Category: World Cup 2026

Friday roundup: Vegas A’s details still TBD, Jags plan worse than reported, $90m Cleveland soccer subsidy floated

access_time personNeil deMause

It was a bit of a slow news week for once — a rarity in this year of a constant firehose of sports subsidy battles — but we still got Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan demanding $775 million in public money for stadium upgrades. And a bunch of other stuff happened! Let’s scroll through the news detritus:

  • The Oakland A’s have presented a nonrelocation agreement to the Las Vegas Stadium Authority, and plan on submitting an actual financial plan for building a stadium sometime this summer, according to Mick Akers of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Las Vegas Stadium Authority Board chair Steve Hill insists that A’s owner John Fisher “has the ability” to fund the rest of his stadium out of his own pocket if he wants, but keep in mind Hill works on behalf of the A’s stadium project in his spare time, so big grains of salt apply. Meanwhile, Bally’s says it’s still thinking about where on its land the A’s stadium would go — given that’s it’s too big to fit anywhere, maybe they could put it in that thing their aunt gave them that they don’t know what it is?
  • That $150 million apiece from the Jaguars and the city of Jacksonville for community benefits like public housing turns out not to be an actual 50/50 split, as the city would spend it over the next five years while Khan would have 30 years to spend the money. That’d be more of a 37/63 split in terms of present value, or even worse depending on how backloaded Khan’s spending is.
  • Someone at one of the community “huddles” on the proposed Jaguars stadium asked Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan if the plan shouldn’t be put up for vote in a public referendum, and Deegan responded, “I believe the referendum was my election back in May.” Did voters know that’s what they were casting ballots on? That must have been one long candidate statement.
  • The proposed owners of a proposed NWSL women’s soccer team and MLS Next Pro minor-league men’s soccer team in Cleveland have revealed renderings for a new downtown stadium, while also noting in passing that they want $90 million of the $160 million cost to be paid for with city, county, and state money, plus team “investors.” Did we mention there’s an animated video walkthrough? “We’re not just investing in a game. We’re investing in a future,” said Greater Cleveland Sports Commission CEO David Gilbert, and when that future has kick-ass action-movie music, who could say no?
  • In case you’re wondering what the eight members of the St. Petersburg city council think of the Tampa Bay Rays‘ $1.5 billion stadium subsidy plan, the answer is: could be better (Brandi Gabbard), opposed (John Muhammad), in favor (Ed Montanari), could be better (Deborah Figgs-Sanders), in favor (Copley Gerdes), opposed (Richie Floyd), opposed (Lisset Hanewicz), generally in favor (Gina Driscoll). That would seem likely to lead to lots of horse-trading to win over Gabbard, Figgs-Sanders, and Driscoll, somebody go find them some development money for projects in their districts, stat!
  • Plans to turn over the RFK Stadium site to the District of Columbia, possibly for use as the site of a new Washington Commanders stadium, hit a snag this week as Montana Sen. Steve Daines objected that the team hasn’t done enough to honor the designer of its old logo, Blackfeet Tribe member Walter “Blackie” Wetzel, saying “they could do something very significant in terms of ensuring the legacy of that logo.” Nobody seems to know what exactly Daines has in mind, possibly including Daines, but as bills like this are generally passed by unanimous consent, he must be appeased before the land transfer can take place, so this could get truly batshit.
  • Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim said that hosting seven 2026 World Cup matches is “the equivalent of 30 to 40 Super Bowls,” and that sound you just heard is thousands of economists’ souls crying out in agony.
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Friday roundup: Utah still unclear on where it’d get $1.4B in MLB/NHL subsidies, White Sox have lots of friends in high places

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s been another nutty week in stadiumland, but let’s give thanks for the small things — in this case, for the WP Dark Mode plugin, which has been updated so that it again gives FoS readers the option to avoid eyestrain while still navigating the site as you’re meant to. If you haven’t clicked the little crescent moon in the corner of the screen, give it a try, it’s fun!

Or you can read about the news of the week, which is less guaranteed to be fun, but is still … interesting? Informative? One of those:

  • Fox 13 in Salt Lake City claims that both the proposed MLB stadium and NHL arena would create entertainment districts where sales taxes would be kicked back to pay for the projects. We knew this for the baseball stadium, but for the arena the legislation says “authorizes a qualifying local government to levy a sales and use tax within the local government’s boundaries and for use within the project area” and caps the amount at 0.5%, so it looks like this would actually be a citywide sales tax hike? Either way, it’s a lot of money, and still more money would be required to pay the full $1.4 billion combined cost — including, notes University of Colorado economist Geoffrey Propheter, $1 million a year in kicked-back “possessory interest taxes,” more than half of which would come out of school budgets — but it sure would be nice to see some clarity on this before the legislature wraps up its session … wait, today? Well, that’s suboptimal.
  • NBC Chicago obtained emails showing that Mayor Brandon Johnson and Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf had their comms departments work together to concoct a press statement about the team’s stadium plans in January, and while it’s sort of understandable given that it was about a meeting between the two, it’s also maybe not the best sign of a mayor being interested in driving a hard bargain for his constituents that when the White Sox asked the mayor’s office to vet their press release, the response was “Could we do a joint statement?” Especially when the resulting statement referred to a meeting “to discuss the historic partnership between the team and Chicago and the team’s ideas for remaining competitive in Chicago in perpetuity” and didn’t mention anything about the $2 billion public price tag.
  • Chicago political consultant David Axelrod tweeted that the White Sox stadium plan would be “a game-changer for the city” and immediately got piled on for “peddling disinformation” (The Athletic’s Keith Law), told “You’re not an economist, so how about trust the economists who are” (economist J.C. Bradbury) and “Claiming stadiums catalyze economic development is like arguing vaccines cause autism” (Bradbury again), among many, many others.
  • Comcast Spectacor, the owners of the Philadelphia Flyers, are talking about doing a $2.5 billion redevelopment of the parking lots around their arena, to include “hotels, residences, restaurants, shops and a 5,500-seat performance stage.” Funding for the first phase would come from Comcast and its development partners, while the second phase would be paid for by “yet to be determined,” according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, which isn’t a red flag at all.
  • The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill handing over the RFK Stadium site to Washington, D.C. for redevelopment which will likely mean a proposal to build a new Commanders stadium there. Every representative from Maryland but one voted against it, as did four of 11 members from Virginia; “It’s most certainly not a level playing field when one interested jurisdiction receives a free transfer of federal government subsidized land,” said Rep. Glenn Ivey of Maryland. We’re still a long way from actual stadium plans or price tags, and the D.C. council may yet vote to use the site for something other than a stadium, but it definitely adds one more potential competitor to what’s been a mostly quiet of late three-way bidding war.
  • MLB commissioner Rob Manfred called the Oakland A’s Las Vegas relocation plans “solid” and immediately got piled on for damning it with faint praise. Manfred also acknowledged that “to most effectively build the [2025] schedule, we need to know at some point in the spring exactly where they’re going to be,” which isn’t exactly giving A’s owner John Fisher a deadline, the commissioner knows who signs his checks. Fisher is apparently hoping that if he agrees to sell his share of the Oakland Coliseum site to the local group that wants to develop it, the city of Oakland will grant him a lease extension to play there through 2027, which isn’t the deal the Oakland mayor’s office has been talking about at all, so we’ll see what the reaction there is.
  • Tennessee’s tourism department has asked the state legislature for the right to deny public access to public records about how much it offers the NFL for the right to host the Super Bowl at the new Titans stadium under construction. “The Super Bowl deal is often embarrassing for the NFL because of the demands they make and for the politicians that agree to give the league things like free high-end hotel rooms and police escorts,” notes College of Holy Cross economist Victor Matheson.
  • Toronto is now expecting to spend $380 million on hosting six 2026 World Cup matches, which is, let’s see, $63 million per match. It says it expects an economic boost of $392 million in GDP and tax revenues of $119 million, which seem both optimistic and mismatched unless Toronto has a 30% sales tax rate, but since World Cup impact numbers are generally garbage anyway — Matheson once called them “so outlandish as to defy common sense” — we can safely ignore them entirely.
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Friday roundup: O’s lease, Brewers doubletalk, A’s lawsuit, Bears gibberish

access_time personNeil deMause

Today’s Friday where you are, right? I’ve completely lost track, honestly. Some things happened this week, or maybe last week, but they definitely happened, let’s talk about them:

  • The Baltimore Orioles owners announced a 30-year lease extension on Camden Yards last night by putting it up on the scoreboard between innings, that’s totally normal, yup. Actual details like what if anything the team got on top of the $600 million in state money approved last year will have to await a Friday news conference.
  • Wisconsin state representative Rob Brooks, who co-authored the bill to give Milwaukee Brewers owner Mark Attanasio even more money than he asked for, now says that he doesn’t want the city of Milwaukee to give Attanasio $7.5 million a year, but just $5 million a year. “If they come up with the things they’ve counted they can do and we think we can do, I do think it will be around $5 million,” said Brooks, which, sorry, what? You really gotta show us some actual legislative language, man, this trying to describe things using your words thing just isn’t going well at all.
  • “Representatives with ties to the A’s” have sued the teachers’ union–backed group Schools Over Stadiums over their proposed Las Vegas A’s stadium referendum “not fully describing the petition’s ‘substantive impacts’ on the project,” according to SOS. Who? What impacts? “This is a developing story. Check back for updates.” Pro journalism tip, Las Vegas Review-Journal: Try to answer at least some of the five W’s before hitting publish. (The Las Vegas Sun has a bit more info, adding that the suit is from registed lobbyists Danny Thompson and Thomas Morley and is objecting to the referendum petition trying to overturn just the funding part of the stadium bill and being “argumentative,” but doesn’t explain why either of those things would disqualify it from the ballot.)
  • Arlington Heights is still talking to Chicago Bears execs about a new stadium, and so is the mayor of Chicago, and that could mean that they’re about to approve a ton of subsidies or agree to a deal that doesn’t require a ton of subsidies or not agree to anything, really. “It’s what the people of Chicago elected me to do is to bring people together,” said Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson. “Being collaborative, compassionate and competent, those are the hallmarks of my administration. It’s what I expect, quite frankly, all leaders to possess.” Is there some sort of brain worm they inject mayors with at their inaugurations that make them talk like this?
  • Michael Baumann of FanGraphs writes that the Tampa Bay Rays and Kansas City Royals owners are both trying to get new stadiums by claiming it would let them start spending money with the big boys, but “we all know this is bunk.” He also complains that new baseball stadiums are too disconnected from their neighborhoods and too tall and too generic (all true), and then headlines the whole thing “The Jewel Box Under End-Stage Capitalism,” to which I can only say promises, promises.
  • The Chicago Tribune is worried that if the Bears don’t win games, no one will want to give them stadium money, and WCPO is worried that if the Cincinnati Bengals don’t win games, no one will want to give them stadium money, and both are probably right, but is that really the part to be worried about?
  • Sports management professor Mark Rosentraub still thinks Saskatoon needs a new arena, this time to remain “competitive” for concerts, LOLRosentraub.
  • Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kroenke may pull his stadium from consideration for hosting 2026 World Cup games because FIFA won’t let him have enough of a cut of the vig. Sometimes when elephants fight, we can just get an entertaining elephant fight, maybe?
  • The Athletic noticed that A’s owner John Fisher, during his recent interview with ESPN, said (in ESPN’s words) that his San Jose Earthquakes‘ stadium “is already outdated compared to newer MLS stadiums” and “lacks the capacity and premium seating that drives the kind of revenue needed to compete for championships.” The stadium is eight years old.
  • “I don’t really like owning teams,” New York Knicks and Rangers LOLowner James Dolan told The New York Times, adding, “Being a professional sports owner in New York, you’re not beloved until you’re dead.” This may be overly optimistic, but sure, he’s welcome to try.
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World Cup final may move from Rams stadium because someone forgot to bring a ruler

access_time personNeil deMause

Okay, so it’s not quite as bad a violation of “measure twice, cut once” as ordering trains that won’t fit alongside the platforms or crashing a spaceship into a planet because you forgot to convert to metric. But Los Angeles’ SoFi Stadium maybe not being able to host the final of the 2026 World Cup because the field is too narrow is still not the best:

Sources close to the 2026 organising committee say in order to comply with Fifa’s regulations, the width of the field would have to be increased — possibly by as much as 63ft — which would mean removing some of the seats close to the pitch and raising the playing surface.

Fifa normally expects a stadium that can hold at least 80,000 people for the final, but losing seats would reduce the capacity of the SoFi Stadium to below 70,000, which may prove a step too far.

The Times of London article omits any mention of the most interesting question here, which is how Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kroenke built a $5-billion-plus stadium and failed to take into account that people might want to play soccer there — something that’s doubly embarrassing considering that Kroenke also owns the Premier League soccer club Arsenal F.C. (Normally I would make a joke here about how it’s embarrassing enough just to own Arsenal, but Arsenal went and ruined that joke this year.) Thankfully, Inglewood got away with putting hardly any taxpayer money into Kroenke’s stadium, but there may need to be some corrections to all the hagiographic articles crediting the building with making the city the sports capital of the U.S.

If FIFA isn’t interested in providing the L.A. stadium with a waiver, next in line to host the World Cup final appears to be MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, which if you’ve ever been to an event there in the summer, or really an event anytime, seems like an extremely bad idea, even if it would be very convenient for me personally. This would look to be an embarrassment for FIFA as well that it failed to notice all these problems with the host stadiums when selecting the site of the next World Cup, but then, if FIFA wasn’t embarrassed by the last World Cup, it’s probably never going to be embarrassed by anything at all.

I know, I know, you want a glib takeaway. How about: Just because billionaires have billions of dollars doesn’t mean they’re always smart about the things they do? That already seemed the case with SoFi Stadium’s mammoth price tag, and there are plenty of other recent examples of super-rich guys being completely idiotic. That would be reassuring, except that unlike in the movies, super-rich guys usually end up less being brought down by their hubris than surviving to be idiotic another day, so maybe the lesson here is … the world is broken? Sorry if you were hoping for something more inspirational, now go and eat your schadenfreude.

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Kansas City commits to $50m in World Cup stadium upgrades, to be paid for by Not Me

access_time personNeil deMause

One of the cities that won the right to host 2026 World Cup games in exchange for agreeing to upgrade its stadium is Kansas City, where the Chiefs‘ stadium will need $50 million in work, according to Mayor Quinton Lucas, including raising and widening the field to meet FIFA standards for soccer, which is an entirely different sport from American football with different field dimensions, who’da thunk it. And who’ll pay for that renovation work?

“Look for an ask to the state on that in addition to private fundraising to fund that step,” tweeted Lucas.

Private fundraising? What private interests would want to pay for stadium renovations that they wouldn’t benefit from? Fox4 TV, you have something?

The source of that “private fundraising” is unknown at present.

Other Kansas City area officials, meanwhile, mostly did that thing where you turn your pants pockets inside out to show how broke you are. Jim Rowland, executive director of the Jackson County Sports Complex Authority, which owns the stadium, told Fox4 in an email, “The Authority would have no source of funds”; when asked Tuesday by an authority board member who then would pay for improvements, Rowland said, “Great question. Call Kathy Nelson of the Kansas City Sports Commission,” a local nonprofit that promotes sports in the city. Nelson declined to answer questions yesterday.

That would seem to leave the state, which already exempted 2026 World Cup tickets from state sales taxes in an attempt to land some matches. (Nobody seems to have calculated how much of a cost this will be to the state, but with 76,000 seats and at least four matches, and tickets averaging at least $100 each, and a sales tax rate of 4.225%, we can guesstimate it’s around $1 million.)

And if the state says no? Who actually committed to this $50 million (estimated) in upgrades? In the World Cup bid book, it’s host cities that promise to be able to accommodate FIFA’s demands, so presumably the buck would stop on Mayor Lucas’s desk, but nobody’s saying at present.

All this is also taking place against a backdrop of Chiefs owner Clark Hunt wanting a new stadium, maybe, or maybe renovations to his current one for football, not soccer. Team president Mark Donovan told reporters last week that investing “tens and tens of millions” of dollars into this has to “factor into those discussions and that decision” about the stadium’s future, which … no, I have no idea what that means, either. Here, enjoy some renderings of fireworks, that oughta cheer you up, or at least distract you for long enough that you forget what question you asked.

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World Cup will bring windfall to U.S. host cities, say whoever news sites could find to say that

access_time personNeil deMause

FIFA picked its 2026 World Cup host cities on Thursday, all 16 of them, and you know what that means: articles about the enormous economic windfall this will result in for the winners! You’re up first, KCTV in Kansas City:

A World Cup match will bring tens of thousands of visitors to Kansas City from all over the world and experts believe it’s going to be a windfall for the local economy…

“This could be a dynamic element for Kansas City worldwide,” said Tony Tocco. “I hope we take advantage of it.”

Tocco is a business and accounting professor at Rockhurst University. He’s also a big soccer fan…

Depending on what kind of match we end up with, we could be looking at $100-400 million in revenue from out-of-town visitors. Our hotels will be booked and the bars will be packed.

A “business and accounting professor” isn’t exactly an expert in economic impact — he teaches business management, basically — but I suppose we should allow some small props to KCTV for picking up the phone and calling someone vaguely experty, rather than just going with what was in the press release.

What about the Atlanta Business Chronicle, did they manage to find someone who’s actually read the economic literature on mega-event impact?

Hosting World Cup matches could mean hundreds of millions in revenue for the city. Retailers and restaurants would also get a revenue boost. More than 5 million tourists visited Russia during the 2018 World Cup, according to FIFA, global governing body of soccer. Equally as many people could visit the Persian Gulf to attend 2022 World Cup matches in Qatar in November…

Hosting the 2026 FIFA World Cup could generate more than $5 billion in short-term economic activity. That would include thousands of temporary jobs (security, for example), generating more than $1 billion in temporary worker earnings across North America, according to a study done by Boston Consulting Group, a leading global management consulting firm.

For Atlanta specifically, there is an estimated $415 million net economic benefit, according to the study.

Nope! That Boston Consulting Group paper was written under contract to the 2026 World Cup bid committee, way back in 2018. Also in that year, College of the Holy Cross economist — and also a big soccer fan, like Tocco — Victor Matheson wrote a paper entitled “The Economics of the World Cup” that observed regarding economic impact forecasts that “at times, the predictions are so outlandish as to defy common sense” and that after-the-fact studies of economic numbers show that “the observed impact of the World Cup has been a fraction that touted by the event boosters, and frequently the observed impact has actually been negative.” He even provided a handy table:

Part of the reason for the World Cup’s dismal economic results has to do with the high costs of hosting matches: Host cities and states have agreed to kick back sales taxes on tickets and pay for stadium upgrades in order to get chosen, reports the Guardian. (Though it, too, uncritically cites FIFA’s claim that the Cup will result in $5 billion in new economic activity.) Several cities including Chicago and Montreal, reports Mother Jones, took themselves out of the running because they didn’t want to meet FIFA’s demands.

When you add in substitution effects (people spending money on soccer matches will cut back on spending on other things), crowding out (non-soccer tourists will steer clear of the U.S. during the Cup because they won’t want to have to fight for hotel rooms), and the fact that under the expanded format starting in 2026 a lot of cities will be getting matchups unlikely to generate huge tourism — Faroe Islands vs. Andorra, anyone? — there’s really no reason to expect a significant windfall for U.S. host cities in 2026. But we’re likely to keep getting these articles so long as FIFA and some business professors are around to claim otherwise, and media outlets are willing to go with official-wisdom journalism, which seems like it’ll be forever, probably.

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Friday roundup: Commanders stadium subsidy dies (for now), Brewers stadium subsidy enters

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s Friday already! Lots to get to, so let’s get to it:

  • The Virginia bill to provide $300 million toward a new Washington Commanders stadium is officially dead, after its state senate sponsor pulled it following comments by team defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio calling last year’s Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol a “dust-up.” A D.C. city councilmember also claims that a majority of that council is opposed to a stadium on the RFK Stadium site, both because they don’t want to end up paying for it “no matter what promises the Commanders make” otherwise and also because of Del Rio’s remarks. This is the kind of dead that you can recover from, mind you — Commanders execs issued a statement saying they’ll continue to work on finding a stadium site, and Sen. Richard Saslaw said in throwing in the towel on his bill that “There were just so many things out there that a lot of people are saying, ‘Saslaw, this thing needs to wait’” — so expect to see this revived in a year or two when either Dan Snyder has finally given up and sold the team, when people have forgotten about Jan. 6 amid the monkeypox pandemic, or when at least Del Rio has been fired either for his loose lips or for being bad at his job.
  • A Milwaukee County supervisor wants to develop part of the Brewers parking lots into an entertainment “Beer District” — like the Bucks’ “Deer District,” get it? — with the resulting increased property taxes kicked back to the team for future stadium improvements. Brewers president of business operations Rick Schlesinger replied: “Could the real estate here be part of a solution? Sure. Do I know what that would look like? No.” That’s clear as mud, then, but it does seem like “develop a bunch of public land and give the proceeds to the Brewers” is on the table, at least, so keep an eye on this one.
  • The Sycamore Institute, a seven-year-old “nonpartisan” think tank that is not to be confused with the think tank of the same name at American University in D.C. that formed four years later but somehow grabbed the better domain name, issued a report this week totaling up $1.8 billion in sports subsidies the state has proposed for the Tennessee Titans, Nashville Predators, Tennessee Smokies, and Chattanooga Lookouts, and concluded that that’s a lot of money and such public spending rarely pays off. There’s not much in the report that’ll be unfamiliar to readers of this site — the report’s conclusion is “When evaluating these proposals, policymakers at all levels of government should carefully consider the potential benefits and costs,” which is about as nonpartisan as you can get — but it has a nice list of footnotes to past research and articles on the topic, including my 2011 essay for The Nation “Why Do Mayors Love Sports Stadiums?“, so it’s worth keeping handy for the next time you need to win a Twitter argument by dumping facts on your opponent. (No, this is not actually how Twitter arguments work, but it’d be nice to live in that world, wouldn’t it?)
  • Kansas City could get a new NBA team, according to … uh, the graphic designer for the Royals? Slow news day, KSHB-TV, or did you just really want the clicks from all the people old enough to miss the Kansas City-Omaha Kings?
  • Saskatoon’s nonprofit events center wants to build a soccer stadium, and is generously offering to put up $2 million, while the owner of an expansion Canadian Premier League franchise would put up another $2 million, so long as local government or (waves arms around vaguely at “the community”) puts up the other $24 million. They’ve also included a bunch of economic impact claims and a rendering of a stadium with no fireworks but weirdly synchronized glowing fountains, so you know they’re serious.
  • Pawtucket Mayor Don Grebien is asking Rhode Island for an extra $30 million for a soccer stadium on top of the $46.2 million the state is already providing, on the grounds that “We lost the PawSox because of a lack of leadership. And hopefully we don’t lose this.” Pawtucket doesn’t actually have a soccer team, so it wouldn’t technically be “losing” something it never had in the first place, but it does sound a bit better than “money’s all gone, please send more,” anyway.
  • Hosting World Cup games in Atlanta could bring $500 million in economic benefits, says a study done by a “leading global management consulting firm”; hosting World Cup games in Nashville won’t bring in anywhere close to $700 million like a city tourism agency report claims, say every economist Center Square reporter Jon Styf could find. Guess we’ll all just have to agree to disagree, too bad there’s no way to tell whose numbers are correct by looking at evidence or something!
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Friday roundup: NY Gov. Hochul wants to skin puppies, sell their fur to build Bills stadium (maybe)

access_time personNeil deMause

Another Friday, another week closer to the April 1 deadline by which New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has promised to submit a Buffalo Bills public funding proposal, and another week where nothing of the sort has materialized. Since her plan here is almost certainly to stonewall until it’s too late for any more than a cursory debate about her proposal, what should responsible journalists do in this information vacuum? Not say anything until there’s something concrete to report on, and and risk playing right into Hochul’s hands? Speculate wildly about all the ways Hochul could be planning to fund a Bills stadium — direct grants, tax kickbacks, development funds, selling naming rights to Niagara Falls to a pharmaceutical company — and have Hochul and Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz tell you you’re wrong? Hire Anonymous to hack into the state’s email servers to see what Hochul is up to behind taxpayers’ backs? One hopes that news outlet editors are debating these issues right now, at least editors of news outlets whose publishers aren’t helping the Bills owners plot stadium campaign strategy.

On that cheery note, on with the week in news that isn’t state secrets:

  • At least somebody is moving forward with a public vote on Bills stadium funding, but it’s the NFL, whose owners are expected today to approve $200 million in loans ($150 million of that forgivable, so really a grant) toward construction. The conditions of the league’s G-4 stadium funding program are that the team owners also kick in at least $200 million, and public funding cover some of the rest, so if we’re still talking a $1.4 billion stadium, that would leave, let’s see … up to $1 billion to be covered by the public. Don’t come at me, Gov. Hochul, it’s only math!
  • Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee says he’s met with Tennessee Titans execs to discuss putting money toward a new stadium, because “we are always interested in investments that create economic activity in the state.” How much state money, and how expensive a stadium? “There’s a lot yet to be determined about who all the team players are and what those contributions will be.” Cut, that’s a wrap, plenty there for an article, no need for followup questions!
  • Spending public money on a Titans stadium would be “a boondoggle,” writes one Tennessee economist in an op-ed, while the Chattanooga Times Free Press writes in an editorial that the same goes for a Chattanooga Lookouts stadium. The Times Free Press editorial board also calls Field of Schemes “a compelling critique of stadium subsidies,” but doesn’t go so far as to include a link to ordering information, let me help you with that.
  • Tampa Mayor Jane Castor is tired of watching Tampa Bay Rays owner Stuart Sternberg attempt to play off her city and St. Petersburg in a stadium bidding war, and wants him to pick a side: “We just need to get moving on this.” The “shot clock is ticking,” said Castor, a turn of phrase that the Tampa Bay Times attempted to explain by noting that the mayor was a basketball player in college, and surely not because she can’t be bothered to pick the right sports metaphor. Clearly she loves and understands baseball, or else why would she own all those Rays jerseys?
  • To the list of dubious items that states are using federal COVID relief money for, add “$15 million to try to lure 2026 World Cup games to New Jersey.” Hosting World Cup matches would “bring millions of dollars to New Jersey’s tourism and hospitality industries, two sectors that have faced significant impacts from the pandemic,” said a spokesperson for Gov. Tom Phil Murphy, carefully not mentioning that as New Jersey getting more games would just mean some other U.S. city getting less, the net tourism gain for the nation as a whole would be zero, so why should the federal government be interested in subsidizing this, exactly? The Treasury Department doesn’t seem to care, but maybe Congress would want to get involved? Just a thought, if they’re not too busy with other things.
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Missouri told it won’t get World Cup matches unless it exempts tickets from sales tax

access_time personNeil deMause

One of the fundamental tools of media analysis — or, if you’re working for the dark side, media spin — is framing: how the exact same information can be presented in different ways to emphasize one aspect or another. This can be done in passing, as with my dismissal of the entire field of public relations in the last sentence as “the dark side,” or in the very structure of an article, where by cherry-picking what to present as the main takeaway one can report the same news in very different ways.

Which brings us to this article from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Missouri is in good position to host World Cup soccer, lieutenant governor says

Hey, great! The 2026 World Cup is going to be held in the U.S. and Mexico and Canada, and St. Louis just got a new soccer stadium at a cost of only $60 million in tax breaks, while Kansas City has the Chiefs‘ stadium, and now the two cities have “pretty good” chances of hosting some games, according to Missouri Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe. That seems to be all there is to this feel-good story, down to the 10th paragraph now, the 11th, oh wait—

Missouri lawmakers are being asked to approve legislation that would stop the collection of sales taxes on World Cup ticket sales.

Under legislation filed by Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo, D-Independence, the tax would be left off the tickets during the duration of the event.

Kehoe said the existence of the tax is a red flag to FIFA.

“It is a deal breaker,” Kehoe said.

So, basically, we have at least one answer to how FIFA plans to decide which cities to place 2026 World Cup games in: Start by eliminating any cities that don’t agree to hand over a giant tax break. This is common in other siting decisions like the Olympics and Super Bowl, of course, but it’s the first time I’ve noticed it with regard to which cities within a host country get World Cup matches.

As for how much the tax break would cost Missouri, let’s do some math. There will be 80 games spread across 16 cities, so that’s five games per city. The Chiefs’ stadium holds 76,000 people, so if they sell out all the matches, at let’s say an average of $200 a ticket, which seems reasonable based on past World Cup pricing, that’s $76 million in ticket sales. Missouri’s state sales tax is 4.225%, so that’s around $3 million that the state would be kicking back to FIFA. Which isn’t a ton — state officials say that World Cup visitors could spend $600 million, which like all such estimates is a gross exaggeration, but even if you move the decimal place over one it would likely create a couple million dollars in new non-ticket sales taxes. Still, it would be $3 million that the state of Missouri would normally collect from a big event, except that the multibillion-dollar international crime syndicate (not my words, a U.S. Senator called FIFA this, and John Oliver would likely agree) in charge of deciding where to put the games demanded that it instead be given to them in small bills.

Anyway, where was I? Oh right, framing! Don’t read the daily newspaper’s headlines, read my headlines instead, that’s what I’m saying. (Our next lesson will be in aggregation.)

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World Cup could bring hundreds of millions in spending to U.S., but that’s not actually that great: an explainer

access_time personNeil deMause

So yeah, that story I didn’t get to from Friday: It was in Sportico, the new “business of sports” publication (always take with a grain of salt anyone who covers “business of,” unless they also make a point of covering “labor of” and “consumer rights of”), and was about the economic impact of the World Cup. And it included a surprising (if you’re only dimly paying attention to economics) voice arguing that the World Cup packs more bang for its bucks than, say, the Super Bowl or Olympics:

Victor Matheson (professor of economics, Holy Cross) explained, “If you have [an] event that people will travel to, [there is] some potential impact (i.e. new spending in the city as a result of the event). But the impact is smaller than one might guess and way smaller than the leagues or other boosters try to tell the public.”

That’s not the case with the World Cup, though–even as FIFA controls nearly all commercial rights tied to the quadrennial tournament. “Because of the long nature of the event and the ability to accommodate lots of tourists, [a city] realistically could be looking at hundreds of millions in new spending due to foreign tourism during a World Cup,” Matheson said.

If you’re even only dimly paying attention to this website, you’ll recall Matheson as one of the foremost pooh-poohers of economic windfall claims: He’s appeared here in the past citing the economic impact of a baseball postseason as statistically indistinguishable from zero, noting that attendance at Broadway shows actually fell when the 2004 Republican National Convention was in town, and calling a plan to move the Olympics to Florida “batshit crazy.” (Matheson has a way with a quote. Also that plan was exceptionally batshit.) In the case of the World Cup, though, he’s willing to move the decimal point a couple of spaces to the right, and call hosting the event a windfall — though it’s still important to remember that the hundreds of millions of dollars would just be in economic impact, which Matheson himself memorably defined as: “Imagine an airplane landing at an airport and everyone gets out and gives each other a million bucks, then gets back on the plane. That’s $200 million in economic activity, but it’s not any benefit to the local economy.” What gives?

As Matheson emailed me when I asked about it, he’s done several studies on the World Cup (unsurprising, as he moonlights as a college soccer referee), including his most-cited paper, 2004’s “The Quest for the Cup: Assessing the Economic Impact of the World Cup,” which he co-wrote with Robert Baade of Lake Forest College. After running through all the reasons why sports impact predictions are often overstated — they assume all local spending by fans wouldn’t have happened without the sports event, they ignore crowding-out effects where sports tourists just take up hotel rooms that would have gone to regular tourists, etc. — Baade and Matheson found that during the 1994 World Cup in the U.S. “the average host city experienced a reduction in income of $712 million relative to predictions” of what they would have received without the Cup, though some cities fared better and some even worse. Among the apparent reasons:

  • Crowding-out effects from other tourists steering clear of town during Cup games, to avoid high hotel rates and “rowdy” soccer fans. And because matches aren’t held on consecutive days, people who are scared off likely disappear more than just the dates on which games are being played.
  • Residents may flee town as well during the Cup, or at least stay away from areas where games are being held, which could put a damper on downtown restaurant spending, say.
  • Increased interest from locals in watching the World Cup, once it being in town makes them realize soccer is a thing, could make them stay home to watch on TV if they don’t have tickets, which, cf. above.

So the World Cup is no great shakes either — what’s the deal with that “hundreds of millions in new spending,” then?

The answer is it’s not actually all that much money compared to what Cup boosters claim: One projection cited by Baade and Matheson had the 1994 Cup creating $4 billion in economic impact, which, just no. And even a few hundred million in economic impact likely translates into just a few tens of millions in actual city revenue, since only a thin slice of that spending is paid out in taxes. So a World Cup could be good if you own a restaurant across the street from the stadium, but it’s not going to make a huge difference in a city’s budget.

Which brings us to the main plus about the World Cup, according to Matheson: If enough stadiums are already in place that you don’t have to spend a ton of money to build new venues, then even a small windfall is free money, and nothing to turn up your nose at. That’s likely to be the case for the 2026 Cup — but wasn’t for, to pick one example, the 2014 Cup in Brazil, with predictably tragic results.

The lesson, then, is the same for the World Cup as for all sports megaevents: Don’t believe the hype about economic impact, but if you keep your costs low enough, you might see a modest bump in local revenue. That’s a less dramatic way of saying it than Sportico’s “World Cup’s Duration, International Draw Make Event Economically Worthwhile For Host Cities” —  cough bus parking lots cough — but it’s also less likely to result in excited city officials blowing billions of dollars in fits of exuberance.

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Field of Schemes