World Cup 2026 – Field of Schemes

Friday roundup: Rays execs threaten to “evaluate alternatives” if Tampa won’t hand over $1B; could LA revise its Olympics deal?

April 17, 2026 Neil deMause

There’s an absolute ton of news to get to today, but first the biggest news of all: The Field of Schemes gift vault is down to only one remaining numbered Vaportecture art print out of the 100 created for site supporters! That means the next person to sign up as either a new Patreon subscriber or new one-time donor gets print #100, and then there are no more! I’m working on a fun new reward or two for those of you who allow this website to happen, but it’ll take a minute for those to be ready — meanwhile, site supporters are still eligible to get any refrigerator magnets you haven’t already received, plus of course my eternal thanks for helping me devote the time each day to this site that, tragically, still has reason to exist after 28 years of this nonsense.

And speaking of nonsense, here’s more of this week’s stadium and arena news:

Tampa Bay Rays CEO Ken Babby sent an email to the Hillsborough County Commission in advance of yesterday’s commission meeting warning that getting $1 billion in cash from the county and city for a new stadium is “foundational to the project’s viability” and “time and action are of the essence” or else “we would have no choice but to evaluate alternatives,” in a tour de force of don’t-make-me-come-in-there-ism. The commission didn’t endorse the plan yesterday but also didn’t kill it — they weren’t expected to do either, it was just a “workshop” meeting — something Tampa Bay Times senior bothsideser John Romano thinks is a sign that a deal can be had if Rays owner Patrick Zalupski just lowers his demands a little and adds “some acknowledgement that the county is, you know, a partner in this marriage.” Maybe some flowers now and again, is that too much to ask?
Tampa and Hillsborough County may be setting themselves up to be on the hook for a new Rays stadium and a renovated Buccaneers stadium, but there’s still some potential stadium debt in the future of Pinellas County across the bay: The Clearwater City Council and Pinellas County Commission are working on a term sheet to devote $115 million to an upgraded Philadelphia Phillies spring training complex in exchange for the team re-upping its lease through 2027. (The Phillies previously said that upgrades were needed, among other reasons, so that players could have “batting cages with floor scales that track a player’s weight distribution through an entire swing,” that’s a kind of public infrastructure, right?) But I suppose you can’t put a price on the value of spring training to local economies in Florida, and … what’s that you say, you can, and the price is pretty much zero? Well, then.
Would revenues from a tax district around a new Kansas City Royals downtown stadium (which the city council gave preliminary signoff to pursuing yesterday, as expected) be enough to pay off $600 million in city bonds to help build the stadium, after projections for the city’s Power & Light District proved so “spectacularly wrong” that the city has had to dump an additional $199 million into the pot? City officials are promising to take a “conservative” approach, pursuing what the Kansas City Business Journal describes as “studying different debt coverage ratios; bond sequencing, whether all at once or over several years; and enlisting a revenue consultant to ensure city estimates are not off-base.” That all seems to fall more under “trying to make sure we’re guessing right” than actually “making sure there’ll be enough money if we don’t,” but at least they’re admitting there are past failures that this project needs to pretend to be different than.
Royals owner John Sherman, meanwhile, has said that he wants any downtown stadium to look kind of like Kauffman Stadium, given that fans tell him “the No. 1 preference, if you ask people that question, is to stay where we are. Hmm, maybe there’s a less expensive option here? No, the Kansas City Star insists that “the Royals will be leaving Kauffman Stadium in a few years” one way or another, surely a respectable newspaper wouldn’t say something like that if it was just an empty threat by a team with no other viable options.
When Strategic Actions for a Just Economy published my cost report on the 2028 Olympics in February estimating that Los Angeles could end up on the hook for perhaps $7 billion in cost overruns, I didn’t necessarily expect L.A. city officials to do much in response — after all, it also estimated that the city could be on the hook for similar billions in damages if it tried to back out of the games. Since then, though, things have started to get interesting: City councilmember Monica Rodriguez has introduced a city charter amendment to require that the LA28 organizing committee reimburse city costs before setting aside money for its own “legacy fund,” which the original agreement somehow failed to prohibit; the parking news site Parkonomics did its own study of just the traffic and transit costs of hosting the Olympics, and found that nearly every prior host city has ended up hemorrhaging money on getting Olympic visitors to events; and it turns out California Gov. Gavin Newsom still hasn’t signed off on a state promise to help cover Olympic cost overruns, which could deepen L.A.’s budget hole. L.A. is still in the middle of negotiating an Enhanced City Resources Master Agreement with LA28 — it was due last fall, and a draft was sent to the L.A. city council in February, but still hasn’t been made public — so there’s still a chance for the city, as I suggested in my report, to use the International Olympics Committee’s fear of having to cancel or move the 2028 games to reopen talks on reining in costs. Leverage can work both ways!
You can’t really blame local governments for trying to recoup their 2026 World Cup costs by soaking visitors for whatever they can control, but all the same $100 train tickets just to get to the matches is going to really suck for fans, let alone potential sales tax and hotel surcharges on event days.
Better hurry up with approving $2 billion in property tax breaks for a new Chicago Bears stadium in Arlington Heights, Illinois legislators, or Bears officials might have to tell the NFL stadium committee that things aren’t going well! Don’t make us send Dad in there!
A week after Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeff Lurie hinted he could move the team out of Philadelphia without quite saying so out loud, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro vowed that “we’re going to make sure” that doesn’t happen, non-threat threat accomplished!
Louisville could be building a new pro volleyball arena. That seems like a good place to leave things, see you Monday.

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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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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: 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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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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Friday roundup: Friends don’t let friends read stadium news coverage, Bears’ list of places not to move to keeps growing

February 13, 2026March 11, 2026 Neil deMause

One of the things you learn if you read enough articles with the word “stadium” in them, as I am condemned by an ancient mummy’s curse to do, is how very many news reports are just about nothing. For every article that tells us some actual information, there are easily five to 10 that are just meant to fill pixels with something easily reportable, regardless of whether it qualifies as “news,” let alone “reporting.”

Just this week, we’ve had: MLB commissioner Rob Manfred is in favor of the Tampa stadium plan that his co-bosses the Rays owner wants and he’s “optimistic” about getting it done; a Baltimore soccer stadium is “gaining momentum,” according to a headline describing a press conference by Baltimore’s mayor, who didn’t actually even say that; Denver Broncos president says team leaders are “laser-focused” on building the tax-subsidy-funded stadium in a rail yard they already said they want; the Broncos president says actually the rail yard is only the “preferred” site and team execs are still considering other options; Minnesota Timberwolves co-owner A-Rod says a new arena is a “necessity” for the 6th-in-the-Western-Conference, $3.6-billion-valued franchise “to compete”; Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas says he’s determined to build a new Royals stadium that will create “economic development” in a way that’s “fair and transparent for our taxpayers,” no details provided.

That’s a whole lot of Important People giving press conferences in order to get their message out in the news media, which the news media is happy to oblige for them. For normal people, meanwhile, the only option is to try to get space on an op-ed page, if you can convince the op-ed editors that you should be allowed to have an opinion that diverges from that of Important People. It’s also an awful lot of reporters’ time spent on this when they could be trying to investigate all the open questions about what these stadium deals would actually entail for taxpayers and why elected officials are pushing them — but asking questions takes up valuable time that could be spent transcribing press statements. As the old journalism adage goes, “if your grandmother says she loves you, take her at her word and put it on the front page, so long as she owns a local sports team.”

Enough whining about the news media, time to attempt to do some actual reporting by, uh, seeing what’s in the news media:

The Chicago Bears have almost as many places now in neighboring states wanting to be their new home (without offering any money toward it) as they do in the Illinois suburbs: In addition to Gary, Indiana, there’s now Portage, Indiana, plus the entire state of Iowa. While the Bears moving to Iowa sounds like a joke and probably is, at least there’s a bill there to provide actual state tax credits toward a stadium; in Indiana, meanwhile, even the bill to create a stadium authority with no funding attached now isn’t going to move forward, Indiana legislators say, until the Bears owners first commit to moving there if it does. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and state legislative leaders might want to just bide their time and see if all the new Bears move threats evaporate just like the last round did, though it sure sounds like they’re more interested in throwing state money at the problem while the move-threat iron is hot.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers owner Joel Glazer still wants the major stadium renovation he asked for last April before he’ll sign a five-year lease extension, and Hillsborough County Commissioner Ken Hagan has assured Glazer that the county’s plan to divert more than a billion dollars in tax money to a Rays stadium won’t get in the way of diverting money for the Bucs. In exchange for only a five-year extension, by the way, it would only take about $220 million in subsidies to break the record for priciest per-year lease extension in U.S. sports history, you can pretty much take it to the bank that that’ll be the plan.
On the subject of that Baltimore soccer stadium, D.C. United owners said on Thursday that they’re planning to build a 12,000-seat venue on the site of Carroll Park Golf Course, to host a minor-league MLS Next Pro franchise and a pro women’s team owned by former NBA star Carmelo Anthony. And by “planning to build” I of course mean “hoping to receive $216 million in state money to build.” One of the state lawmakers sponsoring bills to provide the cash says “the stars have aligned” now that Carmelo Anthony is on board, maybe somebody should call a local economist to see if studies have found that involving Carmelo Anthony increases economic impact? If nothing else, it would be interesting to see what they’d say if they could ever stop laughing.
Foxborough, Massachusetts officials say they may not issue a permit for men’s World Cup games to be played at the New England Patriots stadium in June unless someone helps cover $8 million in security costs that the town is currently faced with paying, Asked why Patriots owner Robert Kraft, whose team is worth an estimated $9 billion, couldn’t just cut a check, FIFA World Cup Boston 26 organizers said the Krafts are offering up the use of their football stadium for two months in “peak period” of the NFL offseason, what do you want from them, blood?
The Center Square is a libertarian-leaning news site that has generally been pretty skeptical of stadium subsidies, so for it to run the headline “Seahawks’ Super Bowl win temporarily jolts local Seattle economy” is pretty notable — or would be if the gist of the actual article weren’t “U.S. Chamber of Commerce claims Seattle will benefit from the Seahawks winning the Super Bowl, economist Victor Matheson says one study found a short-term bump in per-capita income from Super Bowl-winning cities but it may have just been a spurious finding because ‘when you test 100 different things, even if all those things are random, one of them is going to end up being the best.'” At least the Center Square called an actual economist, unlike those corporate stooges at Al Jazeera in their article on how the Super Bowl will be a windfall for the San Francisco Bay Area despite the 49ers not being in the game and also economists consistently saying no it won’t be.
If Cleveland Browns owner Jimmy Haslam can’t get money to build roads and pedestrian bridges around his new Brook Park stadium from the state of Ohio, he’ll ask for $25 million from the federal government instead, there’s got to be someone to stick with the bill that isn’t named Jimmy.
Also in K.C. Mayor Quinton Lucas news, marginally more newsworthy edition: The mayor wants to cut spending on everything except a Royals stadium and more cops.
Plans for an Indianapolis MLS stadium have gone from on hold to pretty much dead, according to Indiana legislative leaders, though in stadium deals just like in comic books, only Uncle Ben ever stays dead for good.
The Oakland/Sacramento/Las Vegas Athletics just applied for another billion dollars in building permits for their planned Vegas stadium, everyone gets that applying for a permit doesn’t mean you’re actually committing to spend the money on the project, right? Maybe requiring personal seat licenses to buy some A’s tickets in Vegas will help raise the needed funds to employ the permits, anything is possible.
Nope, nobody got back to me from Wyandotte County about how their Kansas City Chiefs stadium subsidy numbers were arrived at, I’ll just assume it was the traditional “dart board and add lots of zeroes” algorithm.
If you have time to kill next Thursday at 3 pm Eastern/noon Pacific, tune in to Alissa Walker’s Torched Talk with me and Chris Tyler from Strategic Actions for a Just Economy on whether it’s worth it to Los Angeles to host the 2028 Olympics, and what the city could do to try to extricate itself if it’s not. Zoom link is here, calendar it now, see you then!

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Could FIFA really move the 2026 World Cup out of the U.S.?

January 27, 2026 Neil deMause

Ever since the Donald Trump administration started ordering immigration officers to abduct people who don’t look like Donald Trump and the Supreme Court said “cool, cool,” questions have been raised about how it was going to work for the U.S. to co-host the men’s soccer World Cup this summer. With U.S. travel bans in place against several nations that made the tournament, on top of the risk fans from other countries would face of being grabbed by death squads and thrown into a waiting van, there was talk that maybe even FIFA would have second thoughts about the propriety of holding a major international sporting event in the U.S. — though also, you know, FIFA.

Now that the death squads are getting more deathy, though, the talk has suddenly grown louder:

A few caveats here: The “German soccer official” is the president of the German soccer club St. Pauli, which is famously activist and may not represent the rest of the nation’s soccer hierarchy. Blatter, formerly the face of FIFA, was ousted in disgrace in 2015 and has been vocal in criticizing the organization he once headed ever since. The UK bill to demand that the World Cup be moved out of the U.S. only has 26 sponsors out of 650 members of parliament, and in any case wouldn’t be binding on FIFA.

And yet! Headlines like “Calls for a Boycott of the World Cup Grow” were not what either the U.S. or FIFA anticipated when the 2026 World Cup was assigned to a combined bid from the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, and the possibility of tons of fans being either prevented from attending, too frightened to go to the U.S., or pissed off enough at Trump to stay home in protest has to have FIFA officials at least having second thoughts. And there’s a relatively easy fallback option: U.S. World Cup matches could be shifted to the other two host countries, though Canada and Mexico would have trouble selling tickets for quite as exorbitant prices as the U.S. would. Shifting games out of the U.S. has to still be considered unlikely, but it’s also the kind of thing where support for a boycott could snowball quickly, once enough Sepp Blatters start saying it out loud.

And why are we talking about this here at Field of Schemes? Only because getting to host major events like the World Cup is often held out as a carrot for public funding of new or renovated stadiums, and even if that’s wildly overblown to start with — how many World Cups or Olympics or even Super Bowls is one stadium likely to host in its expected 30-years-or-less lifetime? — the promised benefits start deflating if your prize event turns into an international embarrassment. Defenders of Olympics in particular counter reports showing that host cities almost always lose money hand over fist by arguing that you can’t put a price on the value of your city appearing on the world stage, but for every Barcelona Olympics that shows the world how awesome Catalonia is (albeit at the risk of then being besieged by too many tourists), there’s a Rio de Janeiro where most of the world ends up concluding “LOLBrazil.” The U.S. may yet escape being clowned internationally this summer — Fox Sports can be counted on not to mention it on air, certainly — but it’s yet another cautionary tale about the risks of putting too many eggs in the “this will bring tourism!” basket.

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FIFA’s bait-and-switch on sponsorships could cost US cities $250m during 2026 World Cup

December 11, 2025 Neil deMause

I was on a stadium panel at Baruch College yesterday — video evidence to be available shortly, I hope — and one of the points I tried to make was that both elected officials and voters need to closely examine stadium deals, because the total costs almost always involve something hidden in the fine print, often around who gets what revenues and who pays for what operating expenses.

And while the latest news about the 2026 Men’s World Cup isn’t a stadium story per se, it does reveal the importance for cities to pay attention to the details when signing major sports deals:

The new “Host City Supporter” programme … involved the host cities – Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, New York/New Jersey, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, to go with two in Canada and three in Mexico – signing up to contracts where they bore most of the costs, with limited access to tournament revenue, but on the understanding this could be made up by the new programme.

The aim was that every city would make around $25-30m from this, through a total of 10 Host City deals per city, but most cities are currently nowhere close to either target due to how restrictive Fifa’s own sponsorships are….

As one example, Philadelphia explored a $5m deal with local convenience store chain, Wawa, but the company’s sale of food was considered a breach of Fifa’s exclusivity agreement with McDonald’s.

Yep, FIFA, in the most FIFA-y way possible, told North American host cities that bearing all the World Cup costs while getting no direct World Cup revenue (not even sales taxes!) would be fine, because they could sell their own sponsorships — but then made it nearly impossible to find sponsors because FIFA’s own sponsors had locked up almost all of the market categories. The Independent reports that some cities have resorted to approaching “local dry cleaners and mechanics,” which is not likely to get them up to $25-30 million apiece in sponsorship revenue.

How much of a hole will this leave host cities in? The Independent says that the 11 U.S. host cities are facing “a collective shortfall of at least $250m.” However, the paper also claims that a requested $625 million in federal funding — FIFA Peace Prize winner Donald Trump hasn’t committed to it yet — would provide “an average of $56.8m [which] won’t come close to meeting costs,” implying that either it’s a $250 million loss per city or that whoever was editing this part of the Independent story didn’t read the “collective shortfall” piece. Earlier reports had the per-city costs as in the $100-200 million range, so the truth is likely lost in the fog of FIFA war.

This is par for the course for sports mega-events: Nobody knows how much exactly the Olympics cost, either, even in years when the host city doesn’t literally set fire to its ledgers. But whether it’s city taxpayers or federal taxpayers who end up footing the bill, it’s sure not going to be FIFA, which should help make up some of the organization’s shortfall now that it’s promised to stop taking bribes, maybe.

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

May 17, 2024May 17, 2024 Neil 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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