Category: economic impact studies

AECOM’s economic impact slideshow on Rays stadium is the clowniest of clown documents

access_time personNeil deMause

Only two weeks late, AECOM’s economic impact report on the proposed Tampa Bay Rays stadium complex is now public — or at least a kind reader sent it to me so I could post it here, thank you, kind reader! Given AECOM’s past record as a construction consultant that doesn’t really know how to study economic impact, one might have reasonably worried that this would be a half-assed attempt to quantify the impact of spending billions of dollars in public money on a new Rays stadium complex in Tampa, with some major logical holes. In fact, it’s even worse.

Let’s start with the knee-slapper that the Tampa Bay Business Journal identified by reading just the cover letter of the 53-slide presentation. (AECOM doesn’t muck around with “pages,” speaking solely in the language of Powerpoint.) Take it away, TBBJ:

An AECOM study commissioned by the Tampa Sports Authority, obtained by the Tampa Bay Business Journal, reports that the Rays’ plans to redevelop Hillsborough College’s 100-acre campus could have a $75.5 billion economic impact over 30 years.

However, that number is based on assumptions and estimates made by AECOM, as key information like the number of apartments, hotel rooms and size of parking garages from the Major League Baseball team remains missing.

Yup, it’s right there on slide 3: “Site plans for the Stadium District were not provided, leading AECOM to make assumptions regarding the type and intensity of development.” In other words, since Rays execs haven’t actually committed to what aside from a stadium they’ll build atop the state-owned college campus they’re seeking a 99-year lease to — one of the many unknowns that some local elected officials are complaining need to be resolved before they can reasonably vote on the plan — AECOM just invented a stadium district out of its own imagination, and then projected how many billions of dollars people would spend there.

That’s pretty bad, but it’s still not the worst of it. Other highlights of the slide deck:

  • Most of AECOM’s analysis is geared toward estimating “economic impact,” which is a garbage stat: It’s just the result of adding up all the spending that takes place in a certain place, whether that money goes to boost the local economy and jobs or just goes into the pocket of a developer or team owner. (As economist Victor Matheson memorably put it, “Imagine an airplane landing at an airport and everyone gets out and gives each other a million bucks, then gets back on the plane. That’s $200 million in economic activity, but it’s not any benefit to the local economy.”) So it’s not even worth quibbling over AECOM’s numbers here, because they’re meaningless.
  • What is worth quibbling over is “fiscal impact,” because that’s how much new tax revenue Tampa citizens can expect their local governments to see as the result of the Rays stadium project. Or at least, it should be — AECOM, unfortunately, seems to have skipped over the “new” part, simply adding up how much in various taxes (sales, property, hotel) its imagined development would produce, assuming it’s as built-out and popular as it hopes. In particular, there’s no attempt to account for substitution of spending in one place for spending in another — so if locals, say, switch from eating at restaurants elsewhere in Tampa to ones in a ballpark district, it gets counted as all net new tax money when really it’s just moving the same spending around. So, again, any numbers produced here are meaningless.
  • Also not included: any sourcing footnotes or methodology for how AECOM came up with these figures. The report does say it used unspecified “IO models” to make its calculations, which is pretty much a highfalutin way of saying “we plugged a bunch of assumptions into a software package, and these are the numbers it spit out.”

Economist J.C. Bradbury has dubbed consulting reports of this ilk “clown documents,” and this is one of the clowniest of them all, not even worth the paper it isn’t printed on. And speaking of Bradbury, what does he have to say about this?

“I’ve seen the report. As I expected, it’s mostly a pile of useless numbers of dubious origin. It’s pseudo-economic drivel with the analytical rigor of a junior high science project. The author Dillon Gilman appears to have no economics training.

“This reminds me of when someone pretends to be an ASL interpreter, and they get away with it until people who understand sign language point out that it’s just some crazed idiot waving their hands around. But, when it comes to commissioned economic impact reports, no one cares.”

One reason no one cares, presumably, is that the people who commission these reports are looking less for accurate numbers than for believable numbers. Even pseudo-economic drivel serves to invoke the clear plastic binder effect, whereby any numbers at all look better if they’re gussied up in a professional four-color presentation — though honestly AECOM’s is pretty lacking in zhuzh as well, maybe because they were only getting paid what the Tampa Sports Authority could afford, not what an actual sports team owner would shell out for.

Maybe that’s one reason the media impact of the report has been fairly muted: In addition to the Tampa Bay Business Journal’s critique, the Tampa Bay Times issued an article promising “four takeaways” from the AECOM slide deck, though most of these ended up being just “AECOM came up with different numbers than the Rays did.” Or maybe hallucinated is the better word: Much like AI, these economic impact reports specialize in producing definitive answers, even if there’s no reason to believe they’re more accurate than what you’d get from asking the nearest three-year-old to guess. “Rays stadium project to create eleventy squillion dollars in economic impact” would honestly be a more accurate headline, I’ll nominate for a Pulitzer any news organization that dares go with that one.

Share this post:

Friday roundup: Pittsburgh cancels in-person school while hosting NFL Draft, this is just a thing that happens now?

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s been quite a week: In case you missed it, I spent much of it keeping up with the comment storm after this Q&A about a paper on housing policy published on Monday. (Turns out people have very many feels about housing policy.) Add in a busy week of stadium news, and I should probably take the day off from typing to avoid a repetitive stress injury — but not before taking a run through the week’s additional stadium and arena news, that’s more important than my wrist tendons.

Share this post:

Illinois bill would require sports projects to include independent analysis, public hearings, repayment of lost tax revenue

access_time personNeil deMause

In the midst of all the Chicago Bears stadium drama, in which team owners are still requesting around $1 billion in infrastructure spending and tax breaks, Illinois state representative Kam Buckner has quietly introduced the Stadium Transparency and Responsible Spending (STARS) Act, which would require that any sports construction or renovation projects costing the public more than $25 million:

  • Have its subsidy agreement posted online for at least 30 days before it can be enacted.
  • Receive a “neutral cost-benefit analysis of the agreement” by the state Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability, with the cost footed by the sports franchise seeking the subsidy.
  • Hold at least two public hearings in the affected community.
  • Reimburse in full all public schools, public libraries, or public fire, police, or emergency service for any loss of property taxes as a result of the deal.
  • Contain a clawback provision where the sports franchise must repay all subsidies, plus 5% annual compounded interest, if it relocates or fails to meet its stated community or economic commitments.
  • Provide annual reports on the number of jobs created, tax revenue generated, and community benefits delivered.

Can it pass? Who knows! Front Office Sports reports that Buckner “intends for this to be at least the start of a broader conversation around the stadium financing,” which makes it sound like more like points to be haggled over than the likely final form of any legislation. But that’s still a start, especially given how often sports projects get rushed through the approval process without much public oversight. And there’s nothing stopping other states from modeling similar legislation on Buckner’s bill — hint, hint, legislators in other 49 states.

Share this post:

Friday roundup: D.C.NFL stadium comes with nine-figure Metro cost, Mets owner likely to win casino on city parking lots

access_time personNeil deMause

I had a nice talk yesterday with Chris Francis of Straight Arrow News (owned by the union-busting Joe Ricketts, sigh) about ballooning hidden public costs of sports stadiums and arenas, and the resulting article is up this morning. Key quote: “I think the team owners and the officials who work with them have realized that it sounds worse to give a check, a taxpayer check, to the team for the stadium than to say, okay, we’re not going to give you that, but we will give you money for infrastructure. We will give you tax breaks. We will give you a break on land costs.” We were talking about the Denver Broncos at the time, but really it goes for all modern sports subsidy deals: All the real costs come in the fine print.

Speaking of the fine print, let’s see what it holds this week:

  • When Washington, D.C. agreed to pay $1 billion in cash and $6 billion or so in future rent breaks to Commanders owner Josh Harris for a new stadium, did everyone forget to mention it would come with a major expansion of the Metro station near the stadium site and perhaps a new station nearby as well? That could cost “in the ballpark of hundreds of millions of dollars,” says councilmember Charles Allen, but “we cannot afford not to do it.” Remember when Allen was saying “D.C. has a responsibility to scrutinize the proposal & demand a better & fair deal” with a “billion-dollar industry”? Yeah, neither does he.
  • New York Mets owner Steve Cohen is set to be awarded a casino license for the city-owned Citi Field parking lots he controls, after it turned out the state senator opposing it was the most disliked woman in Albany. There’s no public money involved, only public land, and that was effectively given away when then-mayor Mike Bloomberg gave Cohen a 99-year lease on the property as part of his stadium deal, but if you want to be annoyed at a multibillionaire sports team owner getting his way over community opposition, don’t let me stop you.
  • The main opposition group to next month’s referendum on giving the San Antonio Spurs around $150 million worth of future tax money toward a new arena is splitting its recommendations, urging a no vote on Prop B (which would provide the arena money) but remaining neutral on Prop A, which would devote tax money to redoing the area around the old arena to attract more rodeo events. COPS/Metro wants to see the county’s money from hotel and rental car taxes spent on “a range of community projects” guided by a citizen committee; it’s not entirely clear what happens to the arena plans if Prop A passes and Prop B does not, but that’s looking like a possibility.
  • The Cleveland Browns owners have started moving dirt at their new stadium site even before figuring out how it will all be paid for. All the kids are doing it!
  • The Athletics have filed for $523 million worth of construction permits in Las Vegas; getting those still won’t guarantee that the vaporarmadillo comes to pass, but it’s edging closer to decision time.
  • Heywood Sanders has elaborated on why the $2.6 billion plan to expand the Los Angeles Convention Center in advance of the 2028 Olympics is a terrible idea, saying in a Q&A with Torched’s Alissa Walker that other similar centers are seeing attendance drop even when they expand, and are having to offer discounted rates to lure a dwindling number of events. Key quote from Walker: “[Bangs head on desk].”
  • The organizers of the New York Marathon claim that it and other running events add almost a billion dollars a year to the city economy; it doesn’t look like they even bothered to hired a consultant to write a report justifying the number, but Crain’s New York Business published it anyway, this is fine.
Share this post:

Bears stadium economic impact reports reveal that economic impact reports aren’t worth much

access_time personNeil deMause

Arlington Heights yesterday released not one but two economic impact reports on the village’s proposed Chicago Bears stadium: One commissioned by the team and carried out by consultants HR&A, and one commissioned by the village and carried out by consultants Hunden Partners. (There’s also a FAQ explaining the two reports.) Such reports do not have a glorious history, so how do these stack up?

HR&A’s Bears-commissioned report first:

  • “As part of this analysis, HR&A worked closely with CSL International, a feasibility, business planning, and consulting firm specializing in sports and entertainment, to estimate the impacts of a Super Bowl in Arlington Heights as well as understand the economic benefits realized from major non-recurring events that Chicagoland currently does not host.“ CSL’s brand isn’t exactly “understanding” things, so we’re off to a bad start already.
  • HR&A projects $10.9 billion in “one-time statewide economic impacts,” which just means that the project would involve building several billion dollars worth of stuff, plus a multiplier for when construction workers go and buy other stuff. Some of this spending would presumably involve things like steel that’s bought from out of state; HR&A doesn’t give any indication of how it calculated this number, though, so no way of knowing if this number is overblown or by how much.
  • After the initial construction outlay, HR&A projects “$1.3 billion in net annual statewide economic impact and close to 9,000 permanent jobs” from the ongoing operations of the stadium and its surrounding development, resulting in $69.1 million a year in net new tax revenues for the state, county, and city. “Net” implies that this is spending that wouldn’t take place without the project — but there’s no indication that HR&A subtracted out spending that would be shifted from elsewhere in the state to the Arlington Heights site. Unless Bears ownership plans on spontaneously generating new Illinoisans, at least some of the spending at the new project will inevitably be cannibalized from elsewhere in the state.
  • As for costs, “the Bears are seeking public funding for $855 million needed for district infrastructure,” notes HR&A, for such things as new highway ramps and moving a Metra commuter rail line. No funding source at all is given for this, but put next to those billions of dollars in projected revenues, $855 million is mere pocket change, right?
  • Hosting a Super Bowl, reports HR&A, “would generate an additional $570 million in statewide economic impact and support close to 3,800 permanent jobs” — that’s right, permanent jobs from a one-week, one-time event, sure would like a methodology footnote on that one, but sadly none is forthcoming.

That’s all pretty sad, but also pretty par for the course for what a consultant like HR&A will typically put together for a client like the Bears: Add up all the money that may change hands at a stadium project, slap on a multiplier, and print impressively large numbers in impressively large type. But what about the village’s hired hands, did they do any better?

  • Hunden’s report is just a three-page summary, so its findings are even more abbreviated than HR&A’s: The stadium project would “support” 5,400+ full-time equivalent jobs and $510.1 million in “net new tax impact” ($15.1m per year) over 40 years. Once again, there’s no indication of whether these numbers account for spending that would substitute for other spending that would take place without the stadium project — not to mention the opportunity cost of losing out on any spending that might take place if the old Arlington Park racetrack were redeveloped for something else.
  • Then there’s this amazing chart on projected uses for a stadium, which starts with the remarkable claim that an NFL stadium would host 370 “events” a year, then wayyyyy at the bottom specifies what most of those events would actually consist of:

The FAQ, meanwhile, adds even more caveats:

  • What about the added costs that would come with providing schools, police, fire, roads, and all the other stuff that a whole new mini-city would require? “Does this report include the impacts on Village services and infrastructure costs? No, it does not. Additional studies will consider the cost of Village services and infrastructure.”
  • Likewise, the reports don’t attempt to estimate the cost of “megaproject” property tax breaks that the Bears are demanding from a so-far-uninterested state legislature, but don’t worry, that isn’t real money: “A Megaproject Bill does not exempt large-scale developers from paying taxes, give State money to private business, nor cost the State government any money.” While all this is technically true — the Bears developers wouldn’t be completely exempt from paying taxes, they would just get a large break on their tax bill, and the public money provided would come out of the village’s and county’s treasuries, not the state’s — the implication that this would present no cost to taxpayers is false.

All of these funny numbers matter a whole lot, and not just for PR purposes: The FAQ specifies that “The Village has always stated that it will not approve the project unless there is a net fiscal benefit — meaning the Village’s new revenues must exceed new expenses,” so how the costs and benefits of the project are calculated is hugely important. Unfortunately, the two consulting reports are pretty much useless for that: Asked for comment after looking them over, sports economist J.C. Bradbury called them “an incomprehensible mess of motivated nonsense.” If it’s the kind of nonsense that will potentially land them more than a billion dollars in new transportation infrastructure and tax breaks, though, the Bears owners will no doubt consider it consulting fees well spent.

Share this post:

Friday roundup: DC hires same clown consultants for Commanders deal who screwed up DC United math

access_time personNeil deMause

Before we get to the weekly news roundup, a commenter asked me a question yesterday — I mean, I think they may actually have been trying to troll me, but it was in the form of a question — about how it could be better for Missouri to risk the Kansas City Chiefs moving to Kansas and losing all the tax revenue that comes with games. After initially going the “because economists say so” route, I tried to write up an actual detailed answer, and I want to include it here, because I, at least, found it instructive to see how quickly these kind of “sports stadium pay for themselves through economic activity” arguments fall apart once you subject them to actual math:

I found where your numbers are from, and they’re not from any economic impact study by the sports authority or an independent auditor or anyone else. They’re from a consultant hired by the Chiefs, who declared that the team and the stadium “generate $28.8 million in direct, indirect and induced tax revenue for the State of Missouri annually.” (The supposed $572 million is just “economic activity,” and the $28.8 million is the presumed taxes on that; if you include both, you’re double-counting.)

So, we already have Missouri spending $500 million in order to save $28.8 million a year, which would be a negative return on investment right there. But where does that $28.8 million figure come from? The Chiefs consultants, Econsult Solutions, only released a one-pager with no footnotes or other methodology, so we have no idea.

Most importantly, we have no idea if Econsult included money that would otherwise be spent elsewhere in Missouri if the Chiefs left. Is that all of it? No, of course not. Is it enough that it would reduce the $28.8 million a year in new taxes to a level where Missouri would be better off if the Chiefs left? Given that Missouri would be better off even if the real number were $28.8 million a year, yeah, that’s a near certainty.

But there’s an easier way to figure this out than guesstimating where people would be spending their money in some hypothetical situation: Look at cities that have gained or lost teams, and see what happens to local tax revenues. Innumerable economists have now done this, and found that the resulting losses are somewhere between 1) nothing and 2) next to nothing. (It’s actually worse than that: Some cities brought in *more* tax revenue without a team.) And that’s cities — the numbers are going to look even worse for states, since you can’t even make it up by stealing tax revenues from the suburbs.

No matter how you slice it, the numbers show that at the price points we’re talking about, $500 million and up, there is no way on earth for local governments to do better with the teams than without. You can wish it were otherwise — and team owners will certainly hire people to claim that it’s so — but good luck finding any data to support your case.

And now, on to the news:

  • Speaking of economic impact reports, Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser just released one for her proposed Commanders stadium that would cost the city upwards of $7 billion, and you’ll never guess who wrote it: That’s right, Convention, Sports & Leisure, everyone’s favorite Dallas Cowboys–and–New York Yankees–owned clown consultants! I have no plans to go over it in detail (though the page with the large heading spelled “MULTPLIERS” does stand out), but I am obligated to point out that the last time D.C. hired CSL to do a stadium study, it was immediately revealed that about two-thirds of the projected city benefits weren’t benefits at all, forcing the consultants to put out a letter “clarifying” that its 400-page report didn’t actually say what it said it said. That CSL they got hired again by D.C. to do their next big stadium study is either a sign that Bowser wasn’t paying attention in 2014 (when she was a city council member) or that stadium consultants aren’t getting hired for the quality of their work, but rather for how reliably they report what team owners and elected officials want to hear, yeah, that’s undoubtedly the one.
  • Sports economist Geoffrey Propheter read far enough into the CSL report to find this knee-slapper: “Suppose I attend a conference in Denver, get a hotel room, and eat a Subway. According to CSL, the Subway gets to count my conference fees, room fees/taxes as economic impact. And so can the conference and the hotel. So now all my spending gets counted x3. Please stop being terrible at thinking.”
  • The Chiefs and Royals owners may now have blank checks from the state for up to 50% of their stadium costs (or will once the Missouri state house passes the bill and Gov. Mike Kehoe signs it, which should happen soon), but they still want even more city and county money to pay for their stadium dreams, and that could require more public referendums. The Kansas City Star reports that the two teams are likely looking at separate ballot measures after a combined one failed spectacularly last April; no word yet on when these would happen, but the teams are clearly going to have to ask the state of Kansas to renew its offer of state money for stadium there beyond its June 30 expiration date, or else “We must outbid the evil barbarians from beyond the western realm!” is going to have somewhat less impact on election day.
  • The plan by Ohio state senators who accepted tons of campaign donations from Cleveland Browns owner Jimmy Haslam to raid the state’s unclaimed funds account to borrow money for a Browns stadium may be stoking outrage from residents about what one called “legal theft,” but it’s doing wonders for publicizing the existence of the unclaimed funds and getting Ohioans to start claiming them.
  • Also, the Browns’ stadium hasn’t even been approved yet, and it’s already racking up cost overruns: The city of Brook Park just asked for $71 million in state road improvements for the planned stadium site, on top of the $1.2 billion in public money that’s already been proposed.
  • Want to read an article about how a min0r-league baseball stadium has “revived a struggling downtown” in a South Carolina city, while quoting only the mayor, the team owner, and the stadium developer? Sorry, I’m going to link to it anyway.
Share this post:

Friday roundup: Browns officially demand $1.2B in tax money, DC and San Antonio residents call out public cost of sports plans

access_time personNeil deMause

And how’s your city’s week going? That good, huh? It’s going around.

I would share more Bluesky snark with you, but there’s stadium news to be gotten to:

  • The Cleveland Browns owners have formally issued their request for funding for a $2.4 billion domed stadium in Brook Park, and it includes $1.2 billion in taxpayer money. (The breakdown is $600 million state, $178 million county, $422 million city, if you’re an Ohioan and are wondering which of your government budgets the money would be coming out of. Also, though it’s being described as “new tax revenue,” it really isn’t; hey there, Casino Night Fallacy!) Team owner Jimmy Haslam is describing this as a “50/50 public and private partnership,” though of course that’s only on the spending end; the chances of taxpayers getting an equal cut of stadium revenues are estimated as ROTFL. At least one of the elected officials being asked for cash was extremely unenthusiastic: Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne, who has stated that he’d rather the Browns remain within the city of Cleveland, said, “We have to throw a flag on the play” and “it’s a Hail Mary to throw out numbers that don’t square,” sorry, we’ve reached our maximum daily exposure to football metaphors, we’ll have to pick this up again next week.
  • D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser told a community meeting that she wants to build a Washington Commanders stadium at the RFK Stadium site, and according to WTOP, “When someone asked whether Bowser would commit to not offering a subsidy, she said no.” News reports didn’t describe the crowd reaction to that non-pledge, but given the overall skepticism about a stadium plan expressed at the meeting, we can picture it for ourselves.
  • Speaking of resident reaction, “‘Highly speculative’: Residents bristle at lack of answers on funding for new Spurs arena” is a pretty evocative headline, well done, San Antonio Express-News. And unlike in D.C., in San Antonio massive public scorn matters, because the Spurs arena development plan — which goes by the truly jaw-dropping name Project Marvel — is going to require a public referendum to pass, so the Spurs owners have some bristling to address.
  • The United Soccer League says it’s planning to launch a new top-tier division in 2027 to compete with Major League Soccer, made up of some of its existing second-tier franchises and some new ones, and you know what new soccer teams means: new soccer stadium demands! USL officials talked a lot about how the U.S. needs a system more like Europe, where there are tons of soccer teams in cities large and small, but left out the part about how those teams’ stadiums are typically built without large public subsidies, curious, that.
  • And speaking of soccer stadiums, a clown study by the Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis claims that a new soccer stadium in Bridgeport would “generate $3.4 billion in economic output and sustain 1,300 new permanent jobs annually until 2050.” Wait, 1,300 permanent jobs annually? Like, 1,300 jobs one year, then another 1,300 jobs the next? It will not surprise you to learn that the Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis is connected with UConn’s business school, not its economics department, though it may surprise you that the report was apparently issued last August but only got reported on by the Hartford Business Journal this Wednesday, slow week in the stenography industry, I guess.
  • You may think you don’t want to read a long profile of College of the Holy Cross economist Victor Matheson in the school’s magazine, but what if I told you he provides scientific tips on which lottery numbers to avoid picking? Matheson also discusses stadium funding (“Let’s just say that I’m fairly happy that I have long-term job security as a critic of spending massive amounts of taxpayer money”) and the fact that he wears a different soccer jersey to class each day, which, yes, requires a lot of soccer jerseys.
Share this post:

Allen Sanderson, stadium economist and sports fan, has died at 81

access_time personNeil deMause

If Allen Sanderson, who died recently at the age of 81, will be remembered most for one thing, it will likely be a single remark: “If you want to inject money into the local economy, it would be better to drop it from a helicopter than invest it in a new ballpark.” That statement, which Sanderson used variations on multiple times (I first saw it in reference to a proposed Minnesota Twins stadium in 1997), ended up inspiring a movie title (as well as a Field of Schemes coffee mug) and generally encapsulated the attitude of pretty much every economist toward sports subsidies: Spending money on anything will result in some economic impact, but it’d be hard to find one with less bang for your buck than a pro sports stadium.

Sanderson should be remembered for much more than that, though: As a longtime professor at the University of Chicago — according to his faculty page, he’s taught more students there than anyone in school history — he co-wrote a ton of important studies of sports stadium economics, including three chapters in the great 1997 tome Sports, Jobs, and Taxes and more recently a study making the case for paying college athletes. And he was always happy to provide journalists and the public with plain-English explanations of economic concepts, whether about why income inequality drives higher ticket prices or the lack of an Olympics bump for cities that host the Games; his other frequent aphorisms included “There are two things you should never put on a valuable piece of property: a cemetery and a football stadium” and, with regard to claims of stadiums’ economic impact, “Take whatever number the supporters are giving you, move the decimal point one to the left, and you’re pretty close.” (Here’s a nice video of one of his talks if you want to see him in action.)

Allen was also a big sports fan, particularly of the Chicago White Sox, something he would invariably admit with chagrin. He once told me about a memorable conversation he had with a sports marketing expert to whom he was complaining about all the unnecessary noise and ad boards and attempts to sell you things that have become part of the modern live sports experience. The marketer, as Allen told it (I’m paraphrasing from memory here), replied, “We have different categories that we separate fans into, and you’re what we call a ‘traditional fan’: You go see sports just to watch the game. Let me tell you something, Allen: There aren’t that many of you.”

There definitely aren’t that many Allen Sandersons, and now we have one fewer. RIP, and thanks for all the insight and good humor that you brought to the world.

Share this post:

Friday roundup: Rays to play 2025 in Tampa, and other things to make people mad

access_time personNeil deMause

The verdict is in for where the Tampa Bay Rays will play the 2025 season while waiting for their roof to be (probably) repaired, and the answer is: Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, spring-training home of the New York Yankees and rest-of-the-time home of the Tampa Tarpons. I’m going to go ahead and call this a fine enough decision: The stadium holds 11,000 people, not too far off of the Rays’ average 2024 attendance of 16,515; as a spring training site, it has major-league amenities; and it’s still in the Tampa Bay region, so Rays fans won’t have to drive across the state or the country to get to games. Plus, there are multiple fields on the site, so there’s no worry about schedule conflicts, since the Tarpons can just play on one of the back fields while the Rays take over the main one.

Of course, it’s also not in Pinellas County, which is already ticking off Pinellas County commissioners who already held up a vote on approving bonds for a new Rays stadium last month amid concern that the team might play elsewhere for a season or three. Commissioner Chris Latvala, who voted against the stadium deal in July, called the decision “unfortunate,” saying, “there’s going to be over $1 billion public funds dedicated from Pinellas residents to the Tampa Bay Rays, and the thank you that the Rays gave them was to play the games across the bridge in Hillsborough County.” Commissioner Rene Flowers, meanwhile, who voted for the deal in July, told the Tampa Bay Times she’s now not sure if she’ll change her vote, saying, “I’m waiting to see how it looks for us financially” — spoilers, Rene, it still looks just as bad as it did then.

And then there’s this tidbit:

The Yankees will receive about $15 million in revenue for hosting the Rays, a person familiar with the arrangement told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because that detail was not announced. The money won’t come from Tampa Bay but from other sources, such as insurance.

Um, Associated Press, you drunk posting? First off, “Tampa Bay” is not a government entity, it’s a collection of disparate municipalities and counties, so who isn’t the money coming from, exactly? And “such as insurance” is both awfully vague and puzzlingly specific, as the only insurance policy that’s been discussed is that held by the city of St. Petersburg, which is already committed to paying for a chunk of the estimated $55 million cost of repairing the Tropicana Field roof.

Still many questions, in other words. Anyone else want to chime in?

“I’ll be excited to set a record for rain delays in a season,” Rays reliever and union player rep Pete Fairbanks said.

And as for the week’s other news:

  • Orlando’s stadium formerly known as the Citrus Bowl is set to get $400 million in county-funded renovations, something that Orlando mayor-for-life Buddy Dyer first proposed last year and which the county gave preliminary approval to back in January. The money would come from the “tourist development tax” — the same pool of hotel-tax money that Pinellas County is currently debating whether to hand over to the Rays — which according to the authorizing legislation can be used for building stadiums, or building auditoriums, or funding aquariums or museums or zoos or beaches or advertising tourism or a whole lot of other things, so long as the purpose is to get more tourists coming to your county. It’s actually somewhat difficult to argue that renovating a stadium that hosts a handful of college football games each year in order to make it “fully symmetrical” is what’s needed in order to encourage tourists to go to freaking Orlando, but this is what the county commission is being asked to vote on in the next couple of weeks, with a straight face.
  • A report by consultant Econsult Solutions Inc. commissioned by the city of Cleveland claims that the Browns leaving downtown would cost the city $30 million in annual economic activity and $11 million in annual tax revenue, which on the face of it doesn’t make any sense since Cleveland doesn’t have any taxes that are at 36.7%. A quick look at the report itself doesn’t reveal any more methodological details, except that Econsult apparently calculated its estimate that Cleveland would lose 29% of Browns-related spending by dividing the population of the city by the population of Cuyahoga County, LOLconsultants.
  • Personal seat license prices at the new Tennessee Titans stadium are in some cases going up from $750 per seat to $10,000 a seat, and season ticket holders are not pleased. But at least the PSL money will help pay off the public’s $1.2 billion share of the construction — oh, what’s that, the seat license money is entirely going to pay off team owner Amy Adams Strunk’s share of the costs? The Hog Mollies didn’t mention that part!
  • The city of Oakland’s sale of its half of the Oakland Coliseum site to private developers is on hold, apparently because Alameda County is dragging its feet on the transfer of its half of the site which it had previously sold to A’s owner John Fisher. No, that doesn’t make sense to me either, it looks to involve a lawsuit in progress charging that the sale violates the state’s Surplus Land Act requiring that public land first be offered up for development as affordable housing — similar objections were raised about the Los Angeles Angels deal, you may remember, but that fell apart before it was ever resolved, so who knows what’ll happen here.
  • One long-rumored stadium site the Kansas City Royals definitely won’t be moving to is the old K.C. Star building, because it’s being converted into an “AI innovation facility.” A local wine bar owner called this “not the most exciting thing for the neighborhood” but at least a plan that wouldn’t require displacing local businesses, which is probably about right.
  • Diamond Sports Group, aka Bally Sports aka FanDuel Sports, has emerged from bankruptcy reorganization, with lots of consequences for the MLB, NBA, and NHL teams it formerly provided cable broadcasts of. ESPN has a rundown, but the main takeaway is that a bunch of teams are going to getting less TV money than they expected, which will effect everything from their player budgets to the relative importance of market size in terms of team profitability, while fans will get some new options including the ability to do pay-per-view of single games for a mere (?) $7 a pop. More on this as more dominoes fall, maybe, or check Marc Normandin’s Marvin Miller’s Mustache newsletter later this morning, if I know him he’ll be weighing in on this.
Share this post:

Friday roundup: Everyone’s building soccer stadiums, no one’s sure how to pay for them

access_time personNeil deMause

This was a rough week for anyone in the U.S. who is an immigrant or looks like they might be, is trans, might ever need an abortion, is Palestinian, is a federal government employee, is a local government employee, is an employee of anything that depends on international trade, lives near sea level or in places that get hot or are at risk of hurricanes, likes democracy, or cares about a relative, friend, or neighbor who does. Not that it would have been an amazing week for most of those people if the presidential election results had gone another way, but a whole lot of folks are somewhere on the spectrum from anxious to terrified right now, so if you need to check in with each other right now before getting back to life as we know it, that’s not only reasonable, it’s a fine tradition.

And now, whenever you’re ready, back to sports stadium and arena life as we know it:

  • The owners of Sacramento Republic F.C., who now include the Wilton Rancheria Native American tribe by are still led by minority owner Kevin Nagle, announced plans for a new stadium, and almost none of the news coverage bothered to provide details of how it would be paid for, even those that reported on how it was announced to the tune of “Don’t Stop Believin’.” Finally, way at the bottom of a KCRA-TV report, we learn that the city of Sacramento is expected to put up $92 million in infrastructure money from property taxes on 220 acres surrounding the stadium, plus provide free police, fire, EMS, traffic, and other services for the next ten years. The city council is set to vote on the plan Tuesday, so that leaves three whole days to gather feedback, two of which are weekend days and the third is a holiday when city offices are closed, this is fine.
  • Bridgeport is considering a minor-league soccer stadium that would cost at least $75 million and which would likely include public funds, and Baltimore is considering a minor-league soccer stadium with no known price tag or details on how to pay for it, and Fort Wayne is considering a minor-league soccer stadium that is promised will be “100% privately financed” but we’ve heard that before.
  • Cleveland and Cuyahogo County are continuing to look for ways to fill their budget gap for paying for future upgrades for the Guardians and Cavaliers, and county executive Chris Ronayne says options are “not yet concrete” because “it’s a conversation that’s probably also going to have to include the public.” Signal Cleveland speculates that this could include going back to voters to approve another tax increase, unless Clevelanders go back to drinking and smoking at their old rates, which might not be as likely as you would think.
  • Nearly 95% of campaign donations by U.S. sports team owners went to Republican candidates or causes, according to a Guardian review of donor filings, which, duh, Charles Barkley could have told you that.
  • How are Inglewood business owners around the Los Angeles Rams‘ new stadium and Los Angeles Clippers‘ new arena loving all the new foot traffic? Not so much! “One of my lowest sales days was on Super Bowl Sunday” because of street closures, said a local bakery owner at a press conference this week. “I literally made under $600 for the day. I had to send employees home, and you’re just looking around like, ‘What in the world?'” Checks out!
  • Did a major news site just run an item reporting wild economic impact projections for a proposed Buffalo soccer stadium without saying who conducted the study, while the byline partly credits a City Hall press release? Sure did! Please give to support your independent nonprofit or collectively owned news media, we might just be needing them the next year or four.
Share this post: