Category: NWSL

Friday roundup: A’s charging $200 each for Sacramento tickets, DC hires NFL-linked firm to study building NFL stadium

access_time personNeil deMause

How much additional stadium news was there this week? So much so that I skipped posting anything yesterday, just so I could start on the bullet points for this roundup. That’s just how much I care about you, the readers of this site. (Also I couldn’t bear to write entire posts for any of these, they were all either too silly or too depressing or both.)

On with the news:

  • There were rumors that Oakland A’s management was going to force fans to also buy Sacramento River Cats season tickets if they wanted A’s season tickets in Sacramento next year, but it turns out that’s not true. What is true: A’s fans wanting season tickets will have to commit to buying them for the “duration” of the team’s stay in Sacramento, and tickets will run between $185 and $250 per seat per game. (UPDATE: The Sacramento Bee reports that that’s only for “premium” season tickets; it’s unclear if there will be non-premium season plans, or if so what they will cost.) At least A’s players won’t have to suddenly acclimate themselves to playing in front of crowds bigger than the intimate affairs they’ve grown used to since owner John Fisher alienated all his fans in the Bay Area.
  • Washington, D.C. is exploring building a new Commanders stadium by agreed to pay $565,000 for a feasibility study to ASM Global, which Fox5DC describes as “a company with extensive experience managing NFL stadiums,” but which is more accurately described as a subsidiary of Legends Entertainment, which is co-owned by the New York Yankees and Dallas Cowboys. Surely they will deliver an unbiased and comprehensively researched cost-benefit analysis of building an NFL stadium in D.C., why would you ever think otherwise?
  • Not only is the city of St. Petersburg forcing its top employees to pay back $250,000 in bonus checks it sent out for overtime work on the new Tampa Bay Rays stadium project, now city administrator Rob Gerdes has suspended city HR director Christopher Guella for a week as punishment, despite Mayor Ken Welch having defended the bonuses as “within budget and my administrative authority.” Gerdes says this is because the bonuses actually turned out to be illegal; Welch insists it’s just because he wanted to avoid a bad look, though if so he really should have checked first with Barbra Streisand about how well that works.
  • Illinois labor leaders are pushing for the state to fund sports stadiums for the Chicago Bears and White Sox and Red Stars, because “unions want to build,” according to AFL-CIO president Tim Drea. And they don’t like building the things that won’t get built if the state saves a few billion dollars by not building stadiums? Somebody get them on the phone with the Nevada teachers union, they have a lot to talk about.
  • Two Cleveland city councilmembers walked around the Browns stadium during an exhibition game and asked more than 3,000 fans if they’d rather the team stay at the lakefront or move to Brook Park, and most said they prefer the lakefront. Of course, since these were people at a game at the lakefront, you’d expect them to skew more toward wanting to see games there, since people who skip going to games because they’re at the lakefront wouldn’t be at a game at the lakefront. Anyway, what did the fans say about how much they want the city government to spend on a new or renovated Browns stadium? Oh, they didn’t ask about that? Opening day is two weeks from Sunday, plenty of time for the councilmembers to plan a new round of canvassing.
  • The Dome at America’s Center, former home of the St. Louis Rams, needs $150 million in upgrades, according to the stadium authority that runs it and surely would never lie about something just to get a nicer space to rent out at public expense. The dome is currently rented out for “assemblies for large conventions, Metallica and Beyoncé concerts, and even some lower-level professional football games,” which surely will make it easy to earn back $150 million, so long as Metallica never stops touring.
  • Saskatoon needs to come up with $400 million in public money toward a $1.22 billion development to include a new arena for the Saskatoon Blades, and it plans on raising the money via a long list of uhhhh, we’ll get back to you: maybe hotel taxes, maybe TIF property tax kickbacks, maybe money from the province, who knows? “What would the city look like without SaskTel Center or without TCU Place?” asked Saskatoon director of technical services Dan Willems. “Would we be able to attract newcomers and help major employers attract talent to our city without these types of amenities?” Shh, don’t tell him.
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Friday roundup: Oakland Coliseum redevelopment moves ahead (maybe), DeSantis writes $8m taxpayer check to Inter Miami stadium

access_time personNeil deMause

In case you’re wondering why sports team owners keep on releasing incredibly amateurish vaportecture stadium renderings that are just going to subject them to ridicule, check out these headlines from just the last two days: “Browns players share thoughts on Brook Park stadium renderings,” “Cleveland Browns stadium saga: Fans react to renderings of Brook Park proposal,” “Cavaliers Star Donovan Mitchell Chimes In On Browns New Stadium Proposal.” Pretty pictures, or even doofy-looking ones, are red meat to click-starved news outlets, and so long as they keep getting coverage that is more “ooh, shiny” than “who’s going to pay for this exactly?” the CAD mills are going to be kept busy.

And speaking of busy, let’s see what else happened this week:

  • Oakland A’s owner John Fisher has agreed to sell his half of the Oakland Coliseum property to developers African American Sports & Entertainment Group for $125 million, which is $20 million more than the city of Oakland got for its half. Now AASEG will convert it into a “$5 billion megaproject that could include a new convention center, restaurant, hotel, youth amphitheater and restaurants,” and maybe a soccer stadium — or could, you know, not, depending on how the economic winds blow. That the group’s private equity partner says the money will come from “investors” isn’t exactly reassuring, but at least a Coliseum development might pencil out as a better investment than the plan that Fisher is trying to sell.
  • One thing to breathe easy about with Inter Miami‘s much-delayed new stadium is that at least it’s not getting any public money, and … wait, why is Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis holding a giant $8 million check made out to the stadium? He can just do that? (Answer: Yes, it’s from an infrastructure slush fund he controls.) Technically the money is going toward traffic improvements around the stadium, but still, handing over $8 million to support a stadium that’s going to happen whether or not you spend the taxpayer dollars on it and then declaring “we just don’t believe that we give money to build sports stadiums” is a nice trick if you can pull it off.
  • And speaking of privately funded soccer stadiums getting public funding, how about Kansas City spending upwards of $30 million in cash and tax breaks for a parking garage for the KC Current‘s newly opened stadium? The deal isn’t final yet, so no publicity photos of oversized checks for now.
  • Signal Cleveland speculates that the proposed $2.4 billion Cleveland Browns stadium in Brook Park could use tax increment financing to cover some of its bills, with the $740,000 a year in property taxes the site currently generates continuing to go to local schools while anything above that number would be kicked back to help pay for the stadium. Except if you believe transit blogger and Browns dome enthusiast Ken Prendergast, the newly developed land would “generate millions more in property taxes or payments in lieu of taxes for Brook Park schools than it does now,” and both things can’t be right. We’ll just have to wait and see what’s actually in the financial plan, which the Browns owners seem perfectly content not to reveal anytime soon, not when they can get Donovan Mitchell making headlines by tweeting that a new stadium is “gonna be fire.”
  • The new Worcester Red Sox stadium has “put the Canal District’s emergence on overdrive,” according to a Boston Globe article citing … some bars that opened nearby? Not mentioned: What the numbers show about the city’s bang for its 150 million bucks, despite there being local economists who could have easily told the Globe the answer.
  • In Anaheim, meanwhile, the presence of the Los Angeles Angels has spawned a group of about 40 hot dog vendors who’ve set up outside the stadium, and Angels execs hate it because that’s money that’s not going into team pockets — no, of course not, they’re just concerned about someone “getting severely sick or even dying due to food poisoning,” because we know how devoted the Angels organization is to ensuring people get quality food.
  • Thomas Tresser, not the DC Comics villain but the author of a book on the successful campaign to defeat Chicago’s Olympic bid, has launched a petition to demand that the city of Chicago not provide any public money or land for sports stadiums, feel free to sign if you’re the petition-signing type.
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Friday roundup: Royals, Chiefs owners turn up heat before sales tax vote, VA gov tries to revive arena by insulting state senate again

access_time personNeil deMause

Time to open up the ol’ Instapaper and see what this week’s leftover news items hold — seriously? Okay, better get started:

  • So much is going on in Kansas City in advance of Jackson County’s April 2 voting deadline for a referendum to extend the county 0.375% sales tax surcharge and give the resulting $500 million or so to the Royals and Chiefs for stadium upgrades that for the first time I’m having to break out a second level of bullets:
    • Chiefs president Mark Donovan went on TV and was asked if the teams would leave town if the tax hike is rejected, and replied, “for us the Chiefs; we would just have to look at all our options” and “I think they would have to include leaving Kansas City. But our goal here is, we want to stay here.” It’d be a shame if someone was to set fire to the football players, wouldn’t it, Luigi?
    • The two teams have doubled their campaign spending to $1 million each, with more presumably expected.
    • A coalition of low-income workers and residents of the Crossroads district where the Royals owner John Sherman wants to build a stadium with around $1 billion in public money says they’re giving Sherman until Tuesday to provide a community benefits agreement for the neighborhood or else they’ll advocate for a “no” vote.
    • And Chiefs mascot KC Wolf and Royals mascot Sluggerrr handed out “Vote Yes” stickers outside the city’s arena yesterday, and I had to dig through the Fox4KC video for photographic evidence but here it is:
  • Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s own internal analysis of the proposed Washington Capitals and Wizards arena deal for Alexandria finds that in order for it to raise enough money to generate the taxes needed to pay its construction costs, fans would have to pay $75 for parking, the arena would have to host 53 more events each year than the teams do now in D.C., and the project’s hotel would have to be able to charge $731 a night. Youngkin says he’s “working on” reviving the arena plan and that the problem is “the Senate didn’t do the work,” he really hasn’t learned his lesson about how to win friends and influence people, has he?
  • Three members of the St. Petersburg City Council remain opposed to Tampa Bay Rays owner Stuart Sternberg’s maybe–$1.5 billion stadium subsidy deal, and it would only take four to vote it down. The nearest anyone else is coming to opposing it is Gina Driscoll’s “undecided but optimistic,” though, so don’t hold your breath, but there’s at least a non-zero chance this thing might not sail through without more haggling.
  • Two weeks after Wisconsin assembly speaker Robin Vos pushed through $471 million in stadium renovation subsidies for the Milwaukee Brewers, five team executives each donated the maximum $1,000 to Vos’s reelection campaign. Probably just a coincidence, though, as they doubtless give money all the time to all sorts of — oh, this was their first donations to any candidate in the state ever? Well then.
  • Why don’t pro women’s teams get as much public subsidies as pro men’s teams? That’s the question being asked by Karen Leetzow, president of the Chicago Red Stars NWSL soccer team, which is owned by Laura Ricketts, who co-owns the Cubs with her brothers Tom, Pete, and Todd, something USA Today utterly fails to mention in its article.
  • The Seidman Research Institute at Arizona State University (which, despite its name, is actually a business consultant) reports that spring training games in Arizona generated more than $710 million for the local economy in 2023, enough to pay Shohei Ohtani’s entire 10-year contract, and this breaks so many rules about not comparing economic activity with actual tax receipts and not comparing present and future value that I almost can’t muster the energy to point out that previous studies show that the actual number is closer to zero.
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Friday roundup: Mets casino gets bill, Angels deal lurches from grave, news outlets everywhere need editing help, stat

access_time personNeil deMause

Thanks to everyone for helping us make it through another week! (I’m assuming here that it’s you readers who someone make time progress; I don’t actually know that much about science.)

Here’s what’s been happening that we haven’t talked about yet:

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There’s a moon in the K.C. Current stadium sky (it’s not called the Moon)

access_time personNeil deMause

New renderings are out for the new stadium for the Kansas City Current, the city’s NWSL franchise, which claims to be “the first stadium in the world built solely for a professional women’s soccer team.” What do we got?

Sure, that’s normal enough, if a little hard to see why it would cost $117 million. (Most of this is being paid for by the team; the owners asked for $6 million in tax breaks in May to help cover cost overruns, but ifd that’s been approved, it’s escaped media mention.) Are there any other views?

Now that’s more like it! Not only can we see additional seating that wasn’t visible in the first image, this one is a smorgasbord of bizarro details:

  • Let’s start with the game action, where the team in white (presumably the Current, though their main kit is currently red) has sent the entire team up to within 20 yards of goal, not bothering to leave even a single defender back to help the keeper defend against a counterattack. This could be a desperation move to score a goal in the closing minutes, but more likely is because, as a closer look shows, they appear to be playing at an 11-to-8 player advantage, after the opposing team had three players sent off.
  • What could have caused the red team to accumulate all those red cards? Perhaps they were objecting to the home team setting off fireworks in the middle of a match, which does seem a little unfair.
  • While we’re looking in the sky, what’s that odd crescent in the top right corner? It could be the moon, but I dunno, it looks awfully big to be the moon, unless this is depicting a photo taken with a zoom lens, which it can’t be given the rest of the perspective. Maybe it’s the Death Star? Using the Death Star to gain home field advantage would definitely seem like a violation of the Laws of the Game, so I can see now why the opposing team’s players got themselves ejected.
  • Whatever that is, it seems to be backlit by the sun in a way that can’t quite happen in normal geometry, though given the stadium’s location, the sun appears to be setting in the north, so maybe everyone in this image has bigger things to worry about than being vaporized just so Grand Moff Tarkin can show off his new toy.

That was pretty good, even better than the last batch of weird renderings the team issued. The stadium is set to open in 2024, so be prepared for the Earth to be thrown off its axis sometime next year.

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Friday roundup: This post is all about the Bears (or the bears), even the parts with no bears

access_time personNeil deMause

What did we learn this week, class? We learned that bears are good for SEO, that elected officials can vote down democracy, and that rich people like public subsidies because it’s where the money is. In another sense, of course, no one has learned anything, which is why we are still here, 24 years into this website, still with the bullet points of outrage to mark the end of the week, every week, never ending or changing, oh now I see why you perk up when there are bears:

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Friday roundup: Tempe opens arena talks with Coyotes, soccer teams everywhere want taxpayers to cover their cost overruns

access_time personNeil deMause

Last of the semi-abbreviated news roundups! Things return to normal next week.

 

 

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Saturday roundup: Moreno demands Angels land sale approval now now now, and other bribery news

access_time personNeil deMause

Told ya! And now an abbreviated (though extended by one day) look at the week’s other news:

  • Los Angeles Angels owner Arte Moreno has responded to a judge granting a 60-day stay to his discounted purchase of stadium land thanks to the deal being caught up in a corruption and bribery scandal involving the city being run by an unelected cabal by decreeing that the city must approve the sale by June 14, or else … well, Moreno, or really Moreno’s lawyer, didn’t specify what would happen if the deal is delayed beyond that date, but you don’t want to find out what it’ll be, you hear? The Los Angeles Times speculates that the Anaheim city council could move forward with the sale despite the stay on its agreement with the state over selling the land without meeting state affordable housing laws, which would almost certainly lead the state to sue, which isn’t going to get the sale resolved by June 14, but maybe Moreno wants that for some reason? Anyway, here, thanks to reader Moose, are some photos of Mayor Harry Sidhu throwing Easter eggs from the private helicopter he’s accused of illegally registering in Arizona to save money, I know that’s what you really want.
  • Speaking of bribery scandals, the Cleveland city council is considering a resolution to demand that the electric utility FirstEnergy have its name removed from the Browns stadium after it was accused of bribing a state official. Browns officials replied that FirstEnergy is “committed to upholding a culture of integrity and accountability” going forward and also the council resolution is non-binding, which is another way of saying “Sorry, we own the naming rights to this publicly owned and paid-for stadium because that’s just how these things are done, we get to decide whose name goes on it, what part of that didn’t you understand?”
  • Tennessee Titans CEO Burke Nihill says it would cost $1.8 billion to renovate the team’s current stadium because it’s in such “disrepair,” citing … well, he didn’t actually cite any study or report or anything, but just trust him, okay? Better to just build a new stadium that would cost — oh, look, Nihill says the price tag is now $2.2 billion, while the team’s share remains at $700 million, meaning the city and state would have to come up with $1.5 billion? That totally makes sense, after all, the old place is 23 years old, it’s pretty much a given that all buildings that old get torn down, right, isn’t that just how engineering works?
  • And speaking of inflation, the Kansas City Current women’s soccer team’s stadium price tag has gone up from $70 million to $117 million, and the team’s owners are asking state taxpayers to cover $6 million of it through tax breaks. Councilmember Eric Bunch says this is fine because it would be “using state tax dollars indirectly to support a project that’s going to benefit Kansas Citians,” which seems to be a novel use of “indirectly” and also “benefit,” though I guess the team owners are technically Kansas Citians in addition to being hedge fund goons, so it would benefit two Kansas Citians, anyway.
  • And speaking of stadiums having the shelf life of mayflies, Palm Beach County is spending $111 million to renovate the spring training home of the Miami Marlins and St. Louis Cardinals; Cards VP Mike Whittle, asked if the 25-year-old Jupiter stadium’s facilities are outdated, replied, “They are. They are,” which should be good enough for you.
  • And speaking of naming rights (which we were doing a few bullet points ago, do try to keep up), the Chicago Fire owners are in hot water for allegedly trying to sell the naming rights to the Soldier Field field when they don’t actually own them, which should make for a fun lawsuit.
  • A Kentucky sports business professor says if the Cincinnati Bengals keep winning, they’ll be able to demand more publicly funded stadium upgrades, which doesn’t really make more sense, but maybe he really means “if the Bengals start losing again, no one will write their elected representatives to demand that the team owners be offered whatever they want in order to keep the team in town, which does check out.
  • Some guy wants to build a USL soccer stadium in downtown Milwaukee, which would cost an unknown amount of money and require an unknown amount of public subsidies. But look, here’s a rendering of it! True, there are no fireworks or people pointing at the sky, but you can imagine those things, no?
  • This is already more bullet points than I meant to write, let me leave you with pictures of the possum that has made its home in the Oakland Coliseum press box. Honestly, given what the A’s owners left of a team for local sportswriters to watch on the field this year with their player fire sale, this maybe should be considered a feature and not a bug.
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Friday roundup: Chiefs want public money if Royals get any, plus what a baseball lockout could mean for MLB stadium talks

access_time personNeil deMause

Eight posts already this week, and now a full slate of Friday roundup news? Remember all the way back on, uh, Wednesday, when people were claiming that the public sports funding era had run its course? Those were good times, I thought maybe I might get to sleep in one day, but clearly that day is not now:

  • The Kansas City Royals owners haven’t even started publicly discussing a new downtown stadium, let alone how to pay for it, but already Kansas City Chiefs owner Clark Hunt is saying he’s considering what to do if the Royals leave the suburban sports complex the two teams share. “We’re going to watch as they go through the process, and at some point here in the next year or so, start thinking about what’s next for the Chiefs from a stadium standpoint,” said Hunt, who added that “we’ve had beautiful stadiums open now in Los Angeles and Las Vegas” that include features “I’m sure we’ll want to incorporate into the stadium.” The Kansas City Star added that “if the Royals receive tax dollars for a new downtown stadium … it’s believed the Chiefs would want a piece of the monetary pie,” which makes sense, it’s how the last Kansas City stadium subsidy worked way back in 2019, and the one before that in 2006. Look out, Indianapolis, there could be a new repeat sports subsidy offender in town!
  • MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred is saying the quiet parts loud again, exclaiming of the pending expiration of the players’ union contract on December 1 that “an offseason lockout that moves the process forward is different than a labor dispute that costs games,” which in Manfred-to-English autotranslates as “we’re going to lock the players out now when it doesn’t cost us anything in ticket sales rather than wait for them to strike in the spring when they have more leverage purple monkey dishwasher.” That makes hardball negotiating sense, but you have to wonder what effect a lockout will have on stadium talks in places like Oakland and Cleveland and Tampa Bay and Kansas City, where elected officials could now be debating whether to give hundreds of millions of dollars to a sport that is shut down in a labor dispute. Sports execs really do do the darnedest things.
  • Manfred also said the league’s executive committee has put off an approval request from Tampa Bay Rays owner Stuart Sternberg on his split city Montreal-Tampa Bay plan, because of “the press of other business” and that “it’s a complicated topic.” You could read this a bunch of ways — that the other owners think it’s a dumb idea, that Sternberg himself thinks it’s a dumb idea and they’re providing him cover by pretending to consider it so he can keep using it as a threat, or that they’re genuinely too busy discussing such issues as how much tacky stuff to preapply to baseball so that pitchers can grip the ball well but not too well — so take your pick.
  • Augusta voters rejected $240 million in bonds for a new arena on Election Day, so now naturally the Augusta-Richmond County Coliseum Authority is trying to figure out somewhere else to find $240 million that doesn’t require voter approval. “We’re looking at other options,” said authority chair Cedric Johnson, which so far could include $6 million in federal infrastructure money for new roads around an arena; Augusta has also diverted $45,000 from its parks budget to hire a consultant to look for more federal money. I’m telling you, while the Biden infrastructure bill is certainly designed to fund a whole lot of genuine public benefits like keeping bridges from falling down and keeping the power grid from failing, if there’s a a loophole that even part of a stadium or other pet development project can be rammed through, sports owners and their friends in local government are going to find it.
  • After a new $190 million stock show arena was similarly rejected on Election Day, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock says he’s determined to find a way to build one anyway, to fulfill his “commitment to the voters” to … build this thing the voters just said they don’t want? Mayors also do the darnedest things.
  • Chicago alderman George Cardenas says he’ll introduce a bill for the city to buy the Bears and sell shares to fans, a la the Green Bay Packers to keep the team from moving to Arlington Heights, which is a great idea except that the NFL passed new bylaws ruling out any new public or community-owned teams, so much for that then.
  • Developers in Raleigh say they have no “clear pathway” to build a 20,000-seat soccer stadium for North Carolina F.C. and the North Carolina Courage because the city has not shown “a deep interest” in kicking back property taxes to help pay for one. The minute someone offers them a huge pile of public money for a stadium, though, they’re rarin’ to go, because Raleigh “deserves” one, really what are they even waiting for, you know?
  • Staten Island’s new minor-league baseball team that is getting $8 million in public stadium renovations in order for the Atlantic League to bring it into existence will not be called the Pizza Rats after all, but rather the Staten Island FerryHawks, which the team’s website claims is “a fun-loving, baseball-playing superhero that combines the power, toughness and persistence of the Staten Island Ferry and the red tailed and cooper’s hawks that are seen around Staten Island.” I would have considered Googling this and similarly pronounced names before making the announcement, but maybe that’s just me.
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Friday roundup: Sports team owners saying stuff, and the journalists who love to reprint it, Episode #736

access_time personNeil deMause

That wasn’t a swing, was it? It sure didn’t look like a swing to me.

Sorry, right, enough about actual sports, back to the business of sports business:

  • The owners of the new St. Louis City SC MLS team want a new parking garage built next to their new stadium, arguing that the stadium “will have a magnetic quality that draws people to the district 365 days a year,” according to the garage’s lead architect. Team officials already demolished several century-old mixed-use buildings to make way for the garage, which would seem to be a lost opportunity for things like stores and restaurants that might more likely be in use year-round, but far be it from me to argue with an expert in economagnetism.
  • Albuquerque city officials say they won’t decide where to build a New Mexico United USL soccer stadium until voters approve the money for it — which makes total sense, because the cost of a project doesn’t depend at all on what land needs to be acquired, and also no landowner would ever jack up the price of property knowing that the city needs it for an already-approved project. Today is Opposite Day, right?
  • Arash Markazi no longer works for the L.A. Times after being exposed for promoting friends’ projects in his columns and reprinting press releases almost verbatim, but Substack and Twitter don’t care if you’re ethical so long as you get eyeballs, so we have Markazi announcing, unsourced, that “The Oakland Athletics are expected to announce a handful of finalists for a potential $1 billion stadium in Las Vegas after the World Series,” and that getting turned into entire news articles elsewhere. Never mind that A’s exec Dave Kaval already said as much last month, or that “narrows down sites for stadium that nobody has proposed to pay for” isn’t really breaking news anyway, a famous reporter guy said a thing about famous business guys maybe saying a thing, everybody quick post updates at once!
  • Tennessee Smokies owner Randy Boyd says he’ll pay stadium construction workers at least $15.50 an hour but won’t sign anything making that promise enforceable, and won’t promise to pay concessions and other stadium workers anything above the cheapest the labor market will let him get away with. The Knoxville News Sentinel reports that Boyd says since he’s “a longtime community member, a community benefits agreement won’t be necessary,” a sentence that it’s amazing the News Sentinel production staff could type without busting out in visible lolsobs.
  • Pawtucket’s McCoy Stadium is in bad shape after the Pawtucket Red Sox left for Worcester and took all the kitchen equipment and office chairs with them. The city is considering whether to rehab the stadium for an indie-league team, but the two that kicked the tires said that at 10,000 seats it’s too big for them; or to redevelop the site for something else, but there are worries it will sink into the swamp.
  • Charlotte officials have noticed that they’re paying city police officers to provide security at Carolina Panthers games instead of having the team hire off-duty officers, because no off-duty officers want to work for the $42-an-hour rate that the team offers. I spent a bunch of time reading local articles to try to figure out if it’s the Panthers or the city or someone else chintzing on security wages, and felt bad that I couldn’t figure it out until I saw a quote from Charlotte’s police chief saying, “Listen Panthers or whoever, enough is enough?” and decided that if he doesn’t know, I shouldn’t be expected to either.
  • Do you really want to read NFL uber-insider Mike Florio speculating about whether the NFL will settle the city of St. Louis’s lawsuit against the league for moving the Rams by offering the city an expansion team? Even though Rams owner Stan Kroenke has promised to cover any losses the league is stuck with, and Florio doesn’t provide any sources at all other than “an acknowledgment in league circles of the possibility”? Probably not, but you’re a grownup, make your own decisions.
  • The Tampa Bay Rays may have been eliminated from the postseason, but that’s not going to stop the Tampa Bay Times editorial board from taking the opportunity to stump for a new stadium on the grounds that, um, let’s see, “far too few people will buy tickets to watch them play at their current stadium” and “the hard work needs to be done now to ensure the team stays in the Tampa Bay area, even if it’s part time.” One could point out that there’s no solid evidence that significantly more people would buy tickets at a new stadium, especially for a team that would disappear to Canada all summer, but the Times also says that “this is not the time to clam up or for grandstanding or unhelpful posturing,” so I guess they wouldn’t want lots of people writing them about this, huh?
  • Did you know that the USL is creating a new women’s soccer league, to be an adjunct to/compete with the NWSL, currently reeling under a sexual harassment scandal that has already brought down its commissioner and forced the relocation of its championship game? I had not, but more women’s pro teams can only be a good thing both in terms of growing the women’s game and providing more teams so that cities don’t have to outbid each other for them, though also more opportunities for teams to demand that cities outbid each other for them, because city officials are pretty much morons when it comes to this stuff.
  • Lots of times sports team owners argue that there’s no way to fund venue construction and repairs without public subsidies, but did they ever consider growing and selling soybeans? On free public land, oh, Canada, you just had to ruin this feel-good story, didn’t you?
  • Tokyo’s Olympic white-elephant stadiums are facing increased maintenance costs because they’re under attack by oysters. That is all.
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