We have a lot to cover today, but first I would like to encourage you to donate to Matthew Sweet’s GoFundMe for stroke recovery if you’re a fan of his music and haven’t yet — he sounds like he’s in a bad way, he couldn’t afford health insurance on a musician’s income (especially being off the road for much of the last four years thanks to the pandemic), and needing to have health insurance is still a thing in the U.S. for some reason. Here’s hoping that the money raised will help allow him to make a significant recovery, and that someday even people without hit songs will be able to afford medical care and the Pentagon will need to hold a bake sale.
But enough about the unfairness of the modern American economic system, on to … well, you know:
- With the city of Cleveland considering whether to file suit under the Art Modell Law to force Cleveland Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam to offer the team for sale to local buyers before decamping to suburban Brook Park, the Haslams have taken the preemptive step of suing to block the Modell law on the grounds it violates the U.S. Constitution’s Commerce Clause and is too vague and probably a bunch of other things, the typography on the PDF is really hard to read. “Today’s action for declaratory judgment was filed to take this matter out of the political domain and ensure we can move this transformative project forward to make a new domed Huntington Bank Field in Brook Park a reality,” said Browns COO Dave Jenkins, which is a nice way of saying, “These damn ‘laws’ and ‘democratic procedures’ were getting in the way of our stadium plans, that could not be allowed.”
- Speaking of things getting in the way of the Browns’ Brook Park dome plans, Cuyahoga County executive Chris Ronayne has reiterated that he doesn’t want Ohio taxpayers footing $1.2 billion of the stadium bill, saying, “We have looked at the facts, and the facts are that, and I said it before, that the Brook Park play just doesn’t work. It doesn’t work from a financial standpoint, and it’s frankly very detrimental to our future.” Added Cleveland city law director Mark Griffin: “I want to say this to our state legislature … and to this court system: If you make moves to try to gut this city of one of our key corporate partners and money maker, all of us will remember. You will be up for reelection. You would have to deal with the city of Cleveland in some way, shape, form, or fashion, and none of us will ever forget it.”
- John Fisher will not be presenting any financial details of his Las Vegas Athletics stadium plan at the Las Vegas Stadium Authority’s October 31 meeting, I’m sure you’re all shocked to hear. The authority will discuss his proposed lease agreement for the stadium, but the actual language doesn’t appear to have been posted yet on the authority’s website, guess it’ll be a surprise! Marc Normandin has more on the Vegas clown show at Baseball Prospectus.
- The Green Bay Packers have agreed to future rent increases at Lambeau Field after previously demanding a rent freeze so it could instead put the rent savings into paying for stadium upgrades. The Green Bay council unanimously rejected that proposal, and Packers execs agreed to annual 2.75% rent increases worth about $30 million in total present value — turns out sometimes pro sports franchise owners do take “no” for an answer, though obviously the Packers are a bit of a special case in terms of franchise ownership.
- WTOP-TV quotes University of Maryland business professor Michael Faulkender as saying a renovated Washington Capitals and Wizards arena could benefit the surrounding Chinatown because “Generally when people come down for an event, they’re not just going to go straight to the event. They’re also going to, perhaps, come in early, go to restaurants, maybe stay afterward, go to bars,” which 1) they really don’t that much, 2) those that do are already there, since the arena is already in place. Faulkender added, “It may, on the margin, attract people to live closer to it, if they’re regular fans of one of those teams,” and attracting new residents to displace existing ones is exactly why people say the arena has been bad for D.C.’s Chinatown, Faulkender can just stop now, I think.
- If you were wondering what former Arizona Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo was up to and had your money on asking for tax kickbacks for a proposed $1 billion minor-league and college hockey arena in Reno, Nevada, you’re a winner!
- New York Gov. Kathy Hochul says her $1 billion Buffalo Bills stadium subsidy was necessary because five other cities were trying to steal the Bills otherwise. She didn’t name any of the cities, of course, but we know what one of them must have been.
- I wrote a long explainer for Defector this week on where the proposed Philadelphia 76ers arena deal falls on the bad-to-awful spectrum, if you’ve been wanting a long explainer on that. And I did an interview with ABC Tampa about where the Tampa Bay Rays might play next year with their stadium roof in tatters, if you want to hear me expound on that, or just missed seeing what I have on my living room walls.