#billstogreensboro – Field of Schemes

NY gov vows to get Bills stadium plan done in next two weeks, or next three months, one of those

December 21, 2021 Neil deMause

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said many, many words yesterday about her plan to build a new Buffalo Bills stadium. Here are some of them, presented in the actual order she said them:

“I’ve made it clear to the Buffalo Bills organization that we are, we wanted to accommodate both options and let them see the cost of downtown in Orchard Park, but not putting our finger on the scale and if their desire is Orchard Park, it’s Orchard Park…

And:

“I’ve also offered two timelines to them, whatever works best for them. I can get this done by the end of this year. I can get this done. We can work out the numbers. We’re having good conversations, or I also have the until the end of March because it is a budgetary item so I also have a larger window if we need more time. So it’s not a hard deadline, but my desire is I’m a Buffalo Bills fan, let’s lock this down. Let’s get it done. So we are very intently focused on keeping the Bills here. If Orchard Park’s their first choice, their only choice, it’s Orchard Park and we’ll make it all happen. So we’re very excited about announcing a deal hopefully in the near future, but a lot of devil in the details.”

So, that all means … nothing at all, that I can tell, other than that Hochul still wants to build a Bills stadium somewhere, sometime. The nearest to anything in there that is actual news is the “two timelines” thing, which I guess means Bills owners Kim and Terry Pegula can come to an agreement on a stadium plan in time to get it in the state budget when she issues it in January or not, but really it’s hard to see anything past all the croutons in that word salad.

Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown, meanwhile, did some nice threatmongering on behalf of the Pegulas, asserting that “the longer this lingers on with other cities, with other states wanting professional football teams, I think it puts our team, the Buffalo Bills, at risk.” Not that team execs have actually threatened to move anywhere, and not that there are a ton of cities with NFL-ready stadiums or plans for them looking to pounce, but … Brown means Greensboro, doesn’t he? I can read between the lines.

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Buffalo Bills considering move to Greensboro, says clever robot

June 10, 2021June 10, 2021 Neil deMause

An FoS reader passes along this report from Eleuther.ai:

Reports say that the Buffalo Bills are looking to move to Greensboro, N.C. from Orchard Park, N.Y.

“Our owner’s intent is to bring the Buffalo Bills to North Carolina and we’re actively working on that and see where that goes,” said Fred Jackson of the Bills in an interview with DYMM. “We’ll get there.”

Doing so would represent the team’s third move within four years. Buffalo was originally based in Toronto, Canada, before moving to Toronto, where it played for four years before it moved to Orchard Park. The Bills also played in Baltimore in the mid-70s and in Toronto in the late-70s before they played a season in Buffalo in 1983.

As you’ve probably figured out from that last paragraph, if not from the website name, this isn’t an actual news story: It’s what an online AI program came up with when given the prompt “Reports say that the Buffalo Bills are looking to move to Greensboro, N.C.” Impressive that the AI figured out the Bills currently play in Orchard Park! Not so impressive that the AI thinks Buffalo used to be in Toronto, then moved to Toronto! Also, previously played in Toronto! Will this multiverse of madness never stop?

For the record: The Bills are not moving to Greensboro, that’s just a thing I made up last week to see if I could get people talking about it, like A-Rod buying the Minnesota Timberwolves and moving them to Seattle, another thing that is not happening. Also: #billstogreensboro, baby!

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Friday roundup: Big-league owners seek big-money land deals, while in the minors they’ll just take a check, thanks

June 4, 2021June 4, 2021 Neil deMause

Holy moley, all the news this week! No time for clever repartee, let’s dive right in:

The Cleveland Indians owners are “well along” on a lease extension beyond the expiration of their current deal in 2023, says Gateway Board Chairman Ken Silliman, in exchange for stadium upgrades that according to WKYC-TV will be “in the tens of millions, if not more,” which will be paid for by … whoops, looks like WKYC’s reporter forgot to ask about that, though they did note that Silliman mentioned the possibility of selling development rights around the stadium and using the proceeds for the Indians when this last came up over a year ago. Keep an eye on this one.
Speaking of land development deals, remember that one that Boston Red Sox owner John Henry was seeking back in February to build a ton of skyscrapers near Fenway Park and tae over a public street? Well, he and his partners officially submitted them to Boston this week, though they made sure to note that they weren’t proposing to build a “sports theme park” and that “the Project should feel like the neighborhood is enveloping the ballpark, and not that the ballpark is spreading its influence into the neighborhood.” There’s no lease extension in play here since the Sox own Fenway Park, and no public money (that we know of), so this one would just be the city doing a favor for a local billionaire by approving his massive redevelopment plans, which is standard operating procedure — whether you consider that more or less egregious than handing out special favors to sports teams is between you and your economic belief system.
And speaking further of the same thing, lots of Nevada legislators say they wouldn’t want to spend public money on a new baseball stadium to lure the Oakland A’s to Las Vegas, but providing free land and development rights? Mmmaybe.
Not to be left out, Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan has followed up the collapse of his Lot J redevelopment plans by seeking a $441 million development project that would include a new practice stadium, which would include $93 million in public cash, plus maybe a discounted land price, it’s really hard to tell from reading the term sheet. Anyway, it’s another data point that the Los Angeles Angels land-rights subsidy model is the new game in town, for Big Four sports owners, anyway.
Meanwhile, in minor-league baseball, Reading Fightin Phils general manager Scott Hunsicker says the team’s owners “have no intention of ever leaving Reading” but also if their stadium doesn’t get about $15 million for bigger locker rooms and other sundries, “Major League Baseball could terminate our license here in Reading and Major League Baseball could at that point give the license to somebody else, somebody in another city,” maybe a city that just lost its team like Williamsport, State College or Trenton. Yep, minor league contraction is working its subsidy-grubbing magic just like it was planned to.
The Pensacola Blue Wahoos are only set to get $2 million in public cash for their MLB-mandated upgrades, but same deal as the Fightin Phils. Every penny (or 200 million pennies) counts!
Not to be left out, the Los Angeles Angels are getting $40.9 million in public money for upgrades to their minor-league stadium in Tempe, Arizona, in exchange for extending their lease for 13 years, through 2035. No more details from the Arizona Republic about where Tempe will get the cash, but there is a bunch of stuff about how the stadium was originally built by the short-lived Seattle Pilots, so that’s kind of interesting, I guess?
The Toronto Blue Jays are playing temporarily in Buffalo while Canada works to vaccinate enough citizens to be able to reopen, which led WGRZ-TV to ask: Could Buffalo get a permanent MLB team? Their answer: No, almost certainly not, Buffalo barely has 250,000 people, what are you even saying? No wonder the Bills are moving to Greensboro.
When Cobb County wanted an extra $2 million to cover expenses related to this summer’s MLB All-Star Game — back before the game got moved to Denver after Georgia passed its new voting restriction law — county finance director Bill Volckmann claimed the expense would generate between $37 million and $190 million in economic impact, without providing any methodology at all for how those figures were calculated. Here is economist Victor Matheson pointing and laughing at him.
The USFL Is coming back! With original team names! But not necessarily original cities! No, I don’t know how that works, but the league is partly owned by Fox Sports, so expect the games to be aired out of order and then the season to be canceled right when people are starting to get interested.
Also MLS is planning to launch a league for its franchises’ B teams, which currently mostly play in the USL, which you might think would put a damper on the USL expanding by as many as 35 teams, but that’s not how Ponzi schemes work.
Note to Cleveland.com reporter Steven Litt: Please do not use “gain yardage” to refer to progress by the local sports team owner in getting public money, it conflates rooting for the team with rooting for the owner, I covered this more than 20 years ago, seriously.

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