Before we even get to the bullet points, we need to start with this: Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt announced yesterday in his State of the City speech that he wants to build a new arena for the Thunder to replace their current one, which just turned 22 years old and is receiving a $100 million upgrade begun in 2011. The present building is “simply not what it used to be,” according to Holt, and “will keep getting older,” which, yep, that’s how time works. “Seats get old, scoreboards get old, elevators break,” said Holt. Everything breaks, dunnit?
To help pay for a new arena, Holt wants to extend the 1% sales tax surcharge that paid for the old one and which is currently set to expire in 2028. Holt described this as “no tax increase will be necessary,” which is true if you mean that Oklahoma City residents won’t have to pay any more in taxes than they do now, but not true if you mean whether they’d have to pay more than they would if the Thunder were forced to continue to play in their aging more-than-two-decade-old arena instead of an aging new one.
The tax extension would at least require a public vote, as the original one did. Still, J.C. Bradbury has a point:
I think it's generally good public policy to at least finish the $100 million renovation in progress before you start talking about replacing the venue. https://t.co/yvQtCESJTf https://t.co/x8v3aaZZQP pic.twitter.com/EAQtyzavuz
— J.C. Bradbury (@jc_bradbury) July 20, 2023
Nothing wrong with getting a new arena every year, so long as you’re not the one paying for it. And now, on to the week in bullet points:
- Nashville officially approved $760 million in public bonds to help pay for a new Titans stadium, which Mayor John Cooper called “getting a $2.1 billion domed stadium paid for entirely by the team, tourism, the state and users of the East Bank campus,” and J.C. had something to say about that as well.
- Jacksonville is considering hiring a former Jaguars executive and current NFL consultant to lead its negotiations with the Jaguars over a $1 billion stadium renovation subsidy. “Takes one to know one” or “fox guarding the hen house,” you make the call!
- That temporary cricket stadium that New York Mayor Eric Adams wants to build in a public park in the Bronx would displace a bunch of public cricket pitches, and local cricket clubs and players are not happy at all.
- Washington Commanders owner-for-now Daniel Snyder is being fined $60 million by the NFL for sexually harassing a former employee and hiding revenues he should have been sharing with his fellow owners, probably not in that order. The NFL also approved Snyder’s sale of the Commanders to Josh Harris for $6.05 billion, so if you want to think of this as a 1% “being a horrible human being” tax on the part of the league, I’m not going to stop you.
- People are still somehow talking about a Los Angeles Dodgers gondola that would cost $300-500 million to build and offer free rides to games and make money by ?. If you go to a Dodgers game, you can visit a mock gondola in the parking lot and receive what one Dodgers fan (and gondola fan) called “a wowing experience,” and who can put a price on that?
- No, hosting a Taylor Swift concert is not a major boon to the local economy, click through for Pat Garofalo’s explanation why.
- And hosting the MLB All-Star Game is not a major boon to local restaurants, click through for Seattle restaurateurs’ explanation why.
- There’s been some remarkable examples of bad sports journalism this year, but it’s going to be hard to top Tulsa World’s “ChatGPT ranks Big 12 stadiums.” Expect a lot more of this in the future, since chatbots are way cheaper than journalists, even if they can get dumber over time. At least this is a joke, maybe? In the future, will we even know what a joke is, or will we have to ask chatbots to tell us? Sorry, everyone, that got dark there at the end, go throw your computer out the window and enjoy your weekend without looking at any screens, at least reality is still real, probably, for now.