Category: Atlanta Braves

Even MLB doesn’t pretend the All-Star Game brought $100m to Atlanta, so why does the media?

access_time personNeil deMause

The MLB All-Star Game was last night, and the word being used to describe it most in headlines is “historic,” which is the nice way of saying it was tied after nine innings and decided by a mini–home run derby because baseball changed the rules in 2022. And the thing about history is that it can be good or bad, or both depending on your perspective, so it’s a fair word for everyone to describe what unfolded last night.

What hasn’t changed, meanwhile, is the torrent of article that accompany every major sporting event these days, claiming the true historic event is the rain of economic activity that falls from the sky as a result:

According to preliminary estimates, the All-Star Game and surrounding events are expected to generate at least $50 million in economic activity for metro Atlanta. Statewide, officials believe the number could approach or surpass $100 million, comparable to what Georgia was projected to lose when the 2021 All-Star Game was relocated.

This is the kind of reporting that causes sports economists to lose their shit. The impact of sports mega-events has been studied to death at this point, and the findings show that while events like All-Star Games or Super Bowls obviously draw tons of fans, they often drive away other visitors who steer clear of town during the event, cost significant amounts of public money for hosting and supporting the event, divert money and attention from other things cities could be investing in, and siphon off much of their benefits to out-of-town interests. And when pressed back in 2021 on the source of their economic projections for an Atlanta All-Star Game in particular, the league and county officials who boasted of them already backed away from them, with the county saying they came from the Braves and MLB, the Braves saying they came from the league, and the league denying any role in calculating them at all.

USA Today sportswriter Gabe Lacques visited The Battery, the bespoke neighborhood that the Braves built in a wooded area alongside their new suburban stadium that opened in 2017 with the help of more than $300 million in county money, and found that while it’s a success from a team real estate development standpoint, generating $67.3 million a year for the team, it hasn’t done much for the county, and certainly not for the Atlanta metro area as a whole:

Certainly, Cobb County captured the revenue that used to go to Fulton County when the Braves played there. Yet much of the activity – a night at the movies, a mid-range dinner, a round of drinks with the boys or the baddies – simply would have occurred somewhere else minus The Battery’s existence.

“You built a department store,” says JC Bradbury, an economist and associate professor at Kennesaw State. “We already have seven of those in Cobb County. It’s not transformative for development when you look at a county that’s a ($64 billion) economy. It’s a rounding error.

“Even though they’re always touted as a great economic engine, they’re not. And the data bear this out.”

Bradbury has already crunched the numbers and found that the county is losing about $15 million a year in tax revenue on the Braves stadium development, a figure that didn’t make it into any of this week’s coverage, not even USA Today’s.

And, hey, what was all that way back up above about “when the 2021 All-Star Game was relocated”? Also not mentioned much, in an event that celebrated Henry Aaron breaking Babe Ruth’s career home run record while downplaying the groundbreaking civil rights aspects of the moment, was the fact that Atlanta was originally supposed to host the All-Star Game in 2021, but MLB took it away because of concerns over Georgia’s draconian new voting laws that threatened to disenfranchise many Black voters. What ever happened with those laws, anyway?

In fact, voting rights experts say, conditions have only worsened for potentially disenfranchised voters….

A Brennan Center for Justice analysis of the 2022 midterms revealed that the racial gap between white and Black voters was the largest in at least a decade.

As opponents of the bill indicated, reducing the amount and availability of drop boxes would have a disproportionate impact on voters in areas like Fulton County, where they were abundant during the presidential election but much scarcer in the wake of SB 202.

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred’s explanation of why he changed his mind despite the laws that led to the 2021 cancellation not changing one bit: “I made a decision in 2021 to move the event and I understand, believe me, that people had then and probably still have different views as to the merits of that decision. What’s most important is that the Atlanta Braves are a great organization. Truist Park and The Battery are gems in terms of the facilities, and Atlanta and Georgia have been great markets for us for a very, very long time.”

All that reporting is again courtesy of Lacques, who is shaping up to be the hero of All-Star week journalism, along with folks like Craig Calcaterra and Bradbury. Much like last night’s game itself, the impact of the All-Star Game looks exciting and historic on the surface, but it leaves out a lot of the story.

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Friday roundup: Commanders warn DC council “Don’t make Trump come in there,” plus Blue Jackets could join the line for Ohio subsidies

access_time personNeil deMause

Okay, that’s done, Friday roundup, let’s get to it:

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Friday roundup: Bengals land $350m in county stadium cash, will seek more from state

access_time personNeil deMause

The stadium deals are coming fast and furious now: Hamilton County and the Cincinnati Bengals owners have reached an agreement on a lease extension, four days before the team owners could have extended their current lease unilaterally. The new lease, approved yesterday by a 2-1 vote (Alicia Reese, dada poet, abstained) will run through the 2036 season (with five two-year options afterwards), and the team will receive $350 million in county money toward $470 million in stadium upgrades. The team will start paying rent for the first time (beginning at $1 million a year, gradually rising to $2 million), while continuing to receive 93% of parking revenues.

That’s a little over $30 million in public money per year of lease extension, which would be high but still short of the $43 million a year that the Carolina Panthers received last year. But the real question is: Did Hamilton County succeed in getting out from under that state-of-the-art clause that requires taxpayers to buy the team anything that other teams’ stadiums have, famously including holographic replay systems should they ever be invented? Neither the Bengals’ statement nor the county’s statement mentions this, and if it’s still in place, then you have to wonder why the county didn’t just let Bengals owners the Brown family renew the old lease and pass on giving them $350 million in cash.

And it could end up being more than $350 million: Hamilton County stated that “Commissioners plan to pursue state support as capital grants become available to grow the size of the renovation project” — which would be insane for the state to do in exchange for exactly nothing in return from the team owners, but the Ohio state legislature isn’t exactly known for its sanity lately.

More news as events warrant, then, but it certainly looks like a big win for the Browns, not to be confused with this week’s big win for the other Browns. And while we await more news, here’s more news:

  • The Kansas City Chiefs owners have officially requested an extension on Kansas’s offer of state money for a new stadium, either because they really want to move to Kansas or because they want to scare local Missouri lawmakers into sweetening the pot on the state money that was already approved there. The Kansas legislature will discuss the extension proposal on July 7; in the meantime, state senate president Ty Masterson declared: “The letter from [Chiefs president] Mark Donovan indicates that the drive to bring this historic project to Kansas is moving down the field. Now that we are in the red zone, this extension will provide stakeholders sufficient time to ensure the ball crosses the goal line” — at which point the English language itself died of metaphor overload.
  • The community revitalization levy (Canadian for TIF) that provided $300 million in tax money for a new Edmonton Oilers arena is set to expire soon, so of course the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce wants it extended for another 20 years, or else: “Extending the CRL is about making a generational investment in our city, and it directly responds to what we’re hearing from local businesses. A vibrant Downtown isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s a must-have,” said ECC CEO Doug Griffiths. Some of the money would go toward expanding the Oilers’ ICE District Fan Park, which is less a park than an event space that Oilers owner Daryl Katz can use to hold GWAR concerts; “We shouldn’t be doing secret deals behind closed doors for one or two businesses. That’s just wrong,” objected city councillor (Canadian for councilmember) Michael Janz in advance of public hearings yesterday and today.
  • The Tampa Bay Rays need to figure out where to play their home playoff games if they make the postseason, and if you want to read Ken Rosenthal expounding semi-coherently on it — sample text: “Come October, a team known for disrupting the sport might provide its wildest wrinkle yet: a public-address announcer bellowing, ‘Welcome to the 2025 postseason at Steinbrenner Field!'”— here’s the Athletic paywall, go to town. (Or, psst, you can always try archive.ph.)
  • The Marietta Daily Journal reports that the Atlanta Braves‘ stadium is producing more tax revenues than it’s costing Cobb County in tax expenditures; no, it’s not, points out Kennesaw State economist J.C. Bradbury, who notes that this fails to account for the 60% of county costs that are covered by sources other than property taxes, which puts the county comfortably back in a sea of red ink.
  • The Washington, D.C. city council has scheduled public hearings on a proposed Commanders stadium for July 29 and 30, which makes it clear that the council won’t be voting to approve the potential $7-billion-and-up subsidy deal on July 15 as team officials and Mayor Muriel Bowser had hoped. Any delay past July 15 would “jeopardize D.C.’s ability to attract premier concerts, global talent and marquee events — including the 2031 FIFA Women’s World Cup” and “slow new jobs at a time when the District needs them the most,” a Commanders spokesperson harrumphed. Council president Phil Mendelson says he still expects a stadium deal to be approved this summer; the big question is whether the council will do anything to trim the proposed record-breaking public costs or will just greenlight basically what Bowser approved. If nothing else, the hearings should be a good opportunity to fill out some of our bingo cards.
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Friday roundup: How fast is the A’s Vegas stadium going nowhere, and other questions

access_time personNeil deMause

Another week down! Have you been enjoying the Olympics so far? Did you even remember the Olympics were happening, other than to make sure you weren’t going anywhere near Paris during them? I, for one, cannot wait for the 2028 flag football competition.

Meanwhile, here’s what’s been happening:

  • Until now Oakland A’s owner John Fisher’s lack of any options for funding a Las Vegas stadium has just been widespread conjecture, but now a research note by JMP Securities analyst Mitch Germain confirms it: “The Oakland A’s new stadium currently remains in a holding pattern. The last piece of the puzzle was private financing obtained by the owner for the remaining cost of the stadium. Chatter suggests this may have hit a roadblock.” Oh wait, “chatter” could just mean Germain is reading the same conjecture? We can upgrade it to extremely widespread conjecture, at least.
  • Oakland has officially signed a deal to sell its half of the Oakland Coliseum site to the African American Sports & Entertainment Group for $105 million, paid out between now and June 2026. If AASEG fails to make the payments, then … that part didn’t make it into the San Francisco Chronicle story, it’s okay, they had bigger fish to fry.
  • The Massachusetts legislature adjourned this week without rezoning industrial land in Everett for a new New England Revolution stadium, and team owner Robert Kraft said he’s “deeply disappointed,” then threw some passive-aggressive shade by adding, “Massachusetts’ political landscape is one of the only places where creating opportunities in environmental justice communities and rehabilitation is dictated by the needs and bargaining of political leaders with outside influences.” Outside influences, eh? Were they … agitators?
  • Cleveland councilmembers want the Cleveland Browns to keep playing in Cleveland, not so sure about the whole “giving them hundreds of millions of dollars” thing, film at 11.
  • There are two competing proposals to put a sales tax increase back on the ballot to raise money for a Kansas City Chiefs stadiums, and the Jackson County legislature just voted down the one for a 0.125% hike over 25 years but is still working on the one for a 0.375% hike for 40 years.
  • Chicago Bears president/CEO Kevin Warren says he still prefers a new stadium on the Chicago lakefront that would come with billions of dollars in public money, but if that doesn’t work, Arlington Heights is nice, too.
  • Turns out someone did do a more robust analysis than the one by the Pennsylvania Independent Fiscal Office of the number of hotel room stays attributable to Philadelphia Phillies fans, and the finding was “not statistically significant.” I know Springer books are pricey, but the fiscal office really couldn’t afford $180?
  • The Atlanta Braves owners’ decision to build their stadium in the middle of the woods in the suburbs has prompted much debate, but until now it didn’t have its own Tracey Ullman parody song.
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Friday roundup: NYC approves $780m NYCFC stadium in Queens, still doesn’t know what it’ll cost the public

access_time personNeil deMause

I keep meaning to find a place to mention it, and here is as good as any: sports economists J.C. Bradbury, Dennis Coates, and Brad Humphreys have taken up the task of updating Judith Grant Long’s epic database of stadium and arena deals, and the results are online as a CSV file. There are likely still going to be some debates about specific figures — the Buffalo Bills stadium is listed with an $850 million public cost, for example, because that’s what the New York Times said, but that leaves out state and county money set aside for future maintenance and upgrades — but it’s still a hugely useful resource for getting ballpark estimates (sorry) of both total and taxpayer costs. Bookmark it now, or just click the “Data” tab here anytime to find it!

That’s enough about that, let’s get to the news, oh the news, so very much the news:

  • The New York city council approved NYC F.C.‘s plan to build a Queens stadium across the street from the Mets‘ stadium, which is expected to cost $780 million and open in 2027. While construction costs are being covered by the team’s owners, Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner and Manchester City owner Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, it’s still unknown exactly how much the city will be giving up in property-tax breaks and discounted rent (the city Independent Budget Office estimated $516 million) or how much the city will be spending on infrastructure for the project (which includes housing and other stuff too, so it’d be tricky to determine exactly how much of infrastructure costs should be charged to the stadium). Ah well, plenty of time to figure that out after the agreements are all signed! Queens councilmember Shekar Krishnan cast the only dissenting vote, declaring, “We are not facing a stadium crisis in this city. We are facing a housing crisis, an inequality crisis and a climate crisis. Now we’re looking at a proposal that gives away public land worth hundreds of millions of dollars in public financing for a commercial soccer stadium. What is the benefit for the people of New York City?” You mean the joy of visiting Naming Rights Sponsor Stadium isn’t enough?
  • Patrick Tuohey of the Show-Me Institute wants to know what happened to the 2022 Populous study of the Kansas City Royals‘ stadium that projected it would cost more to repair than replace, thanks to “concrete cancer,” since it’s been taken down from the KC Ballpark District website. Good news and bad news, Patrick: The report is still there on the Wayback Machine, but it provides no sourcing at all for its figures. It does print them in very large type, though, and how could anything in a 48-point font be wrong?
  • Jackson County legislator Sean Smith polled his constituents about why they voted how they did on the Royals and Chiefs stadium tax surcharge referendum last week, and determined it’s because nobody listened to their concerns and engaged in too much “fear-based campaigning” by threatening the teams would leave. Smith didn’t release any detailed results of his survey, though, so it’s left as an exercise for the reader to imagine what the public’s concerns were, exactly.
  • Adding insult to injury department: Workers for the Oakland A’s weren’t told by team management that the franchise was relocating to Sacramento next year and that they would all be laid off as a result, they saw it on the TV news. “Thank you for ruining our lives,” said one A’s bartender only identified by CBS Sports as Tony. (Also, the layoffs have reportedly already begun, because John Fisher has clearly determined you don’t need concessions workers when you’ve so effectively alienated your fans that no one will come to your games.)
  • The Atlanta Braves claim that a new survey found their stadium-in-the-middle-of-suburban-nowhere ranks 13th out of 30 teams in “walkability,” and we don’t even need to debate whether it’s a dumb survey because it turns out 13th actually means 21st because it turns out the dumb survey people don’t know how to break ties.
  • “Can Minor League Baseball Survive Its Real Estate Problems?” asks the New York Times, but those problems were created by MLB when it bought and contracted the minor leagues and then forced cities to scramble to upgrade stadiums to avoid being left without a chair when the music stopped. Try to keep up, New York Times! Even without a sports department!
  • D.C. United wants to build a stadium for a minor-league affiliate in Baltimore, and the Baltimore Banner article on how “there hasn’t been enough information shared about the project” doesn’t even try to ask how much it would cost or who would pay for it, this has not been a great week for journalism. Here are some tips, guys, start with those!
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Friday roundup: A’s now open to “different” Vegas sites, stadium reno could leave Jaguars homeless, Zimbalist says he may have been wrong about Worcester ballpark benefits

access_time personNeil deMause

Time for our weekly speed run through the rest of the week’s news! Let’s get started, because there is a metric crapton of it:

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The latest Bradbury v. Zimbalist economist slap fight over Braves stadium, explained

access_time personNeil deMause

If you’ve been waiting patiently for the next shoe to drop in the exciting economist war of words between Kennesaw State University’s J.C. Bradbury and Smith College’s Andrew Zimbalist over the economic impact or lack thereof of the new Atlanta Braves stadium, you will be happy to hear this news: Bradbury has fired back at Zimbalist’s Braves-commissioned trashing of his economic studies, and does not pull any punches. In a 64-page response — “I wish this reply were shorter, but its extensive length results from the magnitude of errors that I am forced to address,” Bradbury writes — he goes through Zimbalist’s criticisms and excoriates them in language that … okay, it’s not that spicy for normal human discourse, but for an academic paper it is fire. Some of the highlights, and my attempts to translate them into trash talk fit for a layperson:

  • “Andrew Zimbalist’s review of my retrospective analysis is deficient to the point of negligence,” writes Bradbury, and furthermore “has violated the standard protocols of scholarly discourse.” Most of this, Bradbury writes, involves 1) making assumptions that benefit his client’s desired outcome — namely, that the Braves stadium isn’t actually a huge money pit for Cobb County taxpayers — and 2) consistently accusing Bradbury of failing to do things that he explicitly did in his original study.
  • One case where Bradbury accuses Zimbalist of cherry-picking: Zimbalist cites two studies showing increased property values around new stadiums as examples of how “some sports facilities have produced salutary financial outcomes.” Except the co-author of those studies is West Virginia University’s Brad Humphreys — who happens to be a co-author with Bradbury on other work — and Humphreys himself has written that those two studies probably aren’t representative of any larger trends, but just indicate that for stadiums built in areas primed for redevelopment, property values then go up because they would have gone up anyway, duh. (This is a big part of Bradbury’s argument about the Braves deal: Property values went up in Cobb County after the stadium was built, but no more than they did in surrounding counties, so you can’t credit the stadium with being the cause.)
  • There’s a long section about Zimbalist griping that Bradbury said it was “egregious,” “specious,” and “incomprehensible” for the Braves to assume that revenue from new hotel and business taxes imposed around the stadium should count as the result of the presence of the stadium. Bradbury writes that that assumption is too all those things, because slapping new taxes on all spending in a seven-square-mile area around the stadium and then calling the revenue “stadium-related” makes about as much sense as taxing blue cars and then declaring that because blue cars weren’t taxed before the stadium was built, the blue car tax money was generated by the Braves. For good measure, he then cites Zimbalist himself, in a 2013 essay, as noting that an increase in spending right around a stadium doesn’t necessarily mean an increase in overall spending, so you can’t count it as a net gain.
  • Bradbury cites several instances where Zimbalist accuses Bradbury of not explaining his methodology, to which Bradbury responds by citing exactly where in his paper he explained his methodology, and notes that Zimbalist could have easily found this if he’d bothered to use the search function.

There’s much more, but most of Bradbury’s upshot comes down to: Bradbury looked for any evidence that the Braves’ new stadium has caused Cobb County’s financials to improve significantly relative to neighboring counties and found none; Zimbalist’s retort is well, but maybe that will change in the future, if these several unlikely things happen:

When I reconstruct Zimbalist’s model to evaluate its projections, I demonstrate that its estimates are the product of the favorable assumptions he chooses. Zimbalist bases his optimistic conclusions on a limited set of projections that produce the greatest fiscal impacts. Using more reasonable assumptions, his model estimates negative fiscal impacts.

I want to be clear: this is not a case where two scholars hold a good-faith disagreement after presenting equally-compelling arguments regarding esoteric phenomena.

And if that’s still too oblique for you, Bradbury helpfully shared a meme on social media:

The takeaway from all this is, well, that economists can really, really hate each other, or maybe more specifically that economists can really, really hate Andy Zimbalist. (I recall one sports economist telling me years ago when I asked about Zimbalist’s longstanding penchant for trashing his colleagues — sorry for the anonymous quote, but I genuinely don’t remember who said it — “There’s a reason Andy doesn’t co-author too many papers.”) But also that when sports team owners presented with a study saying their stadium is a dud find a guy with academic credentials who will take their money and provide the conclusions that they want, it becomes way too easy to present the resulting dispute as “economists disagree” rather than “the guy working for the team says one thing, while everyone else says the exact opposite.”

All of the above is one-sided by necessity, as Zimbalist hasn’t yet replied to Bradbury’s reply to Zimbalist’s reply to Bradbury’s paper. I emailed Zimbalist yesterday to ask if he had anything to add, and he said he’s on vacation but is working on a re-re-rebuttal. They will fight eternally.

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Friday roundup: When stadium CBAs go sour, Zimbalist explains why he takes team money, and Rob Manfred doesn’t understand how road games work

access_time personNeil deMause

Happy Friday! Before we get to the new stadium news, here’s some hot-off-the-presses old stadium news from me for City Limits magazine, for which I took a hard look at the enforcement problems around the community benefits agreements surrounding the Brooklyn Nets and New York Yankees development deals. The nut graf, as we say in the biz:

One big problem with CBAs: They’re not laws, but rather private contracts between a developer and community groups—in the case of the arena project, groups that were not only hand-picked by the developer but in some cases funded by him. And if those groups aren’t around to hold a developer accountable—or the developer isn’t around and there’s no successor clause—there’s little anyone else can do to enforce an agreement.

That was certainly the problem with the Nets deal, where most of the signatories to the CBA are now long-defunct. And for the Yankees deal, it was even worse: The only people to sign the agreement were elected officials who are now long out of office, and promised regular reports on the community fund’s spending have been withheld from the public on the grounds that no one is authorized to see them — though the fund’s initial administrator says there’s a simpler reason for why no reports have been issued: “During my time, no reports were written.”

Well, lesson learned! Or not, given that the rest of the nation seems intent on repeating the same mistakes over and over and over and…

  • MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said for the umpteenth time this weekend regarding the Oakland A’s and Tampa Bay Rays stadium demands that “we need a solution in both those markets and the time has come for that solution,” which is both some of his typical awkward-as-possible wording and also an excellent example of how sports team owners love to define their not-as-high-as-they’d-like profits as a problem in need of a solution, preferably with someone else’s money. Manfred added re the Rays: “We are getting to the point where wherever it is in the region that has an interest in having 162 baseball games, they need to get to it, get with the club.” Um, the region has 162 baseball games now (really 81, but let’s not bother Manfred with concepts like “road games”), and the Rays don’t exactly have an offer on the table from another city with a stadium, or even the promise of a stadium, so it’s not like if their lease expired today they would be gone. But when you’ve got one move and it’s vague threats, you’ve got to make the most of it, I suppose.
  • Sports economist Andy Zimbalist has fired back at critics of his criticism of sports economist J.C. Bradbury’s study of the Atlanta Braves stadium deal in an interview with Sportico (which didn’t bother to interview Bradbury that I can tell [CORRECTION: it did, it just didn’t quote him much]), saying among other things that getting paid by a team owner to conduct a study of the team’s nine-figure stadium subsidy isn’t a conflict of interest because “If I didn’t get paid there is an element in it that says I am not a professional, I am doing it for some other reasons. The payment thing is, ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t.’” I am pretty sure that phrase does not mean what you think it means, Andy.
  • Speaking of paid consultants, Nashville Mayor John Cooper and the metro area council are considering hiring one to analyze whether it would really cost taxpayers $1.8 billion to maintain and upgrade the Tennessee Titans‘ stadium for the six-year remainder of the team’s lease, a key cog in the team’s argument that the public should just build a new stadium instead. This is an excellent idea, but may I just suggest that one particular person not be hired for the job?
  • And speaking of Bradbury, he has an excellent rundown in Global Sport Matters (for which I also write) of what every city should know before publicly funding a stadium or arena deal, which pretty much comes down to “don’t.”
  • NYC F.C. fan site The Outfield, which has done an excellent job following the bouncing ball of the MLS team’s never-ending search for a site on which to build a stadium of its own, reports that the club’s owners are reopening talks on building at a site on railyards along the Harlem River, completing a memorandum of understanding with the state Department of Transportation to lease the site. This is still likely just kicking-the-tires stage — The Outfield also notes that “NYCFC still seems to be engaged to a degree in feeling out development in Willets Point,” across the street from the New York Mets‘ stadium — but as a reminder, here are some pictures of what the Harlem River Yards stadium was supposed to look like in 2018, and here’s a projection from the time of how the deal would involve possibly $400 million in state land subsidies, and here’s the team itself backing away from the plan at the time as fast as possible.
  • If Anaheim tries to sell Angel Stadium land to Los Angeles Angels owner Arte Moreno again after the stench of the bribe-solicitation scandal that forced the resignation of the old mayor wears off, a new bill in the California state legislature is seeking to require that the city open it up to competitive bidding first. This is another excellent idea, if only to find out what the land is actually worth, which has been a bit of a point of contention.
  • “Arizona Coyotes plan to privately finance new arena, entertainment district, team president/CEO says” reads the ESPN headline, but the story itself reports that Coyotes CEO Xavier Gutierrez actually said, “It’s going to be privately financed. … And then we have made a request to have the city issue bonds whose sole collateral would only be the land and the real estate, so the taxpayers would never be at risk.” Which is not how “privately financed” or “not at risk” actually work — regardless of the collateral, Tempe taxpayers would be out at least $200 million — but “[person with a fancy title] says” allows for a lot of non-reporting by news outlets like ESPN, the better to move on to writing the next six posts of the day. (An even better time saver: Just make quotes up! Those articles about McDonald’s employees leaping out drive-through windows to save people choking on chicken nuggets aren’t going to write themselves!)
  • And speaking of journalism with room for improvement, here’s GOPHNX reporter Craig Morgan’s opening sentences in his article this week on the arena plans: “Before the special Tempe City Council meeting on June 2, there was genuine concern about the fate of the Coyotes’ proposed arena and entertainment district along the south bank of the Salt River. Some insiders worried that the opposition was too strong, that the issues were too numerous and that the council was lacking the votes necessary to push the project forward.” Or, you know, some people, that aforementioned opposition, did not “worry” those things but presumably “hoped” them. Can someone please tell Craig that there’s no cheering in the press box?
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Braves hired Andy Zimbalist to fire back on stadium impact criticism, and it went about as well as you’d expect

access_time personNeil deMause

When Kennesaw State economist J.C. Bradbury issued his comprehensive study in March showing that the new Atlanta Braves stadium was leaving Cobb County taxpayers on the hook for $15 million a year, Braves execs were not happy. And now, apparently on the principle that the best answer to a good economist with a study is a hired-in-house economist with a study, the Braves have commissioned a report from … oh, my goodness, it’s Andy Zimbalist!

For those who came in late, Zimbalist was part of the first generation of economists to turn a skeptical eye on sports stadium and arena deals, notably co-editing with Roger Noll the 1997 book Sports, Jobs, and Taxes, which remains an excellent overview of why claims of economic windfalls from sports subsidies are hoohah. Zimbalist was also one of the first to turn his expertise into a lucrative ($225 an hour) consulting business, taking on gigs from the likes of Brooklyn Nets owner Bruce Ratner, New York Yankees president Randy Levine, and the cities of Anaheim, Seattle, and Worcester to write reports and/or testify publicly on the costs and benefits of sports venues.

These reports were, ah, not always conducted with the rigor of Zimbalist’s other work. Memorably, his report for Seattle — which was arguing in court that losing the Sonics to Oklahoma City had cost the city money — turned out to be largely copied from his report for Anaheim — and since Anaheim was arguing that the presence of the Los Angeles Angels didn’t create a huge economic benefit, Zimbalist simply reversed his conclusions at the end. In the case of Worcester luring the Pawtucket Red Sox to town with a new taxpayer-funded stadium, he: cited University of San Francisco economist Nola Agha’s work to argue that minor-league subsidies are more justifiable, only to have Agha reply that that “virtually never works”; earned criticism from economist Victor Matheson, who actually works in Worcester at College of the Holy Cross, that “Andy is using his credentials and his prominence to basically give cover to the Worcester city council and [city manager] Ed Augustus to go forward with this project”; and later admitted (to me, for an article in pre-decimation Deadspin) that he hadn’t calculated all the costs of, for example, providing schooling to all the new residents he was crediting the Worcester stadium project for attracting.

As for the latest Zimbalist missive on behalf of Cobb County, let’s let the Marietta Daily Journal provide the takeaway:

Accompanying the county’s own numbers was a new, Braves-commissioned study prepared by Smith College economist Andrew Zimbalist, which is pitched as a corrective to Bradbury’s findings. The lead finding is that by 2046, the county is expected to see a return on its initial investment of between $19.6 million and $125.6 million.

Braves management touted the study as a long-awaited vindication of the deal, saying in a news release, “This should put to rest any questions on whether this project has been a win for Cobb County taxpayers, who have seen a major return on their investment.”

But have they really? The strength of Bradbury’s study was that he looked at the actual numbers for economic activity in Cobb County before and after the stadium — sales tax receipts, property values, and so on — and compared them with other neighboring counties to see if Cobb did significantly better as a result of the stadium. (Answer: It did not.) Zimbalist’s report, meanwhile, starts off with a long section on how the Braves owners put up a bigger share of construction costs than many other teams (the public share for Cobb County being 45% vs. an average for all stadiums from 1970 to 2010 of 70%, though as he doesn’t footnote the latter figure it’s possible he’s not comparing apples to apples here), charges Bradbury with providing “no foundation, either methodological or empirical,” for his sales tax figures, and accuses him of focusing solely on short-term losses for Cobb County when the real gains will be, he says, far into the future.

The MDJ didn’t bother to call Bradbury for comment for their article, but J.C. doesn’t need no legacy print newspapers when he has Twitter:

Phew! No reply yet from Andy on Twitter, but given that he tweets about 0.0001% as often as Bradbury, that’s probably no surprise. And anyway, as J.C. rightly points out, the proper forum for hashing this stuff out is in a peer-reviewed academic journal, whereas Zimbalist just typed out a Word file and sent it along to his client, which passed it along to reporters. This resulted in the MDJ’s headline “Braves tout new study on fiscal benefits, landing between ‘home run’ and ‘pop fly’,” as well as a way more skeptical article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (“Visitors paying less, businesses more for Cobb stadium bonds”).

In any case, this is yet another reminder that not all “reports” are created equal, and it’s important to look at who has paid for them, how rigorous their methodology is, etc. Or, as a far wiser observer once noted, it takes more than a clear plastic binder to make for good research.

 

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Friday roundup: At least your state isn’t giving $1.5B in tax breaks to an electric-car factory (unless you live in Georgia, in which case I’m sorry)

access_time personNeil deMause

We made it through another week! Well, if you’re here reading this, you did, anyway. Let’s celebrate with some mostly depressing news:

  • The Erie County legislature hasn’t voted to spend $250 million on a new Buffalo Bills stadium yet, but deciding how to vote is for suckers, they’ll just be focusing on which $250 million to spend. (If you’re wondering why the linked article says that Erie County plans to somehow save money by adding a quarter-billion dollars in debt, that seems to be because the state is pouring in $160 million toward future operating expenses that the county was on the hook for at the old stadium; I can’t be bothered to try to parse the Buffalo News’ “reporting” this morning, but suffice to say that spending $250 million still costs $250 million in this part of the multiverse, at least.)
  • The Atlanta Journal Constitution is concerned that if more Cobb County areas form their own cities and take hotel tax revenues with them, the county will have less money to pay off its $300 million in Atlanta Braves stadium debt. This feels like mostly a bookkeeping issue to me — if new cities siphon off tax revenues, that’s bad for the county whether they have to pay for a stadium with it or not — but I’ll leave it to the next J.C. Bradbury paper (or tweet) to figure that out.
  • The Arizona Coyotes are officially moving into Arizona State University’s new 5,000-seat arena! Which, yes, was already announced as official back in February, but now it’s officially official. ASU will get to keep parking, naming-rights, and sponsorship revenue, while the Coyotes will get ticket and merchandise sales and a cut of concessions, plus is working on ideas for raising money via “branded content” and “fan activation” and, okay, they’re just making up marketing terms now, let them have their fun.
  • The San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission has granted its approval to the new Oakland A’s stadium plan … or maybe just released a staff report recommending that it be approved? It all depends on whether you trust Front Office Sports’ unsourced reporting as far as you can throw it, which I don’t particularly recommend, just look at that shifty acronym!
  • The Chattanooga Lookouts owners are getting a pile of state sales tax money to help pay for their new $86.5 million stadium, so much for the pandemic forcing the team to stay at its 22-year-old stadium for a minute longer.
  • In non-sports news, Georgia is giving $1.5 billion to an electric-car manufacturer to open a plant east of Atlanta, which is a record for a public subsidy for an auto plant. But don’t worry, it’s supposed to create 7,500 jobs, which is only a cost of $200,000 per job, which is a terrible ratio compared to literally pretty much any other thing you could spend public money on, where’s my helicopter?
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