Category: (Sacramento) Athletics

Friday roundup: Commanders warn DC council “Don’t make Trump come in there,” plus Blue Jackets could join the line for Ohio subsidies

access_time personNeil deMause

Okay, that’s done, Friday roundup, let’s get to it:

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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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A’s hold world’s weirdest groundbreaking in Vegas, actual stadium construction remains TBD

access_time personNeil deMause

The not-yet-Las Vegas Athletics held a groundbreaking for their proposed new $1.75 billion Las Vegas stadium yesterday, and let’s skip right past all the pomp and circumstance and get to the good bit:

You know, groundbreakings are always just media events: Get a bunch of shovels and hard hats, hand them to local dignitaries, snap some photos, and move on. Anybody can have a groundbreaking — former UNLV basketball star Jackie Robinson, for example, staged one in 2014 for his planned $1.4 billion retractable-roof arena project in Las Vegas, and that was the last time any dirt was shoveled on that project, which finally expired quietly in 2023. And I did predict on Friday that Monday’s event would be a Potemkin village of fake construction work, so this wasn’t entirely unforeseen.

And yet! Even I could not have dreamed up John Fisher standing alone on a podium in front of a collection of backhoes that were just props rented for the occasion — plus the actual ground being broken being just some dirt on a table, which made for a super-weird visual. Props (the other kind) to Doug Puppel of the Engineering News-Record for asking about the Bob the Builder cosplay, and to that nameless PR person for answering honestly.

Of course, Fisher holding the world’s most awkward media event is nothing new — the man specializes in awkward — and doesn’t in itself mean that the A’s will follow in Robinson’s footsteps and never do any real construction work. Builders McCarthy Building Companies and Mortensen told KTNV that drilling was set to begin Monday night, and there is a construction schedule of sorts, though it’s just a list of “milestones” to be achieved in each calendar year. So, you know, maybe?

Except there’s still that nagging question of where Fisher will get the money to pay for it. He has produced a letter vowing that he and his family are committed to spending “up to $1.1 billion” on the stadium project while at the same time trying to sell minority shares in the A’s at inflated prices and reportedly trying to sell the San Jose Earthquakes to raise additional cash. That KTNV article was headlined “How will the Athletics pay for their new ballpark? We break down the money,” and this was as far as the breakdown went:

$380 million in already approved state taxpayer funds can be used.

The Fishers have a $300 million loan.

$1.1 billion is expected to be covered by the Fishers.

So we’re still right where we were all along: Fisher has a nine-acre plot of land, dreams of a spherical armadillo, and a $1.1 billion budget hole to fill. And now, a one-day backhoe rental bill to pay.

Dignitaries and near-dignitaries at the groundbreaking mostly insisted on seeing the glass as half full. Nevada assemblymember Steve Yeager told the San Francisco Chronicle, “You always want to see what happens with the economy. But I don’t think we would be having this groundbreaking if this wasn’t going to be a go.” Former Nevada state Sen. Scott Hammond noted that people were initially skeptical that Raiders owner Mark Davis would get his stadium built as well, and predicted that Fisher would find money for his project, though he admitted that funding is “still a work in progress.”

And what did Fisher himself have to say about coming up with the missing money?

“We’ve got a number of people who have committed so far, and we’re continuing to raise capital,” Fisher said. “But this will probably help because people all want to see: is this real? … As the structure comes up, I think people are going to be able to look at it and, you know, sort of say, ‘Wow.’”

One thing we can all agree on: People are going to look back at this entire A’s-to-Vegas process and say, “Wow.”
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Fisher reportedly puts Earthquakes up for sale to buy A’s a Vegas stadium, O. Henry warned about this

access_time personNeil deMause

Oaklandish A’s owner John Fisher, as has been covered here ad infinitum, has gotten himself between a rock and a hard place: He’s burned his bridges in Oakland, his team’s temporary home in Sacramento is not working out well at all, and while he has about $600 million in public cash and tax breaks waiting for him in Las Vegas, that’s still around $1 billion shy of what he needs to build a stadium there so his team doesn’t have to play in a vacant lot. Most of Fisher’s family wealth is tied up in Gap stock, which is not doing great itself, leaving his only assets the A’s themselves — which Fisher has been trying and mostly failing to sell minority shares in — and the San Jose Earthquakes MLS team.

Even if you haven’t already read social media this morning, you probably see where this is going:

San Jose Earthquakes owner John Fisher has hired an investment bank to sell his MLS club, according to multiple people familiar with the billionaire’s plans. An official announcement is expected sometime on Wednesday.

In January, the Earthquakes ranked 20th in Sportico’s MLS team valuations at $600 million.

It is certainly possible that Fisher could sell the Earthquakes, take the $600 million in proceeds (less capital gains taxes on the profits from the $20 million he paid for the team in 2007) and his $600 million in Nevada subsidies and $100 million in Aramark concessions contract money and a $300 million Goldman Sachs loan and use that to hire contractors to build his vaporarmadillo, then hope like hell it doesn’t go over budget and that he doesn’t have to then sell the A’s to pay for his stadium’s gold watch chain. Or he could just be trying to keep enough funding balls in the air to convince MLB not to issue him an ultimatum to sell the team to someone who has an actual place for it to play. Not that MLB seems eager to do so — his fellow owners just put Fisher on their executive committee, after all, which isn’t the kind of thing you do with someone you’re about to drum out of the club — but half of raising money is pretending you already have a financial plan, so maybe there’s a method to Fisher’s madness. Or just madness all the way down, either remains possible! More updates on this once Fisher makes an official announcement later today, maybe.

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A’s to get out shovels at Vegas stadium site on June 23 (no, not real shovels)

access_time personNeil deMause

The Oakland Athletics of Sacramento have announced a June 23 groundbreaking for their new Las Vegas stadium, and the gambling news site Casino.org doesn’t pull any punches with its subheds:

The Athletics have set a groundbreaking ceremony date for their new Las Vegas Strip stadium

Which may not get built because the large majority of its funding is still not in place after nearly two years of soliciting shares in the team

But there’s nothing to see here

A’s owner John Fisher has been promising for a while now that he would hold a groundbreaking in June, and this will get in under the gun by a week. This isn’t the start of actual work on the site — that arguably was last month when workers started drilling some holes and building a perimeter fence — and doesn’t seem to represent any ramping up of construction, either: The Las Vegas Review-Journal calls it “more of a celebration for the A’s and state and local politicians to celebrate the work they put into the project leading up to construction beginning.”

Once the celebration is celebrated, it’s unclear what happens next. The plan is to open the stadium by Opening Day 2028, which is maybe possible in a less-than-three-year timespan even with the stadium’s unique engineering challenges, but, as Casino.org and everyone else paying even the slightest attention notes, somebody still needs to cut a $1.75 billion check to the construction company first. Fisher is still hoping to raise $550 million by shopping around chunks of team ownership to potential “investors,” and while concessionaire Aramark is reportedly in for $100 million, that still leaves a sizable funding gap. Fisher could always start spending his own money while waiting to see if any more suckers are willing to buy into the team at an inflated $2 billion value — we’ll see if anyone picks up real shovels after the ceremonial ones get put down on June 23.

There’s no real reason Fisher has to do anything immediately. The state can declare the project abandoned and back out of it if no work has been done in a 180-day span, so expect at least some work before Christmas to keep that clock running, but otherwise he can continue to slow-walk this if he wants to — or needs to, if he really doesn’t have the cash himself. That would likely mean extending his stay in Sacramento, and how’s that going, anyway?

  • “As soon as we got to the ballpark and walked on the field, the first thing we noticed was this warning track is massive,” Minnesota Twins announcer Trevor Plouffe said. “It is not a typical warning track, and it is giving outfielders fits.”
  • “The first thing I thought of was [Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Zack] Wheeler saying, ‘I was all arm when I was here,'” Twins pitcher Joe Ryan said after teammate Pablo Lopez went down with an arm injury after throwing off the Sacramento mound. “We’re in the big leagues, and we have these amenities for a reason. It’s to get prepared and go inside if you need to for a second. Whatever your routine is, you can’t do that here. You can’t do that in Tampa. As his teammate, it makes it sting a little bit more. I don’t think Pablo is the kind of guy that’s going to say it, but I’ll say it.”
  • A’s pitcher Luis Severino on the Sacramento clubhouses being in the outfield, so pitchers can’t go relax there between innings: “This just is not a big league park.”

Or the A’s could always try to decamp temporarily for another location, like Salt Lake City, which just opened its new minor-league ballpark and where attendance is … oh. Oh dear.

There’s no construction cam set up yet for the alleged Vegas A’s stadium, so we’ll just have to continue to follow this through news reports. Tune back in on June 24, and see what’s happening, or isn’t!

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Friday roundup: How real is the threat of a Royals or Chiefs move to Kansas, and other pressing questions

access_time personNeil deMause

Happy zeroth anniversary of that time we decided to all die of bird flu! It’s a fitting way to go out, honestly.

While we’re still here, though, there’s plenty of other stuff to keep getting wrong in the meantime:

  • A company affiliated with the Kansas City Royals has bought the mortgage to a potential stadium site in Kansas’s Johnson County, and … guys, you know that buying the mortgage isn’t anything like buying the land, it just means the property owner makes their payments to you instead of to the original mortgage issuer, right? Sure, if the property owner defaults, you get the land, but that’s a slim thread on which to hang a potential stadium plan — unless of course you’re just looking for easy ways to get “Royals” and “Kansas” into a headline to throw a scare into Missouri, in which case, nice outside-the-box thinking there.
  • Speaking of moving to Kansas, two economists have looked at that state’s STAR tax diversion deal and determined that there’s no way the state can build even one stadium, let alone two, without cannibalizing existing revenue. “A majority of Kansas lawmakers disagree,” reports the Kansas City Beacon, meaning “whether STAR bonds can support one or two teams depends on who you ask” — if you ask people who know what they’re talking about, you get one answer, if you ask people just grandstanding on behalf of the edifice complex you get another, whoda thunk it!
  • Over in Missouri, meanwhile, a group of Republican senators are refusing to consider Chiefs and Royals stadium funding unless the state approves new tax cuts, while Democrats are objecting to spending billions on stadiums when the state is only providing $25 million to tornado relief. “It’s not coming together just swimmingly as of right now,” summed up state Sen. Lincoln Hough.
  • At least one Missouri legislator is still on board: Republican Sen. Mike Cierpiot said spending on stadiums is worth it because “we’re not giving this money to billionaires. We’re giving it to the stadiums, which is owned by the county.” That’s not how stadium ownership works, unfortunately — owning stadiums just costs you property taxes, what’s important is to own the revenue streams from them, and here those would be controlled by the team owners — and isn’t how number agreement works either, this really isn’t going swimmingly.
  • Over on the other side of Missouri, meanwhile, a state audit has found that the Dome at America’s Center — that’s the former home of the St. Louis Rams, not a missile shield program — needs $155 million in maintenance over the next decade, and while that’s not all that much all things considered, the dome is losing money just hosting St. Louis Battlehawks UFL games and the occasional concert, so, you guessed it, the St. Louis Regional Convention and Sports Complex Authority is considering asking for state money. If they can find a way to increase that maintenance price to $500 million, they could qualify for funding under Gov. Mike Kehoe’s everybody-gets-a-stadium plan, I bet diamond-encrusted cupholders would go a long way toward meeting that requirement.
  • And to answer your question, yes, there was some news this week that was not in Missouri or Kansas! Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis vowed not to provide any state money for a Tampa Bay Rays stadium — except for “roads and exits,” of course, gotta have roads and exits. And stairs and ramps are really exits of a kind, right? Not that any local governments are really proposing a new stadium for the Rays at this time, so DeSantis is unlikely to get called on his promise, but it’ll be interesting to see what happens if he’s in office long enough that he does.
  • This New York Times op-ed is getting a lot of likes for its headline (“Sports Stadiums Are Monuments to the Poverty of Our Ambitions”), but fewer seem to be reading down to the part that argues that “cities build stadiums in part because it’s so hard to build almost anything else,” which is presented without evidence and isn’t really historically true, but it’s of the moment because something something Ezra Klein.
  • Does everyone who plays at the don’t-call-us-Sacramento Athletics‘ ad hoc stadium still hate it? You betcha! Sports Illustrated speculates that John Fisher could consider relocating the team again, perhaps to Salt Lake City, but notes that then he wouldn’t be able to get sweet Northern California TV money, and … remind me what size TV market his intended destination of Las Vegas is again? Hmm.
  • And finally, this week in one-sentence media criticism:

Why investigate the public financing of a billion-dollar stadium when you can post pictures of Trisha and Garth with hardhats and shovels?

— J.C. Bradbury (@jcbradbury.bsky.social) 2025-05-30T12:31:50.461Z

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Friday roundup: Cleveland sin tax hike could add $300m in sports subsidies, A’s declare moving dirt around is “essentially” breaking ground in Vegas

access_time personNeil deMause

Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” passed the House yesterday by a single vote, and while there are probably other more important bits to pay attention to — the massive money transfer from the poor to the rich, the mandatory cuts to Medicare that would be triggered, the sops to Big Oil that could increase energy costs — it’s worth noting that it would also cut sports franchise owners’ amortization loophole in half. (This is the tax dodge discovered by Bill Veeck in the 1950s that allows some team owners to double-dip on deductions by claiming tax breaks both for their annual spending on player development and for the presumed loss in team value from the fact that players wear out and have to be replaced. It’s not the biggest of sports subsidies, and there’s no guarantee it will survive the Senate version of the bill, if the Senate actually passes it at all — recall that when Trump’s first-term tax bill tried to eliminate the use of tax-exempt bonds for sports stadiums, the Senate conveniently excised that language — it’s worth keeping one eye on.

The other eye, meanwhile, has had plenty to keep it busy this week:

  • The Cleveland Browns stadium wars keep heating up, with Cleveland and Cuyahoga County officials saying they will no longer work with the Greater Cleveland Partnership, the region’s chamber of commerce, following the partnership’s endorsement of the Browns moving to a new stadium in Brook Park. Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb, meanwhile, said that “we gotta move on” regarding the Browns remaining in their current stadium, and that he plans to focus on developing “a lakefront our residents can be proud of,” with plans to issue a request for proposals this summer. Meanwhile meanwhile, the owners of the Cavaliers and Guardians have issued letters to the partnership expressing concern that if the Browns owners seek to use cigarette and alcohol tax money for their stadium — something they haven’t done yet, but also the financing plan still has big holes in it at present — it could kill chances for Cleveland’s other teams to get increased “sin tax” money, given how much local voters hate the idea of using that money to move the Browns to Brook Park. A sin tax hike could bring in an additional $20 million a year, which could fund about $300 million in future repairs and upgrades for the three teams’ venues.
  • The Oakland Athletics of West Sacramento‘s Las Vegas stadium has “essentially broken gr0und,” claims team president Marc Badain, with cranes coming in to do “shallow foundational work” starting July 1. Badain’s statement was largely overshadowed by the issuance of an agreement for the team to submit a $3.7 million bond to cover the costs of building an eight-foot wall around the site if no stadium ends up being built there; while this probably isn’t a sign that the project is on any shakier ground than already expected — the Raiders signed a similar agreement before successfully building their stadium — it’s still not a great look.
  • There have been a bunch of town halls in D.C. around the proposed $7.5 billion–plus Washington Commanders stadium project subsidy, and while there are people on both sides, one comment from Frazer Walton, a member of the Kingman Park Civic Association, is worth particular attention: “I absolutely support using public funds. I absolutely support seeing millionaires come to the city, so they can pay some of these taxes for us.” That is absolutely not how taxes work and D.C. officials haven’t even released consulting-firm numbers about how they pretend they will, and it makes the case better than I can that D.C. is better off using that money for its education budget, clearly its schools aren’t doing the job they need to.
  • Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings says if wannabe Orlando MLB team owner Rick Workman wants county land for a stadium, “I don’t think we should donate land to billionaires or to wealthy people. They, if anything, have to compensate the people for the land.” D.C. officials, see how it’s done, is that really so hard?
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Friday roundup: Missouri multi-stadium bill caught in party crossfire, Browns threaten not to ask county for $187m

access_time personNeil deMause

Here we are at the end of another programming week, and this being May and May being springtime and springtime being when state legislatures are in session, the news roundup is once again a lot. Which stadium proposals will live, and which will die, and which will die but be brought back to life like a key member of the bridge crew? Let’s recount the clues:

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Friday roundup: D.C. poll shows public support for spending fraction of what Commanders stadium would actually cost

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s been another long week in what feels like an endless series of long weeks, complete with the most expensive stadium subsidy demand ever and whatever the hell this was and a new pope, so let’s all take a moment to relax by watching a major league baseball player get hit on the head with a pop fly. I watched it four times in a row before writing this post, there’s something remarkably soothing about it, provided you’re not Chase Meidroth or his team physician.

And now there’s no avoiding it: the remaining news of the week!

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Friday roundup: Ohio senate leader says damn the analysts’ warnings, full speed ahead on Browns’ $1.2B subsidy

access_time personNeil deMause

Nothing like a week that starts out with a plan for a $1.147 billion stadium subsidy deal and ends with it somewhere well north of $2 billion. But the Washington Commanders horror show wasn’t the only news of the week, so let’s dive in and see what else has been going down:

  • How are Ohio state legislative leaders taking the news that two different state budget analysts have said that the numbers on a proposed $1.2 billion Cleveland Browns stadium subsidy look terrible? “When the Browns put forward those numbers, they’re not putting forward numbers that they grabbed out of a hat. They’ve hired professionals on their side, too,” retorted state senate president Rob McColley. Professional economists on one side, professional clowns on the other, the truth must lie somewhere in the middle! McColley added that senators are “going to make sure that those numbers add up” and will include a “fail-safe” to ensure the state gets its money back, can’t wait to see how that goes.
  • Meanwhile, Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne has asked the state legislature for $350 million to renovate the Browns’ current stadium instead, calling it a “better, and less expensive option,” which is both true and a perfect example of the anchoring cognitive bias. Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb has already offered $240 million in city money toward renovations; this now makes three different official plans for giving upwards of half a billion dollars to Browns owner Jimmy Haslam and none for not giving him any.
  • Here’s a handy chart of where D.C. councilmembers stand on the proposed Commanders stadium deal, with the current tally being four yes, four no, three undecided, and one did not answer. There’s also a special election to fill the Ward 8 seat left vacant by the expulsion of councilmember Trayon White for bribery charges, which is expected to be won by none other than Trayon White, but that’s not till July 15 and the stadium deal has to be voted on by then (quelle coincidence!) so it won’t count, meaning Commanders owner Josh Harris and Mayor Muriel Bowser need to collect three more yes votes from the four remaining swing votes; staffers in those offices might want to take their phones off the hook for the next 11 weeks, because the full-court press lobbying campaign is doubtless going to be brutal.
  • Concessionaire Aramark is reportedly in “talks” with (Your City Name Here) Athletics owner John Fisher about investing $100 million in a Las Vegas stadium project and another $100 million in the team, if by invest you mean pre-paying concession fees that Fisher would get anyway.
  • New soccer stadiums may sound like a great idea to boost team revenues and revitalize cities, writes Aaron Timms in the Guardian, but they often don’t work out that way, leaving fans unhappy at sterile new buildings and teams struggling to repay construction costs. Unless you’re in the U.S., where it’s cities that are on the hook for much of the costs and struggling to repay them: “Stadium-led revitalization is the myth that will survive the apocalypse. New stadiums, as a vast body of academic literature shows, bring few of the economic benefits that developers, team owners, and local politicians promise. Whatever stimulus they offer to economic activity in their immediate vicinity is invariably offset by a corresponding depression in spending and investment in other areas of the same city.”
  • The people who want to bring an MLB team to Orlando say they have close to $1.5 billion lined up to buy a team, which sounds impressive until you realize MLB wants $2 billion for expansion franchises and somebody would have to build a new stadium in Orlando too, but “Orlando rich people happy to pay $1.5 billion toward a team and stadium worth double that” didn’t look as good atop the press release.
  • How’s the economic boom in Green Bay from hosting the NFL draft going? “Sales were down maybe 50%,” Cold Stone Creamery Green Bay owner Amin Elhalw said. “Gradually the closer we got to the draft, the sales were decreasing, the percentage.” Local businesses blamed draft traffic and road closures for keeping away regular customers, funny how that happens.
  • The developer of the Ybor City site in Tampa where Rays owner Stu Sternberg was at one point considering building a stadium (until it turned out nobody wanted to pay to build it for him) now says there’s no room for one, “unless the Rays can build a very tiny stadium.” Turns out building apartments and shopping pencils out better, funny how that happens.
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Field of Schemes