Category: horse racing

Friday roundup: Raleigh to spend $625m on arena and convention center upgrades because reasons, and other news

access_time personNeil deMause

Here is video of the Beths playing last night in front of a giant inflatable fish! You’re welcome!

On to the news:

  • Raleigh and Wake County “need to make some big renovations” to the Carolina Hurricanes arena and the city’s convention center to lure more events, reports WTVD-TV, but how will the estimated $625 million in costs be paid for? (North Carolina approved $81 million last year, but now is preparing to spend a whole lot more.) An even better question: What kind of events would be worth spending $625 million in upgrades to lure them? Those curious about the answer will not find it at WTVD, which interviewed all of three people for its story: a county commissioner trying to raise the funds, the head of the state authority that runs the arena, and the manager of the convention center, hmm, wonder why none of them are questioning the need for that level of spending?
  • I’m not exactly sure what the best rhetorical strategy is when going into negotiations with your local NBA team for signing a new lease, but I’m pretty sure going on about how small your city is and how “cities who want to retain their status as TOP tier American cities have obligations” is not it, yes I’m looking at you, Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt. Of course, if we look at this less as Holt bargaining with the Thunder owners and more him bargaining with city residents for why he needs to use their tax money to build a new arena just 21 years after building the last one, it starts to make a bit more sense…
  • New York Gov. Kathy Hochul wants to give $455 million to the operators of Belmont Park racetrack for upgrades and let them pay it back with future state subsidies, and here’s an interview with the consultant who wrote the report saying this is a good idea somehow. Highlight: “Are there other tracks that have reversed declining attendance numbers by renovating their facilities?” “I don’t know the answer to that.” Worth every penny, this guy.
  • MLB Players Association president Tony Clark says that owners asked for the right to unilaterally reduce the size of the minor leagues even further in bargaining over the minors’ first-ever union contract, and Clark informed them that this was a “non-starter.” It’s not clear whether the leagues’ owners already have another contraction plan in the works or are just looking to reserve the right to axe more teams if they so decide, but given how great the last downsizing has worked for letting them shake down cities for stadium money, it’s no real surprise they’re at least thinking about it in their downtime from lobbying Florida to exempt minor-leaguers from minimum-wage laws.
  • More than 60% of Jacksonville residents don’t want to see the city spending $750 million in their money on renovations to the Jaguars stadium, which should be unsurprising, frankly. Also, 48% reported “they had shouted ‘DUUUVAL’ in the past year,” which makes me a little concerned about the people who are writing these poll questions.
  • The latest Buffalo Bills stadium renderings aren’t nearly as hilarious as the last ones, but I do wonder why the scoreboard during the game depicted appears to be showing footage of an entirely different game where the Bills are wearing different uniforms.
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Friday roundup: NFL funds its teams’ stadiums too, but still wants plenty of public cash

access_time personNeil deMause

It was the NFL owners’ meetings this week, which meant a whole lot of headlines about how the league is providing money toward new or renovated stadiums for a bunch of its teams: $295 million for Dallas Cowboys upgrades, $200 million toward a new $2.1 billion Tennessee Titans stadium, and $100 million for Denver Broncos upgrades. All this is coming via the NFL’s G-4 program, funding that is often termed loans but, since it gets “repaid” with ticket sales money the teams would normally have to share with the league, it’s really grants.

If you’re wondering why the NFL goes through the trouble of shuffling money around this way — asking for a cut via revenue-sharing and then handing it back for stadium projects — it’s complicated. G-4 evolved from G-3, which was originally created way back in 1999, when Robert Kraft was threatening to move the New England Patriots from Boston (well, Boston-ish) to Hartford. The NFL, which had recently seen the Houston Oilers move to Nashville and the Los Angeles Rams move to St. Louis in search of new stadium deals, appointed a committee to see if there was a way to discourage owners from abandoning larger cities for smaller ones, thus hurting the league’s ability to demand top dollar for national TV rights. To lead this committee, the league appointed one Robert Kraft.

You can probably see where this is going: Kraft’s committee approved a plan whereby the NFL would allow teams to withhold some revenue-sharing money if it used it to build new stadiums — but only for teams in the top six markets. The 6th-largest market at the time just happened to be Boston, and Kraft became the first recipient of funds under the league’s new G-3 provision.

Immediately, other team owners claimed it wasn’t fair that the Patriots, one of the richest teams in a league full of rich teams, were getting to use their money to build a new stadium that would benefit mostly them, and so G-3 (and its successor, G-4) was expanded to the entire league. This didn’t make a ton of sense in terms of keeping teams in big markets, but it did make for lots of spending on upgrades, so it was in the league’s interest, maybe, at least if the upgrades brought in more money than they cost, which was more likely to be the case when there was a pile of public money involved too.

To that end, G-3 and G-4 were designed to require “public-private partnerships,” meaning the NFL would only kick in if local taxpayers did first. But somewhere along the way, the league started bending that rule: While the Titans, for example, are supposed to get more than a billion dollars in tax money for their new stadium, the Broncos are getting just $12 million, and the Cowboys nothing — so a more accurate reading of the rule might be “public-private partnerships, or be Jerry Jones.”

And that’s The Story of G-4, or How NFL Stadium Funding Got Weirder Than Mere Billionaires Ripping Off Taxpayers Would Have You Expect. It’s not great news, exactly, since it doesn’t mean team owners are asking for any less public money, but it does go to show that sports leagues do have ways of funding new venues without demanding tax dollars, if they wanted to, which they don’t, because why wouldn’t you want tax dollars? Never spend more for an acquisition than you have to.

Was there other news this week? You betcha:

  • The Buffalo Bills stadium still hasn’t gotten a final environmental signoff from the New York state legislature or a community benefits agreement between the team and the county, but it has over a billion dollars in state and county money, so the rest can (and will) wait till 2023 sometime, don’t you worry.
  • The state of Ohio just got around to approving its $30 million share of spending on stadium upgrades for the Cleveland Guardians, to go along with $255 million from the city and county. That’s been expected all along, but it’s still worth taking note of, especially when building the stadium in the first place only cost $350 million (in 1994 dollars, but still).
  • Speaking of the Titans, their newfound antagonist, metro councilperson Bob Mendes, has proposed reducing the state’s spending on their stadium from $500 million to $450 million and spending the other $50 million on children’s services. That’s probably mostly a rhetorical gambit to show that, no, this isn’t money that has to be spent on a stadium, it could go to kids if the state decided to do that, but also a way of pointing out that if a stadium would really generate $3 billion in future tourist taxes like its advocates claim, why not spend the upfront money on more pressing needs and give the Titans owners any surplus that comes in later? That’s not likely to go over well with team execs, but like I said, rhetorical gambit, it’s more to make a point than actually get approved, so well enough played, Bob Mendes.
  • We Are NY Horse Racing released an economic impact study claiming that upgrades to Belmont Park will produce “billions of dollars in economic impact” and I’m sorry, I can’t finish this sentence without laughing, go read the stenography journalism yourself.
  • More new Tampa Bay Rays stadium renderings, this time for a proposed stadium on the Tampa side of the bay, though they’re not detailed enough to make much fun of. The roof does have some weird wrinkly thing going on, which presumably has something to do with skylights, but given that we’re extremely likely never to hear of this proposal or this design ever again, I’m having a hard time getting into it.
  • And finally, enjoy this story of a St. Louis suburb that destroyed its bond rating by building a practice rink for the Blues then ran out of money to pay for it, because of COVID or something, definitely not because a $55.7 million hockey practice arena could never possibly pay for itself. (If the article is paywalled after the first few paragraphs, just let a bot write the rest for you, it’ll probably be as reliable as most local newspaper reporting anyway.)
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Unnamed “backers” want Islanders arena to lead to redeveloping Aqueduct with casinos and other crap

access_time personNeil deMause

The New York Islanders‘ new arena at Belmont Park — or The Stable, as some people on Twitter are already trying to get you to call it, which must make the people in charge of selling its official naming rights just thrilled beyond belief — won’t open until 2021 at the earliest even if it survives its multiple legal challenges, but that doesn’t mean its too soon to start planning how it will become the linchpin of a massive strategy to close Aqueduct Racetrack to horse racing and build new casinos and maybe other development there. Allow Newsday to explain:

Redevelopment backers have a grand vision of Belmont becoming a “sports destination” that goes like this:

• Consolidate downstate horse racing by ending it at Aqueduct Race Track in Queens, and moving all racing to Belmont. Then promote Belmont as a destination with hockey, horses, hotels and shopping.

• Authorize three new downstate casinos by 2023, or sooner.

• Allow Aqueduct, which already rakes in money from thousands of video slot machines, to become a full-fledged casino, and maybe do the same for Yonkers Raceway.

• Consider selling to developers the acreage at the sprawling Aqueduct facility that won’t be part of a casino. The state owns the land and the horse racing business is just a tenant.

All of which makes some sense, even if the only “redevelopment backer” actually named is the Long Island Association, a business lobbying group: Horse racing isn’t exactly a thriving pastime, and Aqueduct is potentially valuable property, though whether state-run casinos are really the best use of it is extremely arguable.

More to the point, though: What does any of this have to do with a new arena at Belmont? I am far from an expert on horse racing (I owned a horse racing board game at around age 10, I recall), but it seems to me that if Aqueduct and Belmont’s racing schedules can be merged effectively, that can happen with or without a hockey arena next door. The new train station that the Islanders’ developer group is helping to pay for but absolutely not paying for without taxpayer money should help, sure, but is it really vital to the plans, or just a way for these Aqueduct redevelopment advocates, whoever they are, to get the attention of Newsday?

And speaking of which, how did this article end up in Newsday anyway, given that it seems to be just the grand vision of one business-lobby spokesperson accompanied by a bunch of reaction quotes from local elected officials? There’s definitely something happening here, but what it is and who’s pushing it still ain’t exactly clear.

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Friday roundup: SF doesn’t want Raiders, Spurs hate Tottenham, Rays outfielder says team has “no fan base” and should maybe move

access_time personNeil deMause

It was a bit of a slow holiday week, but the news that there was made up for it by being extra-entertaining:

  • The Oakland Raiders played maybe their last game in Oakland, at least until the next time they move back to Oakland. (Hey, it’s happened before.) Still nobody has a clue where the team will play next year, but San Francisco officials are already gearing up to block any Raiders games at the Giants‘ AT&T Park, saying they don’t want to be “scabs” in the city of Oakland’s lawsuit against the Raiders for skipping town that prompted this game of stadium chicken in the first place. This is looking like a better and better option.
  • The New Jersey state legislature is preparing to help out the horse racing industry by providing $100 million over the next five years to goose winnings, which seems like exactly the opposite of how gambling is supposed to work.
  • Tottenham Hotspur still can’t get its new stadium open — the earliest possible date is now in February — but that’s not stopping team officials from griping that the surrounding neighborhood is too dirty to go alongside its fancy new stadium thanks to “litter and fly-tipping.” According to one borough memo, “When the question of all the extra cleaning needed was raised and who would fund it it was made very clear that it would not be paid for by Spurs.” The estimated cost of added street cleaning would be £8,000 per match; the team’s most recent annual profit was £58 million.
  • I love interactive fiction and have even written some myself, so I’m inclined to like this Arizona Republic article presenting the Suns arena showdown as a Choose Your Own Adventure book. But sadly its plot relies on some misconceptions — allowing the Suns owners to break their lease in 2022 doesn’t necessarily mean the team will leave, and if they do leave the city’s estimates of $130-180 million in renovations to keep it “competitive” for concerts may be overblown — so I won’t be voting for it for a XYZZY Award.
  • Some details have been released about plans for a Portland baseball stadium, but none of them involve how the stadium would be paid for or how much rent it would pay to its public landlords or even where a team would be obtained, so feel free to skip reading the full documents unless you’re really interested.
  • Tampa Bay Rays outfielder Tommy Pham was asked what he thought about playing in his new home city after being traded last year from St. Louis, and replied, “It sucks going from playing in front of a great fan base to a team with really no fan base at all.” Pham added, “Do I think something has to happen, whether it be a new ballpark, maybe a new city? I think so.” I am going out on a limb to guess that attendance will probably not be great next year on Tommy Pham Bobblehead Night.
  • The Milwaukee Bucks arena has been open for “several months” now, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, which apparently can’t count to four, and the most important takeaways are that: 1) kids like candy, 2) grownups like cheese-covered sausages, 3) everybody likes taking selfies, 4) Bucks president Peter Feigin also likes candy, and 5) nobody actually wants to sit in that ridiculous Panorama Club. No reports back yet on the status of the magic basketball.
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