Pensacola Blue Wahoos – Field of Schemes

Friday roundup: A’s and opponents jockey in advance of Tuesday council vote, and more minor-league subsidies, always more

July 16, 2021July 20, 2021 Neil deMause

Thanks, everybody, for sitting through a week of delayed posts while I travel. (Plus some sporadic technical glitches, which my web host hopes they can resolve this weekend.) As your reward, you get … the same Friday roundup you get every week! Don’t you feel special.

As the Oakland A’s owners turn up the heat on move threats in advance of next Tuesday’s Oakland city council hearing on their $855 million stadium subsidy plan, team president Dave Kaval has been scrambling for more nice things to say about Las Vegas now that there are no more Stanley Cup playoff games to tweet from. The latest: Tweeting a photo of himself standing next to (I think) a giant Elon Musk drill bit and calling his tour of Musk’s Boring Loop in Vegas the “future of transportation,” which is a great opportunity to remind everyone that it’s a one-lane tunnel for Teslas to drive really slowly in and not the future of anything at all. Also that we should all probably stop taking Kaval’s tweets seriously, lest it lead to serious analysis of the synergies of locating a baseball stadium near Billy Idol’s Vegas residency.
Opponents of the A’s plan are also turning up the heat, with protesters gathering outside the A’s offices on Wednesday to call for the team ownership to be held to affordable housing rules and to provide $1.5 million a year in money to aid anyone displaced by the project, while a former port commissioners penned an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle saying the project should be tweaked to reduce any adverse traffic or other impacts on nearby Chinatown. Both of which are reasonable requests, though neither would be nearly as important to Oakland residents as whether that $855 million changes hands — one of the big problems with community benefits agreements, as we’ve discussed previously, is that they end up being just a way for subsidy recipients to buy off opposition with a small cut of their boodle, so we’ll have to see how this plays out.
Also next Tuesday, the Anaheim city council will be conducting a public discussion on whether the city’s sale of stadium land to Los Angeles Angels owner Arte Moreno may have been illegal, as the California Department of Housing and Community Development warned back in April. There is no way I’m livetweeting or liveblogging or liveanythinging two cities’ council hearings in one day, and anyway this doesn’t appear to be an official public hearing that gets streamed online because it’s not on the council calendar, but if anyone finds a link to video, feel free to post it here in comments.
Pensacola has agreed to give $2 million to the Blue Wahoos for stadium upgrades in exchange for a ten-year lease extension, which team owner Quint Studer calls “a win-win” because the Wahoos pay around $700,000 a year in rent — this is definitely an argument you should try with your landlord! The renovation will in part be paid for by diverting nearly $1 million that had been set aside for pedestrian improvements and bike lanes on downtown Reus Street, so everybody in Pensacola, try not to get hit by any cars for the next couple of years, it’s for the good of moving the minor-league team’s bullpens, doncha know.
Wichita Wind Surge CEO Jordan Kobritz says his team could use a share of the Minor League Baseball Relief Act’s proposed $550 million in bailout money because when the 2020 season was canceled, “a lot of clubs, including us, lived off lines of credit.” Plus, you know, that $518,000 in PPP money you got, don’t forget to mention that, Jordan.
I think I’m going to stop linking to mindless boostery zero-evidence articles about how much sports teams do for their local economies, because I don’t want to reward them with clicks, but suffice to say they’re still happening: If you really want to find one, search for the quote “We’re a champ city man, this is Champa Bay!” by someone who is only identified as a “fan.” #deathofjournalism

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Friday roundup: Big-league owners seek big-money land deals, while in the minors they’ll just take a check, thanks

June 4, 2021June 4, 2021 Neil deMause

Holy moley, all the news this week! No time for clever repartee, let’s dive right in:

The Cleveland Indians owners are “well along” on a lease extension beyond the expiration of their current deal in 2023, says Gateway Board Chairman Ken Silliman, in exchange for stadium upgrades that according to WKYC-TV will be “in the tens of millions, if not more,” which will be paid for by … whoops, looks like WKYC’s reporter forgot to ask about that, though they did note that Silliman mentioned the possibility of selling development rights around the stadium and using the proceeds for the Indians when this last came up over a year ago. Keep an eye on this one.
Speaking of land development deals, remember that one that Boston Red Sox owner John Henry was seeking back in February to build a ton of skyscrapers near Fenway Park and tae over a public street? Well, he and his partners officially submitted them to Boston this week, though they made sure to note that they weren’t proposing to build a “sports theme park” and that “the Project should feel like the neighborhood is enveloping the ballpark, and not that the ballpark is spreading its influence into the neighborhood.” There’s no lease extension in play here since the Sox own Fenway Park, and no public money (that we know of), so this one would just be the city doing a favor for a local billionaire by approving his massive redevelopment plans, which is standard operating procedure — whether you consider that more or less egregious than handing out special favors to sports teams is between you and your economic belief system.
And speaking further of the same thing, lots of Nevada legislators say they wouldn’t want to spend public money on a new baseball stadium to lure the Oakland A’s to Las Vegas, but providing free land and development rights? Mmmaybe.
Not to be left out, Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan has followed up the collapse of his Lot J redevelopment plans by seeking a $441 million development project that would include a new practice stadium, which would include $93 million in public cash, plus maybe a discounted land price, it’s really hard to tell from reading the term sheet. Anyway, it’s another data point that the Los Angeles Angels land-rights subsidy model is the new game in town, for Big Four sports owners, anyway.
Meanwhile, in minor-league baseball, Reading Fightin Phils general manager Scott Hunsicker says the team’s owners “have no intention of ever leaving Reading” but also if their stadium doesn’t get about $15 million for bigger locker rooms and other sundries, “Major League Baseball could terminate our license here in Reading and Major League Baseball could at that point give the license to somebody else, somebody in another city,” maybe a city that just lost its team like Williamsport, State College or Trenton. Yep, minor league contraction is working its subsidy-grubbing magic just like it was planned to.
The Pensacola Blue Wahoos are only set to get $2 million in public cash for their MLB-mandated upgrades, but same deal as the Fightin Phils. Every penny (or 200 million pennies) counts!
Not to be left out, the Los Angeles Angels are getting $40.9 million in public money for upgrades to their minor-league stadium in Tempe, Arizona, in exchange for extending their lease for 13 years, through 2035. No more details from the Arizona Republic about where Tempe will get the cash, but there is a bunch of stuff about how the stadium was originally built by the short-lived Seattle Pilots, so that’s kind of interesting, I guess?
The Toronto Blue Jays are playing temporarily in Buffalo while Canada works to vaccinate enough citizens to be able to reopen, which led WGRZ-TV to ask: Could Buffalo get a permanent MLB team? Their answer: No, almost certainly not, Buffalo barely has 250,000 people, what are you even saying? No wonder the Bills are moving to Greensboro.
When Cobb County wanted an extra $2 million to cover expenses related to this summer’s MLB All-Star Game — back before the game got moved to Denver after Georgia passed its new voting restriction law — county finance director Bill Volckmann claimed the expense would generate between $37 million and $190 million in economic impact, without providing any methodology at all for how those figures were calculated. Here is economist Victor Matheson pointing and laughing at him.
The USFL Is coming back! With original team names! But not necessarily original cities! No, I don’t know how that works, but the league is partly owned by Fox Sports, so expect the games to be aired out of order and then the season to be canceled right when people are starting to get interested.
Also MLS is planning to launch a league for its franchises’ B teams, which currently mostly play in the USL, which you might think would put a damper on the USL expanding by as many as 35 teams, but that’s not how Ponzi schemes work.
Note to Cleveland.com reporter Steven Litt: Please do not use “gain yardage” to refer to progress by the local sports team owner in getting public money, it conflates rooting for the team with rooting for the owner, I covered this more than 20 years ago, seriously.

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Friday roundup: Climate-doomed sports cities, a $500m video-game arena, and tax breaks to allay pirate fears

February 26, 2021 Neil deMause

Happy Friday, everyone! If you’ve been thinking, Gee, what with vaccines rolling out and the end of the pandemic maybe finally imaginable, I could really use some other global catastrophe to experience existential panic about, Defector and I have you covered with an article about which U.S. sports cities are most likely the first to be made uninhabitable by climate change. No spoilers here, but suffice to say that if you’ve been holding out the last 64 years for the return of the Rochester Royals to the NBA, this might be your lucky century.

And in the newsier news:

Pittsburgh Penguins owners Ron Burkle and Mario Lemieux were among the slew of developers and landholders who successfully lobbied the Trump administration last year to redraw Census maps to expand Opportunity Zones, earning who the hell knows how much money in tax breaks as a result. This may sound like a blatant cash grab that isn’t available to normal people who don’t have lobbyists on payroll, but just wait until you hear about the St. Croix hemp farmer who says that without tax breaks he would have trouble finding investors in the U.S. Virgin Islands because “people have ideas of pirates and all this sort of thing,” and then think about how little he probably paid for his land there after telling the seller, “I dunno, man, it’s probably infested with pirates,” and then you’ll know for sure.
The owner of two separate Toronto esports teams (one an Overwatch team and one a Call of Duty team, if you think I’m going to dignify them with boldface team names you’re nuts) has announced plans for a 7,000-seat venue to host them, at a cost of $500 million. Wut? I mean, it will also be able to host concerts (its designer called it neither “a sports arena nor an opera house” but “a new typology that straddles the two,” which he got “new” right, anyway), but still, half a billion dollars for a 7,000-seat theater with lots of big screens? Also, the developers already announced this last July, just without the $500 million price tag, so good job, guys, if you leaked the large number now just to get attention, as it’s working. No word yet on whether they’d want public money or tax breaks or anything for this, but you have to think they’d be crazy to spend all their own money on this.
Add the Pensacola Blue Wahoos to the list of minor-league baseball teams trying to use the downsizing of the minors to shake down cities for stadium improvements. Sure, it’s only $2 million, but it’s also only to secure a ten-year lease extension, which means they can demand more money in 2031 … if Florida is still above sea level by then. (Oop, damn, the spoiler thing again, sorry.)
The Oakland A’s owners may have won their lawsuit to fast-track any environmental challenges to their proposed Howard Terminal stadium (which, by the way, is in an area likely to be among the first to be inundated by sea level rise — oops, I said no spoilers), but lawsuits can be appealed! There, I just saved you $52 a year on an Athletic subscription.
I’ve been only marginally following Everton F.C.‘s plans for a new £500 million stadium on the Liverpool waterfront — holding 52,000 people, eat that, Overwatch barons — but there are some mostly dull new renderings out. Also the team’s owners are claiming that moving from one part of town to another will add £1 billion to the local economy, which just goes to show that even when all they’re asking for is a city loan that they’ll repay with interest, sports team owners can’t stop going to the “money will rain like manna from heaven” page in the stadium playbook.
The Columbus Crew have fresh renderings out of their new stadium, and do they include people throwing their hands in the air and gesturing wildly to things they want to buy at a bar to show how excited they are to be at a soccer match and ignoring the game so they can sit indoors with a bunch of other uniformly young and attractive people? You bet they do!

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