Happy zeroth anniversary of that time we decided to all die of bird flu! It’s a fitting way to go out, honestly.
While we’re still here, though, there’s plenty of other stuff to keep getting wrong in the meantime:
- A company affiliated with the Kansas City Royals has bought the mortgage to a potential stadium site in Kansas’s Johnson County, and … guys, you know that buying the mortgage isn’t anything like buying the land, it just means the property owner makes their payments to you instead of to the original mortgage issuer, right? Sure, if the property owner defaults, you get the land, but that’s a slim thread on which to hang a potential stadium plan — unless of course you’re just looking for easy ways to get “Royals” and “Kansas” into a headline to throw a scare into Missouri, in which case, nice outside-the-box thinking there.
- Speaking of moving to Kansas, two economists have looked at that state’s STAR tax diversion deal and determined that there’s no way the state can build even one stadium, let alone two, without cannibalizing existing revenue. “A majority of Kansas lawmakers disagree,” reports the Kansas City Beacon, meaning “whether STAR bonds can support one or two teams depends on who you ask” — if you ask people who know what they’re talking about, you get one answer, if you ask people just grandstanding on behalf of the edifice complex you get another, whoda thunk it!
- Over in Missouri, meanwhile, a group of Republican senators are refusing to consider Chiefs and Royals stadium funding unless the state approves new tax cuts, while Democrats are objecting to spending billions on stadiums when the state is only providing $25 million to tornado relief. “It’s not coming together just swimmingly as of right now,” summed up state Sen. Lincoln Hough.
- At least one Missouri legislator is still on board: Republican Sen. Mike Cierpiot said spending on stadiums is worth it because “we’re not giving this money to billionaires. We’re giving it to the stadiums, which is owned by the county.” That’s not how stadium ownership works, unfortunately — owning stadiums just costs you property taxes, what’s important is to own the revenue streams from them, and here those would be controlled by the team owners — and isn’t how number agreement works either, this really isn’t going swimmingly.
- Over on the other side of Missouri, meanwhile, a state audit has found that the Dome at America’s Center — that’s the former home of the St. Louis Rams, not a missile shield program — needs $155 million in maintenance over the next decade, and while that’s not all that much all things considered, the dome is losing money just hosting St. Louis Battlehawks UFL games and the occasional concert, so, you guessed it, the St. Louis Regional Convention and Sports Complex Authority is considering asking for state money. If they can find a way to increase that maintenance price to $500 million, they could qualify for funding under Gov. Mike Kehoe’s everybody-gets-a-stadium plan, I bet diamond-encrusted cupholders would go a long way toward meeting that requirement.
- And to answer your question, yes, there was some news this week that was not in Missouri or Kansas! Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis vowed not to provide any state money for a Tampa Bay Rays stadium — except for “roads and exits,” of course, gotta have roads and exits. And stairs and ramps are really exits of a kind, right? Not that any local governments are really proposing a new stadium for the Rays at this time, so DeSantis is unlikely to get called on his promise, but it’ll be interesting to see what happens if he’s in office long enough that he does.
- This New York Times op-ed is getting a lot of likes for its headline (“Sports Stadiums Are Monuments to the Poverty of Our Ambitions”), but fewer seem to be reading down to the part that argues that “cities build stadiums in part because it’s so hard to build almost anything else,” which is presented without evidence and isn’t really historically true, but it’s of the moment because something something Ezra Klein.
- Does everyone who plays at the don’t-call-us-Sacramento Athletics‘ ad hoc stadium still hate it? You betcha! Sports Illustrated speculates that John Fisher could consider relocating the team again, perhaps to Salt Lake City, but notes that then he wouldn’t be able to get sweet Northern California TV money, and … remind me what size TV market his intended destination of Las Vegas is again? Hmm.
- And finally, this week in one-sentence media criticism:
Why investigate the public financing of a billion-dollar stadium when you can post pictures of Trisha and Garth with hardhats and shovels?
— J.C. Bradbury (@jcbradbury.bsky.social) 2025-05-30T12:31:50.461Z