Minnesota Twins – Field of Schemes

Friday roundup: San Diego okays $1B arena complex, Manfred floats neutral-site World Series, and that time the Twins ran stadium ads featuring a kid who’d died from cancer

November 6, 2020 Neil deMause

I am way too tired this morning from waiting for tranches of vote counts to drop to write an amusing intro, so let’s get straight to the news:

San Diego voters have approved Measure E, which removes a 30-foot height limit on buildings in the Midway District, which will allow the construction of a $1 billion-or-so new arena complex, which it’s still not entirely clear how it would be paid for, plus there’s still a lawsuit against it, so tune back in later.
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has told Sports Business Daily that holding the World Series at a neutral site every year is not “completely off the table” because “you can plan, you can take out travel, you can pick sites that eliminate weather problems.” Marc Normandin notes that this is probably just a trial balloon — “Manfred says a lot of things to gauge the reaction of them, and then attempts to move forward with the things he thinks he can get away with or that are worth MLB’s time regardless of fan reaction” — but also points out that MLB could require cities to bid for the World Series like they do the Olympics, or at least use hosting rights as a carrot for cities to build new stadiums (like they already do with the All-Star Game), which is likely a way bigger factor than how early John Smoltz gets to book his plane tickets.
The MLS expansion team Charlotte F.C. is no longer looking to build a new headquarters at the former Eastland Mall, apparently as a Covid-sparked cost-saving measure. As a result, the city of Charlotte is cutting its subsidies to the team (at least for now) from $110 million to $39 million. There needs to be a new agreement worked out between the team and the city, but also the city council is voting on it on Monday, so maybe it’s already worked out?
The Toronto Raptors could play the 2020-21 season in Newark to get around U.S.-Canada travel restrictions, because at least Newark is in the East. The safety of playing basketball indoors without a bubble remains unclear, but that big German indoor concert study shows that maybe it’s actually safe so long as there’s good ventilation and everyone wears masks and distances, which basketball players aren’t going to do, so never mind.
D.C. United fired its security company to save money and then asked team staffers to take unpaid shifts sitting in the arena watching security cameras, which is very much not a good look. Adding “Volunteering to assist with security will certainly be looked favorably upon (and vice versa)” really didn’t help.
Hotels in Tampa Bay are excited about the upcoming Super Bowl, even if it’s at reduced capacity, because absolutely nobody is staying at hotels in Tampa Bay right now.
Portland’s sports-owner-friendly mayor Ted Wheeler was re-elected, and this guy is really happy because yeah sports!!!
As if the San Francisco 49ers battle with the city of Santa Clara over their stadium operations isn’t weird enough, now the team has signed a parking agreement with the city and then asked the city to tear it up, which is both weird and probably illegal.
SB Nation’s Minnesota Twins blog looks back at that time team execs ran an ad warning that if they didn’t get a new stadium and the team left town, outfielder Marty Cordova could no longer visit eight-year-old cancer patients. Also the kid in the ad had already died by the time it ran. That did not work out well, but the Twins still got their publicly funded stadium a decade later by doing an end run around the city and getting the county to pay for it, so all’s well that ends well or something.

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Friday roundup: Team owners rework tax bills and leases, Twins CEO claims team is winning (?) thanks to new stadium, and other privileges of the very rich

October 11, 2019October 11, 2019 Neil deMause

Tons more stadium and arena news to get to this week, so let’s dive right in without preamble:

Minnesota Twins CEO Dave St. Peter told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that revenue from the team’s new stadium is what allowed the team to build a winning ballclub. The Twins actually made the postseason more times in their last decade in the Metrodome (five times) than in their first decade in Target Field (three times), and skimped on adding expensive players at the trade deadline this summer before running its postseason winless streak to 16 games across 15 seasons, but one of the nice things about being a CEO is that you can say things in the newspaper without getting fact-checked.
The Carolina Panthers got a break on their property tax assessment from county officials that will cut their annual tax bill from $5.7 million to $4.7 million, though team execs still want it cut to closer to the $1.8 million they paid last year before it was reappraised this year, and also they already don’t pay any taxes on the land under the stadium because they lease that from the city. The rich really are different from you and me: They can get their taxes lowered just by asking, that is when they don’t get to avoid paying taxes at all.
Also, a clause in Nashville’s lease with Nashville S.C. requiring the soon-to-be MLS team to play at least one game in Nashville in any 24-month period has the team’s financiers balking at loaning money for the stadium — presumably because they’re afraid MLS will up and disappear for a couple of seasons, maybe as part of a labor stoppage, who knows — so the city may just delete that clause. Seriously, lord grant me the negotiating powers of a mediocre rich man.
Golden State Warriors fans are pleased to discover that their team’s new arena isn’t just in the middle of the San Francisco Giants infield, plus it has a really really big scoreboard. But maybe it won’t be as loud as their old arena in Oakland? Or maybe this was just because it was an exhibition game? At least you can enter a lottery to win the right to buy one of 250 tickets per game priced at $25, without which the cheapest opening day seat would be $188, which taken together is the most 2019 factoid I can imagine.
Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer and New York Knicks owner James Dolan are still fighting over Ballmer’s plans for a new arena in Inglewood, and they will fight eternally.
The U.S. Supreme Court has given a final dismissal to a case charging that the car rental tax used by Arizona to fund sports facilities was unconstitutional because the money wasn’t being used for transportation projects.
There are 52 pro sports stadiums located in the new Trump-created Opportunity Zones, according to research by Billionaire Boondoggle author Pat Garofalo, which means they’re eligible for some kind of future tax breaks on appreciated value, though still nobody seems quite sure exactly how that works no matter how many FAQs the IRS adds about Opportunity Zones.
The Tampa Bay Rays weren’t the only team to play a postseason game before a less-than-capacity crowd: The Washington Nationals and St. Louis Cardinals did too, though in the latter case maybe partly because of games that started in the afternoon, though games have started in the afternoon before and still sold out, so draw your own conclusions about the death of baseball or whatever.
The Halifax CFL stadium proposal isn’t dead yet, but it’s close, with city councillors readying a motion to kill the $110 million plan because its funding plan is too hazy, which it really is.
The Boston Bruins‘ and Celtics‘ arena may have to replace all its seats again after installing new ones that eliminated any leg room to add more padding. This seems like the sort of thing that somebody should have tested out before ordering all new seats, but hey, that’s just me!
The Pimlico renovation subsidy battle has now entered into the former owner suing his own daughter phase.
The city of Santa Clara has voted again to remove the San Francisco 49ers as manager of their stadium, after the first vote might have been illegal because it took place in closed session. Glad we worked that out!
The Hamilton County Commission approved a plan that will involve spending $30 million to relocate a concrete plant so the county can build a music venue next to the Cincinnati Bengals stadium, with the Bengals helping out by forgoing $30 million in future payments from the county, though the team will also now get free parking space on the land. The music venue is reportedly needed because the waterfront is “an area starved for attention outside of Bengals and Reds games,” which maybe is something to keep in mind the next time you hear that a sports stadium will be enough to revitalize an underused area.
In completely unrelated news, here’s an article about a Columbus bar owner who is hoping that the new Crew soccer stadium being built nearby will be a windfall for her business.

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Friday roundup: $278 million in public bonds demanded for pro lacrosse stadium, and … honestly, let’s just leave it there, nothing can top that

March 22, 2019 Neil deMause

We have many newses this week:

The owners of the Chesapeake Bayhawks are proposing that Anne Arundel County, Maryland provide $278 million in county bonds and free land for a 10,000-seat … lacrosse stadium, really? I know lacrosse is unaccountably popular in Maryland, but that still seems pretty remarkable. (Some of the money would go to build retail and hotel space that the Bayhawks would own, which doesn’t actually make this better. The team owners have previously said they’d pay off the bonds over time, which does if they’d actually make the county whole, but there would still be lost property taxes and tax-exempt bond subsidies and that free land to account for.) The Bayhawks currently play at the Naval Academy’s lacrosse stadium in Annapolis, which was last renovated in 2004; team owner Brendan Kelly seems to consider this a crisis, saying, “I would ask the question: Do you want to fix the problem? Or are we going to kick the can down the road further.” There is a lacrosse team that does not have its own state-of-the-art lacrosse stadium, people. Won’t anyone think of the lacrosse children?
Here’s a thing New York Yankees president Randy Levine said this week about NYC F.C.‘s soccer stadium plans: “We are in active negotiations to get a new stadium here in New York. We hope to have an announcement this year.” That was enough to set off a string of self-admittedly overly hopeful soccer blog posts, so it’s worth remembering that 1) the latest NYC F.C. plan has all sorts of problems, and wasn’t even proposed by NYC F.C. but by a private developer; 2) saying overly hopeful things is literally team presidents’ job. No doubt Levine & Co. hope to have something more to report ASAP, but hope and $2.75 will get you a ride on the 4 train to get to an NYC F.C. match at Yankee Stadium.
If you’re jonesing for demolition porn of excavators going at arena seats, Oak View Group has you covered with a new video of reconstruction work at Seattle’s KeyArena. They’re keeping the roof, though, which will be good news for all your vintage roof fans.
Here’s a column by the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s Patrick Reusse about how the Minnesota Twins‘ stadium has been a good deal for taxpayers because in addition to spending $350 million on the stadium, the county spent $23 million each on libraries and youth sports projects using leftover money from the same sales tax hike. Reusse is memorable around these parts for writing an extraordinary column in 2012 taking back his support for Vikings stadium subsidies after they’d been approved, writing, “We in the Twin Cities sports media were so amped up over getting a new stadium for the Vikings and thus maintaining them as a subject to write and talk about that not much time was spent looking at the financial realities”; maybe he should just put a large “REMINDER: NO GETTING AMPED” post-it note on his computer monitor that he can consult before future columns?
Mexico City will tomorrow see the opening of Mexico’s most expensive baseball stadium, a $175 million, 20,000-seat new home for the Diablos Rojos del México. That’s nearly triple what it was originally projected to cost and with an opening date two years behind schedule, but it’s still a pittance compared to U.S. stadiums (albeit for a much smaller seating capacity) and I can’t find any evidence of public subsidies in news reports, at least.
The Wichita city council has approved giving the owners of the relocated New Orleans Baby Cakes four acres of land to develop at a price of $1 an acre, along with $77 million in tax money for a new stadium, despite public criticism that this is an unconscionable giveaway. Councilmember James Clendenin defended the deal on the grounds that “normally when we have developers come from out of town, they want millions upon millions upon millions of dollars in incentives,” and I guess this is just millions upon millions, so shut yer yaps, wouldja?
Derek Jeter says Miami Marlins attendance was so terrible last year in his first season of ownership because really it was always this terrible, but former owner Jeffrey Loria lied about how many tickets he sold. This is maybe the most Marlins sentence ever written.
Hey, that Sydney, Australia rugby stadium that the New South Wales state government started tearing down last week to make way for a $729 million replacement? Turns out a 2016 study found it could have been upgraded to meet safety standards for as little as $18 million. Whoopsie!

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Friday roundup: Warriors rail stop turns pricey, West End stadium undead again, Montreal mayor meets with would-be Expos owners

April 6, 2018 Neil deMause

Superbrief mode today:

Expanding light-rail service to the Golden State Warriors‘ new arena is now expected to cost at least $62 million, which is a lot for Muni Metro, though not for some other transit systems. The Warriors owners are kicking in $19 million, but the rest will be funded by tax money from the arena district, which may or may not be enough to cover the entire nut. Tim Redmond saw this coming.
F.C. Cincinnati owners are officially pivoting back to the West End stadium site that it had declared dead last month after not getting offered enough property-tax breaks on the land. How come? Team CEO Jeff Berding said of the other two options, Oakley is “not as close to the urban core as desired,” and the team couldn’t secure land in Newport, Kentucky. Sounds like the West End has the club over somewhat of a barrel, which it should be able to use to ensure the team pays full property taxes, at least, though some residents may be more concerned about keeping out a stadium entirely over fears it will further gentrify their neighborhood.
The mayor of Montreal is meeting today with an ownership group that wants to bring a new Expos MLB team back to town. “We don’t need a cent from the city of Montreal, but we need a little help,” prospective co-owner Stephen Bronfman said earlier this week; your guess is as good as mine what that actually means.
Minnesota taxpayers have spent $1.4 billion on new or renovated sports venues over the past 20 years, if anyone is counting.
The Pawtucket Red Sox‘ stadium demands continue to be stalled, if anyone is keeping track.
“A deputy in one of Russia’s 2018 FIFA World Cup host cities has claimed that a latest inspection by the world’s footballing body has neglected a missing column at a newly built stadium.” You’ve just got to read the whole Moscow Times article now, don’t you?

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The punchline missing from last night’s great John Oliver segment on stadium scams

July 13, 2015 Neil deMause

I don’t want to in any way criticize Last Week Tonight with John Oliver’s outstanding segment last night, which did a terrific job hitting all the highlights of the stadium subsidy game. But I did want to add a side note to one of Oliver’s examples:

Teams are shameless in manipulating cities’ fears. In 1997, the Minnesota Twins even ran an ad showing a player visiting a child in hospital with cancer, and the tagline: ‘If the Twins leave Minnesota, an 8-year-old in Wilmar undergoing chemotherapy will never get a visit from Marty Cordova. Which is less like the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and more like the Make-A-Threat Foundation.

All true! But it actually turned out to be even worse than that, as the Minneapolis City Pages reported at the time:

Then there was the TV ad aimed at prodding fans to rally the legislature, which depicted Twins outfielder Marty Cordova going to see a sick child at the Minneapolis Ronald McDonald House. “If the Twins leave Minnesota, an 8-year-old from Willmar undergoing chemotherapy will never get a visit from Marty Cordova,” the announcer intoned, as the screen faded to black. To make matters even more repulsive, it turned out that by the time the ad aired, the patient had died.

Also, nobody had bothered consulting Twins outfielder Cordova, whose charity had sponsored the hospital visits, and who objected vociferously to being used for owner Carl Pohlad’s stadium shakedown. The ad was quickly pulled, the Minnesota state legislature declined to fund a new Twins stadium, and the team moved to — er, that is, kept on plugging away at getting public stadium money out of Minnesota, until finally the legislature gave in. That’ll show those lousy dead-cancer-kid-mongers, right?

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Minneapolis All-Star Game impact overstated by 27-72%, says state revenue department

November 12, 2014 Neil deMause

It is very, very rare for a public agency to take a look at the actual impacts of a major sporting event after the fact, as opposed to just throwing around crazy numbers beforehand. So props to the Minnesota Department of Revenue, which followed up on projections that the 2014 All-Star Game would bring $75 million in new economic activity to the state by actually counting up sales tax data, and finding that the actual figure was likely a whole lot less:

The state Department of Revenue, reviewing sales tax data for Minneapolis, added that the true figure could be as high as $55 million, or as low as $21 million…

“At the time, it seemed believable to me,” [Meet Minneapolis director of market research Kevin] Hanstad said of his original projection. Hanstad said he based his forecast in part on the estimated $60 million that the All-Star Game brought to Kansas City and St. Louis, though he added that those estimates were “loosey-goosey.”

He said the actual number for Minneapolis is likely closer to $50 million, and added that even that number remains uncertain. Hanstad said he has the most confidence in just one statistic — that the game itself, played on a Tuesday night, generated $26.9 million in economic benefit.

“It looks like there’s something there, right? But what is it?” said state Revenue Commissioner Myron Frans, who said it is difficult to separate any boost from the All-Star Game from the general upswing that Minneapolis’ economy has seen since 2010. “You don’t want to overstate the case.”

The numbers from the city tourism board Meet Minneapolis, including that $26.9 million figure, are actually more suspect, because they just add up spending at the game and related events, without accounting for what gamegoers didn’t spend on that week. (Data point: When the All-Star Game was in New York in 2013, I dropped several hundred dollars to take my son to the Futures Game, FanFest, Home Run Derby, and the All-Star Game itself. Suffice to say we otherwise didn’t leave the house much that month.) The state revenue figures, on the other hand, at least try to empirically measure the All-Star bump, by comparing tax receipts this July to overall trends.

Their answer — $21 million to $55 million — seems completely reasonable, given that economists have estimated that the Super Bowl’s total impact is around $100 million in new spending, and that’s, you know, the Super Bowl. Remember, though, that this is just economic activity: total money changing hands within the state’s borders. Minnesota’s sales tax rate is 6.875%, which would put the state’s actual take from the All-Star Game at a total of around $2-4 million — maybe a million or two more if you add in any extra state income taxes paid by Minnesotans who made a smidge more money this summer. That’s not nothing, but given that the All-Star Game cost the public about $600,000 in rent breaks, traffic costs, and police expenses — not to mention $387 million for the Twins stadium that earned Minneapolis the right to host the game — it’s pretty unimpressive as windfalls go. I hope the Firestone bunt-at-a-tire game was fun, anyway.

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Minneapolis to set up “clean zones” during All-Star Game to ensure wrong kinds of people don’t benefit

February 13, 2014 Neil deMause

This year’s All-Star Game will be held at the home of the Minnesota Twins, and the Minneapolis city council is already hard at work ensuring that local residents will be able to profit from the event:

A resolution making its way through the Minneapolis City Council would give the league veto power over any temporary businesses licenses in three designated “clean zones” from July 5-20. The All-Star Game is July 15.

The city has also agreed to assign police and licensing inspectors to ensure that the clean zones are free from any unauthorized commercial activity, including:

(i) transient vending or other sales by any individual or entity;
(ii) sampling of consumable items…

If you’re wondering why Minneapolis is agreeing to do all this after it’s already been assigned the event, apparently it was part of the deal that the previous city manager agreed to back in 2011 to get MLB to grant them the 2014 All-Star Game, and this would just make it “official.” Though it does raise the question of what MLB would do if the council changed its mind now. Move the game to Vancouver?

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MN sports teams hate idea of taxing sports gear to pay for stadium, duh

April 12, 2013April 12, 2013 Neil deMause

Predictably, the Minnesota Vikings aren’t too happy with state representative Ann Lenczewski’s proposal to pay for the shortfall in stadium funds by taxing sports memorabilia sales, since that would mean they’d be paying the bills, not taxpayers. And that’s not what they agreed to at all:

“This legislation fundamentally changes the agreement the Vikings negotiated with the state of Minnesota,” said Lester Bagley, the Vikings vice president of public affairs and stadium development, after a hearing on the bill in the House Taxes Committee.

The team put in an additional $50 million in the final stages of negotiation on the bill for the National Football League stadium, Bagley said, and “that commitment was in exchange for an assurance that there would be no further impacts on stadium revenues, including taxes on stadium revenues.”

And other Minnesota sports teams are even less happy with the plan, if possible:

Representatives of the Timberwolves, the Wild and the Twins testified against the bill, which one said essentially would require the teams to subsidize a competitor. A spokeswoman for state retailers spoke against the bill as well.

Still, it seems at least possible that some kind of memorabilia tax will be seriously considered by the legislature — the head of the Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority says it’s a good idea, and really, the state doesn’t have a lot of other options. And even if the Vikings are upset, would they really walk away from $1.1 billion worth of subsidies just for fear of losing a bit of money on memorabilia taxes?

Which is both the strength and the weakness of the proposal, by the way: It’s not actually expected to raise much money. Estimates are that the memorabilia tax would generate $6.8 million in its first year, while the funding gap from e-pulltabs is more like $50 million a year. So while this could help, it wouldn’t be a solution by any means. But at least it’s nice to see the legislature considering trying to make this deal better for the public, rather than just promoting compulsive gambling.

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Did I forget to mention MLB teams shake down cities for spring training money? Oh, do they ever

March 6, 2013 Neil deMause

Nice piece last night by Deadspin wunderkind Jack Dickey on the never-ending shakedown of Florida and Arizona cities for baseball spring training facilities. Key section:

About the Nationals’ current home: It’s Space Coast Stadium in Viera, Fla., which was built in 1994 to keep the Marlins’ spring games in-state. It remained the Marlins’ home until Jeffrey Loria swapped the Expos for the Marlins in 2002, when Loria decided he’d keep Montreal’s newer spring digs at Jupiter’s Roger Dean Stadium, which opened in 1998. Loria happily forced the older stadium on Montreal’s new owners, MLB. Love that guy. In any event, the Nationals’ home isn’t yet 20 years old. But they’re still itching for a new one. For spring freaking training.

So why is it that Lee County won’t give in to the Nats? Have they finally gotten some sense about the economic ineffectiveness of publicly subsidized stadiums? Are they going to invest in infrastructure? Or schools?

Lee County, however, can’t afford anything close to that amount after taking on about $234 million in baseball-related debt over the past several years—borrowing $143 million to build a new stadium for the Red Sox and agreeing to take on another $91 million loan for improvements the Minnesota Twins want.

Oh, great.

This is nothing new, of course — though I don’t write about it here that often because I’m kept busy enough with major-league stadium news, spring-training subsidies have been a thriving business for years, if only because there’s effectively an unlimited number of Florida and Arizona towns who are able to host spring training, so the hosting merry-go-round is an endless bidding war. But it’s nice to see it all in one place. And by “nice” I mean of course teeth-gnashingly enraging.

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Today’s Vikings stadium news, in 13 words or less

April 12, 2011 Neil deMause

I was about to sum up the last 24 hours of reaction to the hot-off-the-presses Minnesota Vikings stadium bill, but really, the headlines alone tell the story just fine:

Steep hills for Vikings stadium

Vikings’ new stadium bid could need a Hail Mary

Vikings stadium bill is introduced at legislature and is headed to back burner

Viking Quest: Stadium Debacle 2011

No hearings scheduled for Vikings stadium bill

You can read the articles for yourself, but in a nutshell: There’s limited time to pass a bill this session, and the legislature is busy with the state’s $5.1 billion budget deficit and is showing no interest in moving on a Vikings bill. Not mentioned but also relevant: Um, there’s an NFL lockout, people? This is sounding more and more like running stuff up the flagpole in anticipation of a real stadium push in 2012 — conveniently just in time for the Vikes’ Metrodome lease to expire, as well as for the league to resume playing football, maybe.

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