Category: Uncategorized

D.C. approves $200m or more in spending on Nats stadium upgrades, calls this “no new cost” to taxpayers

access_time personNeil deMause

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, the day when the United States celebrates the ancestors of some of its ruling class accepting lavish gifts from local residents, while famously providing in exchange smallpox and pain and degradation.

In completely unrelated news, the Washington, D.C. council voted yesterday to approve $515 million in upgrades for the Capitals and Wizards arena that we’ve known about since April, and while doing so they also approved funneling a large but unspecified amount (more on that momentarily) of tax money to the Nationals for upgrades to their stadium, in exchange for the team continuing to play in D.C. for an additional 13 seasons:

On Tuesday, the D.C. Council passed legislation to create a dedicated stream of revenue that the Nationals could use for upgrades and maintenance at Nationals Park, with no new costs to D.C. …

“We’re talking about a site that is generating 150 events per year,” [councilmember Charles] Allen said of the ballpark. “That type of return on investment is what we want, the same way the arena is a place where 250-plus events is creating the investment and the return that comes back on that. It’s a bit ironic we’re voting on both these things on the same day — we don’t want to find ourselves in a position like we did last year.”

Allen did not mention that although the district paid to build the stadium and owns it, Nats owner Mark Lerner gets to keep all the revenue from those 150 events a year. D.C. does get $5.5 million a year in rent from the team, plus whatever sliver of sales tax money it gets from those events that would not be spent in the city otherwise, but that’s nowhere near enough to cover the roughly $30 million a year D.C. is on the hook for in stadium debt. The rest is covered by district business and additional sales taxes that are being diverted to pay off stadium bonds.

Those bonds will paid off soon, though, thanks to tax proceeds coming in — and going back out to pay for the stadium — faster than expected. Which means those tax streams will soon be available to D.C. to pay for other public needs. Or would be, if Lerner weren’t angling to get it for future stadium upgrades instead. As a previous Washington Post article from January noted:

[D.C. Council Chair Phil] Mendelson’s legislation would create the Ballpark Maintenance Fund, ensuring a steady stream of dedicated money — with no new costs to D.C. — that could go toward repairs and improvements that the Nationals had been asking for under the terms of the team’s lease at the ballpark with the city….

“We made a commitment to the team we would build the stadium and we would maintain it, and we just don’t need these stories about deferred maintenance and failing scoreboards,” he said. “So let’s provide a certain path that we’re going to maintain our facility and maintain it as a very attractive ballpark in the major leagues.”

That’s two separate Post articles saying the new funding would be at “no new costs to D.C.,” which is wrong on two counts: 1) D.C. already shelled out the money it promised the Nats owners to pay for stadium construction, so handing over any leftover tax money as well is absolutely a new cost, and 2) the Mendelson legislation would continue to kick back stadium sales tax proceeds and Nats rent payments after the team’s current lease expires in 2037, which is even more a new cost.

How much in new public subsidies this would add up to is unclear: Ol’ “Democracy Dies in Darkness” didn’t bother to calculate a figure, and the D.C. council website doesn’t appear to have entered the bill into the record yet. But if we assume it would amount to at least 13 more years of the same $5.5 million a year in rent and roughly $12.5 million in sales tax money, plus whatever is left over in the current stadium account … let’s estimate the total at upwards of $200 million and leave it at that, though it obviously could end up much more. Lerner still has to okay a lease extension through 2050 to cash his check; one hopes that the D.C. council will post any new lease terms for the public to read, but one probably shouldn’t hope too hard.

This kind of last-minute-before-holiday-weekend stadium renovations approval is going around: Harris County, Texas just approved $35 million in fresh spending on new scoreboards for the Houston Texans to avoid “an embarrassing, unrecoverable failure mid-season.” (No, it wasn’t explained what kind of scoreboard failure would be “embarrassing [and] unrecoverable”; they just can’t get spare parts for the old displays, so presumably we’re not talking about something like this.) And that’s only part of potentially $264 million in upgrades the county is looking at making over 20 years, quintuple its current operating budget for repairs. The grift that keeps on giving is a nice benefit, if you can convince the natives to cough it up.

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Friday roundup: Browns officially want $1.2B for Brook Park dome, Chiefs will take whatever stadium money someone offers

access_time personNeil deMause

Thanks to those who’ve re-upped as FoS supporters in recent days without my reminding you. There are still a handful of numbered Vaportecture art prints left, so donate now if you think that’s the kind of thing you’d like, or if you don’t want that thing near your house at all but just want to support the work of this site.

Speaking of work, there’s a whole lot of it today:

  • Cleveland Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam have confirmed they are indeed focusing on a new domed stadium in suburban Brook Park, releasing a statement yesterday saying, “The transformative economic opportunities created by a dome far outweigh what a renovated stadium could produce with around 10 events per year.” The statement also said that “this stadium will not use existing taxpayer-funded streams that would divert resources from other more pressing needs,” which neatly obscures the fact that it would use $1.2 billion in new taxpayer-funded streams that would divert resources from other more pressing needs. And headlines like “It’s official: Cleveland Browns moving to Brook Park” remain premature, since nobody in state or local government has approved the $1.2 billion in tax money yet, so really we’re still just at “Browns owners’ #1 choice is someone giving them $1.2 billion,” and who wouldn’t want $1.2 billion? I bet you could roll around in it real nice.
  • Speaking of non-announcements, Kansas City Chiefs owner Clark Hunt says he might want to move to a new stadium in Kansas, or move to a new stadium in Missouri, or renovate his current stadium in Missouri, whatcha got? “I certainly don’t expect to have anything finalized by [next spring], but I’d like to know the direction that we’re heading in that time frame,” said Hunt, which isn’t even a fake deadline, come on, man, don’t you know you’re supposed to set a date and then move it later if necessary? Do I have to call you up and read Chapter 4 to you out loud?
  • In extremely unsurprising news, NFL owners unanimously approved Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan’s plan to accept $775 million in public money to pay for stadium upgrades. “The NFL believes in Jacksonville. I believe in Jacksonville, and I know our fans and the people throughout the community believe in Jacksonville,” Khan said after the vote from London, where his team will keep on playing one “home” game a year under the new deal because one can always believe in two places at once.
  • As if Chicago doesn’t have enough new stadium demands, Chicago Fire owner Joe Mansueto says he’s looking at building a soccer-specific stadium as well. Mansueto says it would be privately funded, but they all say that, so if he does settle on a location and a plan, it’s worth keeping an eye on the fine print.
  • For everyone writing up your “Where will the Tampa Bay Rays play in 2025?” articles, please cross Durham, North Carolina off the list, Bulls management says there’s no room there. Also if you’re wondering what is being done with the Rays stadium roof that was blown off last week, you can buy bits of it on eBay.
  • Green Bay Packers management says it wants to sign a 30-year lease extension on Lambeau Field and pay for all stadium upgrades in that time and just wants the city of Green Bay to freeze its rent in exchange. That’s probably not a terrible deal, but it would cost city taxpayers something — $30 million, according to city operations chief Joe Faulds — and the current lease runs through 2032 with a 10-year team extension option, so one can see why the city might not jump at the chance. Anyway, let this be a reminder that even fan-owned sports teams can demand public money, nonprofits got the profit motive too.
  • It took 27 years for this Tom the Dancing Bug cartoon to come true, but with cities like Tulsa offering cash payments for remote workers to relocate to their cities, you too can now be Ned Balter.
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Friday roundup: St. Pete council says loud parts quiet on Rays stadium, A’s Vegas plans get even murkier

access_time personNeil deMause

Another week has run its course, but before we get to the remaining news tidbits, we have one new news item to attend to:

The St. Petersburg city council took up its discussion of a Tampa Bay Rays stadium project yesterday, and team execs led by releasing a pile of new renderings, no doubt figuring correctly that even if they don’t show much more than the old renderings — we still don’t see the inside of the stadium, for one thing — they’d still dominate the news coverage. Rays execs still had to answer questions at the council “workshop,” though, and questions there sure were, including about guarantees that affordable housing will be built, why the city should be on the hook for $142 million in infrastructure costs, whether the community benefits agreement could provide more community benefits, and whether the projected tax revenues to pay for the whole mess depend on monkeys flying out of J.C. Bradbury’s butt.

Nobody on the council appears to have asked the “$1.5 billion in public subsidies, really?” question, though. Tampa Bay Times columnist John Romano, who’s staked out a position as a critical-but-not-too-critical advocate for the deal, called this “refreshing” because “no one attacked it as a nonsensical corporate giveaway.” (Karla Correa of the St. Pete Tenant Union did say “We desperately need public housing, we don’t need more of these public, private partnerships” and “we should not be giving away upwards of a billion dollars of our taxpayer’s dollars,” but she said it at a protest outside the council hearing, so she doesn’t count, I guess.) One of the more critical councilmembers, Richie Floyd, when asked if there were enough votes on the council to kill the deal, said “no,” so it sounds like the council debate will mostly be nibbling around the edges; there’ll be another workshop session next month, which may shed more light on the likely endgame.

Okay, now the news tidbits:

  • Oakland A’s owner John Fisher may have selected the site of the old Tropicana hotel for a new Las Vegas stadium, but it turns out he and landowner Bally’s still don’t know which part of the site the stadium would go on, and NBC Sports has the explanation: “because the project’s master plan has yet to be completed.” That’s, uh, not actually an explanation, it’s just saying the same thing a different way? Anyway, add “Where exactly will it go?” to “How will it fit?” and “Who will pay for it?” and “Will the public money approved so far get overturned by referendum or lawsuit?” on the list of unanswered questions about the soon-to-be officially cityless Athletics franchise’s future stadium plans.
  • Ohio House Speaker Jason Stephens says he’s against giving $600 million in state money toward $1.2 billion in public funding for a $2.4 billion Cleveland Browns stadium in Brook Park, because “we don’t have $600 million to give” and “it’s really easy to not support it when you don’t have it.” Then Stephens said he would prefer to raise the money by selling bonds, which suggests he either isn’t really against it or doesn’t understand that bonds have to be repaid somehow — apply Hanlon’s Razor as you see fit.
  • DaRon McGee, the Jackson County legislator who introduced the sales tax hike plan to funnel $500 million or so to the Kansas City Royals and Chiefs for stadium projects before it was trounced in a public vote, turns out to have asked the Royals’ stadium front man and team owner John Sherman’s personal assistant for box seats to a game in the run-up to negotiations. McGee says it’s all cool, he paid for the tickets now that somebody noticed, get off his case, okay?
  • The Richmond city council voted to issue $170 million in bonds to build a new stadium for the Double-A Flying Squirrels, to be repaid by hotel and restaurant tax surcharges in the stadium district. The plan was immediately met by a lawsuit from local attorney Paul Goldman saying the bonds should have gone to a voter referendum; Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney dismissed Goldman as a “gadfly,” which is at least better than the time Goldman successfully sued to block a casino project and got called “a white Jew with a background of Judas,” so, progress?
  • Albany and New York state officials are talking about building a $75 million minor-league soccer stadium as part of a $300 million downtown redevelopment, to be paid for by “still unknown.” Gov. Kathy Hochul is involved in the talks, though, so we can probably guess what direction this is headed.
  • The Atlantic ran an overview this week of the state of stadium subsidies, and while I could nitpick a couple of things — crediting Camden Yards for the new-stadium boom leaves out the earlier formative effects of Toronto’s Skydome and Chicago’s New Comiskey Park, and shutting off the supply of federally tax-exempt bonds wouldn’t really be the most effective way to eliminate the problem — but I get quoted saying, “Teams need a place to play, and if local governments told them to pay a fair rent or go pound sand, owners would have little choice but to go along,” so I wholeheartedly endorse it.
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Liveblogging that ginormous ESPN article about how the A’s picked Sacramento

access_time personNeil deMause

Oh hell yeah, it’s an ESPN tick-tock (not TikTok) of the Oakland A’s to Sacramento agreement! If there’s one thing ESPN is still good for, it’s fly-on-the-wall insider accounts of major front office decisions, and I for one am going to read this right now, and you get to read it with me:

THIS WAS John Fisher’s moment. It was a cold and rainy morning at Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento, with the microphone glitching whenever Kings owner Vivek Ranadive tried to heap praise upon the Oakland Athletics owner, but this was the place — the single, solitary place in the entire known universe — where people gathered to willingly extol the virtues of Fisher.

Give ESPN’s Tim Keown his props: He knows how to write a great lede. This one has it all: a great sense of place and of dramatic tension, attention to detail (leaving out only a link to the microphone glitch video), and a framing that subtly spells out how A’s owner John Fisher wants nothing more than to be loved, and is receiving nothing but hate. A+ so far, no notes.

They cheered because they are employed by him, or might be soon, or by an entity that might profit from what this man owns.

For a guy who wants to be loved, and who can pay people to cheer for him, Fisher sure is choosing a funny way of dealing with his current employees.

Keown follows with the usual about John Fisher not being able to name any A’s players (the one player he cited Sacramento fans as being able to see next year was New York Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge), and only speaking briefly and then getting the hell out of there, and then the intro is over. CUT TO:

THE VIEWS FROM the A’s waterfront offices in Oakland’s Jack London Square are magnificent: ferries coming in and out, light shimmering off the Bay, San Francisco’s skyline nearly close enough to reach out and touch (the site of the team’s abandoned Howard Terminal project is just a slight lean to the north).

Again, nice scene setting, but when is this, and why are we here?

Representatives from the team and the city of Oakland met at 8:30 a.m. on April 2, precisely 49½ hours before the festivities in West Sacramento

Ah, okay. Might have wanted to do a “49½ hours earlier” screen card first to tip off that we’re in flashback now, just a suggestion.

By early February, with no movement from the A’s, the city’s representatives assumed the team had found somewhere else to play.

And now we’re in a flashback within a flashback — is Chris Nolan directing this article? Anyway, the notion that Oakland city officials assumed Fisher had a plan for a temporary home is slightly dubious given that he’s never seemed to have a plan for anything before, but maybe.

Kaval said $97 million, payable whether the team stayed for five years or opted out at three, was a non-starter and wondered how the city had come up with that number. He was told that Mayor Sheng Thao’s team had done its research, and the number factored in the cost the team would incur by relocating twice in the next three to five years, the $67 million annually the team receives from NBC Sports for its television rights for being in the Bay Area — a figure, the city says, that includes just $10 million in ad revenue, meaning NBC Sports subsidizes to the tune of $57 million per year — and the sweetheart $1.5 million rent the team currently pays at the Coliseum.

“This is above market rate,” Kaval said, and [Oakland chief of staff Leigh] Hanson agreed. “It is,” she said, “and your deal now is criminally below market.”

That’s some impressively hardball negotiating, and it’s good to hear that Thao’s staff didn’t just come up with that $97 million rent number out of thin air. But it’s also the kind of bluntness that failsons who just want to be adored absolutely hate — I speak from personal experience here — and you have to wonder if this didn’t play a role in Fisher and Kaval announcing a Sacramento move less than 24 hours later. Let’s keep reading and find out!

“Well,” Kaval said. “This isn’t going to work for us.”

Hanson said she shrugged. “It’s your responsibility to decide where you’re going to play baseball,” she said. “We pick up trash and we do cops and we care about economic development, but it’s not our responsibility to house you.”

No unearned adoration here at all, guys. What good is being a billionaire’s lackey if elected officials can just talk to you like you’re an equal?

Sources say the A’s, however, never laid out an offer sheet, never presented so much as a single piece of paper with demands or suggestions. At one point during the second meeting, in March, Kaval suggested the A’s might be willing to accept “the Raiders’ deal” — two years and $17 million, the arrangement Raiders owner Mark Davis struck for the two lame-duck years in Oakland before he moved his team to Las Vegas…

The “Raiders’ deal” was the only negotiation tactic Kaval employed, according to sources familiar with the negotiations.

So either Kaval genuinely didn’t want to cut a deal with Oakland, or he was hoping to be presented with an offer he couldn’t refuse. Either tracks, honestly.

Kaval took exception to the city’s offer of a five-year lease, since the team believes its future Vegas ballpark — start date unclear, financing undetermined — on the 9-acre site of the yet-to-be demolished Tropicana Casino and Resort will be ready for the 2028 season, maybe even a year earlier.

Hanson said the city had worked its own numbers there, too, and those numbers indicated the A’s will need five years, minimum, before the Vegas stadium is completed. Left unspoken, sources say, is that significant doubt remains whether the deal in Vegas will happen at all, and the five-year gambit was a hedge against ever having to negotiate with the A’s again.

Ha! Also, yup.

Kaval had made it known the team was in daily conversations with Ranadive and Sacramento, weekly discussions with Salt Lake City. There were those on the Oakland side of the table who believed Sacramento was a done deal before this meeting began — and they weren’t the only ones. Broome, the GSEC CEO, was in the room during the negotiations with Ranadive, and he told ESPN he knew Sacramento was getting the A’s 10 days before the official announcement.

So we’re back to “Kaval didn’t want a deal with Oakland,” which is fine, but then why meet with them at all? Were he and Fisher worried about some kind of St. Louis Rams-style lawsuit charging that he’d skipped over the part of league bylaws that tries to see if a team can be kept in its current home first, and figured that sitting across from Hanson and saying “Yeah, nope” would check that box?

Either Keown didn’t ask Kaval or didn’t get an answer, because he’s on to:

By early evening Hanson got Thao’s approval to present a revised offer: a three-year lease with a $60 million extension fee.

That’s kind of negotiating against yourself, but $60 million over three years is roughly the same per year as $97 million over five, so sure.

Within 24 hours, rumblings that Sacramento was the choice filtered out through the Twitter feed of “Carmichael Dave,” a Sacramento radio personality well-connected to Ranadive and the Kings.

This future we live in is truly a remarkable place.

By 10 a.m., at about the same time the A’s were on a flight heading for Detroit, Ranadive was standing at the podium, wind whipping his hair, thanking his good friend.

And that’s about all we get on the “why” of the A’s move to Sacramento. But Keown isn’t done dropping news bombs:

MLB, at the behest of Manfred, waived the team’s relocation fee because — according to a league source — it would be too burdensome for Fisher to pay. “So if we say there’s a relocation fee of $2 billion,” the source said. “Realistically, how are we going to get that?”

Seriously? I know the leading theory is that Fisher got his way by being so annoying that MLB owners would rather let him make his dumb move to Las Vegas than have to keep listening to him whine about Oakland, but if he really got out of paying a relocation fee by turning his pockets inside out and frowning sadly … that’s either a sign of him being a genius negotiator or the most annoying man in the world or both.

Also, if Fisher can’t afford an expansion fee, how’s he going to afford to spend $1 billion of his own money on a stadium in Vegas? Or does he plan on finding someone else’s money and pretending it’s his? There’s only one guy who gets away with doing that.

“After 15 years of this, owners are on Rob [Manfred],” the league source said. “They want to know, ‘What’s happening in Oakland? Let’s go, it’s time to s— or get off the pot.'”

If those are the options you give someone, those are the results you get. Fisher, clearly, went with Door #1.

IN WEST SACRAMENTO, there are logistical questions that remain outstanding. The physics of the Triple-A River Cats, a Giants affiliate, and the big league A’s sharing a ballpark have yet to be determined. Significant improvements to Sutter Health Park are necessary to comply with the collective bargaining agreement and receive the approval of the Major League Players Association. Lights will need to be upgraded, bullpens revamped and a second batting cage constructed. The home clubhouse is currently beyond the left-field wall, an arrangement that seems less than optimal.

Here we have a partial answer to the question of whether the players’ union can block the Sacramento move, which has been reported elsewhere but is worth repeating: Not so long as somebody upgrades the stadium so that player working conditions are major-league quality. (Whether baseball fan conditions will be is another story.) How much that will cost, and who will pay for it, remains unknown, apparently even to Keown.

And finally, the pièce de résistance:

[Greater Sacramento Economic Council president Barry] Broome said, “The only thing I asked of the Fishers is when they win the World Series in the next three years, they put that parade right in the middle of our town.”…

He is speaking about the A’s, a husk of a team. … Broome is undeterred. “All we need is a 19-year-old kid named Vida Blue, a 20-year-old guy named Reggie Jackson,” he said. “We just need three, four, five guys. We need to look in the Dominican Republic for a shortstop, for Omar Vizquel.” (Vizquel is Venezuelan.)

Boom. Keown has a few paragraphs to go, but that’s putting a hat on a hat, your punchline is right there. Good night, folks, tip your bartenders, and come back soon for more Fun With Fisher and Friends!

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Wizards/Caps execs release glowing arena impact report, or as economists call it, a “clown document”

access_time personNeil deMause

And finally, let’s get to that economic impact study of the proposed Alexandria, Virginia arena project for the Washington Wizards and Capitals, which could include more than $1 billion in public costs. After the public waited nearly two months for the release of anything more than a brief summary, team owner Ted Leonsis and his staff finally provided a fuller version on the Friday before a holiday weekend. The resulting news reports said that the numbers showed the arena would have an enormous economic impact on the city and state, so let’s dive in and see—

Monumental Sports & Entertainment hired CSL International (CSL) in 2023 to develop a business model related to the operations of a new arena in Alexandria, Virginia.

Oh, those guys, the ones who were last seen presenting Milwaukee Brewers stadium projections that one local economist summed up as “it’s pretty easy to make arguments in favor of an idea if you ignore the cost.” But wait, maybe this time CSL and HR&A, the company that did the actual number crunching based on CSL’s projections, actually took into account all the factors—

HR&A utilized the IMpact analysis for PLANning (IMPLAN) input-output model, created by MIG, Inc., to analyze the project’s economic impacts from both construction and annual ongoing operations at full build-out of Potomac Yard.

Oh, that model, the one that economist J.C. Bradbury said “can best be described as garbage in garbage out.”

And yet! We really should look at the numbers themselves that are contained within the report. No, not the “economic output” numbers, economic output is a garbage stat, what we want is to see if either the city or the state can somehow recoup their $1 billion in costs through real tax revenue. Okay, these look marginally more promising:

“Baseline” is what HR&A expects would be built on the Alexandria site without arena subsidies; what we’re interested in is the right-hand section, which is what the consultants project the fiscal impact would be from the arena district plan. And there we find a staggering public cost — $1.6 billion between the city and state — plus an even more staggering flow of new tax money: $2.8 billion, most of it from state income taxes and city property taxes.

Even if you take IMPLAN’s LOLmath at face value, there are two obvious huge problems here. First off, HR&A doesn’t look to have done any calculations of whether this new tax revenue is really new tax revenue: If people paying income taxes in a new arena district would otherwise be living somewhere else in the state, that’s not a net gain to Virginia’s coffers. (As Aaron Gordon points out, it would also mean having “workers pay their employer for building their workplace, funneled through their income tax revenue.”) Plus, there are other costs that aren’t included here: City property taxes, for example, are generally used to pay for schools for the people who move in to a development, but here they’re being treated as if they’ll be available to repay Alexandria’s share of the construction costs, and you can’t spend the same money twice, that’s illegal.

The report includes lots more unhelpful charts — some of them with the numbers actually blacked out — but let’s see what actual economists are saying about it:

Spokespersons from the clown industry were not immediately available for comment on Bradbury’s characterization.

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Quebec to spend $870m on roof for Montreal stadium nobody uses or likes, because Taylor Swift

access_time personNeil deMause

So:

Quebec on Monday morning confirmed that repairs to the Olympic Stadium’s roof and ring will come with a price tag of $870 million.

Without looking, let’s try to guess possible reasons for the province to be doing this for a stadium that is currently home to no sports teams at all: Montreal wanted to upgrade the stadium to play host to the 2026 World Cup? Someone struck oil on government land in St.-Louis-du-Ha! Ha! and the premier had to figure out how to spend all the windfall cash? A clause in the will of Canada’s richest person (probably a Labatt, or maybe some kind of maple syrup baron) requires Montreal to have an operable dome for it to inherit his money?

The answer is none of the above:

Tourism Minister Caroline Proulx said at a news conference that the Olympic Stadium would be ideal for large international concerts, pointing to mega-stars like Taylor Swift, Beyoncé and Bruce Springsteen who didn’t tour in Quebec last year.

The government predicts that, with its new roof, the stadium will attract larger events, possibly generating as much as $1.5 billion from tourism and other sources over 10 years….

Demolishing the Olympic Stadium was simply not an option as it would have to be dismantled “brick by brick” as to not damage the surrounding park and Metro line, which would cost about $2 billion, said Proulx.

So there you have it: If Quebec spends a mere $870 million on stadium upgrades, Taylor Swift will come play there, and > ? > Profit.

Like the original stadium itself, the roof replacement has seen its cost estimate skyrocket in just a few years, from $250 million in 2017 to nearly three and a half times that today, assuming $870 million actually turns out to get the job done, which is never a safe bet especially with Olympic Stadium. As for that $2 billion demolition price tag, that’s soared as well — from a mere $500-700 million in 2017 — and seems a little crazy given the typical costs of stadium demolition, but the number must be right, as it comes from [citation needed]. (It’s also worth noting that Olympic Stadium is made of poured concrete, so “brick by brick” is a metaphor, or possibly a bad translation from French, qui peut dire?)

CBC News did find one person in Montreal to be aghast at the prospect of spending almost a billion dollars to repair a stadium that nobody likes and is almost never used, and it was economist Moshe Lander:

Moshe Lander, a professor in the economics department at Concordia University, says it would still be a better idea to “put it out of its misery and knock it down.”

Though it would cost more to do so, “it’s only once,” he said.

Lander points out that construction projects never meet their deadlines. With inflation, labour costs, delays and unexpected factors, it could take twice as long and cost twice as much to replace the roof, he said.

The Olympic Stadium also doesn’t have a tenant since major league baseball is not coming back, the Alouettes are not playing there and neither is Montreal’s MLS soccer team. As for concerts, Lander says the acoustic of the “concrete bowl” aren’t sound.

“Ask anyone who went to see Metallica there,” he said.

Oof, is the sound really that bad? Hmm, yeah, seems to be, and r/Metallica agrees. I’m sure it’ll be better for Taylor Swift, though, or Bruce Springsteen if he’s still touring at age 79 when the new roof is done. If not, maybe Quebec can just buy a new billion-dollar sound system.

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OKC’s $41m soccer stadium hits $30m of cost overruns, city to raid other tax revenue to pay for it

access_time personNeil deMause

First post of the year, first day back from a long weekend, definitely want to land with something sexy that will get lots of eyeballs. Let’s see, we have … ooh, cost overruns for a minor-league soccer stadium in Oklahoma City, that’s sure to be of interest to literally dozens of people!

And now that I’ve sold it short, this is actually kind of notable: OKC approved $41 million in money for a stadium for the USL Championship’s Energy FC in 2021 as part of its $1.1 billion MAPS 4 laundry list of projects — which included $116 million in upgrades for the Thunder‘s arena, some of which has now been redirected to help build a $900 million new one. It turned out that $41 million was just enough to build “a high school stadium,” though, according to Energy FC co-owner Bob Funk Jr., so whoopsie, somebody needs to find another $30 million! And that somebody will not be Funk:

Kenton Tsoodle, president of The Alliance for Economic Development of Oklahoma City, said the proposal to cover the gap will include $20 million in tax increment financing and $10 million from funding used to build the Omni Hotel…

The stadium and the land, which will be owned by the city, is in a yet-to-start “Core to Shore” TIF district. The project itself won’t generate property tax increment due to it being a public property. Tsoodle said the downtown TIF district, set to expire in 2026, is on track to end with a remaining balance of $20 million — funding proposed to help cover the cost gap of the stadium.

Follow all that? Since the soccer stadium will be exempt from paying property taxes, the city will take tax money kicked back from other downtown land into a pool for downtown development and redirect it to the soccer stadium, plus tax money left over from building a private hotel. I suppose this is good news in that it doesn’t require new tax kickbacks on top of those already committed to, though “Hey, instead of using leftover tax money from our giant development subsidies to fund actual public needs, we’re giving it to the local soccer team” is hard to exactly classify as good news.

The stadium would be built on a former cottonseed oil mill site near downtown. From the Oklahoman’s reporting, it’s not entirely clear how the city would be getting the land — at one point it refers to the land as “donated,” at another to the soccer team owners buying it. Or maybe it just means that Funk and his partners will buy the land and then donate it to the city to get out of paying property taxes on it? Yeah, it probably means that. Welcome to 2024, everybody, it’s starting out looking a lot like 2023!

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Friday roundup: Fresh A’s vaportecture incoming, OKC readies for $850m arena vote, Revolution stadium hits snag

access_time personNeil deMause

I don’t even know where to start with this week, but suffice to say that this keeps rolling on, with no end in sight. At least, for the second consecutive day, Henry Kissinger remains dead.

And, like death and union-busting, the great stadium swindle shows no signs of going away anytime soon:

  • New Las Vegas stadium renderings for the Oakland A’s are due to be released on Monday, and A’s owner John Fisher is even scheduled to show up. (Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz notes that “Fisher is known for not interacting with fans and making public appearances to discuss his baseball team,” which is a polite way of saying that he don’t like people.) Ha ha, the Las Vegas Sun illustrated its article on this with the June stadium renderings that Fisher’s honchos immediately declared to not actually be what the stadium will look like — LOLSun, go read Snel’s coverage instead, if only for his awesome photo filenames. Meanwhile, Nevada Independent sports business reporter Howard Stutz warned that Fisher still has a lot of hoops to jump through before he can move the team — the referendum, the lawsuit, the finding another billion dollars — and “we’re not going to see much other than public meetings and different announcements over the next year,” so enjoy the dogs and ponies for now.
  • Elsewhere in A’s news, Fisher hasn’t officially notified Oakland that he plans to leave town, in order to postpone a $45 million payment to Alameda County for purchasing half of the Oakland Coliseum property. San Jose Mercury News columnist Daniel Borenstein notes that “county supervisors never bothered to require that the team stay in Oakland as a condition for acquiring the rights to the Coliseum property,” whoops, that would have been an idea, somebody make a note of that for next time.
  • The Oklahoma County Democratic Party held a panel discussion in anticipation of next week’s voter referendum on spending $850 million on a new Thunder stadium while team owners spend $50 million. Party affirmative action officer Nabilah Rawdah said the funding mechanism would be “a regressive sales tax,” which, yup, all sales taxes are regressive, and would cost city residents “around $1,200 per person,” which, yup, math. Central Oklahoma Federation of Labor president Tim O’Connor countered, “JOBS!!1!,” because he got an agreement that the project will use union labor. (Yes, it is possible to hate union-busting and to accept that actually existing unions are maybe not their most perfect selves right now.)
  • Plans for a New England Revolution stadium in Everett, just north of Boston, hit a speed bump in the Massachusetts state legislature when the plan was removed from a state budget bill in conference committee. The Boston Globe notes that the stadium would cost $600 million and “no public money is being sought — for now,” which is maybe not the most reassuring; the memorandum of understanding is only seven pages long and doesn’t provide any details on the project finances, more like a memorandum of misunderstanding, amirite?
  • They’re still talking about that damn Dodger Stadium gondola five years later — LOLgondola, don’t make me send Alissa Walker in there.
  • Baltimore Orioles owner John Angelos may now sign a new lease and work out the details of his insanely lucrative 99-year development rights agreement later, after insisting he wouldn’t sign one without the other, wut? Guess he’s convinced now that the state is happy to give him everything he wants and he doesn’t want figuring out what he wants to get in the way of having a stadium to play in next year, guess the state had leverage after all, somebody make a note of that for next time.
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Friday roundup: SF mayor really wants to build a stadium for some soccer team, just not sure which one

access_time personNeil deMause

Pressed for time this morning, so let’s dive right in for a quick tour through this week’s remaining news:

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Friday roundup: D-Backs threaten to move (somewhere nearby), and why MSG probably won’t be evicted

access_time personNeil deMause

Happy Friday, everybody! Or happy for everyone except Arizona Diamondbacks fans, who are going to be stuck buying souvenir jerseys with an extremely ugly shoulder patch for the foreseeable future after MLB decided to start selling ad space on players’ shoulders for the upcoming season. (Some other teams’ are not so bad, though the Houston Astros‘ might be even worse.) Or maybe, given the design of a stark black square, this is actually a memorial patch for an electronics company that tragically passed away during the offseason? R.I.P., Avnet.

And now for some other ways sports team owners are making life demonstrably worse for all concerned:

  • Speaking of the Diamondbacks, team CEO Derrick Hall spoke to the media this week about plans for a new or renovated stadium, which he didn’t actually say anything concrete about, though he did say “we’re still looking at what other options might be in Maricopa County, not outside of Maricopa County, and there’s been some interested parties.” Oh, do tell, some other cities in the Phoenix area want to build the D-Backs a new stadium? This isn’t going to be a Canadian girlfriend thing, is it? Hall also said “we’re prepared to spend hundreds of millions of dollars, we’re not looking for a handout,” which is amusing coming after the team lobbied the state to let it use a sales-tax surcharge for stadium improvements.
  • Madison Square Garden’s special operating permit expires on July 24, but even if that happens without a renewal by then, the New York Knicks and Rangers probably won’t be evicted, since the city would likely let the arena keep operating during a review process, reports The City. (Sorry to those of you who were getting your hopes up for the city parking a zamboni on center ice.) There was a public community board hearing on Wednesday on the operating permit, which according to AMNY’s report was dominated by sports fans shouting that they love their teams and rail station fans shouting that they’d love to see MSG gone so they could have a new Penn Station. There are probably better and even more democratic ways of solving policy debates than having people shout into microphones while power brokers largely ignore them and do what they want regardless, but that doesn’t seem the direction we’re headed.
  • St. Petersburg is spending $250,000 to hire an outside law firm to negotiate a term sheet for a new Tampa Bay Rays stadium, and know what, this probably isn’t a bad use of tax dollars: City lawyers are so historically awful at writing sports contract language that hired guns who know what they’re doing might actually earn back their pay and more. Unless city officials tell them to just get a deal done and not worry about the fine print, that could always happen, but as a glass-half-full kind of person I prefer not to think about what could go wrong — okay, my motto is actually “prepare for the worst, adjust if your expectations are exceeded” and it’s never steered me wrong, but sometimes things have to work out better than expected, it’s just the law of averages, right? Anyway, St. Petersburg is talking about building a billion-dollar stadium, at least it’s not cheaping out on lawyers to determine who pays for it, that’s better than nothing.
  • No, WIBC-FM, “Indy Eleven Owner, Ersal Ozdemir, Speaks on the New Indy Eleven Stadium” is not actually a news story, especially not when Ozdemir’s entire quote is “We do not need to go to the MLS to build a stadium the project should self-generate enough, we’re making a transformational impact to this area (downtown).” (“Transformational”! Everybody drink!) And no, Indianapolis Business Journal, it’s not any better when you give space to Ozdemir to say he would love to own an MLS franchise if someone gave him one, jeez, journalism people, are we going to start reporting on rich guys’ drink orders next? (Answer: You don’t want to know.)
  • The fight against the Philadelphia 76ers owners’ plan to build a new arena bordering the city’s Chinatown has reached the Miley Cyrus parody lyrics phase.
  • Sick of me always harping on about what a bad deal stadium and arena subsidies are without talking about all the other dumb things elected officials spend money on? Then you will enjoy my recent article for Hell Gate investigating what kind of bang for the buck New York state is getting for its film tax credits that Gov. Kathy Hochul wants to see increased. (Answer: Not a very good one!) Unless you are one of the commenters who works in the film industry and wonders why I didn’t focus on tax breaks for jet fuel for the airline industry instead — sigh, wait here, I guess I’ll be back in a couple thousand words’ time…
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