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.