I published four posts in the first four days of this week despite a router (finally replaced last night) that was doling out packets with an eyedropper, and now the internet itself isn’t letting me consistently load the site, so you’ll forgive me if the Friday roundup is a bit perfunctory or late, won’t you?
On with the news, typed out for now in a Notes file:
- Sports subsidy advocates like to argue that spending tourist tax money on stadiums doesn’t really cost local governments anything because it can only be spent on tourism projects anyway, but what then of news that a Tampa Bay Rays stadium in St. Petersburg could eat up all the county hotel tax money that is needed to replenish the county’s beaches?
- The New York Times’ new non-union sports department has an interview with Oakland mayor Sheng Thao about how she met with MLB commissioner Rob Manfred after he claimed there was no stadium offer in Oakland for the A’s to present him with 31 copies (one for him and one for each MLB owner) of her city’s stadium offer. Thao said she wanted “to ensure that the [relocation] committee understands all of our deal points” and also said that “absolutely” she would consider improving her offer. All of which could just be covering all her bases so she can say she tried, but also could be playing to the crowd of MLB owners who’ll be voting on the A’s-to-Vegas move, in hopes that at least eight of them are fearful enough of trading a top TV market for MLB’s smallest, or just hate John Fisher enough, to vote “no,” either of which is certainly possible.
- Baltimore Orioles execs have started lobbying Congress for federal money for “revitalization efforts” in the Camden Yards area, according to disclosure forms uncovered by Politico. How much money they want isn’t the kind of thing listed on lobbyist disclosures, but it’s definitely fresh territory in terms of public funding asks, albeit expected once Joe Biden announced a ton of federal infrastructure spending and sports teams smelled blood in the water.
- Milwaukee Brewers business operations president Rick Schlesinger has provided a list of some of the reasons team execs want about $350 million in state money to renovate the stadium, and they include: 22-year old boilers, obsolete field chillers (?), and TV wiring that needs to be upgraded to fiber optics. Damn, I should have kept renting — under sports logic, I apparently could have demanded that my landlord pay for my new router…
- Charlotte mayor Vi Lyles says spending $120 million on a new tennis center is about “creating jobs in this community” WFAE’s race and equity desk asked if that’s really so, but didn’t ask any actual economists who might be able to answer the question, so gotta give this a B-minus at best.
- NBA commissioner Adam Silver says the league will consider both Seattle and Las Vegas for expansion teams once the league signs a new TV rights deal in 2025. Both cities have new arenas already, so maybe they can get away without building even newer ones, though I dunno, Climate Pledge Arena will be five years old by then, who knows how the field chillers will be holding up.
Okay, I can access the site again, going to hit publish on this before Mercury goes back into retrograde. Stay cool, and see you Monday!