Colorado Switchbacks – Field of Schemes

Plague of minor-league soccer stadium subsidy demands reaches pandemic proportions

August 17, 2022 Neil deMause

Oh hey, USL press release about the ill-fated Pawtucket soccer stadium project, which utterly fails to mention either the metastasizing public costs or the fact that Rhode Island voters now oppose funding it by a 44-35% margin. Anything else in there of actual interest?

Tidewater Landing becomes one of five current stadium projects that are under construction in the USL Championship and USL League One, including one for a future USL Championship club in Des Moines, Iowa. There are another 11 stadium projects approved or in development across USL Championship and League One, following clubs such as Colorado Springs Switchbacks FC, Louisville City FC, Monterey Bay F.C., and Chattanooga Red Wolves SC, whose new homes have opened in recent years.

So, five stadiums under construction (or at least having had a groundbreaking, which lets Pawtucket qualify even though funding hasn’t gotten final approval) and 11 others “in development” — that’s rather a lot, even for a league that currently sports 38 teams across two levels in an attempt to take over the U.S. soccer world by sheer volume. The press release doesn’t specify which cities the USL is currently getting or seeking stadiums in, so with the help of the Field of Schemes archives and Reddit, let’s attempt a rundown in rough order of approvalness:

The Colorado Springs Switchbacks just got a new $35 million stadium with $13 million in city funding.
Birmingham Legion F.C. has a new stadium funded by a 3% car rental tax surcharge.
Spokane’s as-yet-unnamed team has a $31 million brand-new publicly funded stadium that the team owners are putting another $4 million into renovating, despite it being brand-new.
South Georgia Tormenta F.C., yep, that’s its name, has a new stadium under construction.
Indy Eleven‘s owner has been sitting on $112 million in state money for over three years now, but still needs another $38 million and doesn’t have it (or doesn’t want to spend it).
Queensboro F.C. started construction last summer on its new stadium on a public college campus, oh no wait, it got delayed until this summer, I really need to take a drive out there and see what if anything is happening on the site.
The Des Moines Menace owners are seeking “less than $45 million” for a new stadium there.
New Mexico United had its $50 million stadium subsidy request turned down by voters last November, but still isn’t giving up the fight for public money.
Dunno whether Sacramento Republic F.C.‘s stadium ($33 million in city money approved toward a $100 million–plus total) counts as USL because that’s where the team plays now or MLS because that’s where the team wants to play, but it’s still in the hopper somewhere.
Pawtucket’s as-yet-nonexistent team is looking at getting $80 million in state and city money and rising toward a $124 million stadium.
The Greenville Triumph have “plans,” though no actual money yet.
New Orleans is getting a team, and presumably needs a stadium, but no one is saying where or who will pay for it.
Likewise Lexington, whose team has plans for a new stadium that will require “city support” but not “city dollars,” whatever that means.
Potential Portland, Maine owners are shopping around for a stadium site.
An ownership group in Wilmington, North Carolina has “exclusive rights to negotiate” with the city for a stadium in order to get a team.
Grand Rapids, them too.
Fort Wayne F.C. has a semipro USL League Two team and wants to move up to pro and also wants a new stadium and has renderings with fireworks, that’s always a good start.
Baltimore, maybe?
Fort Worth, possibly.
Milwaukee, maybe?
Tulsa, maybe?

That’s 19 potential projects, though only maybe ten of them could be considered in progress, and for some of those you’d have to squint really hard. John Mozena of the Center for Economic Accountability, the people behind those excellent stickers, has a Twitter thread about this whole kerfuffle, in which he points out that sports stadiums, thanks to being closed and empty most of the time, have less economic impact than your typical supermarket or chain food store:

That's the reality of stadiums. They suck at "economic development" because they sit dark, empty and silent for all but a few hours a week at best. (Also, the jobs in and around them tend to be part-time, low-wage and seasonal.)

— John Mozena (@johnmoz) August 16, 2022

If there’s a silver lining to all this, it’s that most of the USL stadium campaigns appear to be spinning their wheels to various degrees. If there’s whatever is the opposite of a silver lining, it’s that none of the potential team owners are giving up, because why stop grabbing for that brass subsidy ring if you can maybe get tens of millions of dollars if you get lucky? Not sure if the USL qualifies as a Ponzi scheme yet, but it’s certainly striving to head in that direction.

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Every city in U.S. now building a soccer stadium, or at least it seems like it

November 13, 2019November 19, 2020 Neil deMause

Some days it seems like this site is turning into Soccer Pitch of Schemes. I mean, seriously, check this out:

The Sacramento city council unanimously approved a $27 million “loan” to the new Sacramento Republic F.C. MLS team for stadium roads and traffic and transit infrastructure, which isn’t really a loan because team owner Ron Burkle will be paying it back with taxes he’d normally pay anyway.
The Colorado Springs city council approved $13 million in public funding for a $35 million, 8,000-seat stadium for the Colorado Springs Switchbacks USL team.
The long-rumored Queensboro F.C. has been awarded a USL franchise to begin play in 2021; this time, instead of a new soccer stadium next door to the New York Mets‘ stadium, they’ll allegedly play in a “new, modular stadium at York College in Queens that will have a capacity of around 7,500” and also “select home matches at Citi Field, home of MLB’s New York Mets.” Here is York College; I suppose you could set up a whole bunch of temporary bleachers on the track, but having enough room for seating and concessions and parking seems like a non-trivial issue, and also York College is a city university, so shouldn’t the city council really be voting on this?
The New Mexico state legislature is set to consider spending $30 million on a $100 million stadium for New Mexico United, which is currently in the USL but could maybe be in MLS someday, if you squint just right.
The Miami city commission put off a vote on Inter Miami‘s stadium plans, but by the time it does vote next month one vocal opponent will have been term-limited off the commission.

The reason for this flood of soccer stadium building has less to do with soccer being the sport of millennials or whatever, and more to do with there being umpteen gazillion soccer teams in the U.S. now, and more on the way, and lots of them not having brand-new stadiums of their own because sometimes there just isn’t time to do that before you have to collect some more expansion fees, you know? Which should cut both ways — if MLS and the USL alike are going to expand to every city with its own post office, you’d think that cities wouldn’t need to spend big bucks on stadium funding in order to have a shot at a franchise — but here we have Switchbacks president Nick Ragain saying of the Colorado Springs vote that “what it means is we have a long-term professional soccer team in Colorado Springs,” and nobody in the media rolling their eyes, so I guess these are questions that are not asked in polite society.

And speaking of soccer and the media not rolling their eyes, yes, an Argentine football team celebrated the reopening of its stadium with a giant holographic flaming lion as many of you have emailed and tweeted at me, but also it’s not really a hologram and fans in the stadium couldn’t even see it except on TV screens. Number of news articles pointing this out: one; number of news articles going “Oooooh, fiery lion!”: more than I can count.

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Friday roundup: Delayed votes, poorly considered tributes, and a no-LeBron loan offer

August 10, 2018August 10, 2018 Neil deMause

Greetings from my undisclosed location! I have time for an abbreviated news roundup this week:

Colorado Springs may use tax increment financing to build a new stadium for its Switchbacks USL team (if you think that’s an odd name, just look at what the city’s minor-league baseball team is going to be called), and the mayor previously campaigned saying he’d require a public vote on any stadium funding, but now says nah, not gonna happen.
The Columbus Crew fan group Save the Crew released renderings of a downtown soccer stadium it’s proposing, which would have some sort of translucent roof supported by full-stadium-width beams and 30-foot-wide stairways and an enormous video board taking up one corner and you know, these are renderings by a fan group, so I really won’t make fun of them. Much.
St. Petersburg has started mapping out plans for the Tropicana Field site when and if the Rays move to a new stadium, with talk of a mixed-use project called the Gas Plant District, which the Tampa Bay Times notes “harkens to the African-American neighborhood the city bulldozed decades ago to build the then-Florida Suncoast Dome.” That’s maybe not the tribute the African-American former residents would prefer? (Also not the proper use of “harken“; the Times means “hark back to.”)
The New York Times’ Michael Powell notes what we all knew already, which is that LeBron James is gone from Cleveland but the Cavaliers‘ publicly funded arena renovations are still going forward. Though he does add: “City and county leaders plan to use a portion of the tax on Cavaliers playoff tickets to help pay off the arena bonds. That looks like a dodgy bet right now as the Cavaliers, shorn of James, may not even make the playoffs.” Whoops! The Cavs are apparently offering to loan the city and county the money if there’s any shortfall; Powell doesn’t say if they’ll charge interest.
Anthony Precourt’s lawyer says some of the Austin MLS stadium amendments proposed by the city council contain “poison pills,” though he’s also pushing for a final vote to be taken today instead of being postponed to next week so councilmembers can read over all the proposals, so that’s exactly what you’d expect him to say. I’ll likely be offline when the vote does or doesn’t happen today, so somebody please update in comments, thanks!

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