amount of future mortgage payments — and that comes to $673 million, which is a lot more than the $500 million that was reported last month when the legislation was passed by the state legislature. Plus, that doesn’t include the kickback of all sales taxes from a possible sales tax increment financing district around the arena, so the public price tag could still go higher.

The sales tax hike still needs to get passed by the city council, but Bettman says if it fails, there’s a Plan B for raising the funds:

If that tax hike doesn’t pass, Bettman told ESPN700 on Friday that he’s seen a second set of arena plans. “There are a couple of sets of plans which I’ve seen. One is obviously a renovation and a resizing and configuring of this building. And the other is … a new building,” he said.

Uh, that’s not actually a Plan B for raising money, it’s a Plan B for spending it. Either Bettman, or ESPN700, or the Tribune (which reported the above) got confused somewhere along the way, your guess is as good as mine as to which.

Salt Lake City downtown businesses are in for an unpleasant surprise. “Utah NHL rising tide expected to lift all downtown businesses” read the headline on last night’s KUTV story, which quickly makes it clear that the ones doing the expecting are those self-same downtown business owners:

[STK Steakhouse manager Markus] Ericksen knows the introduction of a hockey league could be great for a growing downtown.

“We are excited; we saw a lot of great walk-in business because of the games with the Jazz,” said Ericksen.

Unfortunately, the economic literature doesn’t support the idea that more arena business drives a significant amount of new spending at local dining establishments — here’s one paper from last year that concludes that “basketball & hockey arenas do not appear to generate significant spillovers for the surrounding businesses” — and neither do anecdotal reports from local restaurateurs, who say it’s hard to seat enough fans in the brief time before and after games to get much benefit.

Ericksen has the opportunity to get his steakhouse’s name in the news, so it makes sense for him to use it to promote his business to future hockey fans. Why KUTV chose to investigate the economic impact on local businesses solely by talking to one local business owner and the head of the downtown chamber of commerce — I mean, it’s an easier lift than spending the 60 seconds it took me to find that economic paper, I guess, and then going through having to contact the authors and wait for them to get back to you and set up a Zoom, but it’d be nice to see TV journalists doing at least minimal journalism.

Outgoing Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo can’t make up his mind about pretty much anything. Meruelo had quite the week, saying all kinds of things that he then had to immediately walk back:

  • On Thursday, Meruelo said he’d retained ownership of the minor-league Tuscon Roadrunners, and announced that “we’re gonna move them up to Mullett Arena” in Tempe, where the Coyotes have played the past two seasons. Later that same day, Meruelo said “we haven’t made a decision yet,” and the next day he said, “We’ve talked about maybe playing half the season in Tucson and half the season at Mullett.” He also, according to Tucson TV station KVOA, revealed that “the hasn’t discussed the matter with the Roadrunners, the City of Tucson, or Arizona State University, which owns Mullett Arena in Tempe,” all of which would be slightly important before moving the team.
  • In Friday’s press conference, Meruelo declared that he hadn’t done many press interviews of late because he “didn’t like the media” — leading NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, who was sitting next to him, to interrupt: “Let me translate that a little bit. I don’t think anybody should take that personally. I think he doesn’t like being a public person.”
  • After calling his planned Phoenix arena “the first ever privately funded sports arena and entertainment district in the history of Arizona,” Meruelo declared that he actually plans to ask the city to create a “theme park district” that could levy a 9% sales tax surcharge within the district, which would be kicked back to pay for arena construction. (How much of this would come out of taxpayers’ pockets, and how much would act like a ticket tax where he would have to lower prices on things like concessions and souvenirs to avoid driving away customers, remains the subject of debate among economists, depending on a bunch of factors.) A theme park district would also be exempt from property taxes and “monies derived by the district” exempt from income taxes, which could be a much more significant chunk of change.

Like I said, it’s a lot. It’s entirely possible, though, that the move of the Coyotes from Arizona to Utah could end up triggering a billion dollars or more in public costs across two states, so that two NHL team owners can get new arenas without dipping too far into their own pockets. Or Salt Lake and Phoenix elected officials could vote down all the tax kickbacks, sure, that’s a thing that could happen. But accepting defeat and paying for things yourself doesn’t seem to be in Bettman’s, or Meruelo’s, vocabulary.

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Friday roundup: Nevada legislator says she voted for A’s stadium because she didn’t understand it, and other great moments in U.S. politics

access_time personNeil deMause

Before we get to the week’s news roundup, a couple of programming notes. First off, my apologies for the ads that have kept appearing in the middle of posts on this site — I keep telling Google Ads not to put them there, and it keeps ignoring me. I think I may have finally succeeded in turning those off, but do let me know if they reappear for you. I may end up dropping Google as this site’s ad provider if it keeps this up — that is, if I don’t drop Google anyway for firing workers upset that it successfully created Project Nimbus from the famous science fiction novel Don’t Create Project Nimbus.

Second, I know that the Dark Mode function is pretty broken again, often displaying dark gray type on a black background. I’m in discussions with the plugin provider about bug fixes, and also once again looking for alternatives that work more consistently. In the meantime, you can sometimes get it working by refreshing your browser; if that doesn’t work, just don’t use Dark Mode for now, and hopefully everything will be back in working order before your eyeballs explode from the screen glare.

And now for the news:

  • Nevada assemblymember Danielle Gallant tried, despite a very unhappy dog in the background, to explain her vote last summer for $600 million in public money for a new stadium to bring the Oakland A’s to Las Vegas, and ended up having to apologize for not understanding how the financing worked at all. “I hope future errors you make are met with more kindness than some of the responses I received,” tweeted Gallant, presumably inviting those among you who haven’t accidentally given $600 million to a billionaire sports owner to cast the first stone.
  • Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, who previously praised Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf’s proposed stadium development that would require $2 billion in public subsidies and said “everything is on the table here,” now says that some things are off the table: “I’ve always said that ownership has to put some skin in the game,” Johnson told reporters this week, adding that he opposes kickbacks of city ticket taxes to Reinsdorf to help fund the project.
  • If you’re a Buffalo Bills fan outraged that the team is charging as much as $50,000 for personal seat licenses before you can even buy tickets to their new stadium that is being built with over $1 billion in your tax money, good news: Now you can instead be upset about the fact that Gov. Kathy Hochul agreed to make the PSLs exempt from sales tax, costing you and your fellow New Yorkers around another $25 million. Or I suppose you can be upset about both, but life is short, you have to pick your priorities.
  • Tampa Bay Times opinion editor Graham Brink, who previously defended spending $1.5 billion in public money on a new Tampa Bay Rays stadium on the grounds of “collective pride,” is now back with a list of other ways it would allegedly be a good deal: extending the Rays’ lease will keep the team in town longer, their development partner is “the real deal,” they’re using stadium designers who’ve designed stadiums before, owner Stu Sternberg has an “astute front office,” and … that’s all he’s got so far, stay tuned for “Economists may say Rays stadium is a boondoggle, but aren’t puppies great?”
  • Meanwhile, if you ask St. Petersburg residents if $1.9 billion is too much to spend on a Rays stadium, they say yes, and if you ask them if a new stadium would be a good idea in the abstract without telling them how much it would cost, they also say yes! The truth must lie somewhere in the middle!
  • Where will the Kansas City Royals and Chiefs owners turn for stadium money now that voters told them where to stick their sales tax hike? “It’s not something that’s going to just kind of be thrown up into the ether out of nowhere,” says Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas of city funding, and a spokesperson for Gov. Mike Parson says there’s no state money in the works either. Clay County Presiding Commissioner Jerry Nolte says he hasn’t heard from Royals execs lately, and there’s no talk of fresh funding from Jackson County after the sales-tax plan failed, which leaves only … the team owners’ pockets? KMBC-TV for some reason doesn’t mention this option in their article, the internet must have run out of bits before they got to it. The Kansas City Star, meanwhile, reported on noted sports business expert George Brett’s thoughts on whether the teams will now move out of town, it’s truly not a great week for Kansas City journalism.
  • Now that the Arizona Coyotes are moving to Salt Lake City in the fall, everyone wants to know what the team will be called, and new owner Ryan Smith confirms that it will “start with Utah.” No word yet on what it will rhyme with or how many syllables, but presumably Smith will reveal that eventually — just maybe not this fall, don’t want to rush into things, “Utah Professional Hockey Club” sure has a nice temporary ring to it.
  • Tempe city councilmember Randy Keating has complained that the reason the Coyotes are leaving town is because team execs “ran a terribly inept campaign” for arena subsidies. Better luck next time finding ways to overcome massive public opposition, Randy, there’s got to be a way around this whole “democracy” thing.
  • A’s concessionaire Aramark threatened to fire stadium workers who openly criticize the team’s coming move out of Oakland, which turns out to be a violation of labor law, who could have known?
  • This Ringer article on fan opposition to the A’s departure is really long for anyone who already knows the basics, but its deep dive into the history of fan protest movements does quote Field of Schemes and also includes the priceless quote from Oakland activist Bryan Johansen that his goal is “to fucking haunt John Fisher for all of eternity,” so it’s worth it if you have the time.
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Economists divided on whether Coyotes’ departure will hurt Arizona economy, if you only ask two economists

access_time personNeil deMause

With the Arizona Coyotes departing for Utah (for now), the Arizona Republic’s Sam Kmack set himself the task of determining what, if anything, this will mean for the local economy. Let’s see what the experts say!

[Grand Canyon Institute research director Dave] Wells believes the Coyotes’ departure will have “close to zero” economic effect, because of how consumers behave regarding entertainment spending.

“Most people have a limited leisure budget to start with. So, they’ll just reallocate it. You might see an uptick in attendance at ASU basketball games or something like that,” said Wells. He added that a “small core of people” in Arizona may now shift some of their spending to Utah to follow the Coyotes.

And:

[Arizona State University Seidman Research Center director Dennis Hoffman] pointed to three factors related to the Coyotes’ departure that could have an impact:

  • Canadian snowbirds choose to vacation in Florida or another warm state with NHL hockey, rather than coming to Arizona and spending cash here.
  • The loss of the roughly $200 million in revenue he expected the Coyotes would generate, plus the broader economic activity that initial income drives.
  • The loss of the NHL franchises employees who both spend money here and pay state income taxes.

Hoffman said “we could be losing significant money” because of the cash Canadian retirees have invested in Arizona’s economy. Hoffman said that money could “migrate” out of the state, if snowbirds chose Arizona because of the Coyotes.

“How many Canadian winter visitors have historically chosen to locate in Arizona as opposed to Florida because they can go to NHL games?” Hoffman asked. “It’s unknowable. But I think it does a disservice if we just say we’ll ignore it because it’s unknowable.”

And:

Nope, sorry, two economists is all we have time for today! All the better for framing this with a heading reading “Experts are divided” and a framing about how this has “reignited an old disagreement between two experts” over the Coyotes’ proposed Tempe arena deal, albeit a disagreement where one side (Hoffman) was being paid by the Coyotes for his time.

While this may be news to the Republic, there are other economists out there, many of whom have looked at things like what happens when a team leaves a city! As a public service to Kmack, I spent 30, maybe 40 seconds crafting an email to several of them yesterday, and here’s what I got back:

J.C. Bradbury, Kennesaw State University: If Dennis Hoffman honestly thinks that the Coyotes generate a significant economic impact on Phoenix, then he needs to write that up and submit it to peer review where it will be vetted by other economists. That’s the normal process for academic researchers. You don’t get to dismiss the academic consensus by flippantly stating the opposite to the media, especially after producing the estimates for a fee. That’s completely inappropriate, and it does a disservice to the community, which is largely ignorant of rigorous economics research standards. I’m at a total loss to understand why a PhD economist with an academic appointment thinks a pro sports team has such a large economic impact on the community. I mean, maybe I’m wrong; but the burden of proof is on him to demonstrate it to his economist colleagues who have found the exact opposite.

Victor Matheson, College of the Holy Cross: Anytime an economist says there are “untold benefits” from hosting a franchise, either the economist is too lazy to estimate them or is afraid of calculating them for what they might show.

As for actual losses, the state income tax losses from a group of highly paid athletes leaving the state is real, in my opinion, so that is a few million a year. There is an actual “feel-good” loss for the actual fans. (Of course, the fact that the Coyotes are moving suggests there aren’t many of those fans.) Other than that, pretty much no losses.

And the idea that Canadians might not relocate to AZ is absurd. Small numbers in the first place and no consideration that people bring costs not just benefits when they live in a community.

Geoffrey Propheter, University of Colorado: I agree with Victor’s take. It’s silly on its face that people from anywhere outside the state, let alone the country, travel to Arizona strictly because of the Coyotes and for no other reason in such large and frequent numbers to justify the cost of a consultant’s economic impact study, let alone the subsidies for the Coyotes themselves.

I’ll add that the income tax loss is a loss to state public goods. Players pay about $1.8m in state income tax this season, and based on anecdotes about salaries for non-players from NBA teams, I’d put the total (non-players + players) at $2.5-$3.5m. Which on a per capita basis means the hit to state public goods is less than 50 cents per person. The state’s general fund budget is $17.8 billion, or $2,405 spent on state public goods per person. So the income tax loss of the Coyotes leaving the state is at most 0.021% of the state’s total per capita spending on state public goods. Yes, there is a state income tax hit, and yes that translates in theory (ignoring fiscal illusion/obfuscation issues) into lower quantity and quality state public goods, but the magnitude of lost state public goods is so tiny I frankly have a hard time trying to figure out a practical comparison to make it meaningful.

But a little algebra tells me 235 people working 20 hours a week for 52 weeks at the state minimum wage will generate $3.5m in state income tax too. So if folks really care about that couple million dollars of state income tax, there’s other ways to get it.

Matheson: Yeah, I agree with Geoffrey about all of this. I like to put it this way regarding the potential $3.5 million in player taxes. At current interest rates, that amount is sufficient to finance roughly $50 million in stadium construction. So, if you propose a $1 billion stadium deal where the team pays $950 million in construction costs and the state offers up $50 million in subsidies, I probably wouldn’t argue too much.

Brad Humphreys, West Virginia University: New sports facilities do not drive migration between US cities

And there you have it: Economists are actually very much in agreement on whether the Coyotes leaving will have a significant impact on the Arizona economy (LOL, no), except for the one guy who used to work for the Coyotes. The answer must lie somewhere in the middle!

It’s still weird, though, that nobody at the Republic thought to call any other prominent economists to ask — wait, what’s this, also dated yesterday?

What does losing a pro sports team like the Coyotes mean for the metro Phoenix economy?

By Corina Vanek
Arizona Republic

[Phoenix’s] status as a sports hotspot translates little into economic activity, two sports economists said…

[Kennesaw State University professor J.C.] Bradbury said there is “no evidence whatsoever that communities are harmed when teams leave,” when looking at economic activity…

[University of Michigan professor emeritus Rodney] Fort said there are other, measurable benefits that come with sports teams, however. Those are outside ripple effects, Fort said, such as increased sales for businesses near stadiums, making a market more attractive for people to move to and creating a sense of value for fans. The benefits can be small, like if someone goes to a bar to watch the game and buys a drink, but they could add up to notable economic activity…

But, Fort said, it is important to note that those effects are “a drop in the bucket” to a place like Phoenix, which has an annual budget of $6 billion. The economic impact of a sports team annually is about the same as the impact of a large anchor department store, he said.

So one economist says there’s no evidence that economies are significantly harmed when a team leaves, however, another economist says that communities may be harmed, but not significantly. The answer must lie somewhere in the middle!

Anyway, Arizona Republic left hand, meet Arizona Republic right hand. You two clearly have lots to talk about.

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Three ways to think about the Coyotes’ sort-of move to Utah

access_time personNeil deMause

The first rumors that the Arizona Coyotes would relocate to Salt Lake City for the 2024-25 season raised a lot of questions: Why now, when team owner Alex Meruelo was just two months away from bidding on land for a new arena in Phoenix? Would the NHL really be happy with trading one of the larger NHL media markets (albeit with not much historic enthusiasm for the NHL) for a much smaller city that’s also not a hockey hotbed? Why would Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith be paying $1.2 billion (or maybe $1.3 billion; reports continue to vary) for the team, but Meruelo only receiving $1 billion, with the rest being shared among other NHL owners?

Over the weekend, more details emerged, and they only raise more questions:

  • While all of the Coyotes’ assets, including its players and right to actually play NHL games, are being sold to Smith and transferred to Utah, Meruelo will retain the Coyotes name, logo, and trademarks, as well as the minor-league Tucson Roadrunners.
  • Meruelo will have five years in which to finalize a new arena, in which case he’ll immediately be given the right to buy an expansion franchise for the same $1 billion he received for the Coyotes.
  • Accordingly, Meruelo is going ahead with his Arizona land bid, and if he wins, he’ll presumably begin to pursue funding for an arena, likely using a state “theme park district” tax surcharge that remains murky exactly whether it should really be a public subsidy. (I asked three prominent sports economists and got back one “probably,” one “I don’t think so,” and one “let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.”)

To help make sense of all this — none of which has been officially announced, mind you, with Meruelo himself issuing a “reply hazy, try again later” letter, though the Associated Press says a press conference is expected next week — let’s try conceptualizing what’s going on here in three ways:

  1. Meruelo is selling the Coyotes, and getting a replacement expansion franchise in Arizona once he gets an arena deal. This is how it’s mostly being framed in the media, and is strictly accurate. It sort of makes sense for everyone involved: Meruelo gets more time to negotiate an arena deal without racking up annual losses in Arizona; the NHL gets out of the embarrassment of a franchise playing in a college arena without having to worry about a legal battle with Meruelo, plus that $200 million it’s taking off the top of the sale price; Smith gets a team without having to go through expansion bidding wars; and commissioner Gary Bettman gets a new owner who, according to ESPN, has “spent several years building a level of trust” with him, read into that as you will. The main risk for the league seems to be that Meruelo could end up getting an expansion team at a bargain price if those bidding wars really take off, but the NHL may be fine with that if it means getting back into the Phoenix market with an acceptable arena deal.
  2. The Coyotes are going on hiatus to figure out their arena situation, while Utah gets an immediate expansion franchise to take its place. This is an equally valid way of looking at it, and makes the pros and cons even clearer: The NHL is solving its Arizona problem by putting the Coyotes on ice for a few years, while filling out the schedule by letting Smith jump to the head of the line for a new team in exchange for a 20% tip on the sale price. (Smith is also getting an established roster rather than having to pick players in an expansion draft, though given the current Coyotes roster that may not be that much of a benefit.)
  3. The Coyotes are going to be the NFL’s Cleveland Browns, where the team moves but the team’s name and identity stays. That’s Yardbarker’s take, but I’m not sure the parallel works: The NFL granted Cleveland a new Browns franchise in exchange for stadium funding, yes, but that was all sparked by lawsuits over Art Modell moving the old Browns to Baltimore. If the Coyotes re-emerge eventually, though, it’d be the same in terms of a team in one city being transferred to another one then being replaced, after a break, by a new team with the same name once a new venue has been built, so it kind of works if you squint.

There’s definitely lots of ways the Coyotes’ move to Utah can go wrong: As noted here previously, Salt Lake City would be by far the smallest market with two major-league winter pro sports teams, which will create a ton of competition for both ticket buys and TV eyeballs; and the Jazz’s Delta Center, while clearly a better NHL venue than the Coyotes’ current Mullett Arena if only because it has more than twice as many seats, is one of those NBA-optimized venues that sucks for hockey, at least until it gets the $500 million facelift that the state of Utah has promised it. But you can see where someone in the league offices could have made a good case for “So we want a team in Arizona but don’t have an arena there yet, and we have a guy in Utah who wants a team right now and has a marginally workable arena, maybe this can be the beginning of a beautiful friendship? Also, $200 million cash!” At least nobody here would be paying the purchase price by wiring a fraction of it and then claiming he’d left a bunch of zeroes off as a typo. Probably not, anyway. The NHL is always about trying new things.

As for the bigger picture: What, if anything, does the Coyotes’ sort-of move mean as far as how seriously cities should take relocation threats? The team is leaving Arizona after Tempe voted down $500 million in tax breaks for a new arena there, but that came less because either the team owner or the NHL wanted to leave so much as that Meruelo had painted himself into a corner by getting booted out of his old arena and moving to a 5,000-seat one. And Utah did apparently bump itself to the head of the new-NHL-team line by approving $500 million in arena spending, but only because the Coyotes situation called for an immediate solution and they were standing in the right place at the right time. Leagues and individual owners absolutely do shop around for stadium and arena subsidies when thinking about where to play, but that’s not all they think about — if it were, Arizona would now be getting the cold shoulder from the league, instead of an offer of an expansion slot in the next five years. The only truism here is that sports barons love leverage; how they then use it is up to them.

UPDATE: And The Athletic just dropped a tick-tock of what led to the current Coyotes resolution. Tl;dr: The NHL and NHLPA were both sick of the Mullett Arena situation, Meruelo didn’t want to sell but also couldn’t promise when he’d build a big-boy arena, and this was the compromise that was worked out. If that’s not how you think sports league franchise decisions should be made, go take it up with crony capitalism.

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The Arizona Coyotes are moving to Salt Lake City (maybe, depending, check back later)

access_time personNeil deMause

Yesterday, the interwebs started buzzing with talk that the Arizona Coyotes were, maybe, going to be moving to Salt Lake City next season. Things like:

The NHL is concurrently drafting two versions of a league schedule matrix for the 2024-25 season, one with the Arizona Coyotes and another with the Coyotes franchise playing in Salt Lake City in the event of relocation.

And:

The NHL would purchase the Coyotes from Meruelo in a deal believed to be worth around $1 billion. … The league source said that after purchasing the team, the NHL would then sell the Coyotes to [Utah Jazz owner Ryan] Smith at a price that could be as high as $1.3 billion — much higher than the $650 million expansion fee that the Seattle Kraken’s owners paid in 2021 to join the league. The source said the NHL’s other 31 owners would split $300 million as part of the sale.

And:

The team’s final game is at home against Edmonton next Wednesday. One Coyote indicated today that there are rumours of “meeting about the future” before everyone goes their separate ways for the off-season.

The reason behind this reported shift: Uncertainty around the league about Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo winning a June 27 public land auction for a parcel near the Phoenix-Scottsdale border and then being able to put together an arena financing plan. Though Scottsdale Mayor David Ortega on Tuesday walked back his statement the previous that an arena on the site was “not feasible, or welcome,” saying he’s now fine with it so long as traffic is directed away from his city, the whole deal is apparently flimsy enough that the NHL wants to have a Plan B — or maybe even a Plan A, as Daily Faceoff, citing “multiple sources,” asserted that “there is a real possibility that the Coyotes franchise is not based in Arizona come June 27.”

This morning brings no real updates, with the league remaining officially silent and even Coyotes players having been shielded from the press after last night’s game. So what can we make of all this?

First off, the Utah legislature’s vote last month to approve $500 million in spending on a new or renovated arena if the NHL comes to town definitely got some attention. The money is supposed to come from a 0.5% citywide sales tax hike plus kickbacks of sales taxes from a “10-block revitalization area” around any arena. How much an NHL-ready arena would cost overall remains unknown, as is how much Smith would pay to cover the remaining costs after plunking down maybe $1.3 billion for the Coyotes, but $500 million in the hand is worth some anonymously leaked move threats to the league, at least.

Whether the NHL would actually go through with a Utah move for the Coyotes, especially before the Arizona land auction has even taken place, is less clear. Salt Lake City may have some public money approved, and that’s certainly tasty to the league; it would also be one of the league’s smallest media markets, and by far the smallest with both NBA and NHL teams competing for winter sports ticket sales (1,148,120 TV households, behind Miami’s 1,720,970). Actually going ahead with the move would be a major bet on giving a team to whatever city coughs up a public subsidy and has an owner willing to overpay for a team because he once played roller hockey or something, and let them figure out how to actually sell tickets once the team gets there.

And then there’s maybe the weirdest twist to all of this, according to Sportsnet:

The real key is what the NHL will promise Meruelo to avoid this ending up in court.

Those same sources indicate he could be offered a five-year exclusive window to “bring back” the Coyotes as an expansion franchise — although there would be certain language stating what would need to be accomplished for him to return. (The league definitely desires a return to the market if it leaves.)

Sure, I guess? The NHL is clearly enamored of the Phoenix area’s size — though it’s smaller than Atlanta and Houston, which also don’t have teams and don’t seem to have drawn the same unrequited love from the league — and would be happy to have a team there, even if it’s one owned by Meruelo. If that “certain language” stipulates arena financing being in place and, say, season-ticket deposits from more fans than you can count on one hand, it wouldn’t be the craziest way of the NHL deciding where to stick an expansion team. (That would probably be this.)

All of this remains at the level of rumor, needless to say, even if true it could just mean that the NHL is coming up with contingency plans to ensure that the Salt Lake City arena has dates available for the Coyotes’ 2024-25 schedule. In the meantime, are people already wondering how a Utah Coyotes (yes, there are coyotes in Utah, at least more than there is jazz) would impact the Oakland A’s move options? Of course they are:

The longer any online discussion continues, the greater the chance that it will lead to somebody clowning on John Fisher.

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“Are the Coyotes moving to Utah?” enters its ninth month

access_time personNeil deMause

It was NHL All-Star Weekend this weekend, and in addition to somebody beating somebody in the game itself (non-hockey fans, please try to guess the current format without looking), lots of people took the opportunity to say things about the fate of the Arizona Coyotes:

  • Coyotes CEO Xavier Gutierrez: “I can confirm that we have submitted an application [for state-owned land in northeast Phoenix near Scottsdale]. But … I’m confirming with you that, as I’ve made very clear on a number of occasions, we are looking at multiple sites and we are not yet ready to announce which is the one that we are going to pursue as the primary one.”
  • NHL Players Association director Marty Walsh: “If there’s no plan in Arizona, I would encourage a move to another location, absolutely. I think the league feels that Arizona is a good market and I can understand that. The issue I have, and the players have, is how long do you wait to get a home? They’re playing in a college arena and they’re the second tenant in that arena. This is not the way to run a business.”
  • NHL commissioner Gary Bettman: “[Coyotes owner] Alex Meruelo, as recently as last week, told me he was certain he was going to get [a new arena] done, and I don’t make it a practice of contradicting owners unless I have hard facts to the contrary, and I am both hopeful and reasonably [long pause] reasonably confident that he’s going to do what he says.”

Same as it ever was.

Meanwhile, talk of the Coyotes moving to Utah continues, though there’s no real evidence that this is imminent either, beyond unsourced rumors that have been rumoring ever since Meruelo lost his arena-funding vote in Tempe last spring. Also still no word on what a new hockey arena in Salt Lake City — which Jazz owner Ryan Smith said he would need in order to bring the NHL to town — would cost or who would pay for it. So while the NHL players union is undoubtably peevish that one-32nd of his members have to play in a college rink, there are still lots of reasons to expect this drama to drag on a bit longer, not least that it’s already been dragging on pretty much ever since the Coyotes moved to Arizona in 1996, what’s another few months or years or decades?

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Friday roundup: More shouting about Virginia arena traffic, plus rumors of A’s (temporary) death and Coyotes-to-Utah

access_time personNeil deMause

Happy Friday! (Happiness provided separately.) While I have you here, is it a good time to remind you that Field of Schemes is on Facebook, Bluesky, Mastodon, Post, and whatever Elon Musk is calling his thing these days? And that by following FoS in any or all of those places, you can get notifications of new posts as soon as they happen — and not only that, by reacting to posts on those sites, you can help get more attention for Field of Schemes, because that’s how social media likes work, it’s a popularity contest where your votes make the things you like more popular? No, that isn’t what you want to hear right now, you just to read the weekly news recap? Okay, ignore all that for now, you can always come back to it later.

 

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Friday roundup: Bears rumors! Titans vaportecture! Coyotes still about to announce something, sometime!

access_time personNeil deMause

Another week in the books! Will “in the books” soon become an anachronism, once there are no more physical books to keep? Or will “books” just become a term for long documents, and future English speakers will wonder why the phrase isn’t “in the spreadsheets”? Has this already happened and I didn’t notice? Gen Z readers, say your piece!

Moving on to the news:

  • Chicago Bears president Kevin Warren said, “What intrigues me about downtown is I strongly believe Chicago is the finest city in all of the world,” and now everybody thinks this means the Bears would prefer to build a stadium in downtown Chicago rather than it just being a savvy negotiator trying to create leverage for a stadium wherever he can get one paid for by somebody else.
  • Virginia’s billion-dollar-plus subsidy for a Washington Capitals and Wizards arena in Alexandria may now turn on Metro public transit funding, as Senate majority leader Scott Surovell says “making sure Metro is fully funded is a precondition before we have any kind of dialogue about the arena” while Gov. Glenn Youngkin retorted that he wants to see a Metro business plan first because “they’ve got overhead levels that far exceed any of their benchmarks.” Hey, you know what would help fill Metro’s $750 million budget deficit? Here’s a hint, it rhymes with “bot giving a billion dollars to the local sports team owner,” hth.
  • New Tennessee Titans vaportecture! This time the (imaginary) camera moves but the (pretend) people don’t, so we get a horrorscape of fans frozen in place with their arms flung skywards for all eternity! All except for the rock band that is playing forever to a perpetually frozen audience, and the video boards that show moving replays of a forever-static game, this is the most terrifying Black Mirror episode ever.
  • Former Utah Jazz majority owner (and current minority owner) Gail Miller is buying up land around the site of her proposed baseball stadium for her proposed MLB expansion team, hey at least Salt Lake City has more TV households than Las Vegas.
  • The public cost of the new Chattanooga Lookouts stadium has soared from $80 million to $139 million in the last 17 months, which will be fine so long as an extra $500 million worth of development appears from out of nowhere and pays new taxes that won’t cannibalize existing ones, this is fine.
  • “The Orlando Magic are making millions by selling naming rights to a building the team doesn’t even own,” yup, that’ll happen.
  • “[Arizona] Coyotes on ‘precipice’ of announcing location organization will focus on for new arena,” reports an Arizona Sports headline, then the story itself doesn’t have anyone at all saying the word “precipice” with regard to anything, wut.
  • Baseball stadiums built since the early 1990s have crazy-far upper deck seats, reports Travis Sawchik for The Score, will that change with the latest wave of new buildings? Populous architect Zach Allee says there’s a tradeoff that’s “kind of like a balloon” where “if I say I want to be closer to the field horizontally, it ends up pushing the seats up higher,” which isn’t really how geometry or balloons work, and then Sawchik touts the Texas Rangers‘ new stadium for moving the last row of its upper deck 33 feet closer than the last row in its old stadium, but actually they did this by just removing the last 8,000 seats, this is actually a terrible article, I’m sorry I linked to it.

I’m traveling next week, posts may appear at sporadic and/or unexpected times. Have a good long holiday weekend, or as our Toronto readers know it, Monday.

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