Friday roundup: Titans stadium could get $?? in state subsidies, Commanders stadium bill takes (maybe) step back

It’s Friday again! And, really, that’s all I’ve got by way of introduction this week, but there is plenty of news:

  • Tennessee Lt. Gov. Randy McNally tells The Tennessean that Gov. Bill Lee is expected to put state funding for a Titans stadium in his upcoming state budget. No word on how much money, or where the state would take the money from, or how much the stadium would cost, but certainly all that will be addressed well before the budget is voted on by the end of April, no governor would ever try to avoid public disclosure of something like that.
  • The Washington Post editorial board says Virginia giving Washington Commanders owner Dan Snyder a ton of public money for a stadium is a lousy idea, and sports economist J.C. Bradbury concurs in an op-ed, only with more math. Also talks between the Virginia house and senate over a compromise bill have reportedly stalled, so maybe somebody in the Virginia legislature is actually reading the Washington Post? Or is just waiting for all the ruckus to die down so they can pass a final bill quietly, that’s always possible too.
  • Tennessee state Sen. Todd Gardenhire has recommended against his own bill to have the state kick back sales taxes to help pay for a new Chattanooga Lookouts stadium as part of a total public expense of …  honestly, I can’t make head or tail of exactly what’s going on here, other than that Gardenhire is unhappy with something about the funding proposal and is seeking … something else? But then, state Rep. Greg Vital told the Chattanooga Times Free Press, “I’m not quite sure what we’re being asked to fund, who owns what, who’s going to own what,” so at least we’re all in blissful ignorance together!
  • Three Oklahoma City University economists looked at the economic impact of the Thunder on the city, and found that it’s somewhere between “nothing measurable” and “something, but not nearly enough to cover what we spent to get and keep the Thunder.” “These things just don’t pan out as economic growth centers,” says Emeritus Professor of Economics Johnathan Wilner, who is followed in the article by a Norman, Oklahoma official saying the University of Oklahoma needs a new arena because “we’re the third-largest city in the state, and it’s time we started acting like one.” He said she said journalism is just the best, isn’t it?
  • The Guardian has a long recap of the Arizona Coyotes arena saga, and The Athletic has a long lookahead on the future of the Arizona Coyotes arena saga, of which I mostly read the takeaway quote “Every other team in the league will be laughing when they visit us,” so there’s probably some good schadenfreude fodder in there for anyone with the time and patience to sit through a couple of deep dives.
  • Live 24-hour webcam of the reconstruction work being done on the Baltimore Arena! So far it looks like nothing is going on — make your own jokes about that being how the Baltimore Arena always looks — but I promise to alert you if they begin installation of the Top Sail Wine Bar.
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Friday roundup: St. Louis to get $790m Rams payoff from NFL or Kroenke or both, MSG deemed too pricey to move

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:

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Friday roundup: Angels land sale could be illegal, Calgary and Baltimore hold arena talks but won’t tell anyone what they are

So! Much! News! But first, a quick pro tip for Facebook users: If you follow Field of Schemes on Facebook, remember to go to our page and like or otherwise react to a post every once in a while, or else Facebook will not show you Field of Schemes posts, because Facebook. This has been a public service announcement.

And now: News!

  • San Diego’s arena plan isn’t the only one in hot water over the state Surplus Land Act that requires all government land transfers to prioritize affordable housing: The California Department of Housing and Community Development sent a letter to the city of Anaheim on April 28, it has just been discovered by the Los Angeles Times, warning that the city’s cut-rate sale of Angel Stadium land to Los Angeles Angels owner Arte Moreno “may be in violation” of state law. What happens next is super-unclear: The Times’ Bill Shaikin reports that the city could be assessed a fine of 30% of the sale price, which would depend on whether the sale price is considered to be just the $150 million in cash the city is getting or also the $170 million in parks and affordable housing that are being counted as credits toward Moreno’s purchase price. (Yes, Anaheim is claiming that it is meeting affordable-housing requirements by kicking back money to Moreno to build affordable housing. Think on that one for a minute.) The Voice of O.C.’s Spencer Custodio further reports that Anaheim City Attorney Rob Fabela says that the Surplus Land Act doesn’t apply because the city had already entered into an exclusive negotiating agreement before the act was passed — except that the council hadn’t voted to enter exclusive negotiations at that time. There’s also that lawsuit in the works over Anaheim having allegedly illegally negotiated the deal in secret, and yeah, a lot of plot twists could still go down here, do not leave the theater until the credits have finished rolling.
  • The city of Calgary and the owners of the Flames have “paused” construction of a new arena to resolve a “budget difference,” but because the city council discussed the new measures behind closed doors before voting on them in public — never revealing publicly what they were voting on — there’s no way to tell exactly what is going on here. Mayor Naheed Nenshi said that “given materials cost, construction escalation, given some small changes to the program for the event centre, the costs have gone up,” but also that the question is about figuring out “what we want to build here while staying in the context of the previous agreement that the city had made. It’s not about the city pouring in a lot more money.” So that sounds like they’re talking about trimming some of the pricier elements to stay within budget? Where’s my Canadian-to-English (or maybe just politician-to-English) dictionary?
  • Slightly more news this week on the plans to renovate Baltimore’s arena: Tim Leiweke’s Oak View Group and, for some reason, Kevin Durant, would partner on paying for $150 million in renovation costs, in exchange for which they would get mumble mumble something. Presumably Oak View would get to operate the place and collect revenues, but the Baltimore Development Corporation is negotiating this — it’s a theme! — in secret, so who the hell knows what all the details are at this point.
  • NFL commissioner Roger Goodell did his favorite thing this week, warning that one of his league’s teams could move without a new stadium: “This is a really early stage to develop potentially an alternative,” Goodell told radio station 670 The Score on Wednesday regarding the Chicago Bears‘ bid to buy the Arlington Park racetrack site. (If MLB commissioner Rob Manfred knew how to perform this role, maybe poor Dave Kaval could shut his mouth for a moment and stop auditioning to be a supervillain.) Meanwhile, Arlington Heights endorsed a change to zoning that would allow a stadium to be built at the racetrack site, though zoning is the least of the problems when figuring out how to build a potentially $1 billion building. Finally, a recent poll of Chicago-area residents found that two-thirds would like to see the Bears move to the suburbs, though the fact that the poll results appeared in the suburban paper the Daily Herald and that the Herald’s story didn’t include much on methodology — aside from a quip from pollster Collin Corbett that “anyone who answered that they are a Packers fan were excluded, ‘because no one cares what they think,'” — maybe should lead one to take the results with a grain of salt.
  • “There is no agreement to build a new stadium” for the Buffalo Bills, Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said this week, adding that he doesn’t see one happening anytime soon. Turns out that report that the Bills owners were ready to build a new stadium in Orchard Park was more a report that the Bills owners had hired Legends Entertainment to try to negotiate a stadium deal, which is many, many steps short of actually having a plan.
  • I keep forgetting to link to some of the good reporting by Ben Becker of Action News Jax on how Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan’s stadium development plans could lead to huge flood-resiliency costs and how economist Victor Matheson said Khan’s projection of new hotel revenues contained “the single most embarrassing line I have seen in an economic impact statement,” so go read those and catch up on what you’ve been missing already!
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Friday roundup: NFL Draft’s $5.5m subsidy, A’s play apples and oranges with stadium math, plus Canadian wood-bat vaportecture!

Let’s see, what else happened this week? Massive governmental incompetence and death in India, that has nothing to do with stadiums, let’s stay focused here, people:

  • The NFL Draft was last night, and let’s not let the occasion pass without noting that this is yet another dumb mega-event that sports leagues get cities to pay for the privilege of hosting: Cleveland put up $5.5 million in public and privately raised funds to land this year’s draft. Bloomberg Tax goes on to report that this all started about a decade ago when Butch Spyridon, CEO of Nashville’s convention authority, approached NFL commissioner Roger Goodell at a party and “pointed at the [Nashville] mayor and said, ‘You should consider moving the draft. He’ll give you free police and free venues.’” Mayors and shiny objects, man.
  • San Jose Mercury News columnist Daniel Borenstein has called Oakland A’s owner John Fisher’s demand for a massive public subsidy a “massive public subsidy,” and also “egregious” and and attempt to “mooch off taxpayers.” He also notes that A’s stadium czar Dave Kaval fudged the numbers on his claims of economic benefits, comparing $855 million in up-front public infrastructure costs with $1.4 billion in projected public benefits without noting that the benefits would be stretched out over 45 years, making them worth way less than $855 million. Borenstein calls this an “inflation adjustment” when it’s actually also the discount rate, which is a slightly different thing, but either way major props for actually doing math instead of just repeating whatever was in the team press release.
  • Baltimore is seeking bids from developers to renovate its downtown arena because, let’s see, something about the Washington Capitals maybe occasionally playing games there if it were renovated? Anyway, Baltimore’s development agency is refusing to release any details of the bids because “proprietary information,” so we’ll just have to wait to see how much Baltimore taxpayers are being asked to spend for the privilege of watching live hockey a couple of times a year.
  • Depressed about the Tennessee legislature nearly unanimously approving $22 million in sales-tax kickbacks as part of a $50-million-plus subsidy for a new Tennessee Smokies stadium? Well, at least one Tennessee legislator has a line in the sand he won’t cross: state Rep. Jerry Sexton said he was voting against public funding for upgrades to the Titans‘ stadium because he’s upset that some NFL players sometimes take a knee for the national anthem as a protest against systemic racism. That’ll show ’em.
  • The Regina Red Sox are asking for $15-20 million in public funds for a $20-25 million baseball stadium, and … oh, sorry, are you not familiar with the Regina Red Sox of the Western Canadian Baseball League, a summer wood-bat league for college players that operates exclusively in Saskatchewan and Alberta? Well, their owners want a new stadium built with public money for their unpaid players to play in, because, let’s see, scroll scroll scroll, here we go, “Currie [Field]’s old infrastructure severely limits our options for food and beverage, seating, parking and our ability to attract corporate sponsors.” Also “a dump built on a dump,” according to team president Alan Simpson, now that’s the way to get fans to turn out for ballgames! Anyway, here’s a YouTube video of renderings of what they want to build:, and though it doesn’t feature any fireworks or magic basketballs (Canadians are so boring, amirite?), it does include this guy who wore sandals to the game and is drinking some kind of beverage while leaning back against thin air, so don’t knock it entirely:
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Friday roundup: Raiders stadium runs short of tax dollars, Falcons owner makes film about how great Megatron’s Butthole is, and a Ricketts cries poor (again)

Well, that was certainly something to wake up to on a post-Thanksgiving Friday morning. Not sure how many U.S. readers are checking the internet today, but if that’s you and you’re looking for some non-Canadian stadium and arena news for your troubles, we have that too:

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Baltimore council calls do-over on tax breaks for expensive concerts, decides to study it first after all

So remember how the Baltimore city council voted overwhelmingly on Monday to approve kicking back ticket taxes to big, expensive concerts at the city’s arena? Apparently they still needed to hold a second, final vote, and now that vote has been delayed indefinitely while everyone realizes that really, it might be a good idea to look at whether this will actually benefit the city at all:

A spokesman for [council president Bernard C. “Jack”] Young said Wednesday that the council president had heard concerns from constituents and will postpone the vote, initially scheduled for Monday, to allow time for more research and community input.

“More discussion is always good,” spokesman Lester Davis said.

With the mayor’s office opposed to the tax break plan, and the Baltimore Sun editorializing against it without more study, Young seems to have bowed to political pressure to conduct some research before moving ahead with this plan. Though given that much of the opposition to subsidizing tickets at the current arena seems to be coming from people who want to instead use the money to build a whole new arena, at much greater public expense and equally dubious public benefit, this is not necessarily a good thing.

No word yet on who will conduct the research into the council plan’s projected impact. Just please, please don’t let it be these guys.

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Baltimore council okays tax breaks for arena concerts, but only really expensive ones

Sorry, got busy yesterday and neglected to inform you that the Baltimore city council held its vote on exempting concerts at the city’s arena from paying ticket taxes, and it approved it — but only for really big, expensive concerts:

The council voted 13-1 Monday to give preliminary approval to legislation sponsored by City Council President Bernard C. “Jack” Young that would exempt some performances at the venue from paying the city’s 10 percent admissions and amusement tax on every ticket. The gross ticket sales for a single event would need to exceed $500,000 to qualify.

That $500,000 threshold is interesting: The arena holds 14,000, so you’d need a sellout with an average ticket price of $35 to qualify — not unreasonable for most arena shows, but also not a slam-dunk. And it would certainly create a huge incentive for arena operator SMG to lean toward booking only bigger acts that could sell out at a higher price — not to mention pricing shenanigans like offering enticements to purchase tickets at higher prices (free food voucher with every $35 ticket!) to game the system.

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and her finance department think the tax rebate idea is a bad one that could cost the city as much as $1.2 million in annual revenues; proponents of the tax break argue COMPETITIVENESS RARRRGH!:

“I’m trying to get the big events,” [arena general manager Frank] Remesch said. “We’re fighting that big gorilla down the street called the Verizon Center. Give me a swinging chance against these goliaths.”

(Too bad Joe Jackson never thought of this solution, huh?)

Nobody has actually done an economic study to show whether the city would benefit from letting the arena exempt performers from the tax, but economists, pffft, amirite? Though one local economist who hasn’t studied the matter, Anirban Basu of the Baltimore-based consulting firm Sage Policy Group, did argue that the tax rebate idea was bad because it could — wait for it — prevent the city from building a new arena instead:

“The city desperately needs a new arena. … When Baltimore has been able to supply first-class facilities, there have been incredibly good outcomes. One only needs to look at Camden Yards and M&T Bank Stadium,” Basu said. “The current arena is uninspired, and people put up with it because the acts are good.”

That’s right — Baltimore’s current arena can’t compete at drawing concert acts because it’s too old, but nobody has noticed because it’s been too successful at drawing concert acts. With logic like this, I’m not sure all the economic studies in the world are going to help.

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Baltimore arena operator asks for kickback of ticket taxes because being #1 in concert sales isn’t enough

SMG, the private arena management company that runs Baltimore’s Royal Farms Arena (aka 1st Mariner Arena, aka Baltimore Civic Center, aka Spicy Condiment) wants to stop paying ticket taxes on concerts it holds there. And the president of the Baltimore city council thinks, sure, why not?

In an effort to try to attract more and better acts to the city-owned arena, [city council president Bernard C. “Jack”] Young is proposing to exempt many performances at the venue from paying the city’s Admissions and Amusement tax of 10 percent on every ticket…

Young’s bill would grant tax breaks to concerts, comedy shows, dance performances and any other “artistic” work at the venue. Sporting events would still pay taxes, but the bill is written broadly enough that it could apply to WWE wrestling show, [city finance director Henry] Raymond said.

Before we all shake our heads sadly, let me say that this is probably a better idea than building a whole new arena to attract better concerts, something else that’s been proposed, since that would cost hundreds of millions of dollars and this would cost the city only $1.2 million a year. And, sure, maybe SMG will use that cash to lower its concert fees, which means maybe finally Baltimoreans will get to see Rihanna — nope, she’s already playing, but Bruce Springsteen — nope, him, too, in fact, Baltimore’s arena currently sells more concert tickets than any other arena its size, but Adele, okay, they’ll finally get to see Adele without having to drive to Washington, and who can put a price on that?

Or, they’ll just pocket the money and Adele will still skip Baltimore. The city council is set to vote on the plan today.

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Baltimore arena has leaky roof, might as well tear it down and build a new one

Slow news day on the stadium front, and a busy one for me as I enter the home stretch for Brooklyn Wars, but I don’t want to leave you with nothing for today. So here’s a sports blogger from Baltimore taking advantage of that city’s upcoming mayoral election to argue that Baltimore needs a new arena, because, well:

Considering the building has showcased five Garth Brooks shows, the return of Bruce Springsteen to Charm City, a major regular-season men’s college basketball game (the highly ranked Terps hosted Princeton in December), Janet Jackson, Rihanna, Justin Bieber, Justin Timberlake, Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews Band, Prince, Stevie Wonder, a UFC pay-per-view and much more in recent years, it isn’t hard to understand why some might wonder if the city really does even need a new facility.

(We do. The water damage on the ceiling tiles above me in the 200 section from where I watched the Terps down the Tigers in December reminded me that, yes, yes, we do.)

For anyone who insists that the sports stadium subsidy landscape has shifted, here we have a grown man arguing that the mayor of a major American city needs to make tearing down the local sports arena and building a new one, at uncertain cost, solely because the ceiling leaks. (Okay, he also argues that a new arena might attract more college basketball and an Outkast reunion tour — your call which of those is more likely to happen.) We still have a ways to go.

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Cordish mulling harborfront stadium in Baltimore, price and subsidy to be determined

Cordish Cos., who you’ll remember as the guys who failed in an attempt to get approval for a Las Vegas arena with no sports tenants and then succeeding in getting $122 million in public money for a soccer stadium for a Vegas team that doesn’t exist yet, is proposing to build a 15,000-seat arena on the Baltimore waterfront, according to the Baltimore Business Journal. The arena would go on Piers 5 and 6, which are currently occupied by a Cordish-run music pavilion, a hotel, and a couple of restaurants.

The BBJ has few other details, other than to say that it could be expanded to host an eventual NBA or NHL franchise, that it could cost “hundreds of millions of dollars” (duh), and that “public financing would also likely play a role” (also duh). As for me, I’m mostly disappointed that my initial misreading of the headline “Cordish floating plans to build Inner Harbor arena on Piers 5 and 6” turns out not to mean that they’re planning one of these.

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