Category: BOS Nation FC

Friday roundup: Browns still haggling over stadium permit, Fire stadium could include TIF-funded parking garage

access_time personNeil deMause

We’ve somehow ended up again at the last Friday in August, and if history is any guide, none of you are actually reading this, as you’re all headed out of town for the long weekend (as am I). So I could write about anything, really — maybe, okay, that’s too depressing. No, not that, either. How about we stay away from the current U.S. administration and … eeeagh! Fine, sports stadium news it is!

  • Cleveland Browns officials and representatives of the Ohio Department of Transportation are “in discussions” on the height of the Browns’ proposed stadium that ODOT ruled could interfere with flights into nearby Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, but “it remains unclear whether those talks could lead to a compromise,” reports Cleveland.com. The only wiggle room appears to be either digging the stadium lower into the ground (unlikely, since it’s already set to be 80 feet below ground level) or move it farther from the airport (maybe, though if you go too far you run into I-71). If they can’t negotiate an accommodation by Tuesday, the team’s owners can still file an appeal of ODOT’s ruling in state court.
  • Chicago Fire owner Joe Mansueto quietly removed a bunch of plans for a new park and transit and bike path improvements to accompany his proposed new soccer stadium, and advocates for parks, transit, and bike paths are steamed! The new plan also includes a parking garage that could potentially be funded by property taxes from the site (i.e., a TIF), which one steamed Chicagoan told Streetsblog Chicago may not be “even permissible under existing regulations.” Expect lots of shouting at the next Zoom meeting on the project’s transit plan, scheduled for September 9.
  • Wannabe Orlando MLB expansion team owner Jim Schnorf says he’s “confident we will be awarded a Major League franchise in the next decade,” citing the fact that Orlando is bigger than other prospective expansion markets (true) and that it has made more progress on stadium funding (not really so much true). Orlando is also very close to Tampa Bay, which already has the Rays (for now, at least), and MLB expansion looks to be on hold for now while the Rays and Athletics stadium situations get resolved so those team owners have lots of cities available to use as move threats, but “confidence” is nice!
  • Boston city councilor Julia Mejia and the Boston NAACP have proposed a scaled-back rebuild of White Stadium just for school sports that would cut the city’s costs to an estimated $64.6 million from the $100 million-$172 million it would cost for the city’s share of a stadium for the NWSL’s Boston Legacy F.C. That would leave Legacy without a stadium, which was originally the whole point of this exercise, but would also create possibly $100 million in savings that Mejia and the NAACP say should be put toward “unmet student needs” in public schools. Mejia tried to introduce this as a bill on Wednesday but the council ruled it out of order since it already voted for the NWSL stadium version; Mejia says she’ll find other ways to raise it.
  • Houston Astros owner Jim Crane is suing Harris County to keep being allowed to not pay property tax even though Harris County officials say they have no intention of trying to charge the Astros property tax. So long as nobody who owns a sports team has to pay property tax, that’s the important thing, no matter what those crazy judges in New Jersey think.
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Friday roundup: Bucs want “major renovation,” won’t say yet who’d pay for it

access_time personNeil deMause

Today’s main event will be the liveblog of day two of the sports economics conference at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, which tons of presentations on stadiums and stadium-adjacent topics, but first here’s the regular Friday weekly news r0undup, written entirely on Thursday! If anyone’s roof blew off this morning, it’ll just have to wait till Monday.

  • Tampa Bay Buccaneers owner Joel Glazer wants a “major renovation” of his stadium once the Bucs’ lease expires in 2028, funded by, uh: “We’re going through a phase right now where we’re assessing the stadium and what might be needed. And I know [Hillsborough County and the Tampa Sports Authority are] assessing the stadium and what might be needed, and once both of us are done with our assessments, then we come together and go talk about it, work through things.” Asked last summer about Bucs stadium funding, Tampa city spokesperson Adam Smith said team execs “haven’t approached the city about anything like that” and “we don’t expect them to”; either that was code for “paying for this is the county’s problem” or Smith really believes in the power of positive thinking.
  • Unlike the [Sacramento] Athletics, the Tampa Bay Rays have managed to sell out their 10,000-seat minor-league stadium in their opening series, even at prices running more than $100 for every seat that comes with an actual seat. Tampa Bay Times columnist John Romano blames this on the Rays needing to make up for “a potential loss of revenue from ticket sales, concessions, luxury boxes and the associated costs of relocating for a year,” not the desire to capitalize on artificial ticket scarcity. It’ll be interesting to see if those high prices hold up once the Florida summer heat hits — for what it’s worth, there are still plenty of seats available for next week’s series against the Angels.
  • Speaking of the Rays, the clock officially ran out on their St. Petersburg stadium deal on Tuesday, and now owner Stu Sternberg is free to shop around for another city that wants to give him a billion dollars. Anyone? You in the back? You were just stretching your arms? I see.
  • Cincinnati Bengals VP Katie Blackburn was asked what’s up with the team’s lease that’s set to expire in 2026, and replied, “We could, I guess, go wherever we wanted after this year if we didn’t pick the up option up. So, you know, we’ll see.” NFL move-threat stan Mike Florio of NBC Sports called this “a powerful, loaded comment“; one might also argue that it’s exactly the kind of vague non-threat threat that you issue when you don’t actually want anyone noting that no cities have newer stadiums ready to offer. Potato, potahto!
  • The Jacksonville Jaguars need a place to play for two years while the city of Jacksonville is paying for stadium upgrades, so they’re asking Orlando to play them to play there, cool, cool.
  • A Massachusetts judge ruled that the demolition and reconstruction of White Stadium for the Boston Legacy F.C. can move forward, though opponents say they’ll continue to fight against it. (Boston Legacy, btw, is the new name for the much-derided BOS Nation F.C. women’s soccer team, presumably meant to honor the easiest way to get into Northeastern.)
  • Chicago Bears president Kevin Warren says the team is now focused on building a stadium in Arlington Heights, except for the portion of its focus that is on the Chicago lakefront. More news as actual news comes in, not just attempts at leverage plays.
  • Los Angeles elected officials are finally starting to get steamed about how the 2028 Olympics are being planned in a city that is recovering from disastrous fires, though so far it seems to be mostly about where the sailing competition will be held. If history is any guide, the real outrage won’t come until the Games actually begin.
  • Wondering how the affordable housing promises attached to the Brooklyn Nets arena are going? Does “Empire State Development (ESD), the gubernatorially controlled authority that oversees/shepherds the project, says it might enforce the $2,000 a month penalties for each unbuilt apartment, though that process may be fraught” answer that question? If you’re wondering why ESD only “might” enforce the penalty clause that was designed to make sure developers actually build what they promised, ESD VP Arden Sokolow says that if the state fined them, “you wouldn’t be getting any housing there,” whereas this way … oh, would you look at the time, we’ll have to cut off questions there!
  • Former Anaheim mayor and illegal helicopter registrant Harry Sidhu was sentenced to jail time for deleting emails to hide them from an FBI investigation into soliciting bribes related to a proposed Los Angeles Angels stadium deal — if you had “two months in federal prison plus a $55,000 fine” in the betting pool, you’re a winner!
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Friday roundup: Oregon considers upping MLB expansion stadium ante to $800m, baseball owners twirl mustaches in glee

access_time personNeil deMause

This week’s vibes.

  • An Oregon state senator has introduced a bill to increase the state’s spending on a possible Portland MLB stadium from $150 million to $800 million, provided Portland gets an expansion team whenever MLB next expands. The source would still be funneling player income taxes to pay off stadium bonds, yet another Casino Night–style funding scheme that is both risky and not really free money, for reasons we’ve covered here before. (The increased figure would rely on rising player payrolls since the initial $150 million plan was approved more than 20 years ago.) The $800 million figure is apparently meant to compete with Utah’s proposed $900 million in property tax kickbacks for an MLB stadium in Salt Lake City; expansion city bidding war, activated!
  • Denver’s NWSL franchise is planning to build a 14,500-seat stadium, and “the ownership group is paying for the stadium in its entirety,” according to the Denver Post. Also according to the Denver Post, four paragraphs later, a tax increment financing district is already in place on the team’s proposed stadium site, meaning the team would recoup property taxes worth some number that the Denver Post didn’t deign to mention. The city would also be on the hook for buying $24 million worth of land for the stadium project, but Denver Mayor Mike Johnston says “the city would always own that public space and that could come back to us for repurposing in 50 years from now if the stadium were to move,” so really it’s an investment, see?
  • Will the Tampa Bay Rays draw more fans this season, despite playing in an 11,000-seat minor-league stadium, thanks to now being on the side of the bay where more people with more money live? Doesn’t look like it, based on the fact that opening day is one week away and hasn’t sold out yet. It doesn’t help that Rays management raised average ticket prices by 30% in response to the smaller capacity, which could complicate efforts to use the 2025 season to answer the age-old question, “Is it St. Petersburg, or is it just Florida?“
  • Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne says the financing plan for a new Cleveland Browns stadium would require average ticket prices to rise to $800 over 30 years in order for the math to work, while a Browns spokesperson says this isn’t true, and nobody’s showing their math, that’s no fun! (Yes, this website is predicated on the notion that math is fun. I’m sorry if you’re learning about this late.)
  • A Massachusetts judge heard arguments this week in a lawsuit charging that a new stadium for BOS Nation F.C. (soon to be renamed, finally) violates a state law requiring a two-thirds supermajority of the state legislature to approve any new uses of land taken for conservation purposes. The Boston mayor’s office insists that tearing down a public school stadium and rebuilding it as a pro women’s soccer stadium that public school students would still get to play in is really the same use — cue the Ship of Theseus debates!
  • The Eugene Emeralds are absolutely, positively moving out of Eugene after 70 years, uh, just as soon as they find somewhere else offering to build them a new stadium. Until then, they’ll still be playing in Eugene. But they’re gonna leave, just you watch! Don’t call their bluff, voters who rejected giving them $15 million last May!
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Friday roundup: Rays, Coyotes, A’s fiascos keep on fiascoing

access_time personNeil deMause

All kinds of news of the week to cover this morning, and I already lost a couple of hours getting up early to yell at my senator’s window about this fiasco. Let’s start with the Tampa Bay Rays‘ own fiasco, and then work backwards:

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Friday roundup: Hamilton County hires guy who negotiated Rays deal for St. Pete to help with Bengals talks, this should go just great

access_time personNeil deMause

This has been a week, but it seems they all are these days. One glint of hope on the horizon: The second annual Sports Economics Conference has been scheduled for the University of Maryland, Baltimore County for April, which means I get to hang out with some of the smartest (and funniest) minds studying stadiums and other aspects of the sports business world, and you get more liveblogs like this.

Until then, the regular weekly news will have to suffice. Let’s open up the ol’ news bag and see what — oh dear oh dear, best to get started right away:

  • I have advocated before for local government to hire professional help in their negotiations with sports team owners over stadium construction and leases, so it’s potentially welcome news that Hamilton County, Ohio has hired David Abrams of Inner Circle Sports to help with its talks with Cincinnati Bengals execs — “potentially” because until now I had never heard of Abrams, or Inner Circle Sports, so it’s hard to say whether he’ll be bringing inside knowledge of how the opposite side of the table operates or just feed them the league line that pouring lots of public money into private projects is good, actually. I do see that Inner Circle was paid $1.25 million to work for St. Petersburg and Pinellas County on their stadium deal with the Tampa Bay Rays, and that couldn’t have turned out worse for the public despite the Rays owner having zero leverage, so maybe let’s hold our applause until we see the results here.
  • A Boston city council vote to block the demolition of White Stadium so it can undergo a $200 million rebuild, $100 million of which would be paid for by the city, mostly for the benefit of BOS Nation F.C., fell one vote short Wednesday when councilor Liz Breadon didn’t show up to the meeting, leaving the council deadlocked at 6-6. One of the “roughly three dozen” people who showed up to protest the stadium plan yesterday called the tie vote a “huge win,” which isn’t really how huge wins work; there’s still a lawsuit in progress that could block the plan, but it’s unclear if it will be heard in time to halt the demolition, which if it progresses would take off the table a cheaper rehab of the existing structure just for high school sports, as opponents are hoping for.
  • Speaking of the NWSL, Denver is getting a franchise! And a new stadium, maybe, the expansion team’s owners say they’re planning one, more details about things like cost and public cost later, don’t worry your pretty heads.
  • The first phase of renovation work on the Milwaukee Brewers‘ stadium that’s costing taxpayers close to $500 million has been approved, and it will include such things as a $10 million “public gathering space,” because there just aren’t enough places to publicly gather at a baseball game. There’s also plans for a future vote to spend $25 million on winterizing the stadium so concerts can be held there in the winter — something that would work a lot better if not for the fact that, as Holy Cross economist Victor Matheson points out, big stadium concert tours take place pretty much exclusively in the summer. See why I’m looking forward to this Baltimore conference? (Side note to newbies: Once you’ve read this site for long enough, you’ll recognize that for the sick burn that it is.)
  • New York Gov. Kathy Hochul watched the start of the Buffalo Bills‘ playoff loss at a Bills sports bar in Albany, because of course she did, and the Times is on it! “I am just going to bury my head in my hands for eight hours straight,” one fan said afterwards, presumably at the game result, but there are lots of other good ways to intepret that.
  • Season tickets to Salt Lake Bees games will jump from $9-18 to $17-47 when the team moves into its new stadium this year, thanks in large part to the team’s stadium capacity going from 15,400 to 8,000, and much of that being made up of luxury sections that can only be purchased on a season basis:
    (Salt Lake Bees) Daybreak Field suite layout.
    Truly, we are not far from that glorious future where sporting events will only have one seat, and it will be sold to the highest bidder.
  • I recently recorded an episode of the great Conversations With Sports Fans podcast, and if you want to hear me talk in great detail about being a New York Mets fan, as well as a sports fan in general in this current era, click that link back earlier in this sentence, you know the one.
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Bostonians call spending $100m to convert public park for pro soccer “appalling and criminal”

access_time personNeil deMause

The projected public cost of tearing down a public high school soccer stadium and turning it into a home for the women’s soccer team BOS Nation F.C. (which public high school students will get to use when the NWSL team is on the road) has now reached $100 million, out of a total cost of at least $200 million. And lots of Boston residents are hopping mad, as exhibited at 9-hour city council hearing yesterday:

“Boston students deserve a renovated White Stadium – they deserve a public White Stadium, not a private sports and entertainment complex built to enable private profits,” said Jean McGuire, resident of Roxbury and longtime civil rights advocate. “It’s clear that this entire process is being driven by the needs of private investments, not the needs of Boston students. The process has been launched, the state reviews having been conducted, and community members’ concerns about public access and transportation impacts are being ignored, all in a mad rush to next March for White Stadium in order to be a soccer team’s desired opening day.”…

Stevan Kirschbaum, a former BPS bus driver, described the White Stadium plan as “appalling and criminal.”

“We should be chaining ourselves to those trees – this is a criminal rush to judgment.”

And at least one elected official is none too pleased by the soaring price tag:

“We have now said we can come up with $100 million,” [city councillor Erin] Murphy said. “Just like any responsible person, anyone who runs their home budget, at some point you have to say, that’s great but I can’t afford it, so I’m going to have to say no.”

As reported previously, the team owners will “keep the bulk of revenue from matches” aside from 10% of in-stadium ad revenues and 3% of concessions revenues, as well as $400,000 a year in rent and a $1-per-ticket surcharge — the math on which suggests that it would require the average ticket buyer to spend around $1,000 per game on concessions for the city to break even. Boston public school students will get the benefit of a nicer stadium — when they’re allowed to use it — though it’s not clear what benefit they’ll get from such upgrades as a new beer garden.

The parks group the Emerald Necklace Conservancy, which has filed a lawsuit to block the stadium plan, has estimated that a scaled-down high school facility would cost the city just $29 million. Council Ben Weber said of the lawsuit at yesterday’s hearing, “I hear a lot of rhetoric, I don’t hear much about solutions” — maybe proposing a scaled-down stadium isn’t a solution to BOS Nation F.C.’s owner, venture capital CEO and daughter of a Celtics co-owner Jennifer Epstein, but that all depends on how you define the problem.

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Friday roundup: 2024 was the year cities said “no” to stadium subsidies, and team owners said “actually, yes”

access_time personNeil deMause

Welcome to the last weekly roundup of 2024! It was a bit of a slow week thanks to the holiday, when even team execs and elected officials (though not always journalists) tend to take a break from stadium and arena shenanigans and focus on eating overpriced peppermint bark or whatever.

It was a weird year in the sports subsidy world: Kansas City voters rejected a sales tax hike to fund stadiums for the Royals and Chiefs, only to have the team owners get the state of Kansas to approve $1.4 billion or more in public bonds for new stadiums there, though they haven’t yet committed to taking the offer; the Virginia legislature rejected a $1 billion–plus subsidy for a new Washington Capitals and Wizards arena, only to have Washington, D.C. provide more than half a billion in renovation money; Illinois state officials said repeatedly that they weren’t interested in funding a new Chicago Bears stadium, only to have team execs keep coming back with even more proposals for new stadiums; Florida elected officials rejected an already-approved Tampa Bay Rays stadium before later unrejecting it. Or maybe it’s not such a weird year, given that the two constants since the whole great stadium swindle started back in the 1980s have been the populace being steamed about huge piles of their tax money going to wealthy sports owners and the wealthy sports owners coming back with “we’re sorry to hear that, but we would still like the huge piles of money.” They will fight eternally.

But let’s look forwards, not backwards! Time to clear away the remaining news items and get ready for 2025:

  • The city of Boston signed a lease with the NWSL club BOS Nation FC to play at the city-owned White Stadium, which will be rebuilt at a cost of around $200 million, of which taxpayers will cover $91 million or more. According to Boston Business Journal, the team will “keep the bulk of revenue from matches” aside from 10% of in-stadium advertising revenues and 3% of concessions revenue, while paying $400,000 a year in rent (rising by 3% each year) and a $1-per-ticket surcharge. (The renovated stadium will also be available for use by Boston public school teams on days when BOS Nation FC doesn’t need it, though presumably they won’t need things like the restaurant and beer garden being planned for the pro team.) There is no possible way taxpayers won’t take a bath on this unless every single soccer ticket buyer spends around $1,000 on concessions, which seems a bit ambitious.
  • WJLA-TV interviewed businesses near the current Washington Commanders stadium — well, a cashier at one brunch restaurant — to find out what they think of the team maybe moving to a new stadium in D.C., and she replied: “We’re busy on Sundays. I think the Commanders fans, they bleed into our Sundays. They’re in the areas. These are popular shopping areas. Definitely probably going to see an increase post- or before the games.” Definitely probably! No need to interview anyone else, slot that in for the 6 pm news.
  • George Petak died. You know, this guy. Out of respect for his family and friends, I will not make any jokes about potential efforts to recall him from heaven.

That’s all she wrote! See you back here on Monday.

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Friday roundup: Rays stadium, Sixers arena could both get final approval on Tuesday

access_time personNeil deMause

No time to waste this week on a lengthy preamble, let’s get right to the news roundup:

  • It looks like we may have an answer to the question of how much Pinellas County commissioners will demand from Tampa Bay Rays owner Stu Sternberg to approve $312.5 million in county bonds, and that is: nothing. Or at least nothing more than a promise that he’ll accept the $1 billion in cash and tax and land breaks he agreed to back in July: Commissioners Dave Eggers is looking like the likely swing vote at next Tuesday’s commission meeting, saying he wants to see proof that Sternberg will go ahead with the original deal before okaying the bonds, adding, “It’s really on them kind of to be moving this deal along, and maybe they can show us that’s what they’re doing.” (The county legally can’t sell bonds until the Rays provide more documentation of their own progress on the stadium, though it can approve selling bonds.) If the Rays execs are successful at responding to “We don’t know if we want to give you a billion dollars after we were hit with two hurricanes” with “Well, maybe we’ll ask for even more money” before settling on “Never mind, a billion dollars is fine,” then maybe there was a method to their madness after all.
  • The St. Petersburg city council moved slightly ahead on repairing the Tropicana Field roof as well this week, approving spending $1.7 million on architectural designs. Can, kicked.
  • The Philadelphia city council voted 12-4 on Thursday to approve the $60 million community benefits package for a new 76ers arena near Chinatown, signaling that they will almost certainly approve the entire arena deal at their final meeting of the year on Tuesday. That’s better than nothing (and marginally better than the $50 million originally proposed), but still a whole lot less than the $96 million to 273 million that Sixers owner Josh Harris will be getting in tax breaks, which sports economist Geoffrey Propheter sums up as “pretty f’ing stupid.”
  • Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has weighed in on the question of whether the state should put up half a billion dollars toward a new Cleveland Browns stadium in suburban Brook Park, and his verdict is that he’s still “in a fact gathering process” and “I want what is best for Cleveland” and “This would be a decision that would have to be made by the legislature, and of course, I will weigh in on that as well.” Reply hazy, try again.
  • Diamond Baseball Holdings, which has been buying up every minor-league baseball team it can get its hands on, just announced that it’s moving the Modesto Nuts to San Bernardino, where they will become the Inland Empire 66ers. The new 66ers will take the place of the old 66ers, also owned by DBH, who are moving to Rancho Cucamonga to take the place of the Quakes, who are moving to a new stadium in Ontario that that southern California city is paying about $100 million to build. Having the ability to move franchises around like chess pieces would be one advantage to monopoly control over all of MiLB, but it’s still not entirely clear if that’s DBH’s main gambit or if they have even more ambitious plans.
  • Boston’s plan to renovate White Stadium to be the home of the NWSL’s new BOS Nation FC women’s soccer team (yes, that is officially the worst team name ever) has risen in cost to $200 million, with the city’s share going from $50 million to $91 million. “We are going to pay for our half of the stadium, no matter what it costs,” vowed Mayor Michelle Wu, which critics are calling a “blank check.”

I’m going to be traveling for much of next week, so expect posts here to be a bit more sporadic than usual, though I will make sure to at least check in after the Pinellas County and Philadelphia votes on Tuesday. We will resume our regularly scheduled firehose of news after the Christmas log has pooped out its nougat.

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