Category: Kansas City Royals

Friday roundup: Denver mayor says he’ll fight to the death to give George Lucas’s wife $170m for a soccer stadium

access_time personNeil deMause

I had a birthday this week, and nothing says “Yes, you’ve been writing this blog since you were 32 years old and you’re apparently going to have to keep at it well into old age, you got a problem with that?” than becoming a Field of Schemes supporter! There are both one-time and recurring payment options, many of which give you the chance to get one of just ten remaining copies of this Vaportecture art print before they’re gone forever, so act now!

Or just keep on reading and commenting, honestly, that at least makes me feel like this entire project has been worth something, even if the central problem it has detailed shows no sign of slowing down. I remain inspired by the Straight Dope‘s tagline “Fighting Ignorance Since 1973 (It’s Taking Longer Than We Thought),” though the fact that the Straight Dope stopped publishing in 2018 without declaring victory over ignorance is sobering, admittedly.

Anyway, onward!

  • Denver Mayor Mike Johnston has heard the NWSL expansion Denver Summit owners’ threat to pursue a “parallel path” in unspecified neighboring cities at the same time as trying to win over a city council not crazy about handing them maybe $170 million in cash and tax breaks, and he knows just how to respond: by offering to do whatever it takes to get Summit co-owner (and Broncos co-owner, and wife of billionaire George Lucas) Mellody Hobson to build in his city. “Over my dead body will I let the Broncos stadium leave Denver,” said Johnston on Wednesday. “Over my dead body am I going to let the Summit stadium leave Denver. We want that site to be here.” Noooooo, that’s not at all how you haggle, you’re doing it all wrong! It remains to be seen whether the Denver city council will take up Johnston on his “dead body” offer.
  • Residents of Kansas’s Johnson County are “seething” over the possibility of the Kansas City Royals building a stadium there, according to the Kansas City Star, though the Star also reports that a poll found 53% of residents support the idea and 40% oppose it. But also 40% of respondents said the Royals should stay put at Kauffman Stadium vs. 26% who wanted them to move to Kansas, a good seethe is so hard to find these days.
  • How did New York Mets owner Steve Cohen take his plans to build a casino next to his stadium from distant longshot to likely winner? One part, two local anti-casino activists write in the New York Daily News, involved hiring two community board members (one now the councilmember-elect for the district) as consultants, while also holding fundraisers for the local state assemblymember. The main reason for Cohen’s success may still be that the state senator who was his main opponent also turned out to be the most disliked person in Albany, but throwing money around to local officials couldn’t have hurt, either.
  • Buffalo Bills fans appear to have given up and bought the hated personal seat licenses required to get tickets at the new publicly funded stadium scheduled to open next year, with nearly 90% of the PSLs reportedly having sold. All of the $250 million in proceeds so far will go toward paying Bills owner and superyacht captain Terry Pegula’s $1 billion in stadium expenses, none of it toward paying New York state and Erie County taxpayers’ $1 billion in stadium expenses, because standard business practice something something.
  • It’s still not clear where Athletics owner John Fisher will find the $1.4 billion he needs to build an entire ballpark in Las Vegas, but he’s certainly building something: Construction crews started pouring concrete for the lower deck this week. There’s been no word when he’ll hit the $100 million spending mark that will allow him to access $380 million in public money, let alone what he’ll do once that money runs out as well, but if nothing else Fisher is committing to the bit.
  • The owners of Sacramento Republic F.C. have only just started building their new soccer stadium, and they’re already seeking permission to expand it from 12,000 to 20,000 seats, just in case they ever want to.
  • Asked how new Tampa Bay Rays owner Patrick Zalupski is doing at coming up with plans for a new stadium, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred somehow managed to say, “With respect to the go-forward issue, Patrick and his group are hard at work getting the lay of the land in the Tampa Bay region to find out what their options are.” Language is always evolving, and Manfred is truly an inspiration in breaking new ground about where it will go in the future, or as he would say, the go-forward time.
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Friday roundup: Royals “poll” fans on why they need a new stadium, plus still more soccer teams, so many soccer teams

access_time personNeil deMause

I’m posting this week’s roundup from the road, so apologies if any news slipped through the cracks, and I’ll try to catch up with it next week. But at least I’m not shutting down my site to take a full-time editing job: While I’m very happy for Tom Scocca’s bank balance and health coverage, he’s one of the best writers and most astute political analysts in an increasingly threadbare media landscape, and his writing at Indignity and elsewhere will be sorely missed.

In happier news … hahaha, what am I saying, most of this news is dismal as always. But anyway in LOLdemocracy news:

  • Kansas City Royals officials are surveying selected fans about their thoughts on three potential stadium locations — Downtown/Near Downtown, Clay County/North Kansas City and Johnson County/Overland Park — some of which surely is meant to serve as a push poll, given that it only includes one positive option about the team’s current home (“Kauffman Stadium is still a great place to watch a game; There is no reason for the Royals to leave”) and two negative ones (“Kauffman Stadium is past its prime and needs to be replaced by a modern ballpark that is surrounded by an entertainment district with shops, restaurants and bars” and “I love the ‘K’, but it lacks the amenities of modern ballparks and our region would be better served with a brand-new ballpark in a different part of town”). And while surely team owner John Sherman will use the actual responses in some way, you know that his main concern is who he can extricate the most public money from — and by naming three potential locations, he also creates leverage to get the most public money from whichever site he or fans might prefer otherwise, so really win-win-win for him!
  • Raleigh may be asked to build a new stadium for the NC Courage and North Carolina F.C. (currently about to go on hiatus before jumping to the USL’s new top tier intended to compete with MLS) soccer teams, and Green Bay may build a stadium for new minor-league soccer teams, and Rancho Cordova may get tax incentives to help build a $175 million arena for an indoor soccer team, hands up everyone who knows where Rancho Cordova is or that the U.S. has an indoor soccer league! In any event, everybody still gets a soccer team, cities really don’t have to rush to pay for stadiums to get one, you have to beat them away with sticks at this point.
  • Tampa Bay Business and Wealth (?) headline: “The data is in: Mixed-use stadiums win big for cities and fans.” Actual report (?) by consultants JLL (“We believe in the power of real estate to shape a better world”) linked to in the article: “Attendance trends from the 2025 MLB regular season show that stadiums in Lifestyle Market ecosystems drive elevated attendance, even when team performance is poor” (mostly based on the success of the Atlanta Braves, who drew well in 2025 despite sucking largely because people still  bought tickets thinking the entire starting rotation wasn’t going to get injured) and “By 2040, we predict that at least half of MLB organizations will announce plans to develop a new stadium or perform a major redevelopment of their existing venue” this seems to be more winning big for team owners than for fans or cities, you know?
  • MLS commissioner Don Garber is headed to Vancouver to complain that the Whitecaps don’t get first dibs on dates for playoff games and have to share food and beverage revenue with their government landlords, can you imagine the nerve of those Canadians?
  • On Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb’s proposal for a sales tax surcharge district to fund Guardians and Cavaliers upgrades, Cleveland.com reports that “on Reddit, users on r/cleveland and r/cavs were largely united around the same message: billionaire team owners should pay for their own stadiums. They rejected the idea that beers or hotdogs should cost more,” while “on Facebook, the reaction was more skeptical — and often sarcastic.”
  • We already knew that the Baltimore Ravens were working on a nearly-half-billion-dollar renovation funded mostly by tax dollars, but “The Ravens are investing an additional $55 million for the improvements, with the stadium authority set to reimburse the team up to $35 million of that amount” is a new twist, not to mention a new definition of “investing.”
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Friday roundup: Pritzker endorses “infrastructure” spending for Bears, Royals could soon propose Kansas vaporstadium

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s Friday, which means I had to take valuable time away from reading about the Mafia luring rich people into playing in rigged poker games in order to hang out with NBA players who scored 6.6 points a game so that I could instead sum up the rest of this week’s stadium and arena news, for you, because I care.

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Missouri official tags ballot measure to repeal $1.5B stadium subsidy with language warning it would make Chiefs move

access_time personNeil deMause

A Missouri law firm is trying to get a pair of ballot initiatives on the November 2026 ballot to overturn the $1.5 billion in Kansas City Chiefs and Royals stadium money the state legislature approved in June, and instead direct the same amount of money to fund Medicaid in the wake of federal cuts. But we can’t even talk about that, or at least the Missouri news media can’t, because right now everyone is focused on Secretary of State Denny Hoskins’ summary language for the ballot measures, which is uh:

“Shall Missouri law be amended to repeal the ‘Show-Me Sports Investment Act,’ which provides state bonds, appropriations, and tax credits for professional sports stadiums and related events, thereby likely causing the Kansas City Chiefs to move their stadium from Missouri to Kansas?”

Leading the Missouri Independent to add:

There is no mention of the Royals, an omission that sparked a flurry of questions — and criticism.

Excuse me, I have other questions! Like why is the secretary of state editorializing in ballot initiative language about how the Chiefs need subsidies or they’ll move to Kansas, when 1) it’s not at all clear that team owner Clark Hunt is serious about a move or just using it as leverage and 2) Hoskins didn’t also warn of, say, the likely consequences of a “no” vote on Medicaid funding levels. (I’ll skip asking about why it says the Chiefs would “move their stadium” like they would back a truck up to it and tow it across the border.) Seriously, dude, what’s your deal?

When asked by The Star why the question mentioned the Chiefs and not the Royals, Hoskins’ spokesperson Rachael Dunn said the language focused on the “clearest, most immediate potential consequence based on information available at the time of review” and was not based on any internal knowledge of either teams’ plans.

So the Chiefs moving to Kansas is “clear” but not based on any “internal knowledge,” meaning Hoskins got it from watching TV, probably? It’s just how policy is made these days.

Hoskins’ office also said that the initial draft summary is just the “first bite at the apple,” with advocates able to take Hoskins to court if they disagree with the language — something that Brad Ketcher, the lawyer who is working on the ballot measures, said is tantamount to intentionally writing a crap summary to force proponents to waste time in court: “Hoskins is all but admitting that he drafted flawed language with an eye toward slowing the measure.”

Slowing the measure could end up a key factor, as there is also the question of whether the Chiefs and/or Royals will finalize their stadium funding before the ballot measure can be voted on: Don’t forget that the St. Louis Cardinals previously got public stadium money despite local referenda barring sports subsidies, because courts ruled the money had already been allocated by the time voters voted. But, sure, let’s debate whether the ballot language should also warn that the Royals will move to Greensboro, that’s an excellent use of everyone’s time.

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Friday roundup: Stochastic parrot edition

access_time personNeil deMause

Guys! The AI industry needs our help! Nobody wants AI, and AI has lots of AI, so AI is paying AI to make more AI and sell it to AI and making it up in stock price, and that can’t end well! Let’s help out by asking poor li’l ChatGPT to write this week’s Friday roundup, I’ll check in and see how it does:

Friday roundup: Bears still begging, Thunder still building, and Jaguars still staircasing

[Not terrible, not great. Really the headline should reference the top items, and also what the hell is “staircasing” supposed to mean?]

It’s Friday, which means it’s time once again to spin the roulette wheel of public cash and see which stadium and arena schemes landed on taxpayers this week:

[“Spin the roulette wheel of public cash” is a terrible turn of phrase. Also, to complete the metaphor, the wheel should be “landing on” various schemes, not the schemes landing on taxpayers.]

  • San Diego’s Midway Rising plan to replace Pechanga Arena with a new 16,000-seat venue and a pile of housing and retail is inching toward a December 5 planning commission deadline, with the city still wrangling over traffic impacts, affordable housing quotas, and who gets the upside from the $3.9 billion redevelopment. Because nothing says “revitalization” like betting on a 1970s arena site to turn into a housing solution via sports subsidies.

[I haven’t written much lately about Midway Rising, which would replace the former home of the San Diego Clippers, among others, with one of those mixed-use district that are all the rage now, including a new arena. The whole project would cost $3.9 billion, and if ChatGPT knew that it could look back at old articles to understand this week’s, it would have found Voice of San Diego’s explainer about how the project would get an Enhanced Infrastructure Financing District, which is basically a TIF that would kick back property taxes around the site to the developers. How much in taxes? Voice of San Diego didn’t say, and ChatGPT didn’t email property tax economist Geoff Propheter to ask, and Geoff hasn’t gotten to my email yet, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. The last line, meanwhile, is a decent attempt at FoS-style snark, but points off for it not meaning anything.]

  • Oklahoma City’s new $900 million Thunder arena is still on track for a 2028 opening, after voters okayed a 1% sales tax to fund most of it. The latest renderings feature lots of glass and “urban integration,” which probably means the public will be paying for a very expensive window. Construction could start in 2026, with the city touting it as a 21st-century civic monument and critics calling it a half-billion-dollar bribe to keep the team happy through 2050.

[Oh come on, you link to fresh vaportecture and don’t even run the images, let alone clown on the woman in the short-shorts who is about to jog right into a stair railing? Also, how is it a half-billion-dollar bribe when the public is spending $850 million? Zero stars!]

  • The Chicago Bears are back trying to convince Illinois taxpayers to help fund their new domed stadium in Arlington Heights, which team execs insist is the “only viable” site. They already own the land, but are still pushing for $855 million in public infrastructure money, because no NFL owner can resist a good subsidy play before kickoff. If they can pull this off, they say they’ll even be nice enough to bid for a Super Bowl in 2031.

[This is not news. Or rather, it was news last week, which is when we covered it.]

  • Penn State’s $700 million Beaver Stadium renovation keeps creeping forward, promising better luxury seating and a closer-to-the-field fan experience, though the main takeaway seems to be that even college football programs are now acting like pro franchises when it comes to stadium arms races. There’s also an Adidas sponsorship wrinkle, just to make sure the project stays as corporate as possible.

[College football programs have been acting like pro franchises for a long time, but they’re outside the scope of this site because life is short. If all it cost to cover college stadiums was consuming every last drop of water on the planet, I guess I might consider it.]

  • The Albany Firebirds’ Arena Football League announced an expansion team in Saginaw, Michigan — the Michigan Arsenal — which will play at the Dow Events Center. It’s minor-league stuff, but still one more example of how arena football owners keep testing the limits of how many taxpayer-subsidized arenas are lying around waiting for someone to fill a few dates on the calendar.

[The — what? First off, the arena football league is now called Arena Football One, and the Firebirds are just one of its nine teams. The Arsenal will indeed play in Saginaw, in a stadium built in 1972. I don’t see anything to complain about here, or even to care about, unless you are an arena football fan in central Michigan, in which case today’s your lucky day, I guess?]

  • Charlotte’s Bank of America Stadium is getting a new 4,400-seat indoor concert venue next door, courtesy of Panthers owner David Tepper’s entertainment arm. The new hall will slot nicely into his plan to turn every patch of Uptown into “TepperWorld,” assuming the city doesn’t mind another dose of infrastructure subsidies wrapped in the language of “music tourism.”

[Nobody is calling it “TepperWorld.” And most of the $650 million in public money Tepper got for his stadium development wouldn’t be for “infrastructure subsidies.” And “music tourism” is an actual term (people traveling to go see music, I’m doing it myself soon), though not one that’s particularly in play in Charlotte.]

And that’s the week in stadium boondoggles: one new dome, one giant glass box, one mega-housing-sports mashup, and a staircase in Jacksonville that somehow counts as “progress.” Same time next Friday — unless one of these cities goes broke before then.

[Giant glass box? Staircase? Either ChatGPT is drunk or I am.]

Okay, let’s shrug off the italics and see what other actual news the robots chose to ignore:

  • The Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency has reassigned the Cleveland Browns‘ proposed road upgrade plan back to committee, with one county commissioner saying, “So many questions out there in my mind that I don’t know how we move forward at this point.” But Jimmy Haslam is hungry for his $70 million in road money nowwwww.
  • North Kansas City Mayor Jesse Smith said in a press statement yesterday that he’s engaged in “substantial” talks with the Kansas City Royals owners over a new stadium and remains “committed to transparency throughout this process” but also that talks will be confidential for now, which is a lot of mixed messages, frankly. North Kansas City has a population of 4,467, so it’s probably a fair bet that most of the talks are around how to get the county and state to foot the bill for this thing, even more than they already are.
  • The New England Revolution‘s attempts to build a stadium in Everett already drew complaints from Boston officials that they’d need to be consulted on traffic and other impacts, and now four other cities — Malden, Medford, Chelsea and Revere — want in on those talks too. This is maybe going to be a while.
  • Port St. Lucie is spending $27.5 million on a minor league soccer stadium, and WPTV asked two local barbers how it would it affect the economy.
  • Not to be left out, Denver7 examined how a new Broncos stadium would affect the local economy by talking to a coffee company owner and a personal trainer.

And that’s the week in stadium boondoggles: Some stochastic parrots, hallucinated staircases, and terrible journalism. The future, in other words! Same time next Friday — unless the robots have taken over and are talking to themselves by then, and we can go spend all our time on music tourism until the economy collapses.

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Friday roundup: Spurs owner wants arena subsidies so he can be “scrappy,” A’s owner gets closer to unlocking county stadium cash

access_time personNeil deMause

Some weeks, when all the work of this website feels like an endless repetition of the same stories over and over and over again, I try to remind myself that while the general shape of the stadium swindle has remained the same over the last 30 years — boy meets stadium dream, boy uses standard playbook to demand that someone else to pay for stadium dream, elected officials cough up the dough to boy — there have been some discoveries and innovations along the way: The Casino Night Fallacy. The grift that keeps on giving. The kitchen sink gambit. Reusable entourage. Sure, it would be nice for whatever showrunner is in charge of this accursed timeline to quit reusing the same plotlines — helicopter registration fraud was a surprise season-ending twist, but that was three years ago already — but if nothing else we’re getting a deeper understanding of the intricacies of how sports billionaires funnel taxpayer money into their own pockets, and who can put a price on that? Other than the literal price of “billions of dollars of tax money a year,” obviously, but enlightenment doesn’t come cheap.

Also, no one has taken away our god-given right to point and laugh (yet), so may as well enjoy it. And on that note, here’s some fresh meat for your inner Nelson Muntz:

  • San Antonio’s KSAT-TV asked Spurs owner Peter Holt why he can’t just pay for his own arena his damn self, and Holt said “it’s a great question” and San Antonio’s small market size has “pushed us to be scrappy” and “the underdog” and “we want to continue [our] partnership with the county and the city” and the arena project will use “visitor taxes that have no impact on our local citizens” and “there’s no extra fees.” That’s neither really an answer nor exactly true, but Holt is already off and not-answering whether the team would potentially move without a new arena: “You know, we’re not focused on this election not passing. I mean, I think our belief has always been, whether it’s on the court or off the court, we have excellence and we have winning in our DNA. And so we’re confident and optimistic that this will pass, and that’s our plan.” It’s easy to be confident when you’re spending $2 million on ad campaigns to convince voters to go your way, but just in case, may as well employ the “You don’t want to find out what’ll happen if you make Dad mad” strategy as well.
  • The Clark County Commission officially approved the Athletics‘ ballpark development agreement for Las Vegas(ish), which is mostly notable because it allows A’s owner John Fisher to finally tap into $380 million in public funds that was approved way back in June 2023. Or at least Fisher can get the money once he sets a guaranteed maximum price for the stadium and spend $100 million out of his own pocket first, maybe that’s what all the concrete pillars are about? Would Fisher really shell out $100 million of his own money in order to get $380 million in public money in hopes all that will somehow unlock another $1 billion or so of somebody else’s money? He’s done dumber things before, don’t put it past him!
  • Interim Jackson County Executive Kay Barnes says she doesn’t see herself as “taking on any kind of strong initiative” on major issues during her short time back in office, but that’s not stopping her from saying she wants to see stadium projects for the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals move forward, she’s not made of stone, people.
  • The St. Petersburg city council is looking at ending the city’s Community Redevelopment Area (i.e., a TIF that kicks back property taxes to developers) for the Historic Gas Plant District now that the Tampa Bay Rays aren’t using it for a stadium development, probably. “I was very hesitant to do this,” said council chair Copley Gerdes. “More and more, I’m becoming open to it.” What’s next, hugging?
  • A couple of big-market MLB teams might be showing openness to increased revenue sharing to make MLB TV deals more like the NFL’s, which would reduce budget disparities between rich and even-richer teams but also make it easier for teams to threaten to move from big markets to smaller ones like in the NFL. Color me skeptical — big-market team owners have never willingly given up revenue before, and this could all just be openness to new kinds of TV deals while still trying to preserve the biggest slice for themselves, but we’ll see where things go once negotiations for the next collective bargaining agreement begin in earnest after next season.
  • Yes, the latest owner of the Ottawa Senators is still hoping to build a new arena at LeBreton Flats and still hoping for a taxpayer “investment” to help him along, let’s all check back in another decade or so and see if anything has changed.
  • Camden Yards’ public owners won’t get any money from the Los Angeles Rams renting out the stadium for practice before their game in London, just like they didn’t get any money when Paul McCartney played there, who needs money when you have a pro baseball team whose owner wants money more than you do?
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Frank White recall leaves Royals/Chiefs stadiums even more up in air than they already were

access_time personNeil deMause

Frank White, the former Kansas City Royals second baseman who has been Jackson County executive since 2016, was overwhelmingly recalled by voters on Tuesday, largely because of his sub-.300 career on-base percentage anger over rising property tax assessments and a campaign by a dark money group with ties to the construction industry. White had also pushed back against Royals owner John Sherman’s demand for a 40-year sales tax hike to pay for a new stadium — he offered a 20-year hike instead — which led to lots of stadium proponents blaming White when voters overwhelmingly rejected the tax hike in April 2024, likely leading to the funding of the recall campaign.

That’s a pretty complicated political dynamic, and “voters want a county executive who will move quickly to fund new Royals and Chiefs stadiums” doesn’t really seem like the message at all, given the sales tax vote results. Unless you’re KSHB-TV, which led its coverage with this:

With Frank White Jr.’s days as Jackson County executive numbered, his successor — whoever that might be — faces a tight deadline to try and keep the Chiefs and Royals in the county.

They do? The article declares that the teams’ stadium situations are “expected to be settled within the next nine months,” which presumably refers to the June 2026 deadline for the team owners to decide whether to accept $750 million apiece in stadium subsidies from the state of Kansas, you know, the one that was a June 2025 deadline until Kansas legislators decided to give everybody another year. At last word, Sherman was still kicking tires to see which county might offer him even more subsidies on top of the $700 million being offered by the state of Missouri or his $750 million Kansas offer, so really there’s not much rush here at all.

Which KSHB eventually got around to saying as well:

The Royals haven’t put forth a new plan after the Crossroads plan flopped at the polls. The club has denied multiple requests, including several in recent weeks as the 2025 Royals season came to an end, to speak with Sherman or other club officials for an update.

“I would like to see everybody talking publicly about what the options really are, because I don’t think, as a voter, we know much of anything other than rumors, and we don’t even have very good rumors,” [Kansas City, Missouri voter Sandra] Handley said. “I’d like to see some open discussion about this and some explanation of what’s happening and what the choices really are. … I’d like to hear from somebody with the Royals about what they’re thinking and where they’re going with this.”

So maybe it’s Sherman who faces a tight deadline to decide what to do? Leverage is so confusing!

White’s successor will be chosen by Jackson County Legislature chair DaRon McGee, who may appoint himself, saying that wouldn’t be a conflict of interest and he appoints himself to stuff all the time. McGee is memorable for having asked Sherman for Royals tickets at the same time he was readying the measure for the sales tax vote, something he also defended as something he does all the time. Conflict of interest is so confusing!

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Friday roundup: Fire stadium wins Chicago approval, A’s set MLB record for alienating all their new fans already

access_time personNeil deMause

With all the ginormous stadium and arena wrassles like the Washington Commanders stadium and the San Antonio Spurs arena project and the never-ending Tampa Bay Rays saga, it’s sometimes easy to forget about all the other deals that are somewhere in the vicinity of the back burner. Let’s check in on some of those this week, along with some old favorites:

  • The Chicago city council voted yesterday to approve the Chicago Fire‘s plans for a new stadium at the The 78 site, which since Fire owner Joe Mansueto says he’ll build with his own money, so there should be no public funding involved. The Chicago Tribune, though, notes that “some details still need to be ironed out” for the larger redevelopment, including what to do about a new Red Line CTA station and relocating Metra train tracks after developer Related declared the original plan too costly. And what about the rumored parking garage that would, like the now-scrapped transit improvements, possibly use kicked-back property taxes via a TIF? Maybe it’s best to say there probably won’t be any public funding involved, fingers crossed, knock wood.
  • Sacramento Athletics fans are already fast on their way to being non-Athletics fans, reports ESPN, with one season ticket holder writing to the team: “Being a season ticket holder for the Athletics is embarrassing to the point that I regret telling my friends or coworkers. I cannot give away tickets, I cannot easily sell games I can’t make it to (at market rate-especially on SeatGeek), and I feel ignored by the team sales staff.” (The team responded by giving him a plastic bag of leftover giveaways that he already had.) SFGate, meanwhile, reports that an A’s fan this summer summed things up by declaring, “Fuck John Fisher. John Fisher’s a piece of shit,” while wearing a “Sacramento hates you too” cap. Things will surely improve once the team starts playing in Las Vegas in 2028, theoretically.
  • The San Francisco 49ers owners are supposed to cover the $6.4 million cost of hosting the 2026 Super Bowl, but the team’s nonprofit that is on the hook for the costs has no money, which is maybe a problem? Sports economist Geoffrey Propheter says he is “particularly concerned about the statement that the 49ers will reimburse the city for ‘approved expenses,’ with the 49ers seemingly being the judge of what is approved,” and sports economist Michael Leeds agrees, warning that “mega-events such as the Super Bowl almost invariably have costs that are higher than predicted and local impacts that are lower than predicted.”
  • A downtown site targeted for a possible new Kansas City Royals stadium was just sold to a Wichita developer, decreasing the chances that it will end up used for a ballpark. Not that Royals owner John Sherman has said much about where he might want to build a stadium as a December deadline approaches for accepting around $700 million in tax money from Kansas if he moves there, shh, he’s trying to get city or county money to go with his state money from either Kansas or Missouri, don’t bother daddy while he’s trying to concentrate.
  • Going with the headline “Brewers bolster ballpark after $500M deal” when $471 million of the money is coming from state taxpayers is a choice, Fox6 Milwaukee.
  • Marc Normandin has a good rundown on MLB commissioners Rob Manfred’s conflicting missions of doing what team owners want and doing what’s best for baseball, especially when owners themselves can’t agree on what they want: Some owners want to force the players union into accepting a salary cap at all costs, while others are more concerned about the damage an extended lockout in 2027 would do to the league’s broadcast value when it’s time to renegotiate TV deals after 2028. Explains Normandin: “Basically, he has to use this time to convince them of what they should want, so that he can then enact it just like they want him to — otherwise, he’ll have to do what they want him to, even if he thinks it goes against their best interests, because he is beholden to them in the end.” Shaking down players and cities and TV networks for money all at once is no easy feat, you try it sometime!
  • Fine, here’s an update on the Commanders stadium deal as well: The mixed-use district around the stadium will need to go through normal zoning procedures rather than being fast-tracked under a last-minute amendment, meaning they may not be ready for years after the stadium’s planned 2030 opening. That’s bad if you want to live in the promised affordable housing, but does at least also make the development rights less valuable to team owner Josh Harris, meaning the public subsidy is now more likely to be closer to $6.6 billion than $25 billion, yay?
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Friday roundup: Commanders vote, Bengals lease, A’s stadium cost all up in the air at this time

access_time personNeil deMause

The D.C. council’s verdict on the $6.6-billion-plus Washington Commanders stadium subsidy still seems to be up in the air at this time: The council now plans to vote today, giving councilmembers a whole 24 hours to read the final stadium bill, which was just released yesterday, after the council had concluded hearings about it without most councilmembers themselves being present, as one does. Councilmember Robert White has already said he plans to vote against the bill and hopes he can get four others to go along with him and block the needed two-thirds majority; council chair Phil Mendelson seems confident that he has the votes to pass the thing, but we’ll all find out together in a few hours.

Meanwhile, let’s pass the time by taking a spin through the other stadium and arena news that unfolded, or didn’t, this week while we were all waiting for the denouement to Bowser‘s Folly:

  • The Cincinnati Bengals‘ new lease remains up in the air after Hamilton County commissioners yesterday approved it, but Bengals execs haven’t signed it yet because they’re still reading the final version. We’ll just have to wait and see whether team officials are willing to accept $700 million–plus in county stadium upgrade funding, or if they plan on asking for even more.
  • The Las Vegas A’s stadium cost is still up in the air, with estimates now around $2 billion, up from $1.75 billion, according to owner John Fisher. Does Fisher have the money to pay to do more than move some dirt around? Did he before? Only he and his accountants, and maybe Rob Manfred, know.
  • The legality of Missouri’s offer of state money for Kansas City Chiefs and Royals stadiums is up in the air, after two Republican Missouri state legislators and one citizen activist have sued to block it, arguing that it has too much stuff in it and is unconstitutionally targeted to benefit specific companies and is “a bribe” to keep the teams from moving to Kansas. Whether any of that is actually illegal, it’ll be up to the courts to decide.
  • Denver Broncos stadium plans are still up in the air, but Denver Mayor Mike Johnston said yesterday, “We’re working hard on a deal, and I think we’re close.” Where the stadium would go and who would pay how much for it remains up in the air.
  • The final city cost of repairing the Tampa Bay Rays‘ Tropicana Field is still up in the air, with current estimates standing at $59.7 million plus whatever it costs for new video production equipment, plus tariffs, plus any other sundries. Will the St. Petersburg city council keep approving additional costs? You already know the non-answer to that.
  • The economic impact of a new San Antonio Spurs arena development remains up in the air after consultants said it would be worth $18.7 billion over 30 years, then it turned out they were only clown consultants. Whatever fools the San Antonio Express-News is good enough for government work!
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Friday roundup: The world is increasingly an ocean of stadium disinformation slop, and sea levels are rising

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s been another exhausting news week, so if you need a pick-me-up, please enjoy some videos of how I spent last weekend. Sometimes we all need a musical reminder to hang on to your humanity.

Once you’re sufficiently fortified, here’s what else happened this week in the world of sports stadium and arena shakedowns:

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