Misc – Page 2 – Field of Schemes

Friday roundup: Rays stadium demands include federal disaster relief money, $10/year rent while keeping all revenues

April 10, 2026 Neil deMause

On top of everything else this week, the Tampa Bay Rays management dropped their draft memorandum of understanding for a Tampa stadium deal, which sheds a little more light on what precisely they’re asking for in terms of public money. I’ve only had a chance to give it a quick read, but so has Noah Pransky of Shadow of the Stadium, so maybe combined we can hit the biggest takeaways:

This is just the Rays’ proposed MOU; county officials haven’t reviewed it yet.
Rays owner Patrick Zalupski wants it finalized by June 1, so that a stadium can be open by 2029 — probably an impossible timetable, but if it works to create a two-minute warning, sure, why not?
The land under the stadium itself, currently owned by the state, will be shifted to the county’s possession — so all of that previously reported between $1.1 billion and $2.5 billion in free land and property tax breaks is still in play.
The Rays will lease (or maybe “license”) the stadium for 35 years, for a rent of $10 a year. (No, that’s not a typo: not $10 million, $10.)
The stadium itself will cost at least $2.3 billion, with $251 million coming from the city of Tampa (source TBD unless I missed it) and $750 million from Hillsborough County, which will include hotel tax (TDT) money, sales tax surcharge (CIT) money, revenue from an already existing TIF district (Drew Park) around the site, and possibly federal disaster recovery block grant funds. that, notes Pransky, are “generally earmarked to rebuild housing & infrastructure that support low-to-moderate income populations.”
Any excess public revenue from all those tax streams will go into a future maintenance fund, so the actual amount of county funding could be much higher, a la the Atlanta Falcons‘ infamous “waterfall fund.”
“The Rays Stadium Entity intends to seek additional Public Funding from other available public funding sources,” so the total public subsidy could be even more much higher.
The Rays will impose a ticket surcharge, but that money will pay off the team’s portion of costs, not the public’s, so no help there.
Likewise, the “Rays Stadium Entity will retain all revenue generated pursuant to the Lease, including but not limited to revenue associated with tickets, parking, suites, signage, advertising, promotional inventory, sponsorships, concessions, merchandise, broadcasting rights, royalties, licensing fees, concession fees and other sources described in the Lease.” So the city and county will get bupkis in stadium revenues to help pay off their share, not even naming rights on a county-owned building.
This is all just an MOU for the stadium itself; the surrounding development appears to be waiting for a later date, so no more details on when that would be built, how much it would cost, how much in property tax breaks it would be receiving, or how on earth it could be “100 percent privately financed” but with “tax dollars from the district used to eventually pay off the tab.“

So we’re at a minimum of $2.1 billion in public costs for the entire project, and a maximum of who the hell knows, but numbers like $4 billion or even higher are certainly not out of the realm of possibility. There are certain to be lots of questions from Hillsborough County Commissioners, especially on that CIT sales tax surcharge that voters were promised wouldn’t be used for stadiums (and which residents currently oppose using for a Rays stadium) — in the MOU it’s earmarked for “on-site horizontal infrastructure,” which could mean things like roads and sewers but also building foundations. In fact, County Commissioner Joshua Wostal, who is emerging as one of the louder critics of the deal, has already called attention to a clause saying if the city and county can’t come up with the funds in the MOU, they’ll need to “use best efforts to endeavor to secure alternative financing,” something Wostal said seems to be a “poison pill” intended to “force the commissioners to vote no in what seems to be an intentional killing of the deal.” Or maybe they just hope commissioners will agree to anything, it’s happened before!

More on all that next week, surely. In the meantime, here’s the rest of this week’s news:

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas’s Royals stadium ordinance is now released as well, and there’s a lot less there than it sounded like yesterday: Yes, it promises $600 million in city money, but just as part of a future term sheet to be negotiated by the city manager, so at least the city wouldn’t be committing money now for a pig in a poke. Lucas announced that he would also ask the state to fund up to 50% of stadium costs from the $1.5 billion earmarked for stadiums by the state legislature last summer; half of that was set to go to the Chiefs, so it’s as yet unclear whether Royals owner John Sherman could tap more than $750 million of it. In any case, Lucas’s bill is more a framework of a wish list than an actual stadium agreement, so rest assured that there’s still time for city officials to negotiate all the important details before rushing it to a vote without enough public oversight.
Las Vegas Mayor Shelley Berkley is offering two city-controlled sites as potential locations for a new arena for a possible NBA expansion franchise, because surely Las Vegas doesn’t have enough NBA-ready arenas already.
The Houston Rockets arena is getting a $180 million upgrade with $95 million of that coming from the state, but Mayor John Whitmire says this is “at no cost to Houston taxpayers” because the money was going to be spent anyway so the arena can host the 2028 Republican Convention — which is not what “no cost” means at all, unless maybe Whitmore is proposing that Houston residents start refusing to pay state taxes, which is always an option.
Oklahoma City is getting a new UFL football team for its new soccer stadium, will it pay any rent to help defray the city’s $121 million in stadium costs? Anyone? Never mind, probably not important.
Men’s World Cup games in New Jersey this summer will force NJ Transit train service to be suspended for four hours before matches so that trains can all be used to get fans to the games, but don’t worry, “only one game will impact afternoon rush-hour commuters,” so it probably won’t be too bad a trainpocalypse.
What about data center subsidies, you’re asking, do they suck as much for the public as sports subsidies? Yes, indeed they do. At least you don’t have to buy tickets to use them, though, just surrender the world’s oceans.

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Commanders try to hide ginormous stadium parking garages by drawing them as shorter and translucent

April 6, 2026 Neil deMause

What to do when your stadium plan includes two ginormous ugly parking garages, and you don’t want anyone to notice this fact before approving $6.6 billion in subsidies for it? If you’re Washington Commanders owner Josh Harris, you simply direct your rendering artists to make the garages translucent:

What caught fans’ eye was that the parking deck nearest to the Anacostia River — but poking into the stadium view — looked translucent in the concept sketches (see below), masking its real-world impact.

[National Capital Planning Commission] Commissioners requested fuller renderings of that. “I have rarely, if ever, seen a beautiful parking facility,” said NCPC chair Will Scharf.

We spend so much time LOLing at the dumbness of vaportecture renderings here that it’s easy to forget that they serve a purpose: to show the planned project in the best possible light so those with the checkbooks will ooh and aah over it. And often that light is literal, as with the Commanders stadium, which in the above images glows with a spooky inner luminescence while the rest of D.C. is cast into darkness, except for the Capitol dome and Washington Monument, which are a blazing white but also don’t appear to be drawn to scale anyway, given that in reality the Capitol is over half as tall as the monument, as well as significantly closer. The boldest choice, though, is certainly that translucent parking garage, which indeed makes the stadium look better but also raises immediate questions like “Why do the garages look so short if they’re actually going to be two-thirds the height of the stadium?’ and “What translucent construction material will they use?” and “Will the garage be limited to translucent fans driving translucent cars?”

The National Capital Planning Commission still signed off on the Commanders stadium designs, but only because the garages are being developed separately and will be submitted to the commission at a later date. At least one commissioner, Tammy Stidham, a National Park Service lands and planning director, was puzzled by this, asking: “Help me understand why we’re not seeing the development of those [garages] with the stadium package. They don’t have independent utility. They would not be there if you were not building a stadium.”

In fact, the garages wouldn’t be there if Harris weren’t building a huge mixed-use development around a stadium — without that, he could just leave open-air lots like RFK Stadium used on the site, but then he would be missing out on the billions in tax and land breaks that he’s set to receive for the rest of the development. So the garages are pretty key, and “make them shorter and more spread out” doesn’t work if the rest of the land is to be used for other Harris-enriching activities. One local resident suggested instead scaling back on parking and increasing the capacity of the local Metro station or adding a new one, neither of which are bad ideas but both of which would add tremendous public costs to what’s already set to be the biggest public cost ever for a privately used sports stadium. Many, many questions that should be answered before the money is signed off on … well, at least before the stadiums are approved … hrm. Before the sun burns out, is that too much to ask?

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Friday roundup: Has Cleveland’s mayor actually found a way to make Guardians and Cavs owners help pay for own repair costs?

April 3, 2026April 3, 2026 Neil deMause

No time for a lengthy roundup intro today, I’m too busy catching up with the latest problems resulting from sending Microsoft Outlook into space. Plenty of juicy bullet points, though, you can dig into those right now:

Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb is proposing establishing sales tax surcharge of up to 5% in and around the Guardians‘ stadium and Cavaliers‘ arena to help fund what could be $400 million in ongoing repairs and upgrades at the venues, expenses the city’s sports authority is required to cover under the teams’ leases but which it has no money for. Cleveland.com describes this as “Cavs and Guardians fans footing the bill,” but actually a lot of this could fall on the team owners, as fans are unlikely to put up with higher prices on tickets (or, to a somewhat lesser degree, hot dogs or souvenirs) just because taxes went up. One catch: Any “New Community Authority” would require any property owners to agree to join and be subject to the tax; the stadium and arena are owned by the sports authority, though, so it’s at least possible Bibb could force this on the teams over their objections. Lots of team prepare for such backdoor funding attempts by inserting “no ticket tax surcharge” clauses into their leases — I’m not spotting any in the Cavs and Guardians leases on an initial look, but feel free to search for yourselves.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell turned up the heat on the Chicago Bears stadium situation on Tuesday, declaring: “They need to find a solution for a stadium. … I think it’s really important that they come to a resolution on this relatively soon. … This is an important time to get this resolved sooner rather than later.” Okay, that’s less “heat” than “typical commissioner whingeing,” no reason to report on this as upping the pressure in any real oh come on, NBC Chicago.
Predatory lending tycoon Tom Dundon has been approved as the new owner of the Portland Trail Blazers, and he was not pleased at all that one of the first questions he got was why he hasn’t committed any of his own money toward an arena renovation that the team is seeking $600 million in public subsidies for. “No one’s ever told me I didn’t have skin in the game before,” snapped Dundon. “We don’t know each other very well. So, look, we’re going to negotiate and do a market deal.” Easy for him to say since he’s already landed the first $365 million in state funding, but at least maybe this will give local legislators a bit more backbone as they negotiating the remaining $235 million — especially since minority owner and venture capital succubus Sheel Tyle declared, “I don’t want people to be concerned or scared. We are committed to Portland, 100 percent. Full stop.” Somebody please alert Ron Wyden.
The Maryland legislature has killed legislation for the 2026 session to spend $217 million in public money on a stadium to host new Baltimore men’s and women’s soccer teams, partly because there’s community opposition to building it atop a public golf course that was the site of some of the first integration of the city’s public facilities. “When we introduced the legislation, the purpose was not to get it funded,” bill sponsor state Sen. Antonio Hayes told the Baltimore Banner, “the purpose was to keep the conversation going” — so you can rest assured we’ll hear about this again in the 2027 session.
Denver Broncos owner Greg Penner says he won’t be able to meet an “ambitious” 2031 target date for opening a new stadium without help from “a lot of key partners at the city level [and] at state level.” In particular, Penner still needs to finish acquiring land for the stadium — he said if the new stadium isn’t ready by 2031 he could just extend his lease at the old one, so it’s not clear why anyone would feel pressured by this deadline other than him, but this is just how team owners roll.
The Missouri legislature is considering cutting $2 million from its stadium maintenance budget and redirecting it to a fire department program in retaliation for the Kansas City Chiefs announcing they’ll move to Kansas in 2031 — though in the meantime, it would also reduce maintenance spending on the Royals stadium as well, assuming the Royals stick around.
World Cup participant countries typically get tax exemptions during their teams’ time spent in the host nation, but because Trump administration is only extending that courtesy to nations that have signed specific double-taxation agreements with the U.S., “It’s going to cost most non-European countries a lot of money to go to the World Cup” this summer, says tax consultant Oriana Morrison. And that’s before visiting fans pony up for the inflated cost of train tickets to the games in Massachusetts. Props to both the federal and local governments for finding ways to claw back some of the costs of hosting the World Cup, I guess, though taking it from the pockets of Haitians seems just slightly cruel and unusual.
Inglewood is spending $8.5 million to “revitalize” its downtown so that it’s more lively in advance of the 2027 Super Bowl and 2028 Summer Olympics, hey wait, weren’t Super Bowls and Olympics supposed to revitalize their surroundings? U.S. news media, we await your corrections.

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Friday roundup: Can the Home Team Act save your home team, and other pressing questions

March 27, 2026 Neil deMause

Let’s get this out of the way, since it’s blowing up on the socials: Yes, Sen. Bernie Sanders and another less famous guy (Rep. Greg Casar, a second-term representative from Austin and chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus) yesterday introduced a “Home Team Act” that would require sports team owners to give one year of notice before moving or terminating a team — and also give local buyers the right to purchase the team “at a fair and reasonable price” first, with the price determined by a team of appraisers appointed by the Treasury Department. According to the bill, either private buyers or local governments themselves would be eligible to purchase the team, and any owners who jumped the gun would be subject to a $30,000-a-day penalty.

Removing team owners’ ability to threaten to yank a city’s team away if they aren’t bestowed with public subsidies would indeed be a huge step toward ending stadium shakedowns. And it’s justifiable on a couple of grounds: Not only do teams owe their livelihood to the local fan base, but leagues also routinely use their monopoly power to deny teams to cities if they, say, have one in the next state over, or just out of spite.

At the same time, though, there are plenty of questions about this bill. First off, this is Congress we’re talking about, which has not exactly shown the backbone to stand up to the sports industry — even Sanders and Casar, notes the Chicago Tribune, “acknowledge the legislation won’t get passed quickly, if at all.” The bit about governments being allowed to purchase teams could be dicey, given that leagues currently have the power to reject public ownership, or, for that matter, even private buyers they don’t like. And in terms of enforcement, a $30,000-a-day penalty only amounts to $11 million over an entire year, and no sports team owner is going to let a crappy $11 million stand in the way of moving wherever they damn well please, or at least threatening to in order to extract money from the public treasury. (Local governments could also seek “injunctive and monetary relief,” so presumably judges would have the power to impose harsher penalties, if they saw fit.)

Basically, once this has more than two co-sponsors, then we can start taking it more seriously. Until then, it goes next to David Minge’s Distorting Subsidies Limitation Act as proof of concept that our elected representatives could be doing more to stop the flow of tax dollars to extortionate billionaires, they just don’t want to.

Other pressing questions from the week that just was:

Could there be some speed bumps for the Tampa Bay Rays stadium plan and its $2.25 billion in public cash, land, and tax breaks after all? Hillsborough County Commissioner Josh Wostal is demanding that the county and the Tampa Sports Authority release “all draft documents and personal notes” about the deal before a hearing is held next Wednesday — and further says if no public hearings are held before a scheduled April 15 vote, he’ll move to postpone it. “People at a minimum deserve transparency,” said Wostal. “And we are playing hide the ball?“ No word yet on whether others on the commission will support such a wild-eyed radical position as wanting to talk about what’s being voted on before a vote, but people are arguing on the internet about the Rays deal, and in particular its potential use of infrastructure money that elected officials previously pledged wouldn’t go to stadiums, so that’s a start, perhaps.
Will the Ohio state legislature add $45 million in road and transit upgrades around the Cleveland Browns‘ new stadium to the $600 million in state money they’ve already promised owner Jimmy Haslam for construction costs? We won’t know until they revote on April 23 following a public comment period, but given the committee that can authorize such spending unanimously passed it the first time: probably.
What about Haslam’s demand for $50 million in city and county money for a stadium for a Columbus women’s soccer team, will he get that too? Five out of nine city councilmembers say they’re opposed, the other four say they need more information, more lobbying is clearly needed.
Will the new Oklahoma City Thunder arena end up costing taxpayers there more than the $850 million they approved back in 2023? Possibly, says assistant city manager Brent Bryant, who explained that given “economic uncertainty,” the city will “add a factor to that on top of the anticipated cost, to try to plan for that.” What does that mean? Sorry, only one question per bullet point!
Is prospective new Portland Trail Blazers owner Tom Dundon “a go-getter” with “enormous passion and spirit,” like NBA commissioner Adam Silver said he was on Wednesday, or a predatory lender who got rich by letting people take out high-interest car loans that they would inevitably default on, like Oregon Public Broadcasting and ProPublica reported earlier that morning? Nothing saying it can’t be both!
As Anaheim officials push for the Los Angeles Angels to restore “Anaheim” to the team name, could team owner Arte Moreno or the 80-year-old’s eventual successors move the team to Los Angeles County? The L.A. Times’ Bill Shaikin writes that “the logical landing spot would be Inglewood,” only to have Inglewood Mayor James Butts tell him, “We’re maxed out when it comes to sports. We are not going to reduce the housing stock and move residents out to have a baseball team.” Welp, that’s unfortunate, but the column’s already written, too late to go back and choose a new topic!
Does the city of L.A. know what year the 2028 Olympics will be held? Possibly not!

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Friday roundup: Pittsburgh cancels in-person school while hosting NFL Draft, this is just a thing that happens now?

March 20, 2026 Neil deMause

It’s been quite a week: In case you missed it, I spent much of it keeping up with the comment storm after this Q&A about a paper on housing policy published on Monday. (Turns out people have very many feels about housing policy.) Add in a busy week of stadium news, and I should probably take the day off from typing to avoid a repetitive stress injury — but not before taking a run through the week’s additional stadium and arena news, that’s more important than my wrist tendons.

To all the other costs of hosting the NFL Draft, add in running public schools remotely for three days to avoid the presumed traffic that will accompany it, as Pittsburgh is planning to do next month. (Kansas City did the same in 2023, though only for two days.) Economist J.C. Bradbury: “Even if the asserted influx of visitors was accurate (it’s not) closing schools so shirtless bros can scream ‘GO TEAM!’ in a local bar district is indefensible public policy.”
Speaking of the unanticipated costs of hosting big events, it’s understandable that this story on parking for World Cup games at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey focuses on the only available parking costing $200 a car, but I would also like to know how much the state-owned New Jersey Transit is spending to build a new bus terminal at the stadium. Looks like maybe $10 million, as part of $100 million in federal transportation spending to go along with $625 million in federal FEMA spending on “security and preparedness.” (Not enough security for the Iranian team, though, which is appealing to FIFA to move all its matches to Mexico after Donald Trump warned that he couldn’t guarantee the team’s safety.)
Among the new amenities the Baltimore Orioles owners bought for themselves with this winter’s installment of the at least $600 million they got from the Maryland legislature in 2023 are a “first-ever premium” club and a “larger-than-life scoreboard.” Assuming that means a video board, aren’t they all larger-than-life? An actual-size video board would seem like not much of an improvement over, you know, watching the actual game.
The Hillsborough County Commission and the Tampa city council will not rush into voting on a proposed $2.25 billion Tampa Bay Rays stadium subsidy on April 1 and 2 as previously announced, but may well rush into voting on April 15 and 16.
The tourism director for Boston, which is spending $135 million to rebuild a city soccer stadium for Boston Legacy F.C., is quitting to take an executive position with the women’s soccer team? Cool.
The Minnesota sports authority that built and maintains the Minnesota Vikings stadium at a total cost of around $1.4 billion has released an economic impact report claiming that it’s all cool, because the stadium is generating $1.63 billion in state tax revenue over 30 years. I haven’t read the whole thing yet, but insisting that it avoids the substitution effect of cannibalizing existing spending because it “only counts spending from visitors traveling into the State and City” is a very bad start.
For all you commenters writing that there’s no way the Chicago White Sox owners will try to build a stadium at The 78 after the Fire are already building one there, White Sox execs insist they’re still considering it.
There are designs for keeping the Bears in Chicago by adding a roof to Soldier Field and building an entertainment district on a deck over Lake Shore Drive and nobody knows how much it would cost or who paid for the designs? Cool.
Uniqlo Field at Dodger Stadium, it was only a matter of time.

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Tampa and Boston both learn the hard way that stadium costs only go up

March 17, 2026 Neil deMause

What do you get when you spend $2.3 billion on a baseball stadium? Not a top-of-the-line roof, apparently: An architectural report for the Tampa Bay Rays has found that the curved “grid shell roof” the team has requested would add about $300 million to the stadium’s cost. A fabric polymer roof was suggested by the Rays’ construction contractors, but architects warned that that material “can lead to rapid depressurization” and instead suggested a “trussed arched roof,” which is what the Dallas Cowboys stadium uses, among others.

The good news for Florida residents is that the Rays owner Patrick Zalupski would be on the hook for whatever the roof ends up costing, since he’s agreed to pay cost overruns. (Though since he’s set to get $2.25 billion worth of subsidies from the city, county, and state, Zalupski can afford a schmancy roof if that’s what his heart desires.) It’s a cautionary tale for other cities that it’s important to cap public costs, though — see, for example, Boston, where the renovation of city-owned White Stadium for Boston Legacy FC is continuing to go not well at all:

Opposition to the city’s now $325 million public-private plan to rebuild White Stadium for a pro soccer team has intensified following the latest taxpayer cost update, and exposed the mayor’s fractured relationship with the Black community.

Residents and city councilors who oppose the project, which now has taxpayers coughing up $135 million to cover the city’s costs, forcefully pushed back on Wu administration officials’ insistence that new costs announced last month are final and that the city had no other choice but to pursue a public-private stadium rehab.

We already found out last month that the public cost was up to $135 million, but if residents and city councilors are now wondering if it could go even higher, who can blame them? Stadium proponents have absolutely no reason not to lowball projected costs in order to get public officials on the hook, figuring if the real numbers eventually come in higher, it’ll be too late to back out — it’s the same gambit New York City power broker Robert Moses used to use to get the government to fund projects he knew they would back at the price of, by spending all his money building, say, half a bridge and then daring officials to leave it unfinished. This makes it absolutely vital for cities to ensure that team owners cover all cost overruns, and no cheating by working in “maintenance funds” that let them fob off costs onto future public subsidies, either.

At a Boston city council hearing yesterday, Reggie Stewart, a member of the local District 7 advisory council, warned Mayor Michelle Wu and city councilors that they’ll have to face the wrath of voters for squandering their money on a pro soccer stadium instead of using it to improve their neighborhoods. We’ll see — voters are notoriously fickle about penalizing elected officials over single issues, when they even have a viable alternative in the first place — but if it did happen, they wouldn’t be the first politicians voted out of office because they handed the keys to the store to the local sports owner.

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Friday roundup: Blazers threatened councilmembers’ careers if they didn’t subsidize arena, Rays stadium tax vote planned for April 1

March 13, 2026March 13, 2026 Neil deMause

Would love to have a witty introduction for you here, but it’s late enough already and this week’s bullet points are far too juicy to wait any longer!

Lobbyists for the Portland Trail Blazers worked to get city councilmembers on board spending $600 million on a renovation for the team’s arena by threatening that their political careers would suffer if they didn’t, according to one councilmember, who said team representatives “made it clear that elected officials will be blamed if the team leaves Portland.” History shows that elected officials are far more likely to be removed from office by voters angry that they gave public funds to sports team owners, but when did lobbyists ever let facts get in the way of a good extortion scheme?
Hillsborough County commissioners could vote April 1 on using $467 million in sales tax surcharge money on a new Tampa Bay Rays stadium, just two years after voters approved extending the tax on the condition that it not be used for new stadiums. “We have not even began to collect that tax,” Commissioner Joshua Wostal told the Tampa Bay Times, “and here is a suggestion that we already deceive the taxpayers that we made a promise to no less than two years ago.” If the county commission approves that money, the Tampa city council could be asked to vote the next day on the stadium plan, which would involve a total of $2.25 billion in public cash, land, and tax breaks.
Once the A’s (presumably) move to Las Vegas in 2028, Sacramento will be ready to host an MLB expansion team — just as soon as it has a stadium and an owner and an expansion team. “I think MLB is going to give a hard, hard look at Sacramento with only one team in Northern California,” said Sacramento Mayor/self-proclaimed “sports guy” who read Field of Schemes but missed the part about why tax breaks are the same as cash gifts Kevin McCarty.
The former Ford engine plant where the Cleveland Browns want to build their stadium complex is too polluted to use for housing, but Browns officials are convinced they can do cleanup at the site and get the needed approvals. They may also need to find a new source of $600 million, of course, but Cleveland.com assures us that “state lawmakers from the governor on down have already shown their willingness to find a way to fund the project,” and being willing to pay is the same thing as having the money to pay, right?
Former L.A. County supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who wrote the premier report on why the 2028 L.A. Olympics needed to secure an agreement with the IOC for L.A. not to be on the hook for Olympic losses, says now that city officials moved ahead without such an agreement, “I don’t believe that anyone in the city knows what the books are now.” He’s very likely not wrong!
The Orange County Tourist Development Council voted unanimously last week to set aside $20 million to host either the 2029 or 2030 NBA All-Star Game and $15 million to host the 2028 Olympic qualifiers, if it’s picked for either of those, because surely those will work out well.
New England Revolution owner Robert Kraft will guarantee $8 million in security costs for 2026 men’s World Cup games in Foxborough, Massachusetts, ending a standoff that was threatening to prevent matches from being held there.
Is the USL really going to be able to launch a new top-tier division to compete with MLS at the same time as teams are folding? The Guardian looked into it and came back with a decided “uhhhh, maybe?“

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Friday roundup: Bears battle drags on, Blazers subsidy heats up, 15 teams now angling for Ohio unclaimed funds cash

March 6, 2026March 9, 2026 Neil deMause

It’s Friday! But because of other commitments, I’m writing this from Thursday evening! So if there’s any breaking Friday morning news, complain about it in comments, and we’ll get to it on Monday, which for me will probably be Sunday. You following all that? Doesn’t matter, just read your bullet points, they’re good for you:

The Chicago Bears stadium war burbles on, with Indiana having passed a bill to throw $1 billion or $4 billion or maybe more at a stadium in Hammond (details are still very TBD), and Illinois working on a bill to allow property tax cuts for “megaprojects” such as a Bears stadium development in Arlington Heights, which could end up being a $2 billion tax break for the team owners. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker is also still talking vaguely about passing state “infrastructure” spending on an Arlington Heights stadium (also very TBD) once the legislature comes back in session in a couple of weeks, which would add even more to Illinois taxpayers’ tab. And to get Chicago legislators on board, Bears ownership will likely have to offer at least a $90 million payout for breaking their Soldier Field lease, though with what they’d likely be getting from taxpayers, they could more than afford it. Meanwhile, some people in Indiana, or at least a radio talk show host and an anti-tax group, are unhappy with the Indiana stadium funding plans, which still must be finalized and signed off on by both the newly formed state sports authority and the city of Hammond. Tune in next week for more exciting non-decisions, probably!
Willamette Week ran a long article about the Oregon legislature’s consideration of a bill to give Portland Trail Blazers incoming owner Tom Dundon $365 million in state income tax money, along with another $235 million in city and county funds, toward renovations on the team’s 31-year-old arena. It ends with a quote from yours truly on the subject of Oregon legislators having both the right and the responsibility to use their leverage to negotiate the best deal possible for residents — which does not seem to be what’s happening when they’re rushing into a subsidy package without first calculating what will cost taxpayers — but read the whole thing if you want the nitty-gritty of the deal, including a last-second amendment to establish a “sports and entertainment district” to siphon off taxes for the project, because that’s how everyone rolls these days.
The state of Ohio has rejected eight applicants for unclaimed private funds money for sports projects, but is still considering 14 other projects: upgrade requests from the Cincinnati Bengals ($234 million), F.C. Cincinnati ($136.3 million), the Columbus Blue Jackets ($100 million), Cleveland Guardians ($65 million), Cleveland Cavaliers ($40 million), Toledo USL ($20 million), Atomic Speedway ($14 million), Dayton Dragons ($8 million), Toledo Mud Hens ($4.5 million), Akron Rubberducks ($1.8 million), Columbus Clippers ($737,000), Mahoning Valley Scrappers ($562,000), and Lake County Captains ($100,000), as well as a new Cleveland soccer stadium for pro men’s and women’s teams that don’t currently exist ($19.9 million). Add in the $600 million in money toward a new Cleveland Browns stadium and that’s almost $1.3 billion in state-controlled money being handed out to local sports team owners, just because they were the first ones to notice it sitting in an Ohio account and ask for it. Sorry, schoolkids, you should have raised your hands faster, better luck next time!
Kansas state senator Cindy Holscher is running for governor, and really wants you to know that she thinks the Kansas City Chiefs stadium deal will be lousy for Kansans. “Economists from the left, right and center all agree that stadiums simply don’t generate enough economic activity to warrant taxpayers footing the bill.” Yup! “More than anything else, the stadium deal reminds me of the disastrous Brownback tax experiment.” Inasmuch as that was also about giving away tax revenues and hoping to make it up in volume, also yup! Holscher is currently the Democratic frontrunner, though with a ton of undecided voters as yet — it’s unlikely the Chiefs deal will remain unfinalized long enough for the next governor to weigh in, but you never know.
I’ve complained about John Romano’s Tampa Bay Times columns before for being overly bothsidesy about the Rays stadium debates, but credit where credit is due, he recognizes that it would be good to know how much taxpayers would be spending before signing off on a stadium deal.
Alberta premier Danielle Smith revealed that her province has committed $15 million to trying to become the host of the 2028 World Cup of Hoekcy (it’s a thing! sometimes), and she certainly used an interesting podium and backdrop while explaining it.
There’s fresh reporting on the flow of dodgy lobbying (certainly) and/or bribe (possibly) money in the now-dead Los Angeles Angels stadium deal, it’s convoluted to follow but if you’re a fan of stories of an “otherwise shadowy world where lobbyists collect big bounties for influencing legislation or securing contracts for clients from local government agencies without full disclosure,” then boy, does the Los Angeles Times have a story for you. (Me, I’ll wait for the inevitable David Simon HBO series.)
This summer’s men’s World Cup might be without the Iranian team if their country is too busy being invaded by the U.S., and might be without some Mexico venues because of fears of violence, and might be without some U.S. venues because the Trump administration is holding up security funding, and could yet be boycotted by other nations upset about the recent U.S. proclivity for invading places. You can’t buy publicity like this!
Wisconsin is considering a bill to cap concession prices at 120% of cost at publicly financed sports venues, and Colorado rejected a bill to cap food and beverage prices in “captive audience” situations like stadiums and airports to the average in the surrounding county. As I’ve written before, it might be more effective to rein in crazy stadium food and drink prices by requiring publicly supported buildings to allow in outside food, or by reducing income inequality so there are fewer fans for whom a $15 beer is no object, but it is interesting to see that this is an issue elected officials feel like they can grandstand on, if nothing else.
Plano, Texas is offering an abandoned mall site for a potential Dallas Stars arena, wait, we knew that already, why are you reporting it as if it’s new news, KDFW FOX 4?
Sporting Club Jacksonville says its planning to build a new 15,000-seat USL stadium with private money, let’s hope it’s true!
Glub. Time to revise the “Which teams will be lost first to climate change?” rankings?

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Bears hedge on Illinois vs. Indiana decision as public cost of Hammond stadium remains moving target

February 23, 2026February 23, 2026 Neil deMause

When the Illinois legislature canceled Thursday morning’s planned hearing on a property tax break bill for a Chicago Bears stadium in Arlington Heights, it turns out, it wasn’t just a bureaucratic scheduling glitch. Rather, the legislature did so at the request of Bears president Kevin Warren so that the bill could be revised — or, as Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker intimated, maybe just because “Indiana had asked them to say that they’re going to move forward with the negotiations in Indiana.” (Indiana officials had demanded some kind of commitment from the Bears before moving ahead with their own stadium financing package.) Either way, the Illinois bill is supposed to be resubmitted at a new hearing later this week.

Sports Mockery claims (citing no sources whatsoever) that Bears owner George McCaskey was “livid” with Warren for committing so heavily to Indiana, leading to the Bears president issuing a statement Saturday that “we continue to work with Illinois’ leadership and appreciate the progress being made.” All of which has led to even more speculation that McCaskey and Warren are mostly trying to play the two states off against each other to drive up the level of public subsidy, which of course they are, Chicago sports owners practically invented that game.

Indiana’s state Legislative Services Agency, meanwhile, issued a fiscal impact statement on Friday that starts to spell out how much each of the tax streams for a Bears stadium in Hammond, Indiana would cost state and local taxpayers:

The state would create a stadium tax district in Hammond that would divert all new property tax, income tax, and sales tax within the district above what’s currently collected there to paying off the stadium, for up to the next 35 years. Since no one knows how big the district would be or what would be built within it, there’s no way to know how much this redirected tax revenue would amount to; the fiscal note observes that other similar districts in the state divert as much as $10 million a year, but then immediately adds that “the amount of revenue deposited in the fund is
indeterminable and will depend on the plan for the designated district,” which is legislativese for ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
A 1% food and beverage tax surcharge in Lake and Porter counties, on top of the state’s 7% level, would generate an estimated $12-18 million a year, or possibly more if a stadium district leads to more local food and beverage sales.
Doubling the Lake County hotel tax from 5% to 10% would generate “at least $5.4M annually,” again possibly more if hotel stays go up thanks to a stadium.
A 12% ticket tax would generate about $12 million a year.

(In addition, that previously reported bit that “the stadium board will retain all revenues from operation of the capital mprovement” appears to actually mean all net tax revenues from the stadium (“all excise taxes and net income from operation of the capital improvements”), which is far less exciting than it sounded when it appeared Indiana might actually get a cut of stadium revenues.)

How much would all those redirected tax revenue streams add up to? Given all the unknowns it’s impossible to say, plus the fiscal note doesn’t indicate if and how these annual tax expenditures are expected to rise over time. Discounting the ticket tax because that mostly ends up being paid by teams, we have a baseline of around $27 million a year, which would come to around $440 million in present value; but, of course, those unknown subsidies from a stadium tax district could easily add hundreds of millions if not billions more if Indiana diverts taxes from a big enough area, as Kansas is planning on doing with its infamous 293-square-mile district for the Kansas City Chiefs.

All of this ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ is expected to be signed off on by the Indiana legislature this week, while Illinois considers if and how to respond. Getting some more certainty about, at the very least, how big Indiana’s stadium tax district would be before holding a vote seems like the absolute bare minimum of due diligence, but it’s unclear if anyone will attempt that in the five days left before the legislative session ends; blank checks are seldom a good way for public officials to go into a stadium negotiation, but it sure looks like where things are headed.

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Friday roundup: Breaking down taxpayer costs of the proposed Indiana Bears deal, plus other stadium news

February 20, 2026 Neil deMause

The Indiana legislature’s amended bill for a Chicago Bears stadium project is finally up, and we can start to get a slightly better sense of what it would entail in terms of public costs. Tax expenditures would include: a city of Hammond admissions tax, Lake County and Porter County food and beverage tax surcharges, a Hammond food and beverage tax surcharge, a Lake County hotel tax surcharge, what looks like local income and sales taxes from a stadium district, and state sales taxes from a stadium district. The stadium authority would also own the stadium and lease it to the Bears (terms very much TBD), so it would presumably be exempt from property taxes.

That is a ton of moving parts, needless to say. There being no fiscal analysis attached to the bill to project how much each of these taxes will raise, it’s impossible to determine what the total public price tag would be, though something upwards of $1 billion seems likely given all the revenue streams involved. (WGN calls it $1 billion exactly, not sure where that number comes from, though Indiana house speaker Todd Huston did throw that number around as an estimate yesterday.)

The bill also says that “the stadium board is responsible for the operation and maintenance of the capital improvement upon completion of construction,” which sounds bad, and then two paragraphs later that “the authority has no responsibility to fund the ongoing maintenance and operations of the capital improvement,” which sounds good but also contradictory. (It’s possible this is just dividing up responsibilities between two state agencies, I need to keep going through the bill language to be sure; if so, it’s bad for taxpayers because it could end up a grift that keeps on giving.) Also “the stadium board will retain all revenues from operation of the capital mprovement,” which sounds very good for Indiana but also not likely something the Bears ownership would agree to if it really meant what it sounds like it does. So lots of questions still up in the air, we get another public hearing on this before the full Indiana house and senate votes next week, right? Right? Anyone?

Meanwhile, in other news this week:

The proposed Tampa Bay Rays stadium development at Hillsborough College’s Dale Mabry Campus would include relocating a middle school and some county offices to … somewhere, while the college’s buildings would be rebuilt in a compressed corner of the campus … somehow. The new Tampa Bay Times reporters on this story, one of whom was just promoted from intern and the other just graduated from college last summer, don’t appear to have actually asked anyone with the Rays or with Gov. Ron DeSantis’s office about how this is all expected to work, sure do miss Colleen Wright’s reporting on the Rays stadium saga.
The Cleveland Guardians and Cavaliers would like some of that sweet state unclaimed funds money that the Browns are using for their new stadium, please, to use for upgrades to their current homes. The state can get right on that just as soon as that little matter of the restraining order against the state using the funds at all is cleared up.
The estimated $750 million cost of renovations to the Arizona Diamondbacks stadium — which only cost $354 million to build in the first place in 1998, about $700 million in today’s dollars — is now expected to be “much higher,” according to team CEO Derrick Hall. Hall didn’t say exactly how much higher, or whether it will all fall on the state to increase its planned $500 million cut of the costs, or when the D-backs will get around to actually signing a new lease in exchange for the renovations.
Athletics team execs say $300 million has now been spent on construction of John Fisher’s Las Vegas stadium and $989 million contracted for, out of a total price tag of still figuring that out. This is either the biggest bluff in sports history or the biggest dog-catching-the-car-and-having-to-figure-out-what-to-do-with-it, honestly looking forward to the inevitable cataclysmic denouement either way.
The waiting to see if the state of Connecticut will provide $127 million to build and MLS Next Pro soccer stadium in Bridgeport is over, and the answer is: Nope, go kick rocks. State Economic Development Commissioner Daniel O’Keefe cited the need to reduce state spending and what the Connecticut Post termed the “mercurial nature of the sports industry,” noting that the Connecticut Sun may be about to move to Houston and the Bridgeport Islanders may be about to move to Hamilton, fool me three times, shame on me. Developers plan to instead use the planned stadium site for a project involving youth sports indoor and outdoor fields, which apparently don’t require hundreds of millions of dollars of state subsidies like pro sports do.
The video of my interview yesterday on whether Los Angeles should try to renegotiate its 2028 Olympics hosting deal is now up at Alissa Walker’s Torched site, go check it out if you like. Chris Tyler of Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, which commissioned me to do my Olympics report, joined as well, and the three of us spent a solid hour discussing what went wrong and options for trying to fix it — suffice to say that if former L.A. mayor Eric Garcetti’s ears are burning today, this is why.

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