In case you missed the live recap of yesterday’s St. Petersburg city council meeting, the council approved selling $287.5 million in bonds for a new stadium for the Tampa Bay Rays, reversing their vote of two weeks ago to hold off on the move. What happened is pretty straightforward: The two councilmembers who’d flipped to “no” votes two weeks ago flipped back to “yes” — while their stated excuse was that they were content that team execs were no longer calling the deal entirely dead, presumably it was more the recognition that this was likely now or never, as starting in January there would be two new anti-stadium-funding members of the council, and they didn’t want to be accused of dawdling too long like the Pinellas County Commission.
So what happens now? The county commission still has its slim 4-3 majority against selling its $312.5 million in stadium bonds unless Rays owner Stu Sternberg renegotiates the deal; at the same time, Sternberg and his top aides are insisting that they need the pot sweetened to cover the costs of the bond sale having been delayed, even though the original deal said it didn’t need to happen until next April. Historically, this usually leads to some serious haggling between team officials and whichever commission member they think they can flip — the only question is which one would be willing to flip for the cheapest price, and whether “okay, we won’t ask the county to pay for the cost overruns that we’re suddenly claiming exist” would count as a concession. (Okay, there’s also the question of when and if the St. Pete council will sign off on repairing the Tropicana Field roof so the Rays would have somewhere to play in 2026 and 2027, as they didn’t vote on that yesterday, but even if that’s delayed a bit, the team could presumably extend its stay at Tampa’s Steinbrenner Field into early 2026 without too much trouble.)
Or the county commission could decide to hold the line at its December 17 meeting and delay the bond sale again, or even reject it altogether, at which point, understates Mayor Ken Welch, “that sets us on a different path.” We’ll find out a week from Tuesday, but right now, the odds of Sternberg getting his $1 billion public subsidy deal or something close to it look a lot higher than they did a couple of days ago.
But enough about the Rays, already — other stuff happened this week, let’s get to it:
- The Las Vegas Stadium Authority Board gave its final signoff to an Athletics stadium in Las Vegas after team owner John Fisher submitted a letter vowing that “members of my family and I are committing to contribute up to $1,100,000,000” to the project. The Associated Press called this clearing “the last major hurdle” for a Vegas stadium, which isn’t really true: The Clark County Commission still needs to hold its own vote, something A’s exec Sandy Dean said the team was in early stages of talks for; and, of course, Fisher still needs to actually figure out where to get that $1.1 billion — he claims he’s still looking for new private investors, but those seem unlikely to materialize at this late date, so he may need to decide on whether it’s worth committing a large chunk of his family’s wealth to building a very expensive stadium in what would be easily MLB’s smallest market. If he does, and if the county signs off, construction could start as early as next spring with a stadium opening in 2028, but those are still fairly major hurdles.
- The Cleveland Browns hired a real estate consulting firm, as one does, to determine the economic impact of building a new stadium in Brook Park, and announced that the county would see an added five squillion dollars in annual economic impact (give or take a squillion). Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne responded with a statement that “economic impact studies commissioned by organizations with a vested interest often present overly optimistic projections that do not reflect the financial realities faced by local governments and taxpayers” and that “we’re going to have to throw a flag on the play.” (And we were so close to getting out of this without any football metaphors!) Still, this allows the media to portray this as “Browns study says five squillion dollars, city claims only three squillion, truth must lie somewhere in the middle,” which is why real estate consulting firms get paid the big bucks.
- A city council vote on the proposed Philadelphia 76ers arena is expected by December 19, and Chinatown groups made a last-ditch effort to demand that the team owners increase their community benefits agreement from $50 million to $300 million. (Sports economist Geoff Propheter says this would be close to what Sixers owner Josh Harris would be saving in property tax breaks, at least.) Developers said at a hearing Tuesday that $300 million would be too much, but were open to a smaller increase; with the council seemingly set on approving the deal, we look to have entered the haggling over the price phase.
- NYC F.C. held a groundbreaking for their new Queens stadium, now to be called Etihad Park after a brief but memorable spell being depicted as Naming Rights Sponsor Stadium. The city’s Independent Budget Office recently issued its long-awaited report on the cost of city tax breaks for the stadium, and determined that team owners Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan and the New York Yankees will save $538 million via the site being exempted from property taxes, though it also notes that it could have saved all but $74 million of that money through other city tax breaks anyway. So, yay?
- Washington Commanders owner Josh Harris (yes, same Josh Harris) and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell went to D.C. this week to lobby Congress to hand over the RFK Stadium site to the district for a potential NFL stadium, and Maryland’s two senators responded that they would demand that one of D.C.’s two Air National Guard squadrons be transferred to Maryland in exchange. This is officially peak haggling over the price, I think we’re done here, have a good weekend and see you on Monday!
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