Category: Raleigh MLB team

Friday roundup: Portlanders balk at giving Blazers owner $600m, KC gives initial okay of $235m to expand 2-year-old soccer stadium

access_time personNeil deMause

Too damn hot! Gonna see how few words I can use today, to save electricity, y’know. That headline already caused voltage reductions across Brooklyn!

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NC house leaders balk at spending $1.7B in tax money on stadium for nonexistent MLB team

access_time personNeil deMause

WRAL in North Carolina this weekend uncovered the financing plans for a new publicly funded stadium for an as-yet-theoretical MLB expansion team in Raleigh, and while it didn’t publish the legislative language itself, the TV station’s coverage did make clear that the project could cost taxpayers a whole lot more than just the $700 million in state development funds that was previously floated:

  • The stadium is projected to cost $1.7 billion, despite not having a site or a design, a number that the funding document reports “came from independent financial models,” per WRAL.
  • The state would provide $500 million in cash — presumably from its Economic Development Project Reserve slush fund, though the news report doesn’t specify.
  • Additional funding would come via “local revenue sources” (city and county taxes? WRAL doesn’t say), “sports gambling taxes” (a la Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s so-far dormant plan for funding a Cleveland Browns stadium), siphoning off of  income taxes from players and performers at the stadium, and “the creation of a sports and entertainment taxing district” — the last of which sounds like a TIF, though again, no specifics are provided.

The combined public money would, apparently, be enough to pay the entire cost of a $1.7 billion stadium, which would make it the most expensive stadium subsidy in baseball history. (The bill would leave the cash on the table for four years, after which it would be withdrawn if no team materialized.) It’s possible North Carolina could charge a prospective expansion team owner rent to recoup part of the cost — but given lame duck state senate leader Phil Berger, who is the lead sponsor of the stadium bill, said last week that “my understanding is most of the professional leagues discourage interest in localities that basically say, ‘We’ll take it, but only if the stadium is paid for by the owners,'” probably best not to hold your breath on that one.

Of course, maybe best not to hold your breath on any of this, since, as noted here on Friday, state house leaders hate Berger’s plan and are keeping it out of the state budget, for now at least. Still, even an abortive attempt to offer $1.7 billion for a free stadium in order to land an MLB expansion team would be quite the opening bid, and would likely make Berger’s prediction that MLB will demand massive stadium subsidies in order to consider any expansion candidates into a self-fulfilling prophecy. There are lots of signs that some MLB owners aren’t actually that interested in expansion — it would come with juicy one-time checks, but in exchange for diluting existing owners’ shares of TV and streaming revenue — but if free stadiums are being dangled, that could get enough owners salivating to tip the balance.

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Friday roundup: Pelicans owner seeks deal for state-funded velour, ballot measure on Royals stadium could face court fight

access_time personNeil deMause

First off, a special note of thanks to all the FoS supporters who get daily posts by email for your patience while I’ve spent the last week or two figuring out how to make the formatting more readable on mobile devices. (The actual code took just a few minutes to write; figuring out where to insert it in the convoluted system that sends out notices as soon as posts are published was a much longer saga.) I hope this reduces your eyestrain, even at the risk of easier access to stadium news raising your blood pressure.

And speaking of stoking ire, here’s the rest of this week’s news items that didn’t make the daily cut:

  • New Orleans Pelicans owner Gayle Benson is reportedly working on a lease extension with the state of Louisiana to be signed by the end of this year, which could be a 10-year deal with additional five-year options like Benson’s Saints got. No one’s saying a word about the important stuff — how much the state would kick in for arena renovations as part of the deal, and whether Benson would pay any added rent or revenue sharing to help repay the state’s costs — but given that the Pelicans owner has previously said she wants more luxury suites with crushed velour furniture in order to boost the team’s profits, which are currently only about $77 million a year, don’t hold your breath on this “public-private partnership” including a ton of private.
  • A Kansas City labor organization has succeeded in getting enough signatures to put a vote on the November ballot on whether to use city money to fund a new Royals stadium. Mayor Quinton Lucas has declared “the train’s already left the station” and threatened to get the deal signed off on before November, to preclude the public from having a say; the group Missouri Workers Power has threatened to sue to block Lucas from doing so, citing legal precedents where courts struck down legislative actions taken on issues where voter initiatives were pending.
  • North Carolina house speaker Destin Hall is not so crazy about the idea of setting aside a pile of state money to build a Raleigh-area baseball stadium for a proposed MLB expansion team, saying, “Private companies should pay for their own facilities instead of relying on the General Assembly. However, if someone presents a proposal showing that North Carolina taxpayers would get a strong return on the investment, I am willing to consider it.” State senate leader Phil Berger, who lost his primary by 23 votes in March, has been the main advocate of a stadium funding bill; both Hall and Berger are Republicans, while Democratic Gov. Josh Stein said this week, “We’re eager for this opportunity to be considered, and we’ll do all we can to support it.”
  • Some Illinois state legislators don’t seem inclined to revisit tax subsidies for a Chicago Bears stadium no matter what Gov. JB Pritzker says: Comments this week (all from Pritzker’s fellow Democrats) included, “What the Bears wanted was a blank check We not only said no but, excuse my language, hell no,” “If you come to the table in Springfield and you are a liar, it doesn’t bode well for you,” and “The big issue that came about was, Are we going to give billionaires more taxpayer dollars?”
  • A Cuyahoga County councilmember is suggesting using part of the proceeds of a 0.25% sales tax surcharge meant to cover building a new jail and repairing a courthouse to instead pay for repairs and upgrades to the Cleveland Guardians stadium and Cavaliers arena, because surely there’s nothing else the county could use that money for. Just not paying for unlimited upgrades ad infinitum and daring the team owners to give up their sweetheart leases — or even threatening to do so in order to get the team owners to agree to a compromise solution — remains an option, guys.
  • Neighborhood leaders around the Chicago Fire‘s proposed stadium at the The 78 site say if the city is going to devote tax money to parking garages for the stadium, it should also kick in for a community benefits agreement to provide funding for transit access, affordable housing, anti-displacement protections, public infrastructure, and support for local businesses. Whether to view this as a vital instrument of democracy to ensure that regular citizens can get dealt into public spending priorities or just a way for developers to buy off local community leaders by cutting them in on the deal is, as always, a reasonable question.
  • Most of the news coverage of the economic impact of the World Cup has disappeared as coverage of the games themselves has taken over, but Seattle’s KUOW did check in on local businesses this week and found that food outlets near the stadium that sell drinks or quick grab-and-go food items are doing great while businesses farther away or those that sell things fans may not crave before or after a soccer match (Vietnamese cookies, vintage clothing) are having a miserable time of it. Yup, checks out!
  • Buffalo Bills ticket prices are too damn high, clearly we need to reduce red tape so the Bills can build more seats.
  • Yes, that Crain’s Chicago Business article claiming Bears tax subsidies weren’t public money was real bad, but as Geoffrey Propheter reminds us, it’s still no Bridge Detroit.
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Friday roundup: NC may earmark $700m for stadium for imaginary MLB team, Steelers could seek upgrade on “expiring” 25-year-old home

access_time personNeil deMause

Before we get to this week’s news roundup, some old business from last week: I shamefully forgot to give a shoutout to John Mozena for his outstanding liveblog of the stadium-related papers at University of Maryland-Baltimore County’s annual sports economics conference after I was unable to attend. Please check out John’s work at the Center for Economic Accountability and throw some coin his way if you like, or at the very least get some of his free “Pay For Your Own Damn Stadium” stickers.

Back in the present, you’re stuck with me, and I’m stuck with this week’s avalanche of news items:

  • The North Carolina legislature is debating whether to set aside unspecified hundreds of millions of dollars in its final budget for a stadium for a potential future MLB expansion team “in or near Wake County,” which would mean the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill “Triangle” area, as distinct from the Greensboro-Winston-Salem-High Point “Triad” area that voted down paying for a stadium to lure the Minnesota Twins back in 1998. The state has a $700 million Economic Development Project Reserve that it can designate for “high-yield” development projects, and while sports stadiums are nobody’s idea of high-yield in terms of actual measurable impact, there’s got to be somebody somewhere willing to write a consulting report claiming otherwise.
  • Former Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Charlie Batch says team ownership is ready to get back on line for a new or renovated stadium now that their current home is 25 whole years old: “Thirty years is the expiration date. Guess what Acrisure Stadium is? Twenty-five years. So I promise you, conversations are happening behind the scenes to figure out kind of what the next move is as the Rooneys are looking for an upgrade in their stadium.” The next move, apparently, is to send your former-players-turned-YouTube-creators out to talk up how stadiums just straight-up become obsolete after 30 years and somebody has to build you a new one and see if that flies.
  • Illinois’ efforts to retain the Chicago Bears in the wake of team execs’ announcement that they’re absolutely, definitely (maybe) moving to Indiana remain very much undead, with Gov. JB Pritzker saying his state is ready to act but first needs “the Bears to focus on what they want,” adding, “they have not been clear about what is the bill that they need, and how do they need to look, and then, can they get the votes necessary to get it done in the House and the Senate.” State house stadium bill sponsor Kam Buckner noted that both that body and the state senate have passed competing bills — there’s also now a third one, filed by State Rep. Martin McLaughlin despite the legislature not even being in session, that would raise the size thresholds on a “megaprojects” bill to where it would only apply to an Arlington Heights stadium — and “the Bears have to decide what makes most sense for them, which one of those bills is the bill they can get behind and wrap their arms around that can help them remain here in the state of Illinois,” adding, “We cannot have a special session until we have a deal. You don’t call a special session to draw up a flight plan. You call a special session to land the plane.” The hope here seems to be that if Bears officials pick a favorite tax break bill and declare that it’ll be enough to get them to stay in Illinois, that’ll get legislators in both houses to vote for it, which is absolutely the kind of bootstrapping your own momentum thing that you try to do when you’re pushing legislation that just got nowhere.
  • Building a stadium district in Denver’s Burnham Yard railyards may be easier said than done for Broncos ownership, given little details like the land is mostly zoned only for industrial use. This is Broncos owner Greg Penner’s problem, of course, except that, as the lengthy Denver Post article on this only reveals down in its 28th paragraph, Penner could end up asking for TIF property tax breaks to pay for his larger development. “The track record for delivering on these promises by teams in development,” noted University of Colorado Denver economist Geoffrey Propheter, “is shaky. And that’s being super generous.” (Credit where credit is due to the Post: “The naked man, in retrospect, was the least of Sean Herman’s worries” is an excellent teaser lede, though still not quite up there with “The freighter captain, the cop, the guy from the private security firm, the Swiss Army major, and the reporter never saw the pirates coming.”)
  • Athletics owner John Fisher now says his mistake in announcing a stadium plan in Las Vegas was not talking to the media himself enough about it: “Not hearing from me, I think, led to frustration from, frankly, the media. Like, who is this guy? Is he hiding? Who’s the real John Fisher?” He then went on to tell The Athletic absolutely nothing about how he plans to make a $2 billion stadium (with $600 million in public subsidies) in what would be MLB’s smallest market work out, especially when his development partner Bally’s may bail on its part and leave Fisher to fund such additional amenities as a $100 million parking structure. Hearing from John Fisher, it turns out, also leads to frustration, who’da thunk it?
  • San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones would like Spurs minority owner Michael Dell (net worth: $246 billion) to pay for some or all of her city’s $489 million share of a downtown arena. Dell hasn’t responded to her request, and Stanford University Roger Noll says that’s likely because the multibillionaire knows spending your own money on new sports venues is a dumb idea — “the incremental benefits of having a new arena are not as big as the cost” — which is why it’s only worth it if you can stick taxpayers with the bill.
  • The Minnesota Vikings‘ 10-year-old stadium needs a new roof because it got damaged by hail three years ago, but insurance should cover it, or at least the Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority does not believe “substantial use of public funds” will be required, which is slightly less reassuring than “insurance should cover it.” Anyway, it’ll probably never hail this bad in Minneapolis again, right?
  • The first of the Buffalo Bills‘ family of stainless steel buffalo statues has arrived, and fans are excitedly pointing out that bisons don’t really look like that! They’re not even usually made of steel!
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Friday roundup: Indiana and Missouri rack up another $390m in team subsidies, and other dog-bites-man news

access_time personNeil deMause

Sadly, there’s another loss to report this week: Rob McQuown, who for the past decade has been one of the core tech and admin guys at Baseball Prospectus, passed away on Tuesday. I never met Rob personally, but in my days writing and editing for BP we exchanged emails a ton, and he was always a sharp and good-humored presence keeping the site running behind the scenes. (He wrote some excellent fantasy baseball coverage for a while, too.) I haven’t heard the details of his death, but I do know it was way too soon, and my sympathies go out to all his friends and family and colleagues who are mourning him this week. Here’s a lovely podcast tribute by Ben Lindbergh to Rob’s multifarious and too-often underappreciated gifts.

And now, to the news:

  • The Indianapolis City-County Council gave final signoff to $290 million in subsidies for the Indiana Pacers, which along with new and past operating subsidies brings team owner Herb Simon’s total haul to more than a billion dollars. The team’s new lease lasts until 2044, but I’d wager that Simon won’t wait that long before going back to what’s been an insanely lucrative taxpayer well.
  • The state of Missouri has reportedly approved $3 million a year for 20 years, coming to a total of $70 million, for upgrades for the St. Louis Blues, Kansas City Royals, and Kansas City Chiefs stadiums — yeah, I don’t get how that math works either, especially when this was previously reported as $70 million for the Blues plus $30 million for the K.C. teams, and has elsewhere been reported as $70 million for the Blues and $60 million for the K.C. teams, but I’m sure it was copied from a press release somewhere, and that’s what passes for fact-checking these days, right? This brings the teams’ total haul to … let’s see, the K.C. teams got $250 million previously, and the Blues owners got $67 million in city money, so let’s go with “around $400 million,” about which you can say that it’s at least cheaper than what Indiana taxpayers are on the hook for, and that is pretty much all you can say.
  • The city of Anaheim is still waiting on its now-overdue appraisal of the Los Angeles Angels‘ stadium land so it can open talks with team owner Arte Moreno on how much he should pay for development rights on the stadium parking lots. Mayor Harry Sidhu has appointed a negotiating team, though, which includes Sidhu himself, something that has drawn criticism since Angels execs donated to his election campaign. Sidhu also stated that “our theme parks, sports venues and convention center are a matter of pride, but their real purpose is to serve residents by generating revenue for public safety, parks, libraries and community centers and by helping us keep taxes and fees low,” which is not likely to help convince anyone that he understands sports economics like his predecessor did and isn’t just repeating what his funders tell him.
  • Oak View Group’s Tim Leiweke is trying to build a 10,000-seat arena in Palm Springs, and economists point out that this won’t help the local economy much because “you’re crazy if you think I’m flying to Palm Springs to see your minor league hockey team,” and Leiweke says Palm Springs is just different, okay, because so many attendees will be people who are already coming to town to play golf, gamble, or stay at local resorts. How this makes it a major economic plus when those people also see a concert when they’re in town Leiweke didn’t say, but who’re you going to believe, a bunch of people who study economics for a living or a guy who was once the youngest GM in indoor soccer?
  • A Cincinnati nonprofit is trying to raise $2 million to preserve affordable housing around F.C. Cincinnati‘s new stadium, and the Port of Greater Cincinnati Development Authority says that maybe building more market-rate housing will allow low-income residents of existing buildings to stay put. Yeah, that’s really not going to work.
  • Nobody in Miami-Dade County has studied the impact of building a new Inter Miami stadium right next to the city’s airport, and some county commissioners think that maybe that might be a thing they’d want to study.
  • Here’s a good, long R.J. Anderson article on three cities vying for MLB expansion teams (Portland, Montreal, and Raleigh) that should provide reading material for the inevitable endless wait for MLB to actually expand. (I’m also quoted in it, right before Jim Bouton.)
  • And here’s another long article that quotes me, this one by Bill Shea of The Athletic on how stadium subsidies have changed since the Great Recession (some sports economists say it’s tougher to get public money now, I say “Bah!”).
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