You want some shittier news? How about the New York Mets being on the verge of agreeing to an 18-year lease extension for their Syracuse Chiefs Triple-A team, just as soon as the city and state agree to $22.4 million in renovation subsidies?
[Onondaga County deputy executive Bill] Fisher said $8.5 million of the funding would come through bonding. At least another $3.6 million would be kicked in from the county and the Mets from stadium naming rights revenue (the current deal expires after 2025).
Fisher believes once the county locks in its approval, the state will toss in a dollar-for-dollar match of that $12.1 million foundation. That would bring the total pot to at least $24.2 million.
That’s a public expense of $1.24 million a year for each year the soon-to-be-remonikered Chiefs stay in town, which is between 8% and 33% of what some major-league franchises have extracted in terms of lease extensions — so you can either look at it that Syracuse cut a better deal than St. Petersburg did for the Tampa Bay Lightning, or that Syracuse spent a third as much as St. Pete did per year and only got a minor-league baseball team, not the NHL Atlantic Division champions.
Either way, I look forward to hearing how New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo will explain how keeping the Chiefs in Syracuse will totally be worth $12.1 million to the people of New York state, because of all the tourists the team draws in from, I guess, Vermont and Pennsylvania? Or maybe he’ll just raise his hands in victory over his head and declare, “Hey, at least we’re still better off than Worcester! Excelsior!”