Category: BOS Nation FC

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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