Fresno Grizzles – Field of Schemes

St. Pete to Rays: Actually, there’s no deadline for us to fix your stadium roof, read your damn lease

January 23, 2025 Neil deMause

If you’re wondering what’s going on with repairs to the Tropicana Field roof, Tampa Bay Rays execs are waiting on the city of St. Petersburg to tell them when work will begin. Team co-president Matt Silverman wrote to city officials on December 30 declaring that a “partial 2026 season in Tropicana Field would present massive logistical and revenue challenge” and “it is therefore critical that the rebuild start in earnest as soon as possible.” City manager Rob Gerdes has now responded, and it looks like Rays management didn’t read their fine print too clearly:

We look forward to cooperating to attempt to achieve the mutual goal of making Tropicana Field suitable for Major League Baseball games by opening day of the 2026 season. However … the Use Agreement requires the City of St. Petersburg to diligently pursue repairs to Tropicana Field, but it does not establish a deadline for completing those repairs.

It’s true! According to the “force majeure” clause in the Rays’ use agreement, the city only needs to begin repairs within three months of damage that has made the building unplayable, which it has done. There’s no set date for it to finish, though — and the only consequence is that for any amount of time the Rays are homeless, their lease gets extended by an equal amount of time, which is surely no skin off the nose of St. Petersburg.

It’s kind of hilarious that Rays owner Stu Sternberg is falling victim to sloppy wording of a stadium agreement, which is usually city lawyers’ signature move. (To be fair, Sternberg didn’t hire the lawyers who wrote up this use agreement, former Rays owner Vince Naimoli did; still, you’d think he and his execs would have at least read it.) With Sternberg and the city still at loggerheads over whether the Rays owner will accept the offer of $1 billion in public money for a new stadium or demand even more, we’ll likely see more of this brinksmanship in the coming weeks and months and … years? There’s nothing stopping the city from dragging its heels for years, honestly. It’ll almost certainly be resolved before then by either negotiations or lawsuit, but it’s still fun to watch in the meantime.

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Was the Carolina Panthers’ $650m renovation deal really the worst of 2024? An investimagation

January 2, 2025 Neil deMause

The Center for Economic Accountability, a friend of this site, announced its annual “Worst Economic Development Deal of the Year” award for 2024 this week, and the winner was the city of Charlotte, for giving $650 million to Carolina Panthers owner David Tepper for renovations of his team’s stadium. CEA said in a press release that “Charlotte’s Bank of America Stadium deal stood out from the rest of the competition for a combination of factors that included its high cost, lack of transparency, poor returns, questionable economic justifications and the Panthers ownership’s checkered history with subsidized projects.”

There’s certainly a lot to be said for the Panthers deal as a terrible one: The city of Charlotte put up $650 million out of $800 million for renovations to a 28-year-old stadium it didn’t build and doesn’t own, in exchange for Tepper extending his lease for just 15 years and getting to open “good faith” negotiations for a new stadium as early as 2037. Still, it’s worth looking at some of the other contenders from 2024:

St. Petersburg and Pinellas County providing over a billion dollars in cash, tax breaks, and discounted land to Tampa Bay Rays owner Stuart Sternberg to build a new domed stadium right next door to the old domed stadium that everyone said was bad because it was a dome and in a bad location.
Washington, D.C. giving Capitals and Wizards owner Ted Leonsis $515 million in renovation money for what’s effectively a three-year lease extension, even after the state of Virginia rejected Leonsis’s bid for an arena there, which should have left D.C. officials able to drive a hard bargain.
In the non-sports world, Good Jobs First’s Subsidy Tracker lists four megadeals that came in at more than $500 million in subsidies, including $929 million in fresh tax breaks that the state of Indiana offered to Eli Lilly for an expansion of its campus in Lebanon, in a deal costing Indiana taxpayers $1.4 million for each new job created.
A bunch of states upped their film tax credit offerings, something that has been proven time and again does next to nothing to create jobs, instead just shuffling them from state to state while movie studios get to have taxpayers underwrite huge chunks of their ever-expanding production costs.

All worthy candidates, even if there can be only one winner. The lesson here isn’t that Charlotte is singularly bone-headed when it comes to handing out public money to local billionaires; it’s that siphoning off public money for private profit is a pandemic with no end in sight, and even the less-bad deals would be scandalous in a saner world.

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Friday roundup: Phoenix to get USL stadium with giant disappearing soccer ball, plus more fallout from MLB slashing minor league teams

December 11, 2020 Neil deMause

Too much going on this week to have time for more than a brief intro, but I do want to note that “’Company announces advertising campaign’ is not a story, no matter how easily that campaign can be metabolized by the publications it’s aimed at” is something that should be tattooed on the foreheads of all journalists, even if it is a quote from an article about Pantone colors.

And now, how sports team owners and their friends are trying to rip you off this week:

Phoenix Rising F.C., which has been talking about building a new stadium for a while, apparent broke ground on one weeks ago and nobody noticed until they announced it yesterday. The new stadium, to be built on Gila River Indian Community land, will “increase stadium seating by more than 35%” (their current stadium, a popup model erected in Scottsdale on the cheap, holds 6,200, so that would imply about 8,370 seats in the new place) and feature such amenities as “permanent restrooms,” and is supposed to be ready by May 2021, so we’re probably still talking off-the-rack bleachers that can be installed quickly. “No funding or cost details were given,” reports the Arizona Republic, but “no budget was exceeded from the Gila River Indian Community side,” according to a Gila River exec, whatever that means. Also no word on whether the soccer complex will still include a robot dog showroom, but new renderings show it will at least have a giant soccer ball in the parking lot — hey wait, in this rendering it’s missing! Somebody get on this breaking story, stat!
More fallout from yesterday’s minor-league baseball decimation announcement: San Antonio judge/stadium booster/stadium namesake Nelson Wolff blamed the Missions‘ demotion to Double-A as being “because nothing could ever get done on a new stadium”; bwahahaha, this is going just as baseball’s barons planned it!
Also, the new stadium complex of the Northern Colorado Owlz (formerly the Orem Owlz, spelled that way to honor the Utah Jazz, which were named for the favorite musical style of, uh, New Orleans) will bring in “roughly 1 million to 1.2 million visitors annually,” according to a city official, despite the Owlz having been relegated to an indie league that may or may not survive for long.
Also also, the recently-demoted Fresno Grizzlies got a $400,000-a-year rent break from the city of Fresno this week, in exchange for reducing the city’s capital improvement fund contributions by $250,000 a year and the team sharing $52,500 a year in naming-rights money with the city, which still seems like a pretty bad deal for taxpayers. It’s a percentage deal, 15% of naming rights revenue over $650,000, so Fresno could break even on this if a new naming-rights contract comes to, let’s see … $1.65 million a year. For a now-Single-A team’s stadium. Good luck with that.
And also also also, for those wondering “Why can’t cast-adrift minor-league teams just go independent and dispense with an MLB affiliation?” (you know who you are, you in the comments), a minority owner of one eliminated team that turned down an MLB Draft League spot told me (asking for anonymity because they aren’t authorized to speak for the franchise) that when they crunched the numbers, they figured out that they’d have to sell nearly 3,000 tickets a game plus get lease breaks from their home city to make it work. And the economics would presumably only be worse for a full indie league, where the players would actually have to be paid.
If you were wondering what ever happened with the Jacksonville Jaguars‘ $200 million Lot J development subsidy vote, Jags execs agreed to a delay until January after realizing they didn’t have enough votes on the council to force one sooner. Meanwhile, city councilmember Randy DeFoor asked for Jaguars owner Shad Khan to agree to repay $150 million of the money if the team moves when their lease expires in 2030, calling it “insulting, quite frankly, that you wouldn’t agree to that”; team president Mark Lamping replied that Khan’s “actions speak for themselves” in his commitment to the Jaguars “playing in Jacksonville forever,” so why muddy up these vague promises with enforceable contract language, right?
The new operator of the Nassau Coliseum is telling investors to put their money into his other projects because the arena “generates little to no revenue, and it continues to lose substantial sums of money each month.” The county should definitely keep giving this guy rent breaks, you can’t buy word-of-mouth like this! Or wouldn’t want to, I always get those two mixed up.
In non-sports subsidy news, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos got “tens of millions of dollars” in Opportunity Zone tax breaks for their private spaceship programs, and Tom Brady got almost $1 million in Paycheck Protection Program money and then went and bought a giant boat, and if you haven’t figured out yet that even broadly available government business relief programs get snapped up first by the wealthiest and most-connected people, I don’t know what else I can say to convince you.
New England Revolution owner Bob Kraft still wants a soccer-only stadium in Boston “eventually,” check, same as it ever was.
Inter Miami‘s stadium is going to host a sports management school starting next June, and no, I can’t tell if this will be under the bleachers or out on the pitch to help with social distancing, assuming we still need that then.
Someone in Las Vegas crashed his drone into the Raiders‘ stadium last month, damaged a panel worth $5,000–$8,000, asked the security guard for his drone back, then drove off in a BMW rental car. This really has nothing to do with stadium subsidies, but I cannot overstate how much I enjoyed typing that sentence.

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MLB just killed 18 minor-league teams that got $249m in public stadium funding

December 10, 2020December 10, 2020 Neil deMause

MLB issued its final list yesterday of which 120 minor-league teams will get to continue as farm teams for big-league clubs, and which will be left to join a series of independent or amateur leagues or disappear altogether. While a few teams got official notice that they’d be switching levels — the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp jump from Double-A to Triple-A, the San Antonio Missions drop from Triple-A to Double-A, the Frederick Keys are bounced from Single-A to the new MLB Draft League where players will have to play for free to showcase their skills for the annual player draft, and the Fresno Grizzlies just yesterday afternoon accepted their demotion from Triple-A to Single-A once they saw what the alternative was — let’s focus on the truly SOL franchises, those that USA Today listed under the heading “No Current League” (state and former affiliation in parentheses):

Lowell Spinners (MA, Red Sox)
Hagerstown Suns (MD, Nationals)
Burlington Bees (IA, Angels)
Clinton LumberKings (IA, Marlins)
Kane County Cougars (IL, Diamondbacks)
Lexington Legends (KY, Royals)
Charlotte Stone Crabs (FL, Rays)
West Virginia Power (WV, Mariners)
Florida Fire Frogs (FL, Braves)
Salem-Keizer Volcanoes (OR, Giants)
Staten Island Yankees (NY, Yankees)
Batavia Muckdogs (NY, Marlins)
Auburn Doubledays (NY, Nationals)
Norwich Sea Unicorns (CT, Tigers)
Tri-City ValleyCats (NY, Astros)
Vermont Lake Monsters (VT, A’s)
Lancaster JetHawks (CA, Rockies)
Boise Hawks (ID, Rockies)

That is a whole lot of intercaps being thrown to the wolves, not to mention both of the minor leagues’ Burlington teams. (The Lake Monsters played in Burlington, Vermont.) And while some of these franchises may yet end up joining an existing non-affiliate league — the MLB Draft League has two spots available, according to the Washington Post, and the indy Atlantic League is currently down to just six teams and could add more — many will almost certainly follow the Staten Island Yankees into oblivion.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at how much public money was spent on stadiums for teams that have now been annihilated by MLB fiat:

Lowell Spinners: $11.2 million (construction, 1998)
Hagerstown Suns: $1.06 million (construction, 1930; renovations, 1981 and 1995)
Burlington Bees: $3 million (renovation, 2005)
Clinton LumberKings: $4.35 million (construction, 1937; renovation, 2006)
Kane County Cougars: $19.5 million (construction, 1991; renovations, 2008 and 2015)
Lexington Legends: privately funded
Charlotte Stone Crabs: $32.2 million (construction, 1987; renovation, 2009)
West Virginia Power: $25 million (construction, 2005)
Florida Fire Frogs: $45.9 million (construction, 2019)
Salem-Keizer Volcanoes: $6.8 million (construction, 1997)
Staten Island Yankees: $71 million (construction, 2001)
Batavia Muckdogs: $3 million (construction, 1996)
Auburn Doubledays: $3.145 million (construction, 1995)
Norwich Sea Unicorns: $9.3 million (construction, 1995)
Tri-City ValleyCats: $14 million (construction, 2002)
Vermont Lake Monsters: privately funded
Lancaster JetHawks: $14.5 million (construction, 1996)
Boise Hawks: privately funded

A couple of caveats: The Stone Crabs and Fire Frogs played at their big-league affiliates’ spring training sites, so those stadiums will still be in use on a lesser basis; and a couple of other stadiums get use as high school or college fields. Still, that’s $249 million in tax money down the toilet, with little hope of finding replacement teams in the future.

Little hope, I should say, without throwing more public money at the situation. You’ll note that a lot of those stadium construction dates above are from the 20th century — Centennial Park in Burlington, Vermont opened way back in 1906! — which is ancient in the what-have-you-built-for-us-lately world of pro sports. One of the reasons MLB gave for seeking to cut teams when it was first announced last year was to “improve Minor League Baseball’s stadium facilities,” and in fact the Boise Hawks owner specifically said he was told his team was marked for death because it was an age-defying 31 years old:

“We were told our current facility ultimately led to the decision,” [Hawks president Jeff] Eiseman said in a statement. “As we have stated since the day we purchased the Hawks, the venue is a challenge. The failure to not have replaced it in all of these prior years led to this move.”

Not having to pay as many minor-league salaries — in part by forcing minor leaguers to play as amateurs, whether in the new MLB Draft League or the conversion of the entire Appalachian League to a “college wood-bat league” — was obviously a prime reason for MLB’s restructuring of the minors, but increasing leverage for new or renovated stadiums could turn out to be the far more lucrative result. If Boise or Lexington or Batavia wants a new team, they will almost certainly be asked to upgrade their stadiums first; and if the cities that do get rewarded with teams, that will allow MLB to cast existing teams onto the scrap heap, in an endless cycle of stadium shakedowns.

Even now, the new minors structure isn’t 100% finalized: MLB and the surviving minor-league teams still need to work out a player-development contract that will determine exactly what each side will pay toward minor-league team costs; the Tacoma Rainiers owners have already released a statement that they “cannot accept the invitation until we’ve had time to review the deal that will govern our sport, and this relationship, for decades to come.” And there is still the possibility of antitrust lawsuits to fight the elimination of teams, since MLB has effectively taken control of all of its competitors for baseball fan dollars and ordered a bunch of them to shut down — recall that last year an unnamed MLB official told the New York Daily News’ Bill Madden, “My God, we’ll be sued all over the place from these cities that have built or refurbished ballparks with taxpayer money, and this will really put our anti-trust exemption in jeopardy.”

Still, a whole lot of minor-league baseball fans are about to lose their teams, and a whole lot of cities are about to see their investments in stadiums go up in smoke. And a whole lot of minor-league players are about to be, in essence, redefined as unpaid interns. Thus has it always been.

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