Category: Chicago White Sox

Friday roundup: Rays may have bot-lobbied for stadium funds, OR gov says not rubber-stamping Blazers cash is “playing politics”

access_time personNeil deMause

We’ve run off the end of April, and — spoiler alert — neither the Chicago Bears nor Tampa Bay Rays stadium situations have yet been resolved as team owners had hoped. Sportswriters often like to portray a slow approval process as dysfunction, but it can equally well be the opposite: Taking your time and driving a hard bargain are good negotiating tools, and when billions of dollars in tax money are at stake, rushing to get something approved just because the local billionaire is impatient is a great way to end up with unexpected costs. It’s still very much unknown whether residents of Illinois and Florida will end up with better stadium deals as a result of legislators taking their time, but it’s hard to imagine it’ll end up being any worse than if they’d just signed off on whatever they were presented with without reading it.

Anyway, lots of news did happen this week, even in Tampa Bay and Chicago, so let’s get to it:

  • Hillsborough County Commissioner Joshua Wostal claims that somebody sent more than 2,000 bot-written emails from a single IP address in Los Angeles urging county commissioners to hurry up and approve the Rays’ stadium deal. Wostal says he doesn’t want to move forward with any stadium plan until the Rays owners provide documentation of where they’ll get the money to finance their part of the deal, which would include more than $1 billion for the stadium plus possibly billions more for surrounding development (some of which would be recouped by tax and land breaks), though the team hasn’t actually committed to what exactly it will build; a Rays statement said only that it would provide financing details “at the appropriate time as is standard with similar public-private partnerships,” which must be ownerese for “maybe after we’ve cashed your check.”
  • Bears executives held a meeting with NFL officials this week, in which everyone agreed that the best stadium options are either in Arlington Heights or Indiana. The assembled dignitaries then warned Illinois legislators that if a stadium bill to the Bears owners’ liking isn’t approved ASAP, the team and league could meet again.
  • Count Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek among the hurry-up-and-rubber-stampers: After signing a bill to provide $365 million in state money for Portland Trail Blazers renovations, she chided city and county officials for not swiftly approving their own $235 million, saying, “This is not a time to play politics. This is a time to get it done.” (“Playing politics,” in this case, includes things like not wanting to sign a nondisclosure agreement before entering into arena funding talks.)
  • The Cleveland Browns held a groundbreaking for their new Brook Park stadium, even as legal questions remain about the state unclaimed funds money that is supposed to pay $600 million toward the project. Everyone involved is still moving full steam ahead, though: Browns owner Jimmy Haslam said that “we’re not attorneys, OK?” but after talking to actual attorneys “we do think it’ll be resolved,” while Gov. Mike DeWine reassured everyone that if this public funding plan fails, the state could always go back to his plan to raise sports gambling taxes and give the proceeds to sports teams that everyone hated. No one is saying exactly what will happen if the state — and the city of Brook Park, which is still negotiating its own $245 million in stadium spending — can’t come up with the money after stadium construction is already underway, probably because nobody wants to admit that “let the Haslams figure out how to find the rest of the money” is still an option for fear of risking the benefits of moving the Browns from Ohio to Ohio.
  • But if (greater) Cleveland doesn’t get a new stadium, how will it host a Super Bowl? Don’t worry, it probably won’t get one anyway unless it builds more hotels, says NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, who pointedly did not mention this during the runup to the stadium funding vote.
  • MLS has a prospective Las Vegas bidder for the Vancouver Whitecaps: a group led by Grant Gustavson, the 30-year-old son of Kentucky’s wealthiest billionaire. This doesn’t necessarily mean the Whitecaps will move if they don’t get a new arena deal in Vancouver — Vegas doesn’t have a soccer arena at all (though Gustavson said he’s ready to “privately finance” one, without providing details) and is getting dangerously close to a market glut of sports teams — but it’ll likely light a fire under officials in British Columbia, who already started scrambling the jets once the league announced its Vegas move threat earlier this week.
  • Team owner insists he needs state money for a new stadium, state says no you can’t have any, team owner finds an existing stadium to play in. Happy endings all around in the CT United F.C. story, unless you’re team owner Andre Swanston, who now has to settle for just selling tickets to watch soccer matches instead of getting $127 million in state aid to help boost his team’s bottom line.
  • Would this Comiskey Park–inspired stadium design be a better place for Chicago White Sox fans to watch a game? Undoubtedly, since it would bring back that ballpark’s close-to-the-action upper deck. Would it make more money for the White Sox owners? Probably not, because it would be missing the wall of luxury suites that are to blame for the current stadium’s unloved distant upper deck: Extra-nosebleedy cheap seats in modern stadiums are a feature, not a bug. Maybe work on reducing soaring income inequality that has created such a soaring market for high-priced tickets, and then we can get back to stadium design that actually works for everyone.
  • How did the economic impact go from the NFL Draft that Pittsburgh canceled school for? Not so hot, according to one restaurant worker who fought through draft-related bus rerouting only to have her hours cut because fewer customers than usual showed up. (Economists are shocked, shocked!) The city tourism agency responded with a statement that really the NFL Draft was less about bringing in new spending than “positioning Pittsburgh as a modern, globally relevant city well beyond the weekend.”
  • In related news, New Jersey transit officials are recommending that state residents work from home during World Cup matches to avoid the transit nightmare caused by rerouting trains to take fans to matches since they won’t be allowed to drive there. This could be good news for New Jersey restaurants, maybe, unless everyone just makes their own lunches those days, see why economic impact of sporting events is harder to calculate than just adding up all the fans and declaring “> ? > profit”?
  • No, the Athletics aren’t going to change their name to the “Las Vegas Black Fire” just because they listed that as a location in a job listing, it’s just the name of a co-working space in Vegas. Thanks to SF Gate for clearing this up, maybe everyone should have done a little more research before firing up the AI jersey designs.
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Friday roundup: Pittsburgh cancels in-person school while hosting NFL Draft, this is just a thing that happens now?

access_time personNeil 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.

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Would-be ChiSox owner considering buying railyard for would-be stadium, maybe

access_time personNeil deMause

Private equity goon Justin Ishbia has an option to buy the Chicago White Sox in a few years and is reportedly negotiating to buy an Amtrak railyard in the South Loop, and hoo, baby, are people connecting the dots:

The White Sox, whose lease at Rate Field in the Armour Square neighborhood expires in 2029, have previously pitched plans for a new stadium at “The 78.” If the deal between Shore Capital and Amtrak is completed, Crain’s reports, the groundwork could be all set for a stadium-centric district on the southern edge of downtown.

It all sounds plausible enough in internet comment thread logic, but there are some major questions about how this would all work. First off, the “The 78” stadium project faltered after nobody in Chicago was interested in giving current White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf up to $1.7 billion to help pay for it, a funding gap that remains. Second, the Amtrak property is across the Chicago River from The 78, so it would be a “district” with a large body of water dividing it in two. This could be resolved if both the White Sox stadium and the rest of the district went on the Amtrak side of the river — but Crain’s Chicago Business reports that the Amtrak site is narrower than The 78 (it doesn’t look it on Google Maps, but maybe Amtrak is only selling part of its site?) and so might not be able to fit a whole baseball stadium, but also that “sources” say Ishbia is considering a stadium there anyway.

Ishbia outright buying the land would be interesting, since it would mean he would be on the hook for property taxes on the site, as well as any development he built on it. Though, of course, this is Chicago, where property tax breaks are handed out like oranges with Jack-o-Lantern faces drawn on them, so it’s always possible he could apply for a TIF district like The 78 got.

Or not! We are deep, deep in speculation territory here, when all we really know is “Jerry Reinsdorf wants a new White Sox stadium, preferably before he dies” and “the rich dude who is set to take over the White Sox wants everyone to know he’s looking at buying some land.” The devil, as always, will be in the funding details, and those are so far down the road you couldn’t see them clearly even with the help of mini-flashlights.

Meanwhile, what’s next is, let’s let Fox32 sum it up:

What’s next: The White Sox’s current lease for Rate Field does not end until 2029, well after the 2028 season.

Nailed the concept of time’s arrow, Fox32, no notes.

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Friday roundup: K.C. area officials debate throwing more tax money at Chiefs and Royals, as does San Antonio for Spurs, etc. etc.

access_time personNeil deMause

Six posts already in the first four days of the week, and still there’s more news that didn’t make the cut? Legislative season is brutal, man — I can’t wait for it to be over so we can get back to things like wondering if St. Petersburg is going to finish fixing the Tampa Bay Rays stadium roof by next season. (Probably maybe, apparently! There’s one item off the list already!)

And on with the show:

  • Kansas City, Missouri Mayor Quinton Lucas says he thinks he could fund the rest of a Royals stadium without having to go to voters to approve a new sales tax hike, by using “a different set of tools and entities, so much like you’ve seen the discussion in Kansas” — so that would involve kicking back existing sales taxes, presumably, instead of extending a sales tax surcharge? Meanwhile, Clay County Presiding Commissioner Jerry Nolte says if the Royals choose to build a stadium there, the county might hold a vote on a sales tax hike. None of this is going to get resolved by the end of the month, the time by which Kansas’s offer of state sales tax money for Royals and Chiefs stadiums expire; the Kansas legislature could vote to extend that deadline, but it looks like Kansas officials may be tired of being the teams’ spare-tyre lover: Kansas House Speaker Dan Hawkins says he doesn’t want to do that: “We gave them a year to get it done, and in a year, you know, they kind of keep messing around, going back and forth, and you extend it, and that’s what they’ll do. You know, the pressure is off. Then it could take another year and come back again.”
  • Bexar County voters could be asked to cast ballots in November on a 0.25% hotel and car-rental tax hike to raise about $175 million for a new San Antonio Spurs arena. This would only be one of many public revenue streams used to pay for it, presumably — the arena is expected to cost between $1.3 billion and $1.5 billion and Spurs owner Peter Holt won’t commit to how much he would chip in, just keep those subsidies coming until Holt says “stop,” thanks.
  • A 16-page slide deck from April on proposals for a new Cincinnati Bengals stadium lease has been revealed through a public records request, and some of the items include: $308 million in county spending on stadium upgrades from an existing escrow account, in exchange for the Bengals owners extending their lease through 2031; maybe a lease extension through 2036 if the county kicks in another $300 million by 2028; the Bengals paying $1 million a year rent either for the next five years (what the team wants) or for the rest of the lease (the county’s proposal); and a Bengals request to get half the tax revenue the city of Cincinnati gets from “stadium operations” to help cover stadium maintenance. And what about the question of extending that state-of-the-art clause requiring the county to build holographic replay systems if they’re ever invented, anything? No mention of that, really? Not that it matters, as this slide deck is two months old and there’s still a ton of haggling to go, but would have been nice to at least include one slide on it, just saying.
  • The Ohio Capital Journal describes the current debate over a Cleveland Browns stadium as state legislators and Gov. Mike DeWine “disagree[ing] on how to pay for it. Gov. Mike DeWine proposed increasing the taxes on gambling and Ohio House lawmakers favored issuing state bonds,” and no, Ohio Capital Journal, “issuing bonds” is not a way to pay for something, any more than taking out a mortgage is a way to pay for a house, it’s just a way to finance something but you still have to pay for it later, go back five spaces and lose a turn to think about what you have written.
  • The Connecticut state legislative session may have ended without passage of $127 million for a minor-league soccer stadium (plus other stuff) in Bridgeport, but the legislature did pass approval for Bridgeport to set up a TIF district to redirect its own tax revenues to pay for up to $190 million in development costs. This’ll surely go just great, remember how well the Bluefish worked out? Connecticut United is set to begin play in MLS Next Pro next season, probably not Bridgeport but somewhere.
  • This week was so hectic that I never got around t0 reporting on Marc Normandin’s excellent Baseball Prospectus essay from Monday about how Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf’s agreement to sell the team somewhere between 2029 and the time the sun burns out is timed to increase the savvy negotiator‘s leverage, since 2029 is when the team’s current lease expires, plus prospective buyer Justin Ishbia is a minority owner of the Nashville S.C. MLS team, and hint, hint, Nashville. The 89-year-old Reinsdorf seems determined to go to the grave leaving some juicy leverage for his son, or at least to cement his legacy as the most hardball extortionist of all time, guess you have to make your own fun when you realize you can’t take it with you.
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Friday roundup: D-Backs tax kickback plan rushes ahead despite questions, Utah bill would let a hundred stadiums bloom

access_time personNeil deMause

Springtime is always a busy time for stadium and arena shenanigans, if only because it’s budget season for most states and cities. But still! Buncha bullet points today, is what I’m saying, and expect a lot more next week, and so on and so on until legislators break for the summer or come to their senses, whichever comes first (you know damn well which will come first):

  • An Arizona state legislative analysis says because Diamondbacks players pay $3.5 million a year in state income tax, that would over more than a quarter of the tax kickbacks team execs want for stadium renovations — asked and answered, move to strike. Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego, meanwhile, says the state analysis doesn’t look at actual economic data but rather projections like calculating every fan buys two beers (first, assume a spherical fan). No worries, though, the bill still has to go through — oh, welp, looks like it already passed the state house and just needs to clear the senate, and House Democratic Leader Rep. Oscar De Los Santos has expressed “alarm” and said “we should not be rushing through this legislative process,” guess there’s no time to worry like the present.
  • Utah state senator Scott Sandall, figuring one MLB stadium with no team to play in it and no way to pay for it isn’t enough for a growing state, introduced a bill to let Salt Lake City’s stadium district build multiple stadiums as small as 18,000 seats for any sport, “to be proactive, just for the future,” not because he has any particular sports teams in mind that could use an 18,000-seat stadium or anything.
  • Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas is supporting a new Missouri state bill to raise money for Royals and/or Chiefs stadiums by providing … okay, Lucas didn’t say exactly how much money or from where, and the bill itself isn’t posted on the Missouri senate website yet, but Lucas says it’ll help Kansas City “host FIFA World Cup games,” please nobody tell him that it’s going to be decades before the U.S. gets another World Cup after 2026, I don’t want to spoil his day.
  • The proposed Cleveland Browns stadium in Brook Park is set to lead to the creation of a new Circle K gas station, maybe, if government bureaucrats don’t get in the way with their red tape about “residents” being “concerned,” can you believe those guys?
  • Phoenix Suns co-owner Justin Ishbia has pulled out of bidding for the Minnesota Twins and is instead upping his minority stake in the Chicago White Sox, which certainly can be read as positioning himself to become majority owner once 89-year-old Jerry Reinsdorf gives up either control or this mortal coil. Whether he would go ahead with with Reinsdorf’s current stadium plans, let alone rebranding the team as the Chicacago White Sox, remains to be seen.
  • The MLB cable empire keeps on crumbling, and at least one small-market owner, the Milwaukee Brewers‘ Mark Attanasio, says he wants a TV revenue sharing model more like the NFL’s where all the money is shared equally. This is worth watching since it would have a major impact on where teams could relocate to (Green Bay would suddenly be a viable MLB market), plus all sort of other things like how long the 2027 baseball lockout is likely to last.
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After U of I pulls out, downtown Chicago developer suggests just building more stadiums

access_time personNeil deMause

The University of Illinois has backed out of plans to build a research and teaching facility at the proposed The 78 downtown development site, but don’t fret! This is actually good news, says site developer Related Midwest, because it means now they can build moar stadiumz:

“Given its proximity to downtown, adjacency to the river and flexibility to accommodate a wide range of uses, The 78 stands alone in its ability to house large institutions that want to plant their flag in the heart of Chicago,” their statement read, in part. “We are actively exploring the co-location of dual stadiums for the Chicago White Sox and Chicago Fire, two organizations whose presence at The 78 would align with our vision of creating Chicago’s next great neighborhood.”

That disturbing “plant a flag in the heart” image notwithstanding, the more alarming part here is that unlike a research and teaching facility, a soccer stadium for the Fire is unlikely to bring in enough new money to pay off its construction costs. (The Fire only bring in $45 million a year in gross revenue total, so relocating from Soldier Field to a new stadium isn’t likely to move the needle by more than a few million a year, which wouldn’t do the trick.) While Fire owner Joe Mansueto has said he doesn’t “believe in using Tax Dollars to fund these ANY such projects” (that’s the way he typed it, yes), it’s hard to picture a soccer stadium at the The 78 site without some public money, at least for infrastructure or tax breaks.

So we could be looking at additional public costs beyond $900 million in tax kickbacks for infrastructure plus $1.1 billion for a White Sox stadium. None of which anyone at any level of government has offered to step up to pay just yet. You can’t get if you don’t ask, sure, but tacking on a soccer stadium to an already aspirational project doesn’t seem likely to make the financing pencil out any better.

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Somebody (hint, hint) says Jerry Reinsdorf could sell White Sox to Nashville-linked ownership group

access_time personNeil deMause

The Athletic reported a weird story yesterday, citing “sources briefed on the matter but not authorized to discuss it publicly,” that Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf is discussing selling the team he’s owned since 1981. According to the article, Reinsdorf in “in active discussions” with a group led by former MLB pitcher Dave Stewart and player agent Lonnie Murray.

Why is it weird? For one thing, the 88-year-old Reinsdorf has previously said he planned to hold on to the team as long as he was alive, leaving it to his heirs to figure out what to do with it afterwards. (Though he’s the White Sox principal owner, Reinsdorf reportedly only owns about 19% of the team.) But also, Stewart and Murray almost certainly don’t have anywhere close to the couple billion dollars or so it would take to buy the White Sox; on top of that, they don’t have any particular ties to Chicago, with Stewart previously having helped lead efforts to get an expansion franchise for Nashville.

It’s certainly possible that Stewart and Murray, who would become the first Black majority owners in MLB if they bought a team (and could raise the funds to be the majority owners), figure that buying a team in Chicago would be a faster and more certain route than waiting for the possibility of one in Nashville. Or it’s possible that they have designs on buying the White Sox and moving them to Nashville, though that would seem like an expensive way of going about it, given that Chicago is the nation’s #3 media market and Nashville is #27.

Or, given that this came out of nowhere based on unnamed sources and that Reinsdorf has previously played footsie with Nashville to try to scare up public stadium funding in Chicago and that is literally his signature move, maybe this is Reinsdorf himself leaking news of the sale talks to kickstart talks about his $2 billion Chicago stadium funding demands? There’s no way to be sure without knowing who the Athletic’s Brittany Ghiroli heard this from — even then it might not be possible to know who if anyone directed them to spread the rumor, but at least if we had a name we could make an educated guess. Unnamed sources really are bad for humans and other living things.

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Friday roundup: Florida Panthers’ lease extension could be one of the priciest ever for taxpayers

access_time personNeil deMause

I’ve been trying to write about this all week, but stuff kept happening: Broward County commissioners agreed to a term sheet that would give the Florida Panthers a five-year lease extension through 2033, and the money part is so convoluted that it calls for its own set of bullet points:

  • Panthers owner Vincent Viola will give the county $51.5 million to pay off the remaining debt on the arena where the team plays, which cost the county $185 million to build in 1998.
  • The county will continue to spend $25 million a year in hotel tax money on operations, maintenance, and upgrades to the arena, for the life of the lease extension.
  • The county has two five-year options to extend the lease. If it doesn’t do so, it has to return some or all of Viola’s $51.5 million debt payment.
  • Viola gets development rights to land around the arena, which he had given up as part of a 2015 deal to get access to the hotel tax funding and get the out clause in his lease that is the whole reason why the county is renegotiating his lease now instead of waiting until 2028.

I’m hesitant to put a dollar figure on the whole thing, but it looks like if Broward County picks up the two five-year lease extensions it gets the $51.5 million while spending $25 million a year over 15 years, which comes to around $250 million in present value, plus gives up development rights to 140 acres of land, which is worth who knows — let’s guesstimate it as $250-300 million in subsidies from the county to Viola. On the other hand, if Broward doesn’t do the extensions, it doesn’t get the $51.5 million, but also its annual arena subsidies go down to more like $100 million, so that’d be more like a $150-200 million subsidy — but also it would need to redo the Panthers’ lease a decade sooner.

So on a per-year basis — math’s almost done, I promise! — that’s either $17-20 million a year for a 15-year extension, or $30-40 million a year for a 5-year extension. That would still be less than the current record $43 million a year lease extension that Charlotte gave the Carolina Panthers (no relation), but it’s a chunk of change regardless.

The Broward County Board of Commissioners still needs to give final approval to the deal, so maybe if we’re lucky we’ll get some hearings or something that will shed more light on the bouncing dollar signs. In the meantime, we had more news this week, let’s get to that:

  • Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch says if Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf wants a new stadium, he should mostly pay for it with private money. Welch also revealed that the White Sox greats at that private ballfield event Reinsdorf held this week for elected officials included Bo Jackson, Ron Kittle, Harold Baines, and Ozzie Guillen, and they didn’t even play catch — though given Kittle’s career –7.5 defensive wins above replacement, you probably don’t want to let him throw many baseballs your direction anyway.
  • Frisco, Texas approved that $141 million-plus renovation for the F.C. Dallas stadium that it was set to vote on Tuesday, as expected. At least the new sun roof looks cool, even if the provided rendering shows lots of fans still sitting in the sun.
  • My former employer Gothamist, continuing its race away from quality journalism that saw it earlier this week write about New York police shooting a bystander on a subway car in the head by only asking former cops whether it was justified, opines that the Philadelphia 76ers not moving to Camden is a loss for New Jersey officials who proposed the idea. Not mentioned: All the other things New Jersey can do with $400 million if it doesn’t give it to Sixers owner Josh Harris. Guess this is what happens when keep laying off your news staff.
  • The design of the Oakland Athletics‘ proposed Las Vegas stadium is 50% complete, and no, I don’t know what that means either. It would only have 30,000 seats, with another 3,000 in standing room. If you don’t count the Tampa Bay Rays stadium, which only holds 25,000 because its upper deck has been closed since 2019, this would be the smallest MLB ballpark since the 1969 Seattle Pilots played at 25,000-seat Sick’s Stadium, which went so well that the Pilots moved to Milwaukee the next spring.
  • Cleveland.com asked some sports economists if a new Cleveland Browns stadium would be good for local jobs or tax revenue, and got the expected answer. It’s a good overview of the existing economic findings, though, and worth reading if you want to dive into the details of why sports subsidies don’t pay off for taxpayers, not even if you count the value of keeping a team from leaving town.
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White Sox lobby for $2B stadium subsidy by inviting legislators to play catch with former players

access_time personNeil deMause

With Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf’s demands for $2 billion in public money for a new downtown stadium going nowhere fast, what’s a poor little rich boy to do? How about inviting local elected officials to take fielding practice with former White Sox players on a pop-up baseball field laid out on the proposed stadium site:

Attendees then got to “round the bases and shag ground balls* on The Diamond with White Sox Greats and Hall of Famers,” according to an invitation for the event, which was closed to press and billed to “celebrate the spirit of America’s pastime, and embrace the future of Chicago’s legacy.”

That’s right: Like all good lobbying efforts, the state legislator fantasy camp was closed to the public, meaning we don’t know which elected officials attended, or which former players. (One can only hope it included White Sox Great Steve Lyons.) We do, though, have one comment on the event from a non-attendee, courtesy of the Chicago Sun-Times:

One suburban state representative told the Sun-Times they passed on the invite “because I don’t need a tour to know it would be awesome with that outfield skyline.”

“Everyone knows this would be awesome. That doesn’t mean taxpayers should put up a dime for it,” the representative said, asking not to be named.

That’s a reasonable enough quote, but what are you doing, Sun-Times, letting this state rep spew his opinions, on both the awesomeness of a downtown stadium and the non-awesomeness of taxpayers paying for it, behind shelter of anonymity? Don’t you even read your own parent company’s ethics policy?

While we may consider protecting a source or information with anonymity, we avoid doing it frequently because it poses editorial hazards, and because anonymity can be abused and harm public trust. When we do take the exceptional step to grant anonymity, we grant it on the basis of danger and threats to the source, and ultimately, on the basis of serving the public good. Anonymous sources must be approved by a senior manager.

(Senior manager mutters: “Public good, danger to source, editorial hazards, I dunno, it’s a good quote, let’s go with it. Surely no elected official would ever use this power to speak anonymously to manipulate the media for their own reasons, that would be mean.”)

*No, you can’t shag groundballs, only flyballs. Shh, don’t tell the elected officials.

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Friday roundup: Sacramento celebrates A’s move with new golf simulators, KC residents say cap public stadium funds at one-third

access_time personNeil deMause

Sports economist Victor Matheson and I were both on a radio show this week to discuss the Cleveland Browns and Kansas City Royals and Chiefs stadium situations — you can listen to it here, but first check out the rest of this week’s stadium and arena news, it’ll be quick, I promise:

  • There’s a “major economic boost” coming to Sacramento now that the Oakland A’s are relocating there temporarily, reports KCRA-TV: A new brunch-and-golf-simulators venue is opening across the street! (It was going to open there anyway, but now that the A’s are coming, the owner is trying to open it earlier.) Also, the mayor is “in discussions” with three new restaurants! Feel the excitement!
  • There is no excitement in St. Louis, where the Cardinals are still technically in the playoff hunt, but fans in the best baseball city in the world don’t want to watch .500 baseball, it turns out, or even buy hot dogs. “I love being the hot dog lady,” says hot dog lady Karen Boschert. “I’ve cut my staff down. My prices are reasonable. You can take my food into the stadium.” Maybe she could pivot her sales pitch to point out that you can buy her food and not bring it into the stadium? Just an idea.
  • Pollsters in Missouri decided to ask an unusual question of local voters: not whether taxpayers should pay toward new stadiums for the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals, but how much. The average was two-thirds team, one-sixth state, one-sixth city and county, which is kind of arbitrary and doesn’t account for whether the public would get back any share of revenues or community benefits or anything, but sure it sounds fair. Ish. Time will tell if the team owners come back with “zero-thirds team, poke in the eye with a sharp stick public.”
  • Most of the San Antonio residents who testified at a Wednesday hearing on a $160 million Missions minor-league baseball stadium “voiced concerns and skepticism,” according to Fox San Antonio. For actual quotes we have to turn to KSAT, which notes that a local arts and social justice activist said, “This project is all about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer,” while a resident of a housing complex that would be demolished to make way for the stadium said, “I would not be able to get somewhere else, and I would end up in the street yet again.”
  • Chicago’s city budget is facing a $982.4 million shortfall, and Mayor Brandon Johnson says, “There are sacrifices that will be made,” but not new Bears and White Sox stadiums, those are important even if they would cost the city upwards of $1.2 billion and $2 billion respectively, sacrifices are for little people.
  • Team-funded studies of a Philadelphia 76ers arena say it would be great, other studies show it would be a disaster; the Philadelphia Inquirer editorial board says it’s up to the mayor and city council to figure out where the truth lies in the middle!
  • Another group of developers unrelated to either the Royals or the city has come up with renderings for a new downtown baseball stadium, and guys, you should at least look up how many players are on the field for a baseball game.
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