Category: Charlotte MLS team

Friday roundup: VA proposes spending a damn billion dollars on Commanders stadium, all other news pales in comparison

access_time personNeil deMause

That Virginia bill to create a football authority to build a Washington Commanders stadium isn’t just authorizing legislation, it turns out — last night it also got financing details during a senate committee hearing, and the numbers are jaw-dropping: $1 billion in state money toward a $3 billion stadium, to be paid off from “a projected $3 billion dollars in tax revenue from the new stadium” over 30 years.

The first question to ask, obviously: Would this be actual new tax revenue, or money kicked back from existing taxes in a stadium district (a TIF), or what? WUSA-TV, which appears to be the only news outlet that was paying attention to last night’s state senate finance and appropriations committee hearing, cited bill sponsor Sen. Richard Saslaw (D-Fairfax) as promising that borrowing $1 billion for a stadium “does not create a penny of debt.” (Yup, he said that.) WUSA also cited George Mason University business professor and former Commanders exec George Perry as saying this “doesn’t appear” to be taxpayer funding, though in an accompanying video Perry also warned that a football stadium open only a handful of days a year shouldn’t necessarily be expected to spark a ton of surrounding development, so who the hell knows, man.

The bill’s financing plan doesn’t look to have been posted to the senate committee’s website yet, despite a promise there that “presentation materials are posted to our Web page at the beginning of each meeting,” so this one news report is really all we have to go on so far. Further updates on Monday, I hope; in the meantime, settle in from the sticker shock over maybe the biggest NFL stadium subsidy proposal in history with some other news from the week that was:

  • The Arizona Board of Regents approved the plan for the Arizona Coyotes to rent Arizona State University’s 5,000-seat arena for the next three seasons, though the team will have to start the 2022-23 season on an extended road trip since the arena won’t be open until December. Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo will have to spend $20 million to build a new outbuilding with separate locker rooms for the NHL team, and will pay an undisclosed rent on the arena.
  • NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said “the bottom line on it is we have to get a new [Bills] stadium in Buffalo,” and MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said there’s a “sense of urgency” for a new Tampa Bay Rays stadium because not having one “hampers the ability of the business to operate,” and NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said “the sooner people figure out how to get a new [Calgary Flames] arena, the better it’ll be,” everybody drink!
  • Check out what $50 million in renovations (half paid for by public tax dollars) to the Carolina Panthers‘ stadium to accommodate the new Charlotte F.C. MLS team buys you: If you had “new locker room with a giant team logo on the ceiling and a special room just for the soccer players to store their stinky cleats in,” you’re a winner!
  • The Baltimore Sun editorial board is fine with spending $1.2 billion on Baltimore Ravens and Orioles stadium upgrades because spending state lottery revenue is “not a taxpayer bailout” (yup, they said that), but wants the state legislature to get more details on what exactly the renovations would look like and cost before cutting a check. Yay, bare minimum of democracy!
  • Lexington, Kentucky, already home to the indie-minors Atlantic League baseball team the Lexington Legends, is going to get a second team in the same league that will play in the same stadium while the Legends are on the road, and it will be called the Kentucky Wild Health Genomes after a local genomics-based medical clinic. I have lots of questions and I’m sure you do, too, but suffice to say that putting your corporate name in the actual team name and not just the stadium name (the genome people are doing that as well) will make it an awful lot harder for those of us who don’t bother using corporate-branded stadium names to not mention their company. Though I suppose we could always say “Lexington Atlantic League Baseball Team” — no, wait, that’s not specific enough, pretty sneaky, sis!
  • If you would like a “Pay For Your Own Damn Stadium” sticker, the Center for Economic Accountability has got you covered. If you would rather have a billion dollars in cash, please buy an NFL team and then contact your local state legislature.

 

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Friday roundup: Dolan vows price hikes if he loses MSG tax break, Palm Desert arena builder says city wants “handout,” and other sports owners doing the craziest things

access_time personNeil deMause

There’s a construction crew with jackhammers outside my window digging up the exact same patch of sidewalk they spent most of last year digging up, so if you think you’re getting a clever Friday roundup intro this week, you’ve got another think coming.

  • New York Knicks and Rangers owner James Dolan has warned that if whoever gets elected as New York’s new mayor this year repeals his teams’ $50-million-a-year property tax exemption for Madison Square Garden — something that isn’t actually in the mayor’s power, since it’s a state tax break, but anyway — he may have to raise ticket prices in response. This implies that Dolan is currently charging less for tickets than the market will bear out of gratitude for having some tax-break money rattling around in his pockets, which doesn’t sound like how a billionaire failson operates; the alternatives would either be that Dolan is bluffing, or that he’s so dumb that he would raise ticket prices to the point where it would lose him money out of misguided spite, either of which seems very James Dolan.
  • Officials in Palm Desert, California, say that before approving Tim Leiweke’s proposed minor-league hockey arena, they want to know who’ll pay for an estimated $5 million a year in added police and fire costs; Leiweke fired back that Palm Desert “just wants a handout and we’re not going to do that,” earning himself a dictionary entry next to this entry.
  • Major league stadium subsidy demands may have slowed somewhat during the pandemic, but minor-league schemes are making up for lost time, especially in baseball following MLB’s takeover and planned shrinkage move. Look, here’s Ryan Moore, the GM of the Myrtle Beach Pelicans, declaring that without $15 million in upgrade money, his team’s stadium “won’t last another 20 years as it stands.” When was it built? 1999. Moore didn’t specify whether the building was on borrowed time because it was mistakenly built out of papier-mâché or because if it’s not renovated, he would personally blow it up.
  • Of course, here’s a Columbus Dispatch article that calls the Columbus Crew stadium built in 1999 “historic,” so maybe time is just compressed right now, probably due to time dilation from a passing black hole.
  • The Clark County Commission has approved former UNLV basketball player Jackie Robinson’s plans to build a $3 billion sports arena complex on the Las Vegas Strip, despite Vegas already having more arenas than it can shake a stick at. Now all Robinson needs is $3 billion, and he’s all set!
  • I’m still waiting for an oral history of the collapse of the European Super League, but until then we’ll have to settle for the New York Times’ blow-by-blow, which features among other things Juventus president Andrea Agnelli repeatedly promising the head of UEFA that he was about to issue a statement condemning any breakaway attempt, then shutting off his phone, which is absolutely the image we should all take away from this fiasco.
  • New Charlotte F.C. stadium renovation renderings! Unfortunately, they’re pretty dull, though there’s some fairly odd mise en scène going on. Like, what’s up with this woman waiting at a stadium bar by contorting her limbs into as pretzely a shape as she can manage?
    And then there’s this father and child, or possibly kidnapper and attempted victim?
    Either way, the city of Charlotte is clearly getting a whole lot of new places for bros to buy beer for its $25 million in funding for this project, so that’s definitely money well spent.
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Friday roundup: Charlotte approves $35m in soccer subsidies, NYC spends $5m on stadium upgrades for team that may disappear, NBA joins NFL in welcoming fans back to giant virus stew

access_time personNeil deMause

Even after dispensing with that crazy San Jose Sharks move threat story, there’s a ton of leftover news this week. So put down that amazing Defector article about how the British have fetishized the Magna Carta as a declaration of citizen rights when it’s really just about how the king can’t unreasonably tax 25 barons, and let’s get right to it:

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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

access_time personNeil 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:

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Friday roundup: Panthers owner donated to Charlotte officials during stadium lobbying, St. Louis MLS didn’t need $30m in state money after all, and what time the Super Bowl economic impact rationalizations start

access_time personNeil deMause

Happy Friday, and try not to think about how much you’re contributing to climate change by reading this on whatever electronic device you’re using. Though at least reading this in text doesn’t require a giant server farm like watching a video about stadiums would — “Streaming one hour of Netflix a week requires more electricity, annually, than the yearly output of two new refrigerators” is one of the more alarming sentences I’ve read ever — so maybe it counts as harm reduction? I almost linked to an amusing video clip to deliver my punchline, wouldn’t that have been ironic!

And now, the news:

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Charlotte mayor vows $110m in city funds to help Panthers’ billionaire owner gussy up stadium for MLS

access_time personNeil deMause

There’s a smidge of new information on the city of Charlotte’s previously revealed plans to spend $100-200 million on renovations to the Carolina Panthers‘ stadium so that Panthers owner David Tepper can add an MLS expansion franchise that seems destined to be officially announced any day now: According to a November letter from Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles to MLS commissioner Don Garber,

Our plans together include … Modifications to Bank of America Stadium to support MLS and provide a world-class fan experience … $110 million in hospitality funds set aside to help ensure a successful venture over the next many years

Lyles neglected to mention that she’ll need the Charlotte city council’s approval to spend $110 million in tax money, but then, that doesn’t seem like it’ll be an obstacle.

Still unexplained is what exactly Tepper needs $110 million in public money for — both in the sense of how he’ll spend it (the Panthers’ stadium is just 23 years old and freshly renovated with the help of previous rounds of tax money) and in the sense of If this billionaire hedge fund manager can afford to drop $300 million on an MLS expansion franchise, why can’t he foot the bill for $110 million in stadium upgrades as well? Which also raises the question of whether the $110 million is really just underwriting Tepper’s record-breaking MLS expansion fee, which would mean the city of Charlotte would be spending public dollars just to shore up the league’s none-dare-call-it-Ponzi model. Or, as Lyles puts it, being “a welcoming, diverse and inclusive community to the league’s 30th team.” Maybe “diverse” here means “not all large bills”?

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Garber says Charlotte next MLS expansion frontrunner, fee to be part of money-losing league now up to $300m

access_time personNeil deMause

MLS commissioner Don Garber was back on the expansion-franchise hustings this weekend in advance of the MLS Cup final, and had a bunch of newish stuff to let slip:

  • In the race for the 30th and final announced MLS franchise, Garber said, “It’s fair to say that Charlotte has done a lot of work to move their bid really to the front of the line.”
  • He also mentioned Las Vegas and Phoenix as cities that “our expansion committee has been engaging,” which certainly seems to hint that those cities will be first in line for franchises 31 and 32, once those are inevitably announced.
  • According to the minimum-wage-paying content farm currently bearing the name Sports Illustrated (the article is actually by one of SI’s remaining actual staff journalists, Grant Wahl), “The 30th team is expected to pay a $300 million expansion fee.”
  • An official announcement for the 30th team will be made in the “next number of months,” which definitely narrows it down to sometime in, um, the future.

The key number there is clearly “$300 million,” which is crazy in that Forbes estimates most of the existing teams in bigger markets aren’t even worth that much, but less crazy if you see this as MLS trying to take advantage of too many billionaires with too much money burning holes in their pockets and a bad case of tulipomania. If people are willing to keep paying increasing amounts of money for smaller and smaller slices of the MLS pie — which is mostly a whole lot of money-losing MLS teams plus a money-making Soccer United Marketing enterprise, and SUM doesn’t get any more lucrative just because you add more owners — then of course he should be grabbing their cash with both hands.

What happens when and if the world runs out of soccer-loving billionaires, of course, is another story, but MLS will happily cross that bridge when they come to it. Or runs out of cities willing to help underwrite stadium costs so that owners can better afford those crazy expansion fees — Charlotte’s jump to the front of the line almost certainly has less to do with its charms as a city or a soccer hotbed and more to do with the fact it just re-elected a city council eager to give Carolina Panthers owner David Tepper $100-200 million for stadium upgrades so he can host an MLS team at his NFL stadium. The endgame is likely going to be ugly unless MLS can increase its popularity in a hurry, but success in the grifting economy is less about a happy endgame than cashing out before the chickens come home to roost.

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Boise votes to require vote on soccer stadium funding, Charlotte votes for council set to okay soccer stadium funding

access_time personNeil deMause

It was an oddly slow Election Day for sports-related votes — the big Oklahoma City vote on the latest MAPS sales-tax surcharge that would provide public money for a USL soccer stadium isn’t until December 10 — but there were a couple of notable items:

  • Boise, Idaho residents, facing a demand for a $50 million soccer stadium to lure a USL franchise, voted to require a public vote before the city can participate in any sports stadium project that costs more than $5 million in public or private money. (They also voted for a similar requirement for any library project costing more than $25 million.) That sounds like it should be airtight enough to avoid the legal pitfalls that befell Seattle’s similar Initiative 91 when it turned out to be unclear what a public “investment” meant — tax breaks? only direct cash? — but then again, since I-91 did its job fine in terms of preventing major sports giveaways, maybe it’s the spirit of the thing that counts.
  • The mayor of Charlotte and all the city council incumbents up for re-election got re-elected, and since the current city council has been largely willing to listen to Carolina Panthers owner David Tepper’s ask for $100-200 million in stadium improvement to bring an MLS team to town, that’s probably good news for that project. Or bad news for anyone who thinks that $200 million (or more!) to upgrade an existing football stadium for soccer is kinda crazy.

 

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Charlotte council considers $100-200m subsidy for stadium upgrades for MLS, or whole new MLS stadium, they won’t tell anyone exactly

access_time personNeil deMause

Speaking of cities that don’t actually have MLS franchises yet but are hoping to, the Charlotte city council met in closed session on Monday night, according to WSOC-TV, to discuss spending $100 million to $200 million on upgrades to the Carolina Panthers‘ stadium to make it more attractive to soccer:

Sources said a dome is not under consideration at this point, but changes to Bank of America Stadium could include a middle entrance to the field for the soccer players and adding two locker rooms.

Okay, sure, those are things that a soccer team might like, but $100-200 million?!? The entire stadium only cost $248 million to build, which, sure, was in 1996 dollars, but still that seems a bit on the pricey side to add two locker rooms and a walkway.

Over at WBTV, meanwhile, the news is somewhat different, with Panthers owner (and wannabe MLB owner) David Tepper asking for $100-200 million for an entirely new stadium:

During the meeting, those presenting the pitch outlined a request for between roughly $100 million and $200 million in city funds for the facility, which would host a future soccer team and not also share a space with the Carolina Panthers.

Or maybe not!

Unlike the first two sources that WBTV spoke with, the third source clarified the city funds would be used to upfit Bank of America Stadium, where the Panthers currently play, to convert it to a soccer stadium.

Try to get your story straight before hitting Publish, guys!

Let’s see what the Charlotte Observer has to say:

Carolina Panthers owner David Tepper may ask the City of Charlotte for up to $215 million toward Bank of America Stadium renovations and other costs associated with acquiring a new Major League Soccer franchise.

Not actually helping to clarify things! Also, $215 million is not in the $100-200 million range!

Assuming this is actually stadium upgrades and not a new stadium, WSOC-TV reporter Joe Bruno added this on Twitter:

The entire Charlotte city council and the city’s mayor are all up for election in November, so we’re looking here at a $100-million-plus subsidy proposal being discussed by the council in secret, then voted on just weeks before the lame duck officials leave office. I for one applaud Charlotte city officials for knowing how to get things done, without all this mucking about with messy democracy.

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Friday roundup: Another Islanders arena delay, Wisconsin to wrap up Brewers stadium spending but not really, Italy wins (?) 2026 Olympics

access_time personNeil deMause

My endorsement of Hmm Daily last month was so successful that this week the site announced it’s shutting down. I am now officially afraid to tell you people to give money to any other particular site, lest I bestow the kiss of death on them as well, but you should give money to someone you like, because journalism is in bad shape, with dire effects on, among other things, the public’s ability to hold elected officials accountable.

Speaking of which, here’s this week’s news about elected officials doing unaccountable things, and the rich dudes who want to keep it that way:

UPDATE: Just realized I forgot to link to my Deadspin article yesterday on Stuart Sternberg’s Tampontreal Ex-Rays threat, Richard Nixon, Kinder eggs, and bird evolution. And now I have done so, so go read it!

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