Category: MLB

Friday roundup: D.C. poll shows public support for spending fraction of what Commanders stadium would actually cost

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s been another long week in what feels like an endless series of long weeks, complete with the most expensive stadium subsidy demand ever and whatever the hell this was and a new pope, so let’s all take a moment to relax by watching a major league baseball player get hit on the head with a pop fly. I watched it four times in a row before writing this post, there’s something remarkably soothing about it, provided you’re not Chase Meidroth or his team physician.

And now there’s no avoiding it: the remaining news of the week!

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D-Backs rep says MLB could pull spring training from Arizona if no stadium deal, then says that’s not what he meant

access_time personNeil deMause

Arizona Diamondbacks execs have been putting a full-court press on state legislators to secure their desired $500 million stadium renovation subsidy, as the legislative session enters its final weeks. And shit? It be getting weird:

Notes taken by one participant and obtained by The Arizona Republic … said one of the team’s representatives “insinuated (threatened)” that the MLB would pull spring training from Arizona if a deal were not reached…

Andrew Cohn, who made the statements, said it was “a fiction” to characterize his words as a threat. He said his comments came after a discussion about what would happen if there was no funding agreement. He confirmed he had spoken to the former commissioner [Bud Selig], who he considers a friend, about the Diamondbacks’ situation. He said he did not speak with current Commissioner [Rob] Manfred.

“The comment was that it’s a terrible look to have such a commitment to the Cactus League, and spring training in Arizona, and not have a hometown team here,” he told The Republic.

That is 100% a threat that the Diamondbacks could leave without a new stadium, obviously. Whether it’s really a threat that MLB would pull spring training entirely is slightly fuzzier — if it’s not a warning of the “it’d be a shame for something to happen to those paratroopers” type, then what is it, exactly? A sad reflection on how MLB could never show its face among the other sports leagues again? An acknowledgment that MLB wouldn’t allow the Diamondbacks to move in the first place, because it needs them as the face of Arizona spring training? Arizona spring training, mind you, that started 69 years before the Diamondbacks came into existence? Maybe “insinuation” is a better term after all, since he was certainly saying something bad in an indirect way.

As for Cohn himself, he doesn’t actually work for the Diamondbacks, but is a real estate developer who has previously been an intermediary between the team and the county, even after one interaction ended with him yelling at the chair of the county board of supervisors. (His wife is also on the board of the team’s charitable foundation.) Cohn says Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego invited him to last week’s meeting; a spokesperson for Gallego says she did nothing of the sort.

The actual terms of the proposed stadium deal are still shifting, and it’s not entirely clear as of yet whether the proposal will be rolled into the state budget or get a separate vote. The idea that MLB would shift half of its spring training sites in a fit of pique (and regardless of any ongoing leases for spring training stadiums) is way too vague and implausible to be taken seriously; and yet, here we are talking about it. Sometimes having a guy in the room to say the quiet stuff loud can work out okay, if you want people to focus more on vaporthreats and less on reality.

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Royals’ expiring lease may not be the stadium leverage John Sherman pretends it is

access_time personNeil deMause

Kansas City Royals owner John Sherman has been publicly demanding a new stadium for two and a half years now, and one argument he has made is that the team’s future needs to be resolved by the time its lease runs out after the 2030 season.

The traditional way for news outlets to address this is with one line somewhere deep in every article warning that the city faces a “deadline” in the form of the expiring lease. The less common one is to actually look into who really holds leverage around the lease expiration and what might happen as it approaches, and the Kansas City Business Journal, to its credit, took that path less traveled and found:

  • Sherman can simply extend his lease for two additional five-year terms, something that “some current and former officials” think he may end up doing.
  • Cities like Nashville and Salt Lake City are already saddled with big public debts for other sports venues, and so aren’t likely to lavish money on a baseball stadium as well, says Holy Cross economist Victor Matheson: “It’s not like there is city after city after city that’s just clamoring to hand out a billion dollars to a billionaire ownership group and a bunch of millionaire players. The A’s are the best example (of) saying that we will not play here beyond a certain date, and that’s turned out to really backfire on them. … Playing hardball only works if you really do hold the cards.”
  • Even without those five-year lease extensions, says University of Colorado-Denver economist Geoffrey Propheter, there would be nothing stopping the Royals from going year-to-year on their lease, making any deadline totally illusory: “It’s a knee-jerk reaction to get fixated on this end point … and all of a sudden, all decisions are revolving around this point, as though something bad happens at this point. Nothing bad happens at this point. This point just means your current agreement ends, and you need to crap or get off the pot.”
  • Former K.C. councilmember Becky Nace, who is now an activist against public subsidies for a new Royals stadium, says team execs are “just hoping that the city government leaders will somehow blink and offer them a better deal, but the problem is, we’re beating the best deal on the table if we do that. We’re bidding against ourselves.”

All this is true, and important: Yes, an expiring lease makes it easier for a team to threaten to leave town, but it then has to have somewhere to leave town for; if the only option is “if you don’t build us a new stadium we’ll go play in the street” — or in Sacramento — that’s not much of a threat. Government officials need to learn that they have leverage, too: There may be a limited number of pro sports teams to go around, but there are also a limited number of major metro areas, so team owners need cities as much as or more than cities need teams.

The one catch that the Business Journal did not mention, of course, is that “metro areas” can include a lot of different jurisdictions, which is precisely what Sherman is trying to do with the Kansas City metro area: The neighboring state of Kansas last summer approved a potentially bottomless pool of tax money for stadiums for both the Royals and Chiefs, and if the teams’ owners haven’t leaped to take it yet, they’re certainly going to remind Missouri politicians at every opportunity that it’s an option. Again, it’s questionable how much of a threat that should really be: Royals and Chiefs fans could still go to games if they were just across the state line, and any Missouri tax losses from being cut out of team sales and income taxes would be more than offset by not having to shell out a couple billion dollars for stadium construction —  and that’s if Sherman and Clark Hunt even really want to move their teams to Kansas. Maybe this would be a good topic for a followup article: “Would K.C.’s best option be calling Chiefs’ and Royals’ move threat bluff?” You can have the headline, K.C. Business Journal, that’s a freebie.

 

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Friday roundup: Ohio senate leader says damn the analysts’ warnings, full speed ahead on Browns’ $1.2B subsidy

access_time personNeil deMause

Nothing like a week that starts out with a plan for a $1.147 billion stadium subsidy deal and ends with it somewhere well north of $2 billion. But the Washington Commanders horror show wasn’t the only news of the week, so let’s dive in and see what else has been going down:

  • How are Ohio state legislative leaders taking the news that two different state budget analysts have said that the numbers on a proposed $1.2 billion Cleveland Browns stadium subsidy look terrible? “When the Browns put forward those numbers, they’re not putting forward numbers that they grabbed out of a hat. They’ve hired professionals on their side, too,” retorted state senate president Rob McColley. Professional economists on one side, professional clowns on the other, the truth must lie somewhere in the middle! McColley added that senators are “going to make sure that those numbers add up” and will include a “fail-safe” to ensure the state gets its money back, can’t wait to see how that goes.
  • Meanwhile, Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne has asked the state legislature for $350 million to renovate the Browns’ current stadium instead, calling it a “better, and less expensive option,” which is both true and a perfect example of the anchoring cognitive bias. Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb has already offered $240 million in city money toward renovations; this now makes three different official plans for giving upwards of half a billion dollars to Browns owner Jimmy Haslam and none for not giving him any.
  • Here’s a handy chart of where D.C. councilmembers stand on the proposed Commanders stadium deal, with the current tally being four yes, four no, three undecided, and one did not answer. There’s also a special election to fill the Ward 8 seat left vacant by the expulsion of councilmember Trayon White for bribery charges, which is expected to be won by none other than Trayon White, but that’s not till July 15 and the stadium deal has to be voted on by then (quelle coincidence!) so it won’t count, meaning Commanders owner Josh Harris and Mayor Muriel Bowser need to collect three more yes votes from the four remaining swing votes; staffers in those offices might want to take their phones off the hook for the next 11 weeks, because the full-court press lobbying campaign is doubtless going to be brutal.
  • Concessionaire Aramark is reportedly in “talks” with (Your City Name Here) Athletics owner John Fisher about investing $100 million in a Las Vegas stadium project and another $100 million in the team, if by invest you mean pre-paying concession fees that Fisher would get anyway.
  • New soccer stadiums may sound like a great idea to boost team revenues and revitalize cities, writes Aaron Timms in the Guardian, but they often don’t work out that way, leaving fans unhappy at sterile new buildings and teams struggling to repay construction costs. Unless you’re in the U.S., where it’s cities that are on the hook for much of the costs and struggling to repay them: “Stadium-led revitalization is the myth that will survive the apocalypse. New stadiums, as a vast body of academic literature shows, bring few of the economic benefits that developers, team owners, and local politicians promise. Whatever stimulus they offer to economic activity in their immediate vicinity is invariably offset by a corresponding depression in spending and investment in other areas of the same city.”
  • The people who want to bring an MLB team to Orlando say they have close to $1.5 billion lined up to buy a team, which sounds impressive until you realize MLB wants $2 billion for expansion franchises and somebody would have to build a new stadium in Orlando too, but “Orlando rich people happy to pay $1.5 billion toward a team and stadium worth double that” didn’t look as good atop the press release.
  • How’s the economic boom in Green Bay from hosting the NFL draft going? “Sales were down maybe 50%,” Cold Stone Creamery Green Bay owner Amin Elhalw said. “Gradually the closer we got to the draft, the sales were decreasing, the percentage.” Local businesses blamed draft traffic and road closures for keeping away regular customers, funny how that happens.
  • The developer of the Ybor City site in Tampa where Rays owner Stu Sternberg was at one point considering building a stadium (until it turned out nobody wanted to pay to build it for him) now says there’s no room for one, “unless the Rays can build a very tiny stadium.” Turns out building apartments and shopping pencils out better, funny how that happens.
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Friday roundup: Bengals reno plan called “PR stunt,” plus the return of the Rays two-stadium plan

access_time personNeil deMause

Thanks to everyone who generously donated (and in some cases more than generously, you know who you are) to the Field of Schemes spring supporter drive — I have a whole lot of fridge magnets to send out! But first, there’s a weekly news roundup to get to:

  • That Hamilton County agreement to spend $80.5 million on Cincinnati Bengals stadium upgrades and repairs in exchange for no lease agreement at all turns out to be not so popular with the Hamilton County Commission, where commissioner Alicia “hugging the zero down” Reece called it “a PR stunt” because there’s no new lease while commission president Denise Driehaus countered (?) that “No one at that meeting ever said this was related to the final lease.” The county commission only has three members and the third, Stephanie Summerow Dumas, didn’t show up to yesterday’s meeting, so it’s hard to say what this means for the stadium proposal’s ultimate fate.
  • Hey, what if the Tampa Bay Rays built two stadiums, asks Tampa Bay Times opinion editor Graham Brink, one outdoors and one a refurbished Tropicana Field? Would that be cheaper or better? Probably not? Too bad, I already wrote the op-ed, and anyway this is just “back of the napkin” stuff. (Or envelope, which actually has two distinct sides. NAPKINS GOT BACKS!)
  • WAMU-FM reports that “a source familiar with [Washington Commanders stadium] talks” says funding “will likely involve the city borrowing against new tax revenues expected to be generated by any new development,” i.e., tax increment financing. The station cites a 2020 study claiming that D.C. has turned a profit on average on TIF districts — on first look it appears that the study’s authors guesstimated that development would still happen in the districts without the TIF but would take longer, which is probably a reasonable assumption but could create huge swings in the revenue numbers depending on what you mean by “longer.” I have emails out to a couple of TIF experts, I’ll update here if they have anything instructive to add.*
  • Former Cleveland Plain Dealer editorial director Brent Larkin says the Cleveland Browns stadium plans should be submitted to a public referendum, arguing that Ohio voters usually approve sports subsidy referendums anyway, so where’s the harm? Oh, and also it would be “a wildly generous gift to billionaire professional sports team owners at the same time those same elected officials are cutting aid to schools, food banks, libraries and programs for poor kids.” But anyway, it’ll probably win, so let the voters feel like they’re having a say, that’s democracy!
  • St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch has issued a proposal for redeveloping the waterfront that would include demolishing Al Lang Stadium, the old spring training ballpark that is currently home to the Tampa Bay Rowdies USL team. City councilmembers don’t sound too enthused about this, but also Welch’s managing director of city development said the Rowdies owners are “involved and they’re aware” of the plan, so maybe there’s a new soccer stadium proposal in the works? Worth keeping an eye on, if nothing else.
  • A group of downtown Kansas City businesses put up a giant sign with a giant QR code asking that a Royals stadium be built downtown. Chair of the Downtown Council of Kansas City: Gibb Kerr, managing director of the K.C. office of Cushman and Wakefield, a major developer, who surely would not be in position to profit from a downtown stadium, the Kansas City Star would certainly tell us if it were.
  • Work has begun at the proposed Las Vegas A’s stadium site on making it even flatter, this is what passes for progress these days.
  • Los Angeles Dodgers ticket prices are going up, and so is their payroll, and Forbes “contributor” Dan Schlossberg (author of “41 books and more than 25,000 articles about baseball”) concludes that the payroll must be driving up the ticket prices — sorry, Dan, that’s not how it works, there’s a book you might want to read if you have time between writing them.
  • Economist Joe Cortright has done his own analysis of the Portland baseball stadium income tax diversion proposal that I estimated could leave Oregon taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in the hole and determined that the total hole would be more than $600 million.
  • I was on WOSU’s “All Sides with Amy Juravich” on Wednesday to discuss the Browns and Bengals situations, and you can listen to it here. For those who are wondering: Yes, Andy Zimbalist and I did run into each other on the Zoom call as my segment ended and his began, and no, there were no punches thrown.
  • You can buy a piece of the shredded Tropicana Field roof at Tampa Bay Rays games for $15, with the money going to a Rays charity, and doesn’t the city own the roof remnants, shouldn’t the money be going to the general fund? Anyway, if anyone in the Tampa area has been looking for a National Hairball Awareness Day present for me, hint, hint!

*UPDATE: Eight minutes after I hit publish on this post, sports economist and tax expert Geoffrey Propheter replied to my question about the D.C. TIF study. Propheter said it “falls short of academic standards for economic policy analysis” because it doesn’t try to analyze how tax revenue from TIF developments compares to comparable plots of land, but rather just compares actual developments to hypothetical ones that would (according to the study’s assumptions) see different kinds of development take place. He concludes: “I don’t understand how anyone would use this study to justify a TIF for a Commanders stadium.”

And while I was writing the above, Greg LeRoy of Good Jobs First (disclosure: I’m doing some paid work for them, not on the subject of stadiums or TIFs) chimed in to note that D.C. TIF districts like the one for Gallery Place have had to be expanded to siphon off sales taxes from other nearby neighborhoods in order to break even.

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Friday roundup: Oregon okays $800m in MLB stadium spending because “transformative”

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s been a minute since I’ve issued an appeal for new supporters for this site, so: If you aren’t already a supporter of this site, please consider becoming one! There are both monthly and one-time options, and in addition to subscriber benefits like receiving all the stadium and arena news in your email inbox and getting whatever tchotchkes I come up with next, you ensure the piece of mind that comes from knowing you’re helping to keep this site going into its 28th year, which just began this month! Shedding light on the sports subsidy game in any way that affects actual policy turns out to be harder than even a professional cynic like myself thought — for all the reasons this site covers every day — but if we can all just keep it up for another 28 years, I think we might finally start getting somewhere.

As always, thanks to everyone who is contributing now or has contributed in the past — it not only lets me pay the ever-increasing costs of hosting this site and enables me to spend time writing it without going broke, it’s heartening to know that people think this issue is important enough to devote your hard-earned dollars to. Or maybe you just like pointing and laughing at billionaire failsons, that works, too. I hope to be able to keep this site going until it’s no longer necessary, at which point you’re all invited to the victory party, if any of us are still mobile enough by then to dance.

And with that cheery thought, here’s your weekly dose of ways everything still mostly sucks now:

  • The Oregon state senate voted 24-5 to approve $800 million in public bonds toward building a Major League Baseball stadium, just as soon as Portland gets a Major League Baseball team. Senators say the project will pay for itself by using money from player income taxes (it won’t) and that it will be a “forward-thinking, transformative opportunity” and “a showcase of what is beautiful, central, core to our constituents of Portland,” which is giving money to ex-Nike execs so they can have their own private sports team, I guess? Please enjoy your requisite J.C. Bradbury Simpsons meme, it’s well earned.
  • What do Washington, D.C. councilmembers think of the news that their mayor is on the brink of agreeing to spend $850 million toward a Commanders stadium at a time when the district budget is just red ink up to its eyeballs? “Is this really going to cost us close to a billion dollars?” asked council chair Phil Mendelson, while economic development committee chair Kenyon McDuffie called it a “once in a lifetime opportunity” before being asked how the city could afford it and replying, “I haven’t seen the details.” It’s okay, all the other kids are doing it!
  • Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman says he does not support the Cincinnati Bengals owners’ request for $350 million in state money toward stadium renovations, and wants to hold out for a deal where taxpayers “can actually make money” like … the Cleveland Browns deal? I’m getting kind of tired of linking to my explanation of the Casino Night Fallacy, but seeing as this seems to be some sort of mass delusion that state legislators are signing up for, maybe it can’t be explained enough.
  • The Kansas City Chiefs and Royals owners are still kicking tires on potential stadium sites, yep, that’s excuse enough for a news story, nothing else journalists should be spending their time covering, probably. Local business leaders say it’s important, anyway, and if we didn’t have a free and independent press taking its editorial directives from the local chamber of commerce, where would this country be?
  • Modesto, California is trying to build a stadium to get a soccer franchise. Of all the 2025 things that you never expected we would be living through, that’s one of the 2025iest.
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County okays Vegas A’s stadium tax kickbacks that state already approved in 2023, progress!

access_time personNeil deMause

The Clark County Commission approved a special tax district yesterday to help fund a new Athletics stadium in Las Vegas. This means that … well, what exactly does this mean? Let’s recap the story so far:

  • In June of 2023, the Nevada state legislature approved $600 million worth of public subsidies toward a stadium on the Las Vegas strip. (It would not actually be in the city of Las Vegas proper, because that’s how Las Vegas rolls.) Part of the bill included the county kicking back all sales, income, ticket, liquor, and property taxes from the stadium site to pay off $120 million in stadium bonds plus $25 million for infrastructure and public services.
  • For the last 22 months, the county commission just kind of hung out without approving the actual creation of the tax district, but now it has done so.
  • The tax-kickback district — really a tax-kickover, since these taxes never belonged to the team in the first place — would be “a special section around the stadium covering about nine acres,” according to KSNV-TV, though given that the stadium itself is only nine acres, we’re basically just talking about the stadium itself here. If the taxes generated in the stadium aren’t enough to cover the county’s cost, the $145 million will be taken out of the general fund.

In terms of actually providing more money for the A’s Vegas vaporarmadillo, then, this does absolutely nothing: The action by the county just confirms part of the $600 million in subsidies that were already approved by the state. Commissioners didn’t throw up an additional roadblock by denying or delaying the TIF district, sure, but nobody ever expected them to.

So we’re back where we were last week, and last month, and last year: A’s owner John Fisher has a stadium plan that would cost at least $1.75 billion (tariff surcharges not included), and has in hand a commitment for $600 million in public money, and his family has a couple of billion dollars that he could maybe tap part of if he can convince them it’s a good idea to spend it on a tiny dome in a tiny media market, and he’s trying to sell shares in the team at inflated prices to raise more cash. Whether the vibes here feel more like “full speed ahead” or “Fyre Festival 2.0” will be left as an exercise for the reader.

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Friday roundup: Bengals want $350m in stadium money from Ohio, A’s still insist Vegas stadium is happening for real

access_time personNeil deMause

The spring legislative season is always exhausting, but at least we’re already up to … April 11, is that all that it is? At least we can hope that all the team owners lining up for stadium and arena money have already gotten their bills submitted, though plenty of subsidy demands have emerged this late or later: Today is in fact the second anniversary of the Maryland legislature approving $1.2 billion in public money for renovations for the Baltimore Orioles and Ravens (a number that would eventually grow to an unlimited number depending on how much in taxes comes in) essentially without warning, so it wouldn’t be that much of a shock to see a surprise demand emerge from out of nowhere.

And speak of the devil:

  • Hamilton County and Cincinnati Bengals owners the Brown family have declared that if the state of Ohio is set on giving $600 million in tax money to the Cleveland Browns for a new stadium, it should also give $350 million to the Bengals for renovations. The entire renovation plan would cost $830 million and would include a new scoreboard, suite upgrades, new roof canopy, new seating, and improved walkways, escalators, and elevators — which sounds like a lot for that work, honestly, unless the suite bathrooms would be getting diamond-encrusted faucets — and would presumably include county money as well, though officials didn’t specify how much. “Our lease ends before theirs,” griped Hamilton County commissioner Stephanie Summerow Dumas. “Just wondering why is there so much focus on the Browns.” (Hmm, can’t possibly imagine why.) No word on whether the Bengals owners would tear up that insane state-of-the-art clause in their lease as part of the deal, you would think that would be important to ask, I’m looking at you, Cincinnati Enquirer.
  • Newly appointed West Sacramento Athletics president Marc Badain has declared that the team is still on track for a June groundbreaking for its Las Vegas stadium, blaming “skeptics” and “negativity” for the idea that John Fisher may not be able to find $1.15 billion in construction costs on top of the $600 million he’s set to get from the state of Nevada. “There’s a lot of people that make a living out of questioning the success of sports venues and what they actually do for a community,” said Badain, and while on the one hand I feel seen, I do question his description of this as “making a living,” as well as questioning whether a groundbreaking actually means you’re going to build a stadium given that just about anyone with a few shovels can hold one — whoops, there I go with the skepticism again, Badain sure has me pegged!
  • The Denver city council has some skeptics about spending $70 million for land and infrastructure for a NWSL stadium, with councilmember Sarah Parady saying, “We are facing the collapse of global financial markets. … I think we’re gonna be sitting here in a year [and] we will have paid in our amount of money from our incredibly scarce dollars that we are going to need for so many fundamental needs in the city.” Also concerning is the estimated additional $80 million in property taxes the city would be giving up by agreeing to buy and own the land under the stadium, according to  University of Colorado-Denver economist Geoffrey Propheter, who is not only a local but also the expert in calculating such things.
  • Just a few months after $900 million in tax money was approved for upgrades to the Utah Jazz and Utah Hockey Club‘s Delta Center and the Salt Palace convention center, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox’s office abruptly expanded the project’s TIF district last Friday to also redirect taxes from two luxury hotels, an apartment tower, and parking facilities on an adjacent block, providing an additional $59 million in tax money kicked back to the developer, according to Propheter. (That developer would be Jazz and Hockey Club owner Ryan Smith — quelle coincidence!) Then on Tuesday the Salt Lake City council unanimously approved creating the embiggened tax district, with councilmember Victoria Petro bemoaning that “we had no options” but adding that “there is no decimal point here that has been taken with anything less than the gravest consideration,” assuming the gravest consideration can be applied in just two work days.
  • “Salt Lake Bees’ new stadium in Daybreak expected to bring economic impacts, growth to local businesses” was the headline on Utah’s ABC4 website on Tuesday, and if you’re wondering “expected by whom?” and your guess was the owner of a single local coffee shop, you’re a winner!
  • Bridgeport, Connecticut now has an idea for how to pay for a $75 million minor-league soccer stadium, and it’s a TIF district, surprise, surprise. Also the full cost would now be $100 million, and would involve additional state money as well, but who can put a price on being one of the umpteen million cities to have a team in one of the nation’s two warring sets of soccer leagues?
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Friday roundup: Bucs want “major renovation,” won’t say yet who’d pay for it

access_time personNeil deMause

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

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

access_time personNeil deMause

Stadium Day at the second annual sports economics conference at University of Maryland-Baltimore County isn’t until tomorrow, so while I’m attending today, I’m not liveblogging, meaning you’ll have to wait 24 hours for this kind of nonstop excitement. But it also means I have time to check in on the question everyone spent the winter wondering: How is A’s owner John Fisher’s mad scheme to leave Oakland and play three seasons in a temporary home in a minor-league stadium in Sacramento before (hopefully, maybe) moving to Las Vegas working out?

Welp:

The A’s opened their three-year (or perhaps longer) stay in Sacramento on Monday night, and it was an unmitigated disaster — to the point that getting absolutely decimated 18-3 by the Cubs barely registered on the Disaster Scale.

Do tell!

The most embarrassing thing out of Monday night was the A’s English and Spanish radio feeds completely crashing out by the later innings of the blowout loss, forcing the team to switch their television audio into their radio feed to listeners.

But not the only embarrassing thing:

And then there’s:

The A’s temporary home in Sacramento — Pacific League Ballpark Sutter Health Park — doesn’t have bathrooms attached to the dugouts. Yes, that’s right, much to the dismay of the A’s and visiting teams like Monday night’s Chicago Cubs, whereas every other MLB Stadium has a tunnel that leads from the dugout to the clubhouse and locker room, Sutter Health’s player’s area is located near left field.

So when Cubs outfielder Seiya Suzuki had to head to the clubhouse to presumably take a leak, he had to do what is now being called “The Walk of Shame,” as they paused the game so Suzuki could run all the way across the outfield and do his business.

And also:

A’s owner John Fisher, who did not attend a game in Oakland last season, was at the ballpark to hear occasional chants of “Let’s go Oakland” and see a handful of fans wearing SELL T-shirts. Several others wore T shirts or sweatshirts that read, “I’d rather be at the Oakland Coliseum.” A spirited but brief “Sell the team” chant arose after the bottom of the sixth, with the Cubs leading 16-3.

And this, which had to be far more entertaining than the game at that point:

There was a DRONE DELAY during the A’s opener vs the Cubs in Sacramento.

But, hey, every stadium has growing pains, right? Sure, the tool shed and the no-dugout-bathrooms problem aren’t going away anytime in the next three years, probably, but maybe they’ll at least figure out how to keep the radio broadcasts on the air, and maybe one day the A’s will even learn how to pitch! And at least the A’s no longer had to worry about empty seats, since their new stadium only holds 14,000 people, only 10,000 of them in actual seats—

*sigh*

Well then. Anyone else want to pile on?

“I think it’s so stupid that we have to play at a Triple-A stadium,” Cubs veteran reliever Ryan Brasier told USA TODAY Sports, “when they have maybe not a perfectly good ballpark in Oakland, but a big-league ballpark. I would have much rather play in Oakland than Sacramento, but I guess it doesn’t really matter what we want.”

No, no, it does not. All that matters here is that Fisher decided that he wasn’t happy with the $775 million in public money being offered for a new stadium development at Howard Terminal in Oakland, and would rather move to a stadium in Las Vegas that he didn’t have the money lined up for yet, and rejected an offer from Oakland to extend his lease there by paying actual rent. So here we are, for at least the next three years. Though good news, everybody! Fisher got permits approved to break ground for a new Vegas stadium, that should be happening real soon now, right?

The owner said the team’s stadium project in Las Vegas is “in a good place.” He has been targeting a June groundbreaking in Las Vegas. Asked Monday if a summer start to the construction is still possible, he said only, “I hope so.”

This is fine. It occurs to me that before setting betting lines about where the A’s would end up, I probably should have specified what “ends up” means.

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