Category: blog business

I’m under the weather — still testing negative for now but we’ll see, mask up out there, people — so posting may be a bit light this week as I recover. But fortunately last week I was fine, which meant I was able to finalize the design and ordering of the latest set of Field of Schemes refrigerator magnets, with all-new facts about your favorite stadium and arena deals:

For those of you who don’t want to have to squint, yes, there are six different options this time (I couldn’t pick just four), and they are all to mark the 25th anniversary of this website. (I almost typed “to celebrate,” but honestly I was kind of hoping we’d all be done by now.) As always, there are two different ways to get these winging their way to you:

1. Click here to become a monthly Patreon subscriber at the $5/month or $10/month level, and receive all six magnets immediately! (Current Patreon subscribers will receive the whole magnet set automatically as soon as they arrive.)
2. Click the pulldown menu below to send in a one-time donation and get two magnets, hand-selected to be whichever ones I grab out of the box first!

While we have a brief respite from major sports swindle news — everyone getting ready for the holiday? too busy on the Twitter death watch? — I’d like to remind everyone that this site exists thanks to the kindnesses of many strangers, who chip in either one-time or monthly donations to pay hosting expenses and keep me getting up early in the mornings to report on the day’s latest shenanigans. Huge thanks for all of you who have supported this site over the years; if you would like to join (or re-join) the special few, rest assured that you’ll receive your appreciation not just in messages like this from me, but in more tangible form:

• I still have a few Vaportecture art prints left for those who donate at either the $25 one-time or $5/month level. If you can say no to this, you are made of stronger stuff than me:
  
• If you don’t have a full set of the latest batch of FoS refrigerator magnets, I have a few of those left as well.
• Monthly donors via Patreon at the $5 level get any new tchotchkes as I come up with them. (I have an idea for one I’m working on for the new year.) And all monthly donors at any level get all FoS material in their email box each morning, including bonus content like special interviews. (More of those in the works for 2023 as well.)
• Those ads you see on the right-hand side of this page, assuming you’re reading it on a computer and not on your phone? Those are for donors at the higher levels, and can promote anything you want! (I retain the right to reject ads that are super-offensive, but that hasn’t happened yet.)

Plus, of course, the warm, fuzzy feeling of knowing you’re supporting my work, not just here but in places like radio interviews. (Here’s my latest from Friday from Kansas City’s NPR station, discussing the Royals‘ stadium plans alongside New York Times architecture critic Paul Goldberger.)

To sign up as a monthly Patreon donor, click here. To make a one-time payment, go here and scroll down to the payment form.

Thanks, and we will return to our regularly scheduled stadium news tomorrow, assuming something newsworthy happens by then, which we all know it will.

I’m on Day 5 of Covid over here, and while I’m feeling a bit better each day, I’m also discovering that the virus’s patented brain fog is not conducive to witty, insightful news analysis, or whatever is it I’m usually doing here. (You should see how long it took me to type that sentence, for example.)

Accordingly, I’m calling in sick to this site for the rest of this week, unless something so momentous happens that it absolutely can’t wait. For the lesser news items, please feel free to use the comments section as an open thread, and we can hopefully all return to normal on Monday.

The firehose of stadium news doesn’t seem like it’s ever going to stop — yes, I am aware of Maryland’s plan to fund $400 million in development around the Washington Commanders stadium and the various Oakland A’s stadium lawsuits, we’ll get to those in the Friday roundup if not before then — but in the meantime I have a long-awaited announcement to share. I have been promising you all that I had a premium in the works for Field of Schemes backers that would either be the best or the stupidest ever, or maybe both, and now it can be revealed:

Yes, that is a quadriptych of Cab-Hailing Purse Woman, star of stadium renderings everywhere, in four of her many guises. And it’s not just a fridge magnet this time: “Vaportecture” is a limited-edition hand-numbered art print (or at least as close to an art print as the copy shop near my house can supply) that will only be available to the first 100 paying FoS supporters. (If you’re a Patreon backer at the $5/month and up level, you’ll receive it automatically in the mail, whether you like it or not.) After that, it will be gone forever. Think of it as like an NFT, only one that doesn’t destroy the planet quite so much and that you have to find a 6″-by-6″ frame for!

To become one of the lucky few to possess this rare heirloom/bizarre work of Photoshop, click here to either make a one-time donation or become a continuing monthly subscriber. You’ll also get the heartwarming knowledge that you’re supporting the work of this site, but really, do you even need that when there’s a friggin’ art print of Cab-Hailing Purse Woman with your name on it? You do not, that was a rhetorical question, just click the link already. Operators are standing by!

Every once in a while, someone will ask me, “Hey, have you considered this Patreon thing where people can pay you a little something everyone month instead of a big lump sum all at once?” And my answer has always been, “That sounds like work! Besides, FoS readers have been happily supporting this site the old-fashioned way for years, why fix what ain’t broke?”

The solution, it finally occurred to me, is that we can have it both ways. So, starting today, there are two options for supporting the work done here at Field of Schemes, and earning some fun tchotchkes and other worthwhile rewards:

Become an FoS subscriber:

For those of you who like the pay-a-little-something-every-month model, you can now become a Patreon subscriber. So long as you keep your subscription active, you’ll automatically receive all FoS giveaways in your physical mailbox, in perpetuity. Plus, for the first time, you’ll have the option of receiving new FoS posts in your email each morning, no pesky opening your browser and typing “f-i-e…” until it autocompletes. Finally, you’ll also get access to occasional exclusive subscriber-only content (to be determined, but likely some will be more interviews in the vein of the FoS 20 ones) in addition to the daily news writeups.

Similar to the old system, there are three different subscription levels:

• Cheapo subscribers ($3/month) get the option to receive all FoS posts by email, plus access to subscriber-only content.
• Regular subscribers ($5/month) get posts by email and subscriber-only content, plus all new magnets, stickers, and other artwork that I send out, at least once per year.
• Premium subscribers ($10/month) get everything above, plus rotating ad space on the site to publicize anything you want (within reason). I’ll even help design your ad!

To become a subscriber via this site’s Patreon, click the big button below:

Become a patron!

Make a one-time donation:

You can also give money the old-fashioned way, by throwing a one-time donation in the tip jar:

• $25 continues to get you not just the satisfaction of knowing that you’re supporting this site’s work but also two refrigerator magnets featuring Fun Facts from the history of stadium and arena scams!
• $50 gets you two magnets plus six months of rotating ad space.
• $100 gets you two magnets plus one year of rotating ad space.

To make a one-time donation with PayPal or a credit card, fill out the form below:

You no doubt have questions. (At least, those of you who have made it this far do; everyone else has already clicked away to the Patreon page.) Here are some that I have anticipated, and the answers:

Why all these options? Are you trying to confuse me?

Not at all! But I do want to offer ways to support this site that meet everyone’s needs, so I’m keeping the one-time-payment options as well as the new subscription ones. There is no wrong answer, so feel free to pick whichever sounds good to you.

What if I’m already an active FoS Supporter?

Anyone with an active FoS Supporter account will automatically have the option of receiving posts by email and access to exclusive content for the rest of their membership. (You should be receiving an email from me shortly about that; if you don’t, drop me a line and we can work it out that way.) Once your existing Supporter payment expires, I’ll send you an email asking if you’d like to convert to a monthly subscription.

I already have all your damn fridge magnets. What else can you send me?

Already working on the next physical reward. Suffice to say that I think it is very cool, and I hope regular FoS readers will as well.

I don’t want FoS posts clogging up my email. Can I opt out of that?

Yes! When you get your first email (or your second, or your 52nd), you can click the “unsubscribe from this list” message at the bottom of the email, and you will no longer receive posts in your email. Your Patreon membership will remain undisturbed, though, so you’ll still have access to exclusive content and any other rewards that you’re entitled to.

I don’t want any physical rewards, my house is cluttered enough as it is. Can I opt out of that?

Yes! When you sign up on Patreon, check “I prefer not to receive benefits through the mail,” and your mailbox will remain unsullied by FoS gewgaws. You can always change this setting later if you see how awesome some future reward is and don’t want to miss out!

As always, thank you all for your past, present, and future support. This website quite simply couldn’t exist without you, and anything you can give, whether it’s a one-time donation or on an ongoing basis, helps increase the chances that Field of Schemes will be around to keep reporting on stadium and arena news until sports subsidies are dead in their grave. At which point, maybe this will just become a vaportecture fan site? One can only hope.

If you read much about the journalism and the people crossing their fingers tight in hopes of it having any kind of future, you’ve probably noticed lots of articles recently on how subscriber-funded newsletters are the wave of the future, with popular writers like Heather Cox Richardson and Matt Yglesias raking in big bucks by signing up thousands of subscribers at $5 a month a pop. You may also have noticed a spate of response articles, warning that requiring journalists to behave like influencers to earn a living maybe does not make for the best journalism, or the best lives for journalists.

I’ve thought several times about either turning FoS into a paid newsletter or adding a separate newsletter in addition to the website, and always rejected it for a bunch of reasons: it’s important to me that the information here continue to be a free resource to everyone from journalists to elected officials to casual sports fans, not be trapped behind a paywall for paid subscribers only; it serves FoS readers better if I write about events as they happen, not send out a text dump once a week; for every Matt Yglesias there are dozens of lesser-known Substackers churning out newsletter after newsletter without making a living wage. This site works well for me as it is, and I hope for you as well, and it seems silly to fix what ain’t broke in search of some payday that may or may not come.

To keep it working, though, I depend on an even weirder business model than paid email newsletters, which can best be summed up as you sending me money for no reason other than you like my work here. Sure, you can get some rewards as well — I still have a nice stock of the new series of refrigerator magnets to send out to anyone who donates even $25 a year, plus funders at the $50 for six months or $100 per year level get to place a rotating ad for absolutely anything they like in the site’s right-hand sidebar. But I’m continually surprised and gratified at how many readers turn down those goodies, saying they just want to support the work that this site has been doing for (gulp) almost 23 years.

So, if you can spare a small slice of your stimulus check, please consider becoming an FoS Supporter (or renewing your supportership) at one of the available levels. I’ve even freshly broken it down for you by cost per month, so you don’t have to do math! Such is the level of customer service I provide here for you, and which I will continue to do until the sun goes dark, doing this becomes financially unsustainable, or sports team owners stop trying to build fancier and fancier playgrounds to boost their own profits by sending the bills to taxpayers. (Not holding my breath for that last one, but we can always hope!)

Thanks, everyone, for your past and future support, and here’s hoping for a better 2021, or at least one with even more absurd vaportecture.

I promised more new goodies to go along with the site redesign, and here’s one of them: a new series of Field of Schemes refrigerator magnets, since stock on the first edition was running perilously low. And also some of you already had the full set, and possibly still one or two blank spaces still on your refrigerator, and that could not stand.

I’m not going to share all of the designs, because I want to retain at least a little mystery in my relationship with readers, but here’s one of them:

It’s edumacational!

Anyone becoming an FoS Supporter at any level will receive two different magnets from the new series, chosen at random by me with my own two randomized hands. You will also get my heartfelt gratitude for helping make this site possible at a time when nobody much else seems interested in paying for journalism work, but that’s harder to show off to your friends — or your cat, since your friends probably aren’t coming over much during this pandemic.

To become a Supporter (or renew your membership), make your selection below. If you don’t use Paypal, email me and let’s talk.

You’ve almost certainly noticed this by now, but: Field of Schemes has gotten a design overhaul, its first since 2012. While a lot will be familiar, there are a few new elements to the site’s look, especially on mobile devices, that hopefully will make for a better reader experience. And there is a shit-ton of new wiring under the hood, which should make it easier to upgrade the site more than every eight years in the future.

I still plan to roll out a few more additions later this week, a couple of which I’m actually even more excited about than the redesign. In the meantime, though, while this was all working beautifully on a test site, anything can happen once you go live, so if you notice anything wonky — or just that you’d like to see improved — please post in comments and I’ll see what I can do.

And, of course, if you want to show your appreciation for all the hard work I put into the redesign, or just my usual typing about stadium and arena news, the Support This Site page is ready and waiting. I ditched some ads in the redesign, because they were ugly and got in the way of making it easier to provide you with the news, so now more than ever I’m dependent on the kindnesses of strangers. Tip early, and tip often.

Thanks,

N