Category: Chicago Fire

Chicago to vote on swiping $287m in tax money from next neighborhood over to fund Fire soccer stadium development

access_time personNeil deMause

Last September, when the Chicago city council voted to approve a new Fire soccer stadium at the downtown The 78 site that had previously been considered for a White Sox stadium, I reported that “Fire owner Joe Mansueto says he’ll build [it] with his own money, so there should be no public funding involved” but also that “some details still need to be ironed out” so “maybe it’s best to say there probably won’t be any public funding involved, fingers crossed, knock wood.”

Ten months later, how’s that going?

Chicago officials plan to redirect $287 million of West Loop property tax revenue for infrastructure surrounding Chicago Fire FC’s new stadium at the 78, a shift poised to help jumpstart the South Loop megaproject and reduce risk for developer Related Midwest.

But wait, you may ask if you’ve been paying way too close attention to this story, isn’t The 78 already in a TIF district where any rise in property tax receipts is kicked back to pay for “infrastructure” development? Ah, but that TIF district only has enough projected property tax revenue to pay for part of the  infrastructure; this would be money from a different TIF district, the Canal/Congress TIF District nearby, which would be diverted to the Roosevelt/Clart TIF District that the Fire stadium would be built in. This, writes Crain’s Chicago Business with a bit too narrow a focus on the last word in its name, “likely makes it easier for Related to finance the project’s $425 million infrastructure bill at a time when many institutional investors and lenders are avoiding the city,” which it certainly would. it would also leave the Canal/Congress district with $287 million less money, and what that district using its property tax receipts for, anyway?

“What gives me concern is the plan to raid the Canal/Congress TIF in order to pay for it,” [alderman Bill] Conway said, arguing the move will leave the city without TIF resources for maintenance of Union Station, Ogilvie Transportation Center and a Greyhound bus station the city is buying. “It seems like it will have a significant negative impact on public transit in the city.”

(Why, yes, Conway’s district includes the Canal/Congress TIF area but not The 78, why do you ask?)

The city council finance committee already voted 30-1 to approve the TIF shift on Monday, with the full council set to vote today. If it approves the deal, Mansueto would still technically be building the $750 million stadium with his own money. He would, however, be getting $425 million worth of other free stuff: $216 million for “public structures, plazas, and open space”; $105 million for “road infrastructure”; and the rest for things like upgrades to the wall holding back the Chicago River and improvements to the site’s Metra commuter rail connection.

The total price tag for everything that the city of Chicago will be building for The 78 developers via kicked-back property taxes still remains about the same — $700 million for the whole site — so this is less an increased taxpayer cost than the city running short on the originally planned source of funds and having to find other pockets to dip into, a la everything that’s going on in Cleveland. Not sure if that makes it better or worse, but raiding funds that could otherwise go to upkeep of the city’s train and bus stations so that a billionaire soccer team owner and his $70 billion real estate developer partner can “reduce risk” sure doesn’t sound great, unless you’re a member of the billionaire class.

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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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Getting new stadiums in big markets “critical” for MLS, but cities aren’t driving hard bargains

access_time personNeil deMause

The Athletic, aka the non-union (for now) sports website that the New York Times replaced its sports department with, ran an article yesterday about MLS and its desire for new stadiums that sits firmly in the pantheon of “the business of sports business writing is business” reporting: The first words are “Chicago Fire owner Joe Mansueto’s eye for Chicago real estate,” and it just gets more investment-bro-y from there. The ostensible topic is how the Fire and NYC F.C. and the New England Revolution are all working on new stadiums, and how MLS needs them to “wake up” those “critical markets” and “make those teams truly matter in those cities.”

If this means anything, it presumably means getting more people to go to MLS games in those cities. The Revolution and Fire were 7th and 8th in MLS attendance last year — to the extent that official MLS attendance figures mean anything — while NYC F.C. was in 14th. Those figures, all in the 21,000-24,000 per game range, pale in comparison to Atlanta United (41,000 per game) or the Seattle Sounders (31,000), but then those teams play in NFL stadiums, so they have the capacity to draw more. And in fact the new Fire stadium would only hold 22,000 and the Revolution stadium 24,000, both less than the teams claim to be drawing now, so it’s going to be tough to see much increase in announced attendance, though perhaps fewer fans will show up dressed as empty seats.

Either way, the fact that a soccer reporter is asserting that “activating the country’s biggest markets is critical for [MLS] building relevance and establishing a superior television audience” is an indication that MLS needs big markets more than the big markets need MLS, so if new soccer-only stadiums in those markets are truly what will make the league a success, its owners can reasonably be expected to find the capital to build them themselves. Both NYC F.C. and the Fire (Boston is still in the planning stages) are covering construction costs, but both are also being built on land that is at least partly exempt from property tax, amounting to subsidies of around $538 million in New York and $700 million (not all of it for the stadium) in Chicago, plus perhaps another $200 million in infrastructure costs for New York. Could those cities have cut better deals, knowing that the league needed to get them done in order to build relevance and establish a superior television audience? We’ll never know — though early indications in the Revolution’s stadium plans show that holding firm and refusing to give up the store is an option, when savvy city negotiators recognize their leverage.

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Friday roundup: Fire stadium wins Chicago approval, A’s set MLB record for alienating all their new fans already

access_time personNeil deMause

With all the ginormous stadium and arena wrassles like the Washington Commanders stadium and the San Antonio Spurs arena project and the never-ending Tampa Bay Rays saga, it’s sometimes easy to forget about all the other deals that are somewhere in the vicinity of the back burner. Let’s check in on some of those this week, along with some old favorites:

  • The Chicago city council voted yesterday to approve the Chicago Fire‘s plans for a new stadium at the The 78 site, which since Fire owner Joe Mansueto says he’ll build with his own money, so there should be no public funding involved. The Chicago Tribune, though, notes that “some details still need to be ironed out” for the larger redevelopment, including what to do about a new Red Line CTA station and relocating Metra train tracks after developer Related declared the original plan too costly. And what about the rumored parking garage that would, like the now-scrapped transit improvements, possibly use kicked-back property taxes via a TIF? Maybe it’s best to say there probably won’t be any public funding involved, fingers crossed, knock wood.
  • Sacramento Athletics fans are already fast on their way to being non-Athletics fans, reports ESPN, with one season ticket holder writing to the team: “Being a season ticket holder for the Athletics is embarrassing to the point that I regret telling my friends or coworkers. I cannot give away tickets, I cannot easily sell games I can’t make it to (at market rate-especially on SeatGeek), and I feel ignored by the team sales staff.” (The team responded by giving him a plastic bag of leftover giveaways that he already had.) SFGate, meanwhile, reports that an A’s fan this summer summed things up by declaring, “Fuck John Fisher. John Fisher’s a piece of shit,” while wearing a “Sacramento hates you too” cap. Things will surely improve once the team starts playing in Las Vegas in 2028, theoretically.
  • The San Francisco 49ers owners are supposed to cover the $6.4 million cost of hosting the 2026 Super Bowl, but the team’s nonprofit that is on the hook for the costs has no money, which is maybe a problem? Sports economist Geoffrey Propheter says he is “particularly concerned about the statement that the 49ers will reimburse the city for ‘approved expenses,’ with the 49ers seemingly being the judge of what is approved,” and sports economist Michael Leeds agrees, warning that “mega-events such as the Super Bowl almost invariably have costs that are higher than predicted and local impacts that are lower than predicted.”
  • A downtown site targeted for a possible new Kansas City Royals stadium was just sold to a Wichita developer, decreasing the chances that it will end up used for a ballpark. Not that Royals owner John Sherman has said much about where he might want to build a stadium as a December deadline approaches for accepting around $700 million in tax money from Kansas if he moves there, shh, he’s trying to get city or county money to go with his state money from either Kansas or Missouri, don’t bother daddy while he’s trying to concentrate.
  • Going with the headline “Brewers bolster ballpark after $500M deal” when $471 million of the money is coming from state taxpayers is a choice, Fox6 Milwaukee.
  • Marc Normandin has a good rundown on MLB commissioners Rob Manfred’s conflicting missions of doing what team owners want and doing what’s best for baseball, especially when owners themselves can’t agree on what they want: Some owners want to force the players union into accepting a salary cap at all costs, while others are more concerned about the damage an extended lockout in 2027 would do to the league’s broadcast value when it’s time to renegotiate TV deals after 2028. Explains Normandin: “Basically, he has to use this time to convince them of what they should want, so that he can then enact it just like they want him to — otherwise, he’ll have to do what they want him to, even if he thinks it goes against their best interests, because he is beholden to them in the end.” Shaking down players and cities and TV networks for money all at once is no easy feat, you try it sometime!
  • Fine, here’s an update on the Commanders stadium deal as well: The mixed-use district around the stadium will need to go through normal zoning procedures rather than being fast-tracked under a last-minute amendment, meaning they may not be ready for years after the stadium’s planned 2030 opening. That’s bad if you want to live in the promised affordable housing, but does at least also make the development rights less valuable to team owner Josh Harris, meaning the public subsidy is now more likely to be closer to $6.6 billion than $25 billion, yay?
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Friday roundup: Browns still haggling over stadium permit, Fire stadium could include TIF-funded parking garage

access_time personNeil deMause

We’ve somehow ended up again at the last Friday in August, and if history is any guide, none of you are actually reading this, as you’re all headed out of town for the long weekend (as am I). So I could write about anything, really — maybe, okay, that’s too depressing. No, not that, either. How about we stay away from the current U.S. administration and … eeeagh! Fine, sports stadium news it is!

  • Cleveland Browns officials and representatives of the Ohio Department of Transportation are “in discussions” on the height of the Browns’ proposed stadium that ODOT ruled could interfere with flights into nearby Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, but “it remains unclear whether those talks could lead to a compromise,” reports Cleveland.com. The only wiggle room appears to be either digging the stadium lower into the ground (unlikely, since it’s already set to be 80 feet below ground level) or move it farther from the airport (maybe, though if you go too far you run into I-71). If they can’t negotiate an accommodation by Tuesday, the team’s owners can still file an appeal of ODOT’s ruling in state court.
  • Chicago Fire owner Joe Mansueto quietly removed a bunch of plans for a new park and transit and bike path improvements to accompany his proposed new soccer stadium, and advocates for parks, transit, and bike paths are steamed! The new plan also includes a parking garage that could potentially be funded by property taxes from the site (i.e., a TIF), which one steamed Chicagoan told Streetsblog Chicago may not be “even permissible under existing regulations.” Expect lots of shouting at the next Zoom meeting on the project’s transit plan, scheduled for September 9.
  • Wannabe Orlando MLB expansion team owner Jim Schnorf says he’s “confident we will be awarded a Major League franchise in the next decade,” citing the fact that Orlando is bigger than other prospective expansion markets (true) and that it has made more progress on stadium funding (not really so much true). Orlando is also very close to Tampa Bay, which already has the Rays (for now, at least), and MLB expansion looks to be on hold for now while the Rays and Athletics stadium situations get resolved so those team owners have lots of cities available to use as move threats, but “confidence” is nice!
  • Boston city councilor Julia Mejia and the Boston NAACP have proposed a scaled-back rebuild of White Stadium just for school sports that would cut the city’s costs to an estimated $64.6 million from the $100 million-$172 million it would cost for the city’s share of a stadium for the NWSL’s Boston Legacy F.C. That would leave Legacy without a stadium, which was originally the whole point of this exercise, but would also create possibly $100 million in savings that Mejia and the NAACP say should be put toward “unmet student needs” in public schools. Mejia tried to introduce this as a bill on Wednesday but the council ruled it out of order since it already voted for the NWSL stadium version; Mejia says she’ll find other ways to raise it.
  • Houston Astros owner Jim Crane is suing Harris County to keep being allowed to not pay property tax even though Harris County officials say they have no intention of trying to charge the Astros property tax. So long as nobody who owns a sports team has to pay property tax, that’s the important thing, no matter what those crazy judges in New Jersey think.
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Behold, the future of soccer stadiums, Chicago Fire vaportecture edition

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s been a long, dismal spring of record-breaking stadium subsidies making their way through state legislatures (not to mention other even more dismal stuff), so let’s have some fresh vaportecture as a respite from all the horror! And it’s for the proposed Chicago Fire stadium, which will allegedly be built entirely with the team owner’s own money. (The overall development itself will get a ton of tax kickbacks, but we won’t think about that right now.) Roll it!

Okay, sure, that’s fine enough. The stadium looks like a stadium, the sun is actually setting in the west at game time, nobody spelled the city’s name wrong. I do have some questions about what appears to be a practice (or youth?) field next to the stadium and whether all those tents and people walking on it before the game won’t destroy the turf and make it unplayable, but as these things go, that’s a minor quibble.

Likewise, let’s look at everything the interior image got right: There are 11 players on each team, and no one is reacting to the exciting play on the pitch by standing up and holding a scarf to face the back rows. And what exciting play it is: A Fire player looks to have just dribbled an opposing defender so ferociously that the defender just straight-up face-planted on the pitch, leaving the Fire player open for a likely goal. Too bad so many of the photographers lining the field seem to be looking in the wrong direction to get any good photos of the play, but you can’t have everything.

Okay, now you’re talking! What on earth kind of act is this that involves one guitar player and one dancer (?) while a sparsely arranged crowd generally pays no attention to the stage, despite it being lit by multiple spotlights? Is this what future stadium shows will look like now that currently popular artists are all canceling stadium gigs because they can’t sell enough tickets?

Anything else? Overblown quotes from team officials, perhaps?

Fire president Dave Baldwin told the Sun-Times the team wanted the design to harken back to “the City of Broad Shoulders” and its “rich industrial manufacturing heritage.”

“It has that Chicago warehouse feel, but also has a little bit of an enduring elegance to it — the brick facade, the steel, the glass, those are all things that were really important to Joe as we designed this,” Baldwin said. “Whether it’s opening day in 2028, or you fast forward 50 years and you come back to the stadium, it should still feel relevant to Chicago.”

Sure, brick, glass, steel, all things that scream “Chicago.” Or, you know, Baltimore. It probably would be too much to expect a stadium incorporating deep-dish pizza or sausages made of dead rats into its façade, but we’ll have to take what we can get.

As Baldwin noted, the projected opening date is 2028. That’s pretty aggressive given that it’s already halfway through 2025 and Chicago isn’t exactly known for its balmy winters and all-year construction schedules, but we can’t entirely rule it out.

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Amid Bears subsidy opposition, Fire owner vows to pay for own Chicago stadium (maybe, sorta)

access_time personNeil deMause

So much going on of late with the Chicago Bears stadium plans! If, that is, by “so much” you mean team execs getting multiple doors slammed in their face by the state legislature, which adjourned over the weekend without taking action on any of three bills that the team wanted to help fund a new stadium, either in Arlington Heights or somewhere. The three bills would have: 1) allowed local government to freeze property taxes on “megadevelopment” projects, effectively providing massive tax breaks to developers; 2 and 3) some two other things, none of the news reporters bothered to mention what these were, they got places to be, man.

(Meanwhile, the Chicago Sun-Times article on all this described the legislative session as expiring “without the Chicago Bears breaking the line of scrimmage in Springfield” after the failure of legislation that “could’ve thrown the team a block in their rush to the former Arlington International Racecourse,” Bears lobbyists being “left on the Capitol sideline,” because of course it did. This is becoming less a Sun-Times tic than a journalistic cry for help.)

The Bears stadium push will now have to wait for the fall legislative session, when possible language allowing a weighted vote of all affected local taxing bodies to approve tax breaks is expected to push it across the goal line into the end zone like Walter Payton playing the game the way it was supposed to be played or something:

“We were super close and just ran out of time,” state Rep. Mary Beth Canty, a Democrat who represents the northwest suburb [of Arlington Heights] and surrounding areas, said Sunday.

Or, alternatively, the Bears bills are still somewhere deep in their own half, trying desperately to get a first down before having to give up and punt:

[Gov. JB Pritzker’s chief of staff Anne] Caprara sent a message that Pritzker has no plans to support funding for the stadium unless Illinois receives something “substantial” in return.

“Back on here briefly to respond to this bc it’s absurd,” Caprara posted on X. “No one in the Gov’s office or in state government is an expert in NFL finances. The governor has been clear that he’s not going to support state funding for a new stadium unless the state got something substantial in return.”

In the midst of all this (I am so sorry) Monday morning quarterbacking, Chicago Fire owner and investment fund billionaire Joe Mansueto announced plans for a $650 million soccer stadium to be built on the “The 78” property that had previously been targeted by White Sox billionaire owner Jerry Reinsdorf. But where Reinsdorf wanted around $1.7 billion in public money to make his stadium happen, Mansueto says he’ll build his stadium entirely with his own money — with the tiny exception of the $700 million in tax kickbacks already approved for the property in 2019:

There are railroad tracks that need to be relocated and a crumbling seawall that needs to be rebuilt. Water, sewer and power lines need to be installed, and parking garages and surface lots need to be built. So does the last leg of the Riverwalk between Lake Street and Ida B. Wells Drive that had an initial price tag of $140 million…

[Related Midwest CEO, Curt] Bailey said he was still working on what the final infrastructure plan will look like and how large of a TIF subsidy Mayor Brandon Johnson and the City Council will be asked to authorize amid the rising cost of construction materials tied to President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

So a Fire stadium is likely a ways off as well, even if Mansueto says he wants one open for 2028.

If you’re a fan of goal-line stands against stadium subsidies, all this is at least somewhat good news: Pritzker and the Illinois legislature are continuing to push back on even the kind of tax breaks that lawmakers are usually happy to throw at pro teams, and team owners are left having to scrape together whatever public money they can find around the edges, which is certainly a lot more taxpayer-friendly than what’s on the table in some other places. Tax kickbacks are real money, though, and it’ll be important to keep a close eye on what’s being proposed for both the Bears and Fire stadiums, lest the team owners pull off a trick play involving multiple laterals — okay, that’s enough for one morning, let’s blow the whistle on this now.

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After U of I pulls out, downtown Chicago developer suggests just building more stadiums

access_time personNeil deMause

The University of Illinois has backed out of plans to build a research and teaching facility at the proposed The 78 downtown development site, but don’t fret! This is actually good news, says site developer Related Midwest, because it means now they can build moar stadiumz:

“Given its proximity to downtown, adjacency to the river and flexibility to accommodate a wide range of uses, The 78 stands alone in its ability to house large institutions that want to plant their flag in the heart of Chicago,” their statement read, in part. “We are actively exploring the co-location of dual stadiums for the Chicago White Sox and Chicago Fire, two organizations whose presence at The 78 would align with our vision of creating Chicago’s next great neighborhood.”

That disturbing “plant a flag in the heart” image notwithstanding, the more alarming part here is that unlike a research and teaching facility, a soccer stadium for the Fire is unlikely to bring in enough new money to pay off its construction costs. (The Fire only bring in $45 million a year in gross revenue total, so relocating from Soldier Field to a new stadium isn’t likely to move the needle by more than a few million a year, which wouldn’t do the trick.) While Fire owner Joe Mansueto has said he doesn’t “believe in using Tax Dollars to fund these ANY such projects” (that’s the way he typed it, yes), it’s hard to picture a soccer stadium at the The 78 site without some public money, at least for infrastructure or tax breaks.

So we could be looking at additional public costs beyond $900 million in tax kickbacks for infrastructure plus $1.1 billion for a White Sox stadium. None of which anyone at any level of government has offered to step up to pay just yet. You can’t get if you don’t ask, sure, but tacking on a soccer stadium to an already aspirational project doesn’t seem likely to make the financing pencil out any better.

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Friday roundup: Browns officially want $1.2B for Brook Park dome, Chiefs will take whatever stadium money someone offers

access_time personNeil deMause

Thanks to those who’ve re-upped as FoS supporters in recent days without my reminding you. There are still a handful of numbered Vaportecture art prints left, so donate now if you think that’s the kind of thing you’d like, or if you don’t want that thing near your house at all but just want to support the work of this site.

Speaking of work, there’s a whole lot of it today:

  • Cleveland Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam have confirmed they are indeed focusing on a new domed stadium in suburban Brook Park, releasing a statement yesterday saying, “The transformative economic opportunities created by a dome far outweigh what a renovated stadium could produce with around 10 events per year.” The statement also said that “this stadium will not use existing taxpayer-funded streams that would divert resources from other more pressing needs,” which neatly obscures the fact that it would use $1.2 billion in new taxpayer-funded streams that would divert resources from other more pressing needs. And headlines like “It’s official: Cleveland Browns moving to Brook Park” remain premature, since nobody in state or local government has approved the $1.2 billion in tax money yet, so really we’re still just at “Browns owners’ #1 choice is someone giving them $1.2 billion,” and who wouldn’t want $1.2 billion? I bet you could roll around in it real nice.
  • Speaking of non-announcements, Kansas City Chiefs owner Clark Hunt says he might want to move to a new stadium in Kansas, or move to a new stadium in Missouri, or renovate his current stadium in Missouri, whatcha got? “I certainly don’t expect to have anything finalized by [next spring], but I’d like to know the direction that we’re heading in that time frame,” said Hunt, which isn’t even a fake deadline, come on, man, don’t you know you’re supposed to set a date and then move it later if necessary? Do I have to call you up and read Chapter 4 to you out loud?
  • In extremely unsurprising news, NFL owners unanimously approved Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan’s plan to accept $775 million in public money to pay for stadium upgrades. “The NFL believes in Jacksonville. I believe in Jacksonville, and I know our fans and the people throughout the community believe in Jacksonville,” Khan said after the vote from London, where his team will keep on playing one “home” game a year under the new deal because one can always believe in two places at once.
  • As if Chicago doesn’t have enough new stadium demands, Chicago Fire owner Joe Mansueto says he’s looking at building a soccer-specific stadium as well. Mansueto says it would be privately funded, but they all say that, so if he does settle on a location and a plan, it’s worth keeping an eye on the fine print.
  • For everyone writing up your “Where will the Tampa Bay Rays play in 2025?” articles, please cross Durham, North Carolina off the list, Bulls management says there’s no room there. Also if you’re wondering what is being done with the Rays stadium roof that was blown off last week, you can buy bits of it on eBay.
  • Green Bay Packers management says it wants to sign a 30-year lease extension on Lambeau Field and pay for all stadium upgrades in that time and just wants the city of Green Bay to freeze its rent in exchange. That’s probably not a terrible deal, but it would cost city taxpayers something — $30 million, according to city operations chief Joe Faulds — and the current lease runs through 2032 with a 10-year team extension option, so one can see why the city might not jump at the chance. Anyway, let this be a reminder that even fan-owned sports teams can demand public money, nonprofits got the profit motive too.
  • It took 27 years for this Tom the Dancing Bug cartoon to come true, but with cities like Tulsa offering cash payments for remote workers to relocate to their cities, you too can now be Ned Balter.
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Friday roundup: Bengals naming rights deal called “(XXX)” and other titillating stadium commentary

access_time personNeil deMause

Well, that was certainly another week. Thanks to all who engaged in the spirited comment debates about Garth Brooks an Andy Zimbalist and other celebrity stadium experts, and thanks also to all who responded to my latest fundraising appeal — I look forward to a productive weekend of mailing out Cab-Hailing Lady art prints.

But first, we have more news for the roundup to round up:

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