Not even sure how many people are out there reading this rather than still Thanksgivinging (Canadians, right?), but the news sure hasn’t taken a break for the short holiday week:
- As noted in an update to Wednesday’s post about the billions of dollars Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kroenke and the NFL could be on the hook for in the city and county of St. Louis’s lawsuit over the team leaving town, the league and city have reportedly come to a settlement agreement where the league will pay St. Louis $790 million to make the suit go away. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that “the league will determine internally how much will be shouldered by Kroenke and how much by the league and owners” (according to “sources with firsthand knowledge of the settlement”), which should be a fun owners’ meeting for ESPN to do one of its in-depth exposes on. St. Louis University law professor (and former minor-league pitcher suing MLB for violating minimum-wage laws for its minor leaguers) Garrett Broshuis called the settlement “a wake-up call to the NFL,” which, sure, maybe it’ll stop the league from threatening to move teams at the drop of a hat, or maybe at least give local officials some backbone in telling the league, “You just go ahead and try, we’ll see you in court.” Or maybe it’ll just get the league to rewrite its relocation guidelines so they’re not so litigable, or send its owners for training in how not to put in writing letters to fans about their pending move before the league approved it, or at least how not to call it an “Adios, MFs” letter. Either way, at least St. Louis will get $790 million that it can now spend on something more productive than an NFL stadium, which is an undeniable win, whether or not it’s ever repeated.
- Talk of relocating Madison Square Garden to make way for a new Penn Station, which has been ongoing for more than eight years and was still in play as recently as this January, is apparently off the table now that it’s been determined it would cost $8.6 billion to do so and taxpayers would have to foot the bill “to avoid lingering MSG complications that would arise with no buyout.” This according to the minutes of a June 1 behind-closed-doors meeting of state development officials and local legislators that was uncovered by the government-watch group Reinvent Albany last week. Metropolitan Transportation Authority chair Janno Lieber went on to add this week in a state hearing that taking time to negotiate for the relocation of the Knicks and Rangers would be “a guarantee that Penn Station won’t be fixed for, I think, another generation,” so really, forget about all that. None of this should stop talk of finally repealing that full property tax break that was supposed to expire in 1992 but instead keeps rebating more than $50 million to the MSG owners every year, but new Gov. Kathy Hochul apparently isn’t interested in doing so; the New York Daily News notes that MSG’s political action committee donated $5,000 to Hochul’s reelection campaign fund in September, which is either a coincidence, a reward for services rendered, or the chintziest bribe ever.
- Baltimore’s arena is set to get a $150 million renovation from arena managers Oak View Group — the city’s Board of Estimates voted to approve the deal on Wednesday, but I haven’t been able to track down the actual lease and operating agreement yet to see what if anything the city is giving up — which means we’re getting the usual batch of renderings what the
I have no idea what any of this has to do with a sports/concert arena or why the weird ceiling lighting appears to be reflected in the floor or who that bare-midriffed woman is whose image towers over the (squints) Top Sail Wine Bar, but presumably we’ll find out in due time. - Twenty-one out of 23 Ohio economists surveyed last week say that the economic benefits of sports stadiums don’t outweigh their subsidy costs, which is kind of a dumb way of asking it — you would think it would depend on how much subsidies are, which is actually something raised by several of the individual respondents — but we get the point.
- The Newfoundland Growlers have been evicted from their arena in St. John’s during an investigation by the city into allegations of “disrespectful workplace conduct,” and their owner is now trying to turn that into a bidding war by surrounding communities to let him build the new arena that he’s been wanting for a while anyway. Maybe if my idea for a Sunday Night Kroenke series doesn’t pan out, someone could take a stab at this one? David Simon, this has your name all over it!
