Category: MLS

When will Inter Miami open their Miami stadium already? An investimagation

access_time personNeil deMause

With the book finally closed on the Tampa Bay Rays stadium saga, the longest-running stadium campaign in Florida is now likely that of Inter Miami, which goes back 11 years, to a time before the team even existed. After innumerable twists and turns, team owners David Beckham and Jorge Mas finally got approval in 2018 to build a privately funded stadium on a public golf course, then a year later went and built a temporary stadium in Fort Lauderdale to play in in the interim.

All of which brings us to this week, when team execs announced that the Miami stadium, set to open next year, will not actually open next year, which will instead be the “final season” in Fort Lauderdale. In fact, construction hasn’t even yet begun:

In 2023, Inter Miami Managing Owner Jorge Mas said, “I can’t wait to welcome our fans to our state-of-the-art stadium and hear the chants as Messi and your Inter Miami players take the pitch for the first time in 2025.” However, despite Mas’ promise to fast-track the project, construction crews are still working on clearing the land, and the building of the stadium structure has not yet begun…

After reviewing the progress made to date, stadium expert Denys Schwartz, who worked on the Maracana Stadium project, said, “Based on previous experience, I believe it might take from 24 to 30 months to reach project completion if the construction progress is accelerated.”

Sooooo, 24-30 months from now puts us at somewhere between August 2026 and February 2027, which would mean that next season would decidedly not be the final season in Fort Lauderdale. (It could be the final full season there, maybe, if Inter moved to its new stadium mid-2026.)

But more important, is this thing even getting built at all? From this video from two weeks ago, it looks like a bit more has been done than land clearance: There’s some compacting of the soil being done, plus what looks like some rebar in the ground to serve as the foundation for the stadium. So it’s in progress, albeit in the very, very early stages, which makes a 24-30 month timeline pretty reasonable.

Inter Miami fans, meanwhile, are steamed that they were suckered into buying season tickets on the promise that they would get to watch Lionel Messi in “the inaugural season at Miami Freedom Park,” which now will not happen unless Messi signs a contract extension for 2026, when he will turn 39 years old, which is very old for a soccer player, even arguably the greatest one of all time playing in a league that is not at all the greatest of all time. Could Mas and Beckham pull this same trick again, staying put in Fort Lauderdale for all or most of the 2026 season, while forcing fans to keep their season tickets active in order to get first dibs on seats at the new stadium in 2027? There’s no way to tell for sure, but given past history, yeah, probably.

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How much will NYCFC’s stadium cost taxpayers? Nobody bothered to find out before approving it

access_time personNeil deMause

Back in late 2022 when plans were first announced for a new NYCFC stadium in the Willets Point section of Queens, I wrote an article for Hell Gate asking what city taxpayers would be on the hook for in property tax breaks, discounted public land, and infrastructure costs. Then I got busy for a while with other things, and before I knew it the stadium had been approved — and still nobody had any better idea of the public price tag.

I recently found the time to dig into the question of how a massive stadium project on public land got approved without a solid cost estimate, and the answer turns out to be: Nobody thought it was their job to find out.

When [local councilmember Francisco] Moya presented the stadium plan for a council vote on April 11—asking his fellow councilmembers to “picture a little boy in Flushing Meadows, Corona Park learning to play soccer with his father, a game that serves as a link to the life in a faraway country that his father left behind to make Queens his home”—his colleagues largely stayed silent. The only “no” vote ended up coming from Shekar Krishnan of Jackson Heights, who objected that the stadium was costing too much in tax breaks and discounted rent and would take up space that could be used for affordable housing: “A stadium on public land, subsidized by hundreds of millions in public funds, is not a good deal.”

The rest of the decisive council hearing was mostly free of opinions on the deal itself, leaving time for much good-natured ribbing. Republican Councilmember Joseph Borelli of Staten Island teased Moya that as his former State Assembly soccer teammate, “I can tell you bluntly that it wasn’t the lack of a stadium that kept you out of the pros.” [Councilmember Robert Holden] posed only one question: “What does it feel like, Francisco, to lasso a dream? Because that’s what you did today, you lassoed a dream. And I couldn’t be more proud of you.”

(Holden and fellow Queens councilmember Vickie Paladino did ask the city Independent Budget Office for an exhaustive report on city costs – but then when the IBO couldn’t produce one immediately, they voted for the stadium anyway.)

The stadium project also had to go before the local community board for a vote, but the board’s co-chair happily acknowledged shutting down questions on financing and environmental concerns, so long as Mayor Eric Adams put in motion a new police precinct as a quid pro quo:

“We made it clear: We need a precinct, we need a precinct, we need a precinct,” said [Community Board 7 co-chair Chuck] Apelian. “I said, ‘I am not going to lead my team to vote ‘yes’ if you do not take care of the rank and file of this community.’ It’s not many times you get an opportunity, and it’s not many times people listen. So we were at the point where the squeaky wheel got the oil.”

So how much will this end up costing taxpayers? We’ll have to await the release of that IBO report (due later this year) to get a better sense of that, but suffice to say the “hundreds of millions of dollars” in the headline is a safe bet. In the meantime, it’s worth noting that even New York’s months-long land use oversight process doesn’t always provide much oversight — if the people in positions of power don’t want to look, for fear of what they might see.

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Friday roundup: Voters hate stadium subsidies, business leaders love ’em, the truth must lie somewhere in the middle

access_time personNeil deMause

Thanks for sticking around to the end of the week! As a reward, you get more news items to stick around through! This is the information economy you signed up for, sorry, no refunds!

  • The folks at No Home Run in Tampa Bay have commissioned a poll on the Rays stadium plans, and say it shows that while 51% of voters supported them initially, that figure fell to 38% after respondents heard “key financial details.” This turns out to be: that Rays owner Stu Sternberg would get stadium land at a price that appears to be below market value, that he wouldn’t pay property taxes, that the city would be on the hook for $494 million (including interest) while Sternberg would keep all revenues from the stadium including non-baseball revenue, and that he would not share profits on the sale of the team with the city, all of which are undeniably accurate — all polls are hot garbage, it’s true, but this one seems as legit as any.
  • What do people in Charlotte think of the plan to spend $650 million in public money on Carolina Panthers stadium upgrades? “Leaders say” that it’s necessary for Charlotte to remain a “big-league city,” according to the Charlotte Observer, at least if by “leaders” you mean the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance, that’s how representative democracy works, right, the only important people are the ones who own businesses? When not reporting on what the bosses think, the Observer also asked, “Could the Panthers leave Charlotte if they don’t get $650 million from the city?”, answering its own question by saying that sure, “the Panthers don’t appear to be interested in moving” and team owner David Tepper has made “no outward statements about wanting to relocate,” but they could, and other NFL teams have, are you $650 million worth of scared yet, huh, huh?
  • The Jacksonville city council seems prepared to rubber-stamp the city’s plan to spend $775 million in public money on Jaguars stadium renovations, with no councilmembers at a Wednesday workshop expressing major misgivings about the deal. There will be a single public hearing on June 17 for Jacksonville residents to weigh in — it remains to be seen how many councilmembers will show up for that, and how many will listen as opposed to just playing with their phones.
  • The Indianapolis City-County Council on Monday approved Mayor Joe Hogsett’s plan to create a TIF district to kick back taxes for a new MLS team and dissolve the one previously approved for the USL’s Indy Eleven. Indy Eleven fans are displeased, and some councilmembers questioned whether dedicating tax money to a team and ownership group that don’t even exist yet is the best move, but Hogsett countered that the Eleven plans were too financially risky and also the stadium was going to be built on a damn African-American graveyard, so good points on both sides, really!
  • Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch has become the latest state official to tell the Chicago Bears and White Sox owners to pound sand on their subsidy requests: “Even after the election, I just think it’s, things we have to focus on: the kitchen table issues. People want to make sure their groceries are affordable, their rent is affordable, you know, that they have a roof over their head. The last thing they want us to be talking about is stadiums for sports teams. … As we’ve said to the Bears over and over again, to the White Sox, and also to the Chicago Red Stars, there’s just no appetite to use taxpayer funding to fund stadiums for billionaires.”
  • The Chicago Reader, meanwhile, has a good article on Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s weird obsession with building the Bears a new stadium with tax money, which is even better since they fixed the part where the coining of the term “vaportecture” was credited to my old Deadspin editor Barry Petchesky. (It’s not the Reader’s fault — the new Deadspin owners broke a bunch of bylines when they did a site redesign, though they’re fixing them now.) I get quoted some in the piece, but the best line, as is often the case, goes to University of Chicago sports economist Allen Sanderson: “There’s a better chance of Brandon Johnson being drafted number one by the Bears than that stadium making a dollar.”
  • Janet Marie Smith, who worked on the design of the Baltimore Orioles‘ Camden Yards but is not involved with its current renovation, was asked by the Baltimore Banner to comment on what the O’s owners could possibly be spending $600 million or more of public money on, and mentioned various things that reflect a “more fluid way of watching a game,” including more standing room and bar areas, which is certainly one way of describing giving fans fewer places to sit.
  • The NFL is ramping up lobbying efforts to protect the use of federally tax-exempt bonds for stadiums, holding a briefing for Congressional aides during the draft in April. None of the recent attempts to rein in this practice went beyond a committee hearing, but since it saves sports team owners about $230 million a year in taxes for absolutely no benefit to the U.S. as a whole, may as well throw a few lobbyists at making sure no one even thinks about touching it, that’s the sports league way.
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Friday roundup: Rays promise “intimate” stadium with ginormous upper deck, Cleveland running out of tax money to pay for Cavs and Guardians upgrades

access_time personNeil deMause

Happy end of the week! Surely some other news of note happened in recent days, but you chose to come to this website, so you’re looking for different news, maybe some bleak Utah minor-league baseball renderings? And that is but the beginning of the smorgasbord of stadium and arena items on tap! (Yes, you can have a smorgasbord on tap, I’m a professional wordsmith, you’ll just have to trust me on this one.)

  • Reporting live from Tampa Bay Rays owner Stu Sternberg’s colon, the Tampa Bay Times’ Marc Topkin has a love letter to the Rays’ new stadium design, gushing about how much more “intimate” it will be thanks to only having 30,000 seats and “70% of the seats in the lower two of three seating levels.” Getting rid of the worst seats doesn’t actually make the view from the remaining seats any better — getting rid of intervening luxury seating might accomplish that, but there’s no indication Sternberg plans to do that — and having 30% of the seats in a third deck actually sounds like a lot for a 30,000-seat stadium (the Pittsburgh Pirates‘ stadium holds 38,000 and doesn’t have a third deck at all), but team officials blurted all this stuff out and Topkin wrote it down and printed it verbatim, that’s the job of a journalist, right? (UPDATE: FoS reader Andrew Ross points out that the Times actually squeezed this story onto its front page alongside the other notable news of the day.)
  • Cleveland’s stadium agency is on the hook for nearly all upkeep of the Guardians stadium and Cavaliers arena, and the alcohol and cigarette taxes that are supposed to pay for them are running dry, so someone is going to need to find more money to spend on the teams. (Right now Cavs owner Dan Gilbert is fronting his team’s arena costs, and the city and county will have to pay him back.) Some of the work includes upgraded elevators and escalators for the Cavs, kitchen equipment upgrades and new in-stadium TV screens for the Guardians, and a special film on the new glass wall at the Cavs arena to keep birds from flying into it which will have to be replaced every five years, not all of which really seem like “capital repairs” to me, but from the sound of things whoever negotiated these leases on behalf of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County did an absolutely horrible job that is allowing the team owners to bill the public for any and all upgrades, can lawyers be found guilty of malpractice? Make a note to check into that.
  • Speaking of malpractice, the Baltimore Banner managed to write about the Ravens‘ new stadium upgrades with only the briefest of mentions that state taxpayers are picking up the entire $430 million tab, and not mentioning at all that Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti can avail himself of another $170 million or much more after that. The headline the Banner chose to roll with: “M&T Bank Stadium’s premium areas will soon reach new level of luxury.” Turns out corporate-run nonprofit journalism isn’t necessarily any better than corporate-run for-profit journalism, maybe we need a better model?
  • I’ve been sadly neglecting the throwdown in Indianapolis between Indy Eleven owner Ersal Ozdemir, who was planning to build a new stadium for his USL-but-wants-to-be-MLS team with $112 million in state money, and Mayor Joe Hogsett, who now wants to use the money for a different soccer stadium on a different site for a different wannabe MLS ownership group. The City-County Council is set to vote on authorizing legislation for a new “professional sports development area” (read: super-TIF district) on June 3; if it’s approved, it would then go to the state legislature for a final vote.
  • New York Mets owner Steve Cohen’s plan to build a casino in his stadium parking lot, despite it being public parkland, is likely dead after state senator Jessica Ramos said she won’t support any casino project in her district when 75% of residents say they don’t want one. The state legislature could still pass casino authorizing legislation over the local representative’s objections, but that rarely happens, and anyway the state casino location board is unlikely to hand out a casino license to a project on such shaky ground, so probably New Yorkers will get to gamble somewhere other than the Mets parking lots, which Cohen is vowing will remain parking lots until the sun burns out, because it’s the prerogative of a sports team owner to throw a hissy fit.
  • A stairway flooded during heavy rains at the St. Louis Cardinals stadium, time to build them a new one, that’s how it works, I don’t make the rules!
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FC Dallas plans $130m expansion of clubs and luxury suites, likely using city money

access_time personNeil deMause

The owners of F.C. Dallas are seeking a major expansion of their stadium in Frisco, and Dallas Business Journal has all the details:

The May 28 filing with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation calls for a 130,000-square-foot expansion “of premium product including clubs and suites” as well as new broadcast and press areas, to meet Major League Soccer guidelines. New canopy lighting could also be added.

A source close to FC Dallas, who asked not to be named, called the filing a first step toward a potentially bigger project announcement but declined to elaborate…

The TLDR filing listed an estimated cost of $130 million for the project. It indicated construction could begin in January and be completed in August 2027.

Okay, so maybe not all the details. Who actually submitted the paperwork to the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation? Who would pay the $130 million cost? Let’s go to the actual filing and find out:

  • The form was filed by Kimberly Goss, who is president of an accessible architectural design firm in Dallas. The filing doesn’t state whether Goss was acting on behalf of the city or of team owner Dan Hunt.
  • Under “Type of Funds,” the form lists: “This project involves public funds, public land, or is a Federally funded roadway project.”
  • Under “Are the private funds provided by the tenant?” the filing says: “No.”

This is hardly definitive, especially since the filing form can contain errors. (This one lists the stadium owner as “Frisco Stadium LLC,” which is the team, though the building is in fact owned by the city; and it lists the tenant as “Not Assigned.”) But it sure looks like the city of Frisco is about to be asked to spend $130 million on its 19-year-old soccer stadium that was just renovated in 2018, all to create new clubs and luxury suites to increase profits for the team’s private owners. The city issued a statement that Toyota Stadium and FC Dallas represent “important” pieces of “Frisco’s tourism and entertainment economy,” which certainly sounds like preparations to justify spending public money.

It’s always possible, of course, that the plan is for the FC Dallas owners to pay for the new stadium expansion, either directly or through rent payments or revenue sharing down the road. After all, the 2018 renovation cost $55 million and the team kicked in, let’s see … $1 million a year in rent, which is the equivalent of about $15 million total. So, yeah, expect that taxpayers would cover most of the $130 million price tag — which would be more than half the entire annual Frisco city budget, and more than the city spends each year on police, fire, and EMS workers combined, but truly, who can put a price on “premium product including clubs and suites”?

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Friday roundup: More Bears $2.6B stadium subsidy fallout, plus Indianapolis switches soccer horses

access_time personNeil deMause

Before we get to the news: I hope that those of you who enjoy using dark mode are enjoying the new dark mode plugin I installed this week (DarkMySite, if anyone cares), which seems, unlike the old one, to actually mostly work. If you haven’t tried it out and want to, click the little moon symbol at bottom right and take a load off your eyes!

Also, a special shoutout to a couple of FoS readers (unnamed, but you know who you are) who either sent in a large lump sum of cash or upped their monthly Patreon pledge for no reason at all in the last week. As I forget if I explicitly mentioned, I quit my previous day job last month, which should give me more time to devote to this site; and while I do have a new regular gig that seems promising, every step towards making this site self-sustaining is hugely helpful, so a huge thanks to all you supporters, at any level. (And for those who haven’t yet taken the plunge: There are still about a dozen more Vaportecture art prints, get ’em before they’re gone!)

Okay, enough of that, time’s a-wasting and there’s a whole week of news remainders to dig through:

  • The fallout continues from the Chicago Bears owners’ $2.6 billion stadium subsidy demand (see the updates for the math behind the updated figure), with so much more today that we’re going to have to break out the second level of bullet points:
    • Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson says it’s no contradiction that he said during his mayoral race that the city shouldn’t spend billions of dollars on a Bears stadium when there were “dozens of other urgent needs” and now thinks this is a great idea, on the grounds that he, a “middle child” from a “working-class family,” got to talk to billionaires and make sure they put some “skin in the game” and also the stadium will be “transformational” and “the Bears are staying in Chicago” and “the type of economic development this project brings” and “14 more acres of space for our children in the city of Chicago to benefit from.” Is all that the best use of $2.6 billion? I’m sorry, we’re out of time for questions, thank you for coming.
    • The Chicago Sun-Times editorial board did get a chance to ask Bears CEO Kevin Warren what would happen if the team got its $1.225 billion in taxpayer money for the stadium and nobody came up with another $1.175 billion to build new underground garages and park space, and Warren replied: “I’m not going to think negatively about that now. … If that’s the conclusion that … you want to reach now, then you can say that. I’m being positive about it … and being very transparent as far as what we need from the different three phases with this stadium project.” So, optional when projecting the city’s costs, not optional in the sense that you don’t want to go there in terms of what happens if the city doesn’t come up with another billion-plus dollars, got it.
    • Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker reiterated yesterday that he’s agin’ the whole kit and kaboodle, saying: “I’m skeptical of the proposal that was put forward and I’m even more skeptical of the ability to get enough votes for it in the General Assembly.”
    • Chicago Sun-Times columnist David Roeder suggests that if the Bears (and White Sox) want public money, they should give the public a cut of ownership of the team, though some stick-in-the-mud (okay, it’s me) points out that sports leagues love nothing more than to head off the possibility of public ownership, even blocking one-time San Diego Padres owner Joan Kroc from gifting her team to the city of San Diego on the grounds that that just isn’t done.
  • Way back in 2019, the Indiana state legislature approved giving $112 million toward a new soccer stadium for the Indy Eleven soccer team, provided owner Ersal Ozdemir got his team promoted from the USL to MLS. At the time, this seemed like an easy enough lift, since all the other kids were doing it, but it hasn’t happened yet, and now apparently Indianapolis mayor Joe Hogsett has gotten tired of waiting, announcing that he’s putting in a bid with another ownership group to get an MLS expansion team, using the same tax kickbacks that Ozdemir was looking to get. Ozdemir, who already broke ground on his stadium site last year, though it’s unclear if he’s actually started construction, is naturally enough extremely unhappy with this latest news, accusing Hogsett of “preparing to walk away” from “years of good-faith negotiations” and instead give the public money to some other soccer guy instead of him. Will there be lawsuits? Stay tuned!
  • A “hotel entrepreneur and former longtime Kansas City resident” got space on the Kansas City Star op-ed page to argue that Kansas Citians who voted against a tax subsidy for Royals and Chiefs stadiums missed an opportunity to become like Denver, where “the Coors Field development inspired a stunning downtown renaissance” where “dozens of restaurants, bars and clubs opened to serve crowds before and after the 81 hometown games each year.” I once again wish that I still had a copy of the chart someone once showed me that indicated that most of the development starts in Denver’s LoDo district actually preceded the construction of the Rockies stadium; if I can dig it up, I’ll post it here as an update.
  • The Arizona state senate is considering a bill to allow the state to approve “theme park districts” like the one Alex Meruelo wants for a Coyotes 2.0 arena, without city governments weighing in. (It did so by virtue of hollowing out an already-state-house-approved bill to give first responders access to treatment for PTSD and inserting theme park district language instead, which Arizona calls a “strike everything amendment” but “zombie bill” is a much better name.) This could make it easier for Meruelo to have the state levy a sales tax surcharge in his arena district that would be kicked back to him for construction costs; we’ll have to wait and see what the state senate thinks of it.
  • Buffalo Bills owners Terry and Kim Pegula may sell up to a quarter of their team to help raise money for their share of a new stadium, after construction costs have soared by a reported $600 million. In case you needed more evidence that many if not most stadiums are money losers that are only built so that team owners can cash subsidy checks, here’s your Exhibit A.
  • Arlington, Texas is spending $4.2 million to upgrade the Texas Rangers‘ old stadium, which the team moved out of after 2019 into a new publicly funded one, because, according to Arlington Mayor Jim Ross, “it’s a regional injection of all economic development.” The stadium is currently home to the XFL Arlington Renegades and occasional concerts.
  • What more could happen to Montreal’s Olympic Stadium after costing $1 billion to build and hundreds of millions more to fix the roof on and now $870 million to fix the roof on again? How about catching fire and needing $40 million to fix the damage? You gotta wonder if the Big Owe is just trying to put itself out of its misery at this point, but Montreal officials aren’t getting the message.
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Friday roundup: NYC approves $780m NYCFC stadium in Queens, still doesn’t know what it’ll cost the public

access_time personNeil deMause

I keep meaning to find a place to mention it, and here is as good as any: sports economists J.C. Bradbury, Dennis Coates, and Brad Humphreys have taken up the task of updating Judith Grant Long’s epic database of stadium and arena deals, and the results are online as a CSV file. There are likely still going to be some debates about specific figures — the Buffalo Bills stadium is listed with an $850 million public cost, for example, because that’s what the New York Times said, but that leaves out state and county money set aside for future maintenance and upgrades — but it’s still a hugely useful resource for getting ballpark estimates (sorry) of both total and taxpayer costs. Bookmark it now, or just click the “Data” tab here anytime to find it!

That’s enough about that, let’s get to the news, oh the news, so very much the news:

  • The New York city council approved NYC F.C.‘s plan to build a Queens stadium across the street from the Mets‘ stadium, which is expected to cost $780 million and open in 2027. While construction costs are being covered by the team’s owners, Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner and Manchester City owner Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, it’s still unknown exactly how much the city will be giving up in property-tax breaks and discounted rent (the city Independent Budget Office estimated $516 million) or how much the city will be spending on infrastructure for the project (which includes housing and other stuff too, so it’d be tricky to determine exactly how much of infrastructure costs should be charged to the stadium). Ah well, plenty of time to figure that out after the agreements are all signed! Queens councilmember Shekar Krishnan cast the only dissenting vote, declaring, “We are not facing a stadium crisis in this city. We are facing a housing crisis, an inequality crisis and a climate crisis. Now we’re looking at a proposal that gives away public land worth hundreds of millions of dollars in public financing for a commercial soccer stadium. What is the benefit for the people of New York City?” You mean the joy of visiting Naming Rights Sponsor Stadium isn’t enough?
  • Patrick Tuohey of the Show-Me Institute wants to know what happened to the 2022 Populous study of the Kansas City Royals‘ stadium that projected it would cost more to repair than replace, thanks to “concrete cancer,” since it’s been taken down from the KC Ballpark District website. Good news and bad news, Patrick: The report is still there on the Wayback Machine, but it provides no sourcing at all for its figures. It does print them in very large type, though, and how could anything in a 48-point font be wrong?
  • Jackson County legislator Sean Smith polled his constituents about why they voted how they did on the Royals and Chiefs stadium tax surcharge referendum last week, and determined it’s because nobody listened to their concerns and engaged in too much “fear-based campaigning” by threatening the teams would leave. Smith didn’t release any detailed results of his survey, though, so it’s left as an exercise for the reader to imagine what the public’s concerns were, exactly.
  • Adding insult to injury department: Workers for the Oakland A’s weren’t told by team management that the franchise was relocating to Sacramento next year and that they would all be laid off as a result, they saw it on the TV news. “Thank you for ruining our lives,” said one A’s bartender only identified by CBS Sports as Tony. (Also, the layoffs have reportedly already begun, because John Fisher has clearly determined you don’t need concessions workers when you’ve so effectively alienated your fans that no one will come to your games.)
  • The Atlanta Braves claim that a new survey found their stadium-in-the-middle-of-suburban-nowhere ranks 13th out of 30 teams in “walkability,” and we don’t even need to debate whether it’s a dumb survey because it turns out 13th actually means 21st because it turns out the dumb survey people don’t know how to break ties.
  • “Can Minor League Baseball Survive Its Real Estate Problems?” asks the New York Times, but those problems were created by MLB when it bought and contracted the minor leagues and then forced cities to scramble to upgrade stadiums to avoid being left without a chair when the music stopped. Try to keep up, New York Times! Even without a sports department!
  • D.C. United wants to build a stadium for a minor-league affiliate in Baltimore, and the Baltimore Banner article on how “there hasn’t been enough information shared about the project” doesn’t even try to ask how much it would cost or who would pay for it, this has not been a great week for journalism. Here are some tips, guys, start with those!
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Friday roundup: NYCFC unveils images of Naming Rights Sponsor Stadium, A’s reveal plans to blow a/c at fans’ feet

access_time personNeil deMause

And so we have reached the end of another programming week, one mercifully without Jerry Reinsdorf’s stadium subsidy demands going up yet again. That’s just about the only thing that didn’t happen this week, though, so let’s hit the news recap:

  • NYC F.C.‘s $780 million soccer stadium plan cleared another hurdle this week, getting the okay of the City Planning Commission, the last stop before a final city council vote. It also got some fresh renderings depicting how fans would enter the stadium through a giant cube-shaped entryway (dubbed The Cube, this team has a way with words) that would be covered in a giant video board that display the names of all five New York boroughs, in case you forget where you live. (The stadium is depicted bearing the name Naming Rights Sponsor Stadium, while the entryway in one image says “New York City FC” while in another it’s “Cube Entrance Sponsor,” pick a lane, guys.) Still up in the air: how the affordable housing component would work, where fans will park if Mets owner Steve Cohen refuses to let the soccer team use his parking lots across the street unless he gets a state casino license, and, oh yeah, how the whole thing would be paid for, someone should really look into that.
  • The Oakland A’s “spherical armadillo” stadium in Las Vegas would have “the highest number of suites, clubs and other high-end seating products” relative to size of any MLB stadium, according to Venues Now, which spoke to A’s president Dave Kaval on the subject. In addition to hardly any affordable tickets, Kaval promised that the air-conditioning would blow out from under people’s seats, something that’s used at the Sacramento Kings arena and in some Middle East soccer stadiums, and which the site reported Kaval said he’s “working with Henderson Engineers to find a way to make it work in MLB.” Also a work in progress: The A’s are playing an exhibition game in Las Vegas tonight, and plenty of good seats are still available.
  • The Virginia legislature has officially passed a budget without money for an Alexandria arena for the Washington Wizards and Capitals, though Gov. Glenn Youngkin could still try for an amendment or a special session. State senate finance chair Louise Lucas, who has the power to kill budget bills by denying them hearings in her committee, doesn’t seem real amenable to that, though. One Alexandria restaurant owner tells D.C. News Now that he’s upset not because he wants arena traffic for his businesses, but because spending over $1 billion in public money on an arena would “alleviate some of the tax burden from the residents,” somebody’s been reading too many clown documents!
  • Two members of the Jackson County legislature will be holding a public hearing this Monday at 3 pm on the Kansas City Royals‘ $2 billion stadium plan and $1 billion public subsidy plan. While attendance at these things is never representative of the public as a whole — it’s almost guaranteed there will be a throng of construction workers bussed in to cheer the project on, for example — it will at least give us some hint of the public mood as we approach the April 2 deadline for voting on the 0.375% sales-tax surcharge extension that would fund the first chunk of the project. (The Kansas City Star editorial board is a no, at least until Royals owner John Sherman explains more about how the money, lease, and provisions for relocating businesses would work.)
  • The Chicago Bears owners are reportedly “close to” announcing a lakefront stadium in Chicago and are also still haggling with suburban cities over property tax breaks for a stadium there, never take seriously rumors that are spread by team execs themselves, just don’t.
  • Maricopa County and the city of Phoenix are considering a “partnership” to address the Arizona Diamondbacks owners’ stadium demands, which would … do something? Also this was just a letter that the county sent to the city council last August, and the council never replied, guess the Arizona Republic was having a real slow news day.
  • Would a new Tampa Bay Rays stadium increase the team’s attendance? Yes at first, then no after the honeymoon wears off in a few years. This report is not remotely new news, but it comes with lots of stats and charts! Guess the Tampa Bay Times opinion section was having a slow news day.
  • Sure, New York taxpayers are spending over $1 billion on a new Buffalo Bills stadium, but who can put a price on 16-foot-tall bison statues? ESPN reports that “there was some disappointment on social media among fans” that the statues aren’t bigger, since the “World’s Largest Buffalo Monument” in North Dakota is 26 feet tall, that does it, time to tear down the new stadium and build one with state-of-the-art bison.
  • New Mexico United‘s new stadium “costs the city nothing,” according to team president Ron Patel; KOAT-TV checked, and it’s actually nearly $29 million in public money, about half the total cost. Never take seriously cost estimates that are put forward by team execs, just don’t.
  • The Hawaii legislature is set to consider a bill to scrap a $350 million plan to rebuild Aloha Stadium so that the money can be used for wildfire recovery and housing instead. Rep. Gene Ward said he opposes the bill because “it’s not going to get anybody to come to the football games, regardless of how bad you are as a football player,” no, I don’t know what he meant by that either.
  • Finally, back on the A’s front, I was on this week’s Rickeyblog podcast, where we talked about all aspects of the team’s stadium situation, not least why fans in the Vegas stadium renderings are waving the flag of Gaddafi’s Libya and what that could mean for tourism. Give it a listen, you’ve got all weekend!
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Friday roundup: If you hate giving public money to sports billionaires, 2023 really sucked

access_time personNeil deMause

Welp, that’s another year in the books. In 2023 we saw the Baltimore Orioles and Ravens owners finalizing more than $600 million each in renovation subsidies, with the O’s on track to get hundreds of millions more in development subsidies; the Milwaukee Brewers pushing $435 million in renovation subsidies through the state legisltature; Nashville approving a record $1.26 billion subsidy for a new Tennessee Titans stadium; Alexandria, Virginia and St. Petersburg, Florida each proposing to break that record with new sports venues that could come with $1.5 billion public price tags for the Washington Capitals and Wizards and Tampa Bay Rays respectively; Kansas City Royals owner John Sherman kicking the tires on every possible location across two states to see who’s most likely to cough up tax dollars for a new stadium; the Chicago Bears owners kicking even more tires in even more places; Tempe, Arizona overwhelmingly voting down $500 million for a new Arizona Coyotes arena while Oklahoma City overwhelmingly voted in favor of $850 million for a new Thunder arena; and, of course, the Oakland A’s announcing their move to Las Vegas in exchange for $600 million in tax money, unless the Nevada teachers union wins its lawsuit or referendum or A’s owner John Fisher decides paying for even two-thirds of a stadium is too rich for his blood.

That’s not a great year, there, at least not if you were hoping that this site could celebrate its 25th anniversary with any signs of the great stadium swindle slowing down. Oh, we got to poke fun at Jeremy Aguero for being a lobbyist in economist’s clothing, but pointing and laughing gets unsatisfying after a while. Here’s hoping for a 2024 that involves delivering fewer sacks of tax money to billionaires, though I wouldn’t get your hopes up all that much. And hey, Field of Schemes supports dark mode now (click the little crescent moon at bottom right to try it out), and there’s a new set of fridge magnets for subscribers — sometimes you’ve just got to celebrate the one amazing victory but as often as not not.

Here’s a smattering of year-end news for everyone, thanks as always for reading and donating:

  • Everyone was talking for a minute about that Associated Press article about how there’s lots of public money going into stadiums and arenas for private sports teams, but honestly it was kind of scattershot and not anything you didn’t already know if you regularly read this website, or honestly even if you read that first paragraph above. There are some nice enough quotes from economist Rob Baade (“It’s not as if the concrete is falling down and people are in grave danger if they attend a game”) and J.C. Bradbury (“When you ask economists should we fund sports stadiums, they can’t say ‘no’ fast enough”), but if you want to skip the entire thing, you have my permission.
  • The British Columbia “crown corporation” (what they call quasi-public government agencies in Canada) that owns B.C. Place says it needs upgrades to host the 2026 men’s World Cup after getting $514 million in upgrades to host the women’s World Cup in 2015. No price tag yet, but the stadium owner warned that without renovations Vancouver “wouldn’t have been able to attract Taylor Swift” — hey, that’s Montreal’s line!
  • It’s now been 25 days since the A’s owners canceled a planned reveal of new stadium designs on the grounds that two Nevada state troopers had been shot several days earlier, I’m sure it will no longer be too soon any year now.
  • Indy Eleven‘s stadium is being built on a literal graveyard, this should go well.
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Friday roundup: Royals and Chiefs subsidy compromise rumors, Rays name fight looming, plus more gondolamania!

access_time personNeil deMause

It must be Hanukkah, because there’s miraculously already more than a week’s worth of stadium news! (Don’t think about it too hard, just go with it.)

  • Both Kansas City Chiefs president Mark Donovan and Royals president of business operations Brooks Sherman met with Jackson County executive Frank White this week, presumably to discuss putting a referendum on the ballot in April for a sales-tax surcharge extension to fund new or renovated stadiums for the two teams. Fox4 reports that “a source close to the situation” says the team owners might be willing to give up park levy money and insurance coverage they get from the county currently — the insurance money, you may recall, is what had the county figuring a new Royals stadium alone could cost more than $1 billion in present value costs, so this could potentially trim the subsidy demand to more like $500-700 million, which is better without actually being good. More unconfirmed rumors as events warrant.
  • Tampa Bay Rays president Brian Auld has announced that the Rays have no intention of changing their name to St. Petersburg Rays after moving from St. Petersburg to next door in St. Petersburg. The St. Petersburg city council is set to vote next week on a requirement that the team do so in exchange for getting at least $600 million in city money for a new stadium; Auld had previously warned that “Serious people recognize that putting this entire project at risk over a 25-year-old name of our organization is probably not something worth doing,” which sounds like a threat to me, plus a personal attack by calling councilmembers unserious, it would definitely be disallowed if Auld had tried to post it here in comments.
  • Not only is the Los Angeles Dodgers stadium gondola dream not dead, but it has a new price tag: $385-500 million. Plus another $8-10 million a year to operate it. The environmental impact report that gave the new projections says the money could be covered by private bond financing (which isn’t actually a way of covering anything, just a way of borrowing), sponsorships (uh, sure), naming rights (uh, suuuuuure) and fares (though trips to and from Dodgers games, which are most of the point of the thing, are supposed to be free). The report acknowledged that there’s suspicion that the whole gondola scheme is just an excuse to develop the parking lots around the stadium — which former Dodger owner Frank McCourt, who is behind the gondola idea, still owns — but says there’s no proof of McCourt’s plans to proceed with “a larger, more grandiose project in the future,” so just try not to think about that, and focus on the glory that is gondola.
  • Add the Soldier Field parking lot to the list of potential stadium sites Chicago Bears ownership is considering. No indication of whether or how that would work any better than building on the current stadium site, but at this point the team is just kicking tires on any site it can to hope one comes with a huge pile of public cash, which hasn’t worked so far, but they only need to find one sucker to be successful, so can’t fault them for trying. (Except for 100% faulting them for extracting public money for private profit, that’s the whole point of this site, haven’t you been paying attention?)
  • So it turns out it’s the state of Maryland that wants to separate the Baltimore Orioles‘ new lease from its new development agreement, that makes more sense than the other way around. It sounds like the whole issue is more about lack of time to get the documents finalized before next season starts than the state actually looking for some kind of leverage to negotiate a better deal; the O’s may go to a month-to-month lease in the meantime, the better to keep everyone on tenterhooks until they get all the t’s crossed and i’s dotted on their
  • Plans for a new NYC F.C. stadium in Queens cleared a community board vote after the city agreed to build a new police precinct there, which was apparently the board’s main demand. Still unclear: Who will pay for hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure costs and whether the team will get hundreds of millions of dollars in property tax breaks, maybe if we’re lucky we’ll find out before the city council grants final approval in the spring, but don’t count on it.
  • Jon Styf at The Center Square wrote a report on economic impact consulting reports for sports venues and interviewed both J.C. Bradbury (who called them “fantasy reports”) and me (who called them an attempt to “put across B.S. as fact”). He left out my explanation of the clear plastic binder effect, but you can’t have everything.
  • A high school football team that had to play all its games on the road because first its home field was destroyed to make way for a new New York Yankees stadium and then the replacement field that opened years later fell apart and was left unplayable has won the state championship! I can’t actually tell if this story is supposed to be heartwarming or scandalous, let’s go with both.
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