Category: Las Vegas MLB team

A’s denied trademark on “Vegas Athletics” name, everybody LOL

access_time personNeil deMause

LOLAthletics social media has been lit up for the last 24 hours with the news  — actually first reported on Friday on an intellectual property blog, but hardly anyone noticed for a few days — that the United States Patent and Trademark Office denied A’s ownership a trademark on the names “Las Vegas Athletics” and “Vegas Athletics,” the presumed preferred names for the team once it presumably moves to its presumed new stadium in 2028, presumably. The reason given by the USPTO: “athletics” is a generic term, and while the MLB franchise has used it in four different cities now over the course of more than a century, attaching “Las Vegas” to it doesn’t make it a trademarkable term:

The name ‘Las Vegas Athletics’ describes a professional “athletics” organization located in Las Vegas. And, the team has not yet begun widespread commercial use of that name for many of the goods and services listed in its applications. Without that use, there is limited evidence the USPTO can rely on to find that the mark has acquired distinctiveness in the marketplace…

The real problem here is procedural timing. Because the team has not yet started operating as the Las Vegas Athletics, it cannot easily produce the kind of marketplace evidence, such as sales figures, advertising spend, media recognition, and consumer perception, that would normally overcome a descriptiveness refusal.

This adds one more element of hilarity to the A’s dumpster fire of a relocation process, but it doesn’t seem likely to be a major roadblock to the A’s moving to Vegas. IP lawyer Josh Gerben writes on his blog that he expects the franchise to eventually get its trademarks once it has real-life Vegas fans it can point to. And until then, the worst John Fisher will have to deal with is not being able to rein in bootleg “Vegas Athletics” t-shirt sellers, which is significantly smaller fry than paying for a $2 billion stadium; for that matter, there’s nothing stopping third parties from making their own “Athletics” shirts and selling them in Sacramento right now, if they thought anyone would buy them, but that hasn’t stopped the A’s from thriving (LOL) there.

Another option would be to change the A’s name once the team moves — when the former Arizona Coyotes absconded to Utah and couldn’t get a trademark on their preferred name (the Utah Yeti, LOL), they pivoted to Mammoth instead, though that’s also not going great, trademark-wise. There have been dumber complications to sports team relocations, and the A’s have already hit most of those, so may as well go for the full set!

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Friday roundup: Chiefs stadium to cost all Kansans tax money, Royals up next

access_time personNeil deMause

I have to figure hardly anyone is reading this here on Christmas weekend, but for those of you who are, here’s an abbreviated news roundup, much of it about the proposed Kansas City Chiefs stadium deal, because almost everything is this week:

  • The STAR bonds that Kansas plans to use to finance $1.8 billion worth of a Chiefs stadium (and close to $1 billion in other development by the team) confuse a lot of people, and headlines like the Kansas City Star’s “Much of Wyandotte, Johnson counties will pay for Chiefs stadium with sales tax” aren’t helping. No, people inside the “stadium district,” which could end up covering much of those two counties, won’t be paying extra taxes for the stadium; rather, an amount equal to all future sales and liquor tax receipts above what the district is getting now will be removed from the state’s general fund and used to pay Clark Hunt’s stadium bills. (State officials seem to believe that all this will be free money because the only reason tax revenues will rise in the area will be the eight home games a year the Chiefs will play, which is insane on several levels — more on that after the holiday.) That means the cost will fall just as much on Kansans in Topeka and Wichita and points west as it will on those in and around Kansas City, since the state will have to find a way to pay its future bills without a couple hundred million dollars a year in tax revenues it would have otherwise gotten. So really it’s “Everyone anywhere in Kansas will pay for Chiefs stadium,” hth.
  • Elected officials in Missouri, meanwhile, have learned their lesson from the huge giveaway across the border: Time to try to throw billions of dollars at the Royals owners or risk being left without any billionaires to give tax money to. KC, MO Mayor Quinton Lucas noted on Tuesday that voters look to be opposed to this sort of thing, so “we’ve talked about a pathway that allows us to do it through public body approval rather than perhaps having to go to the ballot box,” take that, voters who insist on having opinions the mayor doesn’t like!
  • Construction of the Athletics‘ planned Las Vegas stadium is ongoing — for now, at least — but the casino complex that’s supposed to surround it may not happen for a while if ever: Leaseholder Bally’s has yet to announce a financing plan for its part of the project, and may yet seek another investor to take over the development. That could be a problem for A’s owner John Fisher, who was counting on Bally’s building a parking lot and other infrastructure that the ballpark would use, meaning he’d need to find a way to pay for it on his own, even while figuring out how to pay for the bulk of his $2 billion stadium on his own.
  • Greater Greater Washington has a good long rundown on how this year’s Commanders stadium deal became so bad that it still outpaces even the extremely bad Chiefs stadium deal, dipping briefly into a discussion of Swiss semioticians before returning to its main point: “The moderate flank of our government behaved as recklessly and irresponsibly with the District’s finances as their progressive colleagues are so often accused of, but, because it’s sports, masquerading as economic development, they won’t be attacked by business advocates, the press, or public opinion for putting their pet causes first.” Well, possibly by public opinion, but mayors know how to get around that.
  • Finally, I did a bunch of interviews this week about the Chiefs stadium deal, and you can find one of them here — another from December 24 should be showing up here, but it looks like it’s been delayed by the Christmas rush, check back later.
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Friday roundup: Bears offer Illinois dimes on the dollar toward stadium, Browns considering $150k-a-seat PSLs

access_time personNeil deMause

Apologies for this week’s late roundup — I had to retrieve my now-repaired laptop from the shop and get settled back in before writing this. On the bright side (for you, the information-craving consumer of sports subsidy news, surely not for me, the lowly scribe of such reports), even more stuff happened while I was at the store, so you get to enjoy bonus material as a result!

  • The Chicago Bears owners responded to Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s demand that before getting any state help with a new stadium, the team must pay off the state’s $350-500 million in remaining debt on Soldier Field: How about $25 million instead? The response from legislators has been mostly LOLBears: State Rep. Kam Buckner called the offer “inadequate” and “disrespectful,” while Pritzker deadpanned, “I’m not sure what it’s tied to, what they’re asking for in return for it. I think if they’re donating $25 million to support the people of Chicago or the people of Illinois, that’s always a good thing.”
  • Did the Cleveland Browns owners forget to mention that as part of their new stadium in Brook Park, they’re considering charging personal seat license fees of as much as $149,300? Must have slipped their mind, along with how much of those fees would apply to the Haslams’ share of stadium costs and how much to the public’s $600 million and up cost. (Pretty sure the answers are “all” and “none,” respectively, since that’s how it always works.)
  • Also on the Browns front, the Crain’s Cleveland Business editorial board writes that Mayor Justin Bibb’s proposed deal to get $80 million worth of payments in exchange for letting the team move to Brook Park “leaves a bit of a bitter taste” but may be the best Cleveland can get given that “team owners hold the leverage in an environment where cities are desperate to retain their teams.” Or, at least, they do when the state legislature hands out $600 million to the team to help it move from one part of the state to another. Fixed that for you!
  • The Seattle Sounders owners are seeking outside investors to buy a minority share of the team, with the proceeds possibly being used toward building a new soccer-only stadium, possibly at its Longacres training site in nearby Renton. That’s a lot of possiblys, for sure, but Sportico values the Sounders at $825 million and soccer-specific stadiums generally go for less than half that, so … possibly.
  • CT United F.C. will begin play in MLS NEXT Pro next year playing home games at venues scattered across Connecticut, while it waits for a new stadium to be built in Bridgeport — which is to say, while it waits for the state to decide to give it $127 million to build one. “On the merits of the actual math, the jobs, the housing, the economic impact and aligning with what the priorities have been stated for this administration, it aligns perfectly,” said CT United owner Andre Swanston, take his word for it, he’s just a disinterested hundred-millionaire.
  • “Will the College Football Playoff title game bring economic boost to the Tampa Bay area?” WTSP-TV actually looked at the results the last time it hosted the CFP championship in 2017, and nope: A promised $250-350 million economic impact turned out to be just $720,000 in added sales tax receipts, while hotel tax receipts actually went down. “If that were the case, why is every major city and community bidding on these major events?” asked Hillsborough County Commissioner Ken Hagan. Because you’re all idiots?
  • No, the “sky stadium” Saudi Arabia plans to build for the 2034 World Cup doesn’t look like this, it looks like this. The former is AI generated, the latter, honestly, is probably AI generated at well, but maybe AI generated on purpose by the people who actually plan to build it? With more than half of the internet now AI slop, it’s arguably bigger news when something isn’t a fake, no?
  • And finally, if you’ve worn out the entertainment value of the yule log, we now have the Athletics Las Vegas stadium construction camera. You’re welcome.
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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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A’s Vegas armadillo gets vaporcompany as Bally’s floats not-just-a-casino images

access_time personNeil deMause

The under-at-least-preliminary-construction Las Vegas A’s stadium got some vaportecture neighbors this weekend, as Bally’s released images of the casino/hotel/shopping/dining/etc. complex it plans to build on the rest of the old Tropicana hotel site. Let’s take a look, might as well:

That is decidedly a bunch of randomly assorted buildings surrounding the A’s armadillo dome, most of them plastered with video screens displaying A’s logos and (squints) people with bare midriffs. Are either of those blue things rooftop swimming pools? It’s all impossible to tell, and also doesn’t really matter, as most of the details here are just pasted-in clip art and not necessarily what any of this will look like when it’s built, assuming it all eventually gets built.

Meanwhile, what can we tell from the accompanying press verbiage? Well, the Bally’s resort “will have direct access to the ballpark, feature a casino and have exclusive VIP experiences,” which is just another way of saying it’ll be a Vegas resort next to a baseball stadium. And “the company wants to tap into the non-gaming revenue expected to be generated once the Athletics begin play in 2028,” with Bally’s chair Soo Kim doubling down on the idea that his casino will be mostly not a casino:

“It’s not lost upon me that 75 percent of Vegas revenues are non-gaming,” Kim said. “We want to make progress in that area, and we’re doing that now in real time.”

That 75% figure has been floating around a lot lately, and while it conjures images of three-quarters of people going to Vegas to do stuff other than gambling, a lot of it also involves people going there to gamble but being charged for other stuff ranging from hotels to food to silverware and napkins. It also obscures the fact that fewer people are visiting Vegas overall — in part because more and more people can now gamble at their own local casinos or just on their phones — meaning Bally’s may be chasing part of a shrinking pie.

Bally’s is planning on building the resort in stages, so it’s anyone’s guess when the pretty pictures will become reality, if ever. But then, that’s the case for John Fisher’s A’s stadium as well, which remains funded by about $600 million in public money and around $1.4 billion in “don’t worry, we’re good for it.” Vegas has seen a bunch of new sports and entertainment venues open in recent years, including some that seemed unlikely in the extreme, but it’s also seen years-long promises of other projects that never got off the ground. It’s anyone’s guess what the odds are of either the stadium or the accompanying development coming to fruition — there really ought to be a Vegas line on it, but maybe that’s too meta even for a place that lets you pretend you’re visiting other cities, only smaller.

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Friday roundup: Browns airport standoff continues, Spurs threaten voters with mascot appearance

access_time personNeil deMause

Before we get to the news, a quick note for any site supporters who are still waiting on swag: I haven’t forgotten you, I just have to restock on mailers and stamps, which I have penciled in for tomorrow morning. Thanks for your patience, and I assure you that your fridge magnets will still be timeless when they do arrive. (Because nothing ever changes in the world of stadium schemes, ha ha ha! Ha! Ha.)

But first, here’s the week’s remaining sports subsidy news to entertain and/or depress you:

  • The Ohio Department of Transportation has extended indefinitely its September 1 deadline for the Cleveland Browns owners to appeal their verdict that a new Brook Park stadium can’t be allowed as currently designed because it would infringe on airspace for a neighboring airport. Cleveland airport director Bryant Francis isn’t backing down on his insistence that the current design is a no-go, however, saying, “The FAA confirmed that the proposed height would intrude into protected airspace surfaces by 58 feet,” while adding, “We remain open to collaborating with all parties to find solutions that allow for growth while protecting the airport and the region it serves.” This is hardly the biggest problem with the Browns stadium project — that might just have to do with the at least $600 million in public money it would get from state checks that people haven’t cashed — but in America sometimes bad ideas get rejected because they’re bad, and sometimes they get snail dartered into submission.
  • The Browns’ proposed move is also now facing a second lawsuit charging that it would violate the Modell Law, with the law’s author, former mayor and state senator Dennis Kucinich, adding on to the lawsuit previously filed by the city. It’s actually the third lawsuit over the law, since the Browns owners are also suing the city to block the enforcement of the law, plus the state legislature moved to retroactively make the law not apply to in-state moves back in June, this is going to send a whole bunch of lawyers’ kids through college.
  • The San Antonio Spurs owners are holding a rally tomorrow in support of their campaign to be gifted around $750 million in city and county money for a new arena, and the key guest will be their mascot, who I’m just assuming will threaten to come to your house if you don’t vote for the subsidy.
  • Louisiana is planning to spend $7 million to bring a LIV golf event to New Orleans next summer. To put New Orleans on the tourist map. After spending tax money this year on a U.S. Bowling Congress Tournament, an Ultimate Fighting Championship event, the 2026 Southeastern Conference Gymnastics Championship, and the U.S. Gymnastics National Championships. “In a just world, politicians would have to come up with some reality-based justification for their desire to blow public money on what are effectively sports-adjacent parties,” notes Pat Garofalo in Boondoggle, almost wistfully.
  • The Athletics have submitted a development agreement for their under-construction (?) Las Vegas stadium while securing a permit to pour $87 million worth of concrete to support the lower seating bowl, tipping Schroedinger’s armadillo about 3% more into the “mostly not dead” category.
  • The Baltimore Ravens‘ $489 million stadium renovation, mostly funded by the first of a potentially bottomless pool of state tax money, is providing the team owners with more than a dozen event spaces that they can rent out for business meetings and the like. Will taxpayers get a cut of these new windfall profits, given that they’re paying for the bulk of the cost of building the event spaces? You must be new around here, kid, I’ve got some bad news about this timeline…
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A’s to play six games in Vegas next year, John Fisher hopes you’ll take this as a sign of something

access_time personNeil deMause

In the latest twist in the Athletics‘ maybe-move to Las Vegas, MLB has announced the team will play six home games next year at the home of the Las Vegas Aviators, Las Vegas Ballpark, which is not in Las Vegas but nearby Summerlin but has a naming rights deal with the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, before the team’s planned 2028 move to a new stadium on the Las Vegas Strip, which is also not technically in Las Vegas — let me start again.

When A’s owner John Fisher burned his bridges with Oakland last year, he settled on Sacramento as a temporary home for the team because, apparently, he knew the minor-league team owner there and was able to cut a deal to rent the stadium for three entire seasons. Now everyone in Sacramento hates him, though, and nobody believes he’s really moving to Las Vegas now that construction costs are through the armadillo, so, apparently, he’s decided to move up the timeline for playing games in Vegas(ish), but only for two series in June:

The games — three with the Milwaukee Brewers, June 8-10, followed by three with the Colorado Rockies, June 12-14 — will be played at Las Vegas Ballpark in Summerlin after approval by Major League Baseball on Tuesday.

Why June? The A’s didn’t say, and you’d think they’d want to go a bit earlier to get the games in before the temperatures get quite so sweltering. Fisher doesn’t appear to have made any public statements about the upcoming Vegas series, which was just dropped along with the rest of MLB’s 2026 schedule, so we can only speculate: Maybe it just slots in well with the MLB 2026 special events calendar, including celebrating (?) the 25th anniversary of 9/11? Your theories are welcome.

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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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Friday roundup: If not for John Fisher schadenfreude, we wouldn’t have any freude at all

access_time personNeil deMause

Hello, Canadians, and Americans who couldn’t find a way to get out of town for the holiday weekend! This Friday roundup is handcrafted especially for you!

I wish the news were better, but we have to go with what we’ve got:

  • The latest bad news from Sacramento: So few people want to go to A’s games that tickets are selling for a fraction of what they were at the start of the season, leaving season ticket holders with a massive case of buyers’ remorse: “It is really rough,” one told SF Gate. “I’ve given away a bunch of them. I’ve given them to friends. The other day, I set a record: I sold $90 seats for 12 bucks. So, it’s kind of pretty bad.” At least worries that season ticket holders will miss out on playoff games if they’re not playing in Sacramento are probably moot: The A’s can’t see a playoff spot with a telescope right now, and that’s even before they trade their best pitcher because he keeps complaining about how much their stadium sucks.
  • Speaking of the A’s, I got quoted a lot in this Guardian article on their LOLgroundbreaking in Las Vegas, check it out if you enjoy John Fisher schadenfreude. Economist J.C. Bradbury is also cited as speculating that the A’s could end up in Salt Lake City or elsewhere next season, which he rushed to clarify doesn’t mean he thinks SLC is a long-term solution either (“too small,” yup, checks out).
  • Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie needs to make a decision on whether to build a new stadium to replace their 22-year-old one, says CBS Sports, because “the clock is ticking due to the lease expiring in seven years” and no no no no that is not how leases work, you can renew them, I just can’t even. Lurie hasn’t actually said anything about wanting a new stadium beyond being asked if he’d like a roof on one and saying he’s “torn,” but rest assured that the sports media is going to keep up the pressure for one regardless.
  • The Niagara Reporter took a look at Niagara Falls Mayor Robert Restaino’s plans to build a $200 million hockey arena and determined that to meet its revenue projections it would have to attract a junior league hockey team (as yet uncertain), host 60 concerts a year (typical similarly sized venues average 12 to 20), and host 60 youth tournaments a year, which the Reporter deems “impossible” — and even then still would fall short of meeting the city’s $13 million a year in debt service.
  • “Pioneer League’s Northern Colorado Owlz fold after playing start of season in Colorado Springs following being evicted from their Windsor stadium for ‘health and safety’ reasons and are replaced by new Colorado Springs team with all of the same Owlz players and staff” is quite the story, if only for all the interesting questions it raises about when a sports franchise is no longer the same sports franchise. Also Colorado Springs already had a Pioneer League team, and they’re called the Rocky Mountain Vibes? So very many questions.
  • In case you needed more reason to block the Daily Mail from your news feeds after it was banned as a source by Wikipedia for being unreliable, this article (Wayback link, they don’t deserve the traffic) headlined “NFL team finally given green light to build new $600 million stadium” when it’s a $2.4 billion stadium and the Cleveland Browns owners still want another $600 million to go with the $600 million in state money they just got should be the icing on the cake.
  • How are subsidies going in the non-sports world, you ask? Well, California just raised its tax credit for film and TV production from $330 million a year to $750 million, meaning 35% of all filming costs in the state will now be covered by taxpayers. This has worked out extraordinarily poorly for states in the past, and stories of wasteful tax expenditures continue to pile up, but elected officials keep on insisting it’s necessary to keep economic activity from leaving the state, sound familiar?
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