Category: NBA

Friday roundup: Lightning win $250m in tax money for 6-year lease extension, Missouri holds secret talks on Royals stadium

access_time personNeil deMause

We have a bunch of new followers here thanks largely to all the tumult over the Kansas City Chiefs stadium deal, so it’s worth another mention that Field of Schemes continues to exist after almost 28 years thanks to the kindness of its readers. If you have any money left after donating to help the families of government-kidnapped five-year-olds [UPDATE: Or all the other less adorable Minnesotans who can use help], you can chip in to support this site here — you’ll even get some amusing refrigerator magnets in appreciation, if we can still even be amused in 2026.

And speaking of trying to wring amusement from horror, here is your weekly dose of stadium and arena bullet points:

  • Hillsborough County approved $250 million in arena renovations for the Tampa Bay Lightning in exchange for a six-year lease extension, which at $41.7 million per year would be one of the priciest per-year lease extensions in sports history.  Lightning owner Jeffrey Vinik could still request state sales tax money on top of this as well — if he does in exchange for no more years of lease extension, that would be a per-year cost of infinity, which would be an unbreakable record.
  • Officials from Kansas City, Missouri and Jackson County traveled to meet with Gov. Mike Kehoe on Wednesday about the Royals stadium situation, and no you can’t know what they talked about, that’s for Royals owner John Sherman to find out and you not to find out until it’s all been hashed out. Both Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas and Interim Jackson County Executive Phil LeVota said they hope to strike a stadium deal with Sherman by the end of spring training; while we’re hoping things, let’s hope that this threesome focuses on getting a good deal, and not just a deal that is resolved quickly.
  • An Indiana senate committee cast a vote on Wednesday that “establishes the necessary funding to pay for the construction of a new Chicago Bears stadium,” according to WGN, but actually just creates a stadium authority, as we discussed last week. Also the full Indiana state senate still has to vote on it, and then the state house has to, before even this can become law, but don’t let that stop reporters from calling this a “bidding war.”
  • Dallas Mavericks execs have narrowed their arena site search to two locations, one an undisclosed one downtown and one at an abandoned mall site that, uh, is already getting redeveloped? Only having two prospective sites, both in the same city, wouldn’t bode super well for Mavs owners Patrick and Sivan Dumont’s leverage in demanding taxpayer money to build the thing, but they still have land in Irving they could consider using as a threat, as one does.
  • The Buffalo Sabres owners have hired a lobbyist to seek state funding of a $400 million renovation of their arena, good thing New York state has plenty of money for that.
  • The Sphere people want to build another Sphere, this time smaller and in the D.C. suburbs, using a tax increment financing district to siphon off property taxes to pay to build it. That’s okay, though, because Prince George’s County Executive Aisha Braveboy and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore say a Sphere would generate $1 billion in economic impact [citation needed], so everything should be fine [citation needed].
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Friday roundup: Trail Blazers, Lightning owners join Devils in asking states to fund their arena upgrades because reasons

access_time personNeil deMause

The way this week has gone, you can be forgiven if you just want to avoid the news entirely. If you’ve come here to be cheered up by some less depressing news … that’s never a good idea, but there are maybe some amusing bits, and nobody has gotten killed (so far), so I guess those are pluses!

Feel free to try to find the glass half full in these items:

  • The Portland Trail Blazers owners are about to ask that Oregon hand over all state income taxes paid by home and road players and staff to help fund a $600 million renovation of their 30-year-old arena. (The cost is estimated at $20 million a year, which if salaries rise enough could easily end up amounting to $600 million worth of future taxes.) The Oregonian notes: “Team employees, notably players who earn millions, have been paying into the state’s general fund for decades, dating back to the franchise’s founding in 1970. Will lawmakers have the stomach to divert those funds from essential services to rebuild an arena that is home to a team that will soon be owned by a Texas billionaire?” Then it says that “the income tax dollars the general fund would lose in this proposal will vanish anyway if the Blazers relocate,” which, no they wouldn’t, not if Portlanders spent their basketball ticket dollars elsewhere locally, which the numbers show is what would mostly happen. Securing approval of the tax money before Tom Dundon (the aforementioned billionaire) officially steps in as owner, one source told the Oregonian, “guarantees the Blazers’ future,” though they didn’t say what kind of lease extension Dundon would agree to in exchange, so it’s always possible it would only guarantee the Blazers’ future until it’s time to ask for more tax money again.
  • Hillsborough County is discussing paying for $250 million in renovations to the Tampa Bay Lightning‘s arena in exchange for a six-year lease extension until 2043, which has some Tampa Sports Authority officials worried the Buccaneers and Rays owners may make similar demands if the arena project is approved. Also that would be $41.7 million per year of lease extension, which would be close to the record for most expensive ever.
  • New Jersey’s proposed $300 million Devils arena subsidy only has a few days left of the legislative session for approval, and “some lawmakers,” per New Jersey Digest, have “raised concerns” that rushing a major tax break through in a lame-deck session with a lame-duck governor might not be the best of ideas. Not that state legislatures don’t do it all the time, but not the best of ideas does check out if you’re a fan of transparency and due diligence and all the other democracy things that are out of fashion right now.
  • Kansas officials want to make clear that the state could still build a Kansas City Royals stadium, just not with STAR bonds since the deadline for those expired at the end of 2025, so they’re just for the Chiefs and for Barbie/Hot Wheels theme parks. And the state doesn’t really have many other good revenue sources, says house speaker Dan Hawkins: “It would be tough to use those and develop enough money to really support a stadium, and so, I just can’t see that happening.”
  • The Ohio judge who issued a 14-day temporary restraining order against the use of unclaimed private funds to pay $600 million toward a new Cleveland Browns stadium has extended it indefinitely while he hears arguments on whether to issue a permanent injunction.
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Friday roundup: The year that stadium subsidies went completely nuts

access_time personNeil deMause

One year ago today, this site ran an item headlined “Was the Carolina Panthers’ $650m renovation deal really the worst of 2024? An investimagation,” in response to the Center for Economic Accountability declaring Charlotte the winner of that dubious distinction. The conclusion: The Panthers deal was bad, but there were plenty of other contenders, like St. Petersburg’s attempt (eventually rejected) to give over $1 billion to the owners of the Tampa Bay Rays, the Washington Capitals and Wizards owner landing $515 million from D.C., plus non-sports megadeals for everything from an Eli Lilly drug plant in Indiana to expansion of film and TV production tax credits.

All that seems like a million years ago. The year 2025 will be remembered for lots of things, but one is that it was the year where stadium subsidies blew way past the billion-dollar mark, with Washington Commanders owner Josh Harris landing a stadium-plus deal worth at least $6.6 billion in cash, land, and tax breaks, then Kansas City Chiefs owner Clark Hunt following that up with a preliminary agreement for around $4 billion in goodies for a stadium development in Kansas. Otherwise notable events of the past year like the state of Ohio gifting Cleveland Browns owner Jimmy Haslam $600 million (or more) to move from one part of the state to another and even San Antonio providing $1.3 billion for a new San Antonio Spurs arena project — easily an NBA record — feel like chump change by comparison.

And that’s the bigger concern here: While in a sane world, elected officials would sit down and figure out how much the presence of a sports team is worth compared to having money for public services, or at least how much they need to offer to outbid other prospective host cities, if any, in this timeline it’s more about what the next guy down the road has established as the going rate. It’s impossible to say, for example, how the Chicago Bears owners’ perpetual game of footsie with both Chicago and every suburb within driving distance will turn out, or if Kansas City Royals owner John Sherman will replicate the Chiefs’ tax windfall — but when owners can point to previous deals and argue that giving 99 years of free rent or all future sales tax increases from a 300-square-mile area is just the cost of doing business, it makes it easier for state, county, and city officials to say “sure, I guess, do we at least get a luxury box?”

And on that note, let’s wrap up the final news from 2025, and the early returns from 2026:

  • Kansas state senate president Ty Masterson said the “worst case scenario” for a Chiefs stadium is “nobody buys the bonds, the bonds don’t get sold, the project doesn’t happen,” but it seems far more likely that if nobody is interested in buying the bonds, the state would make its sales tax increment district even bigger than 300 square miles, which seems like it would be considerably worse. Or the state could have to sell bonds at an interest rate of as high as 8.5% to lure bond buyers, which would definitely be worse. Let only your imagination be your limit, Ty!
  • Count newly elected Kansas City, Kansas mayor Christal Watson, who is also CEO of Wyandotte County (counties got CEOs?), among those eager to look the Chiefs stadium deal in the mouth: “If the numbers aren’t there for us to maintain the services that are needed for the community, then we’ve got to reevaluate and renegotiate,” said Watson this week. It ain’t over until it’s over!
  • Meanwhile, Kansas speaker of the house Dan Hawkins says with the clock turning over to 2026, “time’s up” for the Royals to use STAR bonds that were approved last year. Though technically the legislature can still change its mind and approve new bonds until the end of June — if it can find some bits of eastern Kansas that aren’t already part of the Chiefs stadium tax district — this seems like a good opportunity for Missouri officials to recognize that they’re the only bidder for the Royals and drive a hard bargain, though vowing to do an end run around voters doesn’t seem like a great start.
  • The Minnesota Timberwolves owners are still dreaming of a new arena that will feature augmented reality, and Wild owner Craig Leipold wants to make sure he’s in line for arena upgrades too, because “in order to survive in the NHL” you “need to be in a really good building,” and his building is a whole 25 years old and the team is only turning $68 million a year in profits, this is clearly St. Paul’s problem to fix.
  • San Antonio mayor Gina Ortiz Jones says she’s not done trying to renegotiate that Spurs deal, on the grounds that “non-binding means non-binding.” She likely needs a majority of the city council to back her up there — San Antonio has a weak-mayor form of government — but props to her for knowing how to read a dictionary.
  • The New England Revolution owners reached an agreement this week to pay Boston $48 million over 15 years to compensate for traffic and transit problems caused by a planned new stadium in Everett, as well as $90 million over 20 years in parks and transit upgrades in Everett. With team owners the Kraft family covering the $500 million stadium construction cost, I’m tempted to say this is actually a pretty fair deal and a sign that at least some local politicians can still drive a hard bargain, though it’s equally like that this is mostly a sign that nobody in the U.S. cares as much about MLS as about the other football.
  • Wahconah Park in Pittsfield, Massachusetts is set to be torn down and replaced next year, which will come as a sad note to anyone who read Foul Ball, Jim Bouton’s book on how he helped temporarily save the old ballpark 20 years ago.
  • There’s another interview with me up about the Chiefs deal, which you can listen to here — there doesn’t appear to be a way to link to particular timestamps in a YouTube short, but enjoy the whole thing anyway, it may be the last thing on the platform that’s not AI-generated!
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Cleveland still has no money for Cavs, Guardians upgrades, is resorting to stalling

access_time personNeil deMause

The controversy continues over the city of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County having to cover more than $400 million in upcoming repair costs for the Guardians stadium and Cavaliers arena despite having no money to do it with. And according to Cleveland.com, there’s nothing the local governments can do about it:

Under its lease agreements with the Cleveland Cavaliers and Cleveland Guardians, Gateway Economic Development Corporation of Greater Cleveland is responsible for paying for capital repairs over $500,000 at Rocket Arena and all repairs — big or small — at Progressive Field.

Worse yet, it’s not just genuine repairs that taxpayers are on the hook for; the Guardians leases also contains one of those dreaded state-of-the-art clauses that requires publicly funded upgrades if the Cleveland stadium has fallen behind three-quarters of other MLB ballparks, “as well as any changes required by television networks, the league, insurers or government regulations.” Most recently, this required the city and county to spend $1.3 million to install padded seats behind home place in 2023, on the grounds that all the other kids had them.

Gateway officials have responded by trying to stall on approving the payments, with one board member telling a Guardians official, “We are required to fund it. We are not required to fund it on the schedule that you’re asking.” But ultimately, according to the lease extensions approved by lawmakers in 2004 and extended in 2021, the leases require the city and county to cover these costs in exchange for the Cavs and Guardians staying put through 2034 and 2036, respectively.

The city and county do have a doomsday option, though. As I wrote last December:

The leases say the teams can sue Gateway for damages if they don’t get their repair money on time. However, if Gateway runs out of money — which it would if the city and county stopped giving it more cash — it doesn’t appear that the Guardians and Cavs owners can sue the city and county, so it’s within the governments’ power to shut off the money spigot and dare the teams to break their leases and try to find better ones elsewhere, if they wanted.

That doesn’t seem to be the plan so far: Gateway officials are griping to the city and county that they need a bailout — another bailout, following one for $20 million last year that raided funds for a minority business program and other projects — and Mayor Justin Bibb is muttering about creating tax surcharges in the stadium district to help cover costs. This all seems destined to end with the team owners negotiating another round of lease extensions in exchange for a lot more public cash, like how it’s been done one state to the west; you’d like to think that Ohio legislators could be better negotiators than Indiana ones, but if city and county officials had shown any ability before this to write leases that would protect taxpayers, they wouldn’t need the talcum powder.

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Friday roundup: Chiefs to ramp up Kansas saber-rattling, Bears’ Indiana move threat gets cool reception in Illinois

access_time personNeil deMause

Are people still flipping out about Chicago Bears management acknowledging that Indiana is next door to Illinois and they could try to build a stadium there if they wanted? Yep. Does that mostly come down to “fans in Indiana would be happy with a shorter drive and those in Chicago would be unhappy with a longer one”? Yep.

We’ll get back to the Bears in a sec, but first the latest in a more advanced cross-state NFL team location battle:

  • A Kansas legislator says the state’s Legislative Coordinating Council, a joint committee of leaders of the state house and senate, is set to meet on Monday to discuss a proposed agreement between the state and the Chiefs on a new stadium, though the state commerce department cautions that “no final agreement has been reached.” The Missouri Independent says the committee could start the process of approving state-backed STAR bonds at its Monday meeting, though the state already approved those in concept last year, and it doesn’t seem possible to actually sell specific bonds without a specific agreement in place, so not clear on what could actually get decided on Monday. Mostly, this seems to be a way for the legislature to declare that Chiefs owner Clark Hunt has met the required end-of-2025 deadline to be eligible for the bonds — as has Royals owner John Sherman, apparently, despite no concrete stadium plans at all, given that committee chair Ty Masterson’s office said he believes the Royals have met the deadline by being “fully committed” to Kansas. Some sort of announcement of a Chiefs deal on Monday seems likely, but it’s also likely that a lot of details will still need to be worked out, so let’s hold off on the “Chiefs are moving to Kansas” headlines for the — never mind, too late.
  • Back in Illinois, state officials are taking talk of a Bears stadium in Indiana in stride, with State Rep. Kam Buckner (district includes Soldier Field, is opposed to stadium subsidies) calling the team’s move threat “very predictable” and saying “in negotiations, what you do is you create leverage by saying you have more options,” while State Rep. Mary Beth Canty (has sponsored a bill to allow for stadium subsidies in Arlington Heights) asked that the Bears “engage with the General Assembly in good faith, without threats.” State Sen. Bill Cunningham, meanwhile, called giving the Bears a property tax break (but not necessarily all the infrastructure money team execs are asking for) “a good starting point” because it would only be local, not state, tax money, but said “we have more important things to tackle first.” It certainly sounds like the Bears owners can get something out of Illinois, even it not everything they’re demanding; dropping an Indiana move threat may help them get on the legislative agenda, which may be all they want, but there’s still a whole lot of haggling to go.
  • Cleveland’s Gateway sports authority is facing an estimated $150 million in imminent repair costs for the Guardians stadium and Cavaliers arena, plus another $261 million over the next decade, and has no money on hand to pay for these costs and no plans for how to raise it. Not great! The city and county cover capital repairs while the teams cover maintenance, so there’s still the possibility of haggling over which is which. The government taking on all capital repairs during the teams’ 2004 lease renegotiations still seems like a terrible idea, and Gateway just defaulting on this and daring the teams to break their leases (which expire in 2034 and 2036 anyway) early seems like a reasonable consideration compared to throwing $400 million in good money after bad, but nobody’s talking about that just yet.
  • The Dodger Stadium gondola project refuses to die, year after year after year. “NBC Los Angeles reports that during the meeting, project supporters waved signs reading ‘Build the gondola’ while opponents held signs saying ‘Stop the gondola’,” can’t we come to some sort of compromise?
  • Inter Miami‘s new stadium is finally set to open next spring, but the promised accompanying public park space won’t be ready yet, seen that one before.
  • And then there’s Germany, where when a pro women’s soccer team needs a bigger stadium, the team owners buy the one that a recently relegated men’s team is no longer using plays in. It was built way back in 1992, can you imagine how outdated the Getränkehalters must be?
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Stadium questions the media shouldn’t even bother asking

access_time personNeil deMause

If you’ve been reading this site for any length of time, you’ll know that I’m a big fan of Betteridge’s Law of Headlines, which states, to save you from having to click through, that “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.” It’s not 100% accurate — sometimes the answer is yes, and sometimes even definitely maybe. But most of the time it’s a sign that a reporter spent a bunch of time on investigating a question, realized the answer was boringly obvious, and their editors decided to post the query as the headline instead, hoping to at least get clickthrus from readers curious to find out the details. (Which is pretty much how most headlines are designed to work these days anyway.)

Which brings us to these two recent, I’m going to call them “news stories,” though one is an item accompanying an All Things Considered radio item and the other is a repost of a Substack post:

Downtown Minneapolis is struggling. Would a new Wolves and Lynx arena help?

Pretty easy to guess no here, given that the Timberwolves and Lynx already play in a downtown Minneapolis arena, even if it’s one where, as one fan told Minnesota Public Radio, has “restrooms [that] look like they’ve been there for 20 years.” (Presumably whenever her own restrooms get too old, she moves to a new house?) And in fact, the author of the piece knows the answer, because there’s Kennesaw State University economist J.C. Bradbury down in the later grafs saying the answer is no, and it “isn’t some rogue opinion I have. It’s something that’s shared by the entire disciplin. If you ask doctors, ‘Is smoking bad?’ They’ll universally say yes. If you ask economists, ‘Are stadiums bad public investments?’ They’ll universally say yes.”

The article then pivots to talking about how much expensive arenas are to build these days (true), and how the “aging Target Center is mostly upper deck seats” which makes tickets more affordable (possibly slightly true, but probably not so much). It’s not clear why any of this story exists, though the accompanying radio piece does feature T-Wolves co-owner Alex Rodriguez (yes, that one) describing a new arena as “an anchor to the community,” so presumably this was pitched as an investigation of that claim — though if so, sticking in one quote from an economist halfway down saying this question has been asked and answered and then running a headline making it seem like an open question … that’s a choice, certainly.

Then there’s whatever you call this, which ran last week in the Rochester Beacon as a reprint of local reporter Gary Craig’s Substack column:

Is the new Bills stadium really such a bad deal for taxpayers?

Going to go with yes here, because (waves hands generally at everything that has been written about it on this website and elsewhere). But sure, let’s hear how spending $750 million in state money and $250 million in county money to move the Buffalo Bills across the street could be a good deal for taxpayers:

Tucked away in New York’s 2021 analysis of costs for a new Buffalo Bills stadium is this tidbit: “Personal income tax, primarily related to Bills team payroll, is the largest single fiscal revenue source, generating approximately $19.5 million per year for the State of New York.”

That number was likely low then, and with the increasing salary cap in the NFL, is certainly low now. Experts with whom I’ve spoken estimate the annual income tax revenue likely will be upwards of $30 million from the Bills and visiting teams…

These income taxes are numbers not often talked about in the debate over public financial support for a new stadium.

Uhhh, is this for Substack’s new posting-while-smoking-crack vertical? The benefit of getting income taxes from player payrolls is talked about all the damn time by team owners and pro-stadium-subsidy politicians — in fact, here’s then-Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker doing so about a new Milwaukee Bucks arena 10 years ago. The problem is threefold:

  1. Math: Even $30 million a year in new income tax revenue isn’t enough to cover $1 billion in public spending — it’d be worth a little less than half of that in present value. So even by Craig’s own logic, the answer to his question is yes, it’s a bad deal for taxpayers.
  2. New vs. existing revenue: The Bills already play in Buffalo, so this is income tax money that the state and county will be getting regardless of what stadium they play in. It would only become a windfall if you assume the Bills would have moved without a $1 billion stadium subsidy, which LOL.
  3. The but-for: Even if the Bills did move, the money Bills fans currently spend on tickets would likely be spent on something else within Erie County and certainly New York state, and would go to pay other salaries that would generate income taxes. It wouldn’t be a 1:1 replacement, no — a portion of the Bills salaries are paid by TV rights money, and that would indeed depart — but some of the tax revenue would remain, making the $1 billion taxpayer expense look even worse.

“I’m still trying to do a deeper dive on the stadium financing,” concludes Craig, and maybe he should have finished his research before posting this, or at least before letting the Rochester Beacon reprint his off-the-cuff thoughts. Anyway, hope this helps, not sure honestly why I’m still trying to critique a journalism world that is invariably headed slopwards, I’ll have to do a deeper dive on that impulse someday.

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Friday roundup: What if schools got all the money they needed and sports teams had to hold bake sales to build stadiums?

access_time personNeil deMause

Yes, that story about nobody knowing how much the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics cost because the Olympic committee literally set fire to its financial records is incredible, and yes, I really need to make a fridge magnet about it. This is more a note to myself than to you all, feel free to skip ahead to this week’s speed-round bullet points:

  • Cleveland mayor’s office chief of staff Bradford Davy said of the Guardians and Cavaliers owners’ insistence on more public money for venue upkeep and upgrades that “we are going to have to make sure that those relationships are strong and thoughtful,” but also that “the general revenue fund cannot be held accountable” and the city needs to look for other revenue sources that wouldn’t take away from spending on basic city services. I see where this is inevitably going, just be sure to say no to soufflés.
  • Also in Cleveland news, a federal judge has declined to issue an injunction against the state of Ohio’s use of unclaimed private funds to pay $600 million toward a Browns stadium plus more for other private sports projects, but is letting a lawsuit against the spending to move forward. It’s unclear what will happen if the Browns get their state check and the state then either loses its case or has its unclaimed private fund pool drained by state residents applying to get their money back — look for other revenue sources, I guess, it’s all the rage!
  • A consultant hired by the Wisconsin Professional Baseball Park District has issued a report concluding that the Milwaukee Brewers stadium parking lots could hold $700-800 million worth of development, which if fully built out and taxed would supply $18.8 million a year in property taxes. True, the land is owned by the state stadium authority and so is tax-exempt, but maybe the district could cut a deal for payments in lieu of property taxes with some as-yet-unidentified developer, despite “environmental issues” like the parking lots being partly in a flood zone? Anyway, the Brewers’ president of business operations called it a “good first step,” that’s enough to build an entire headline around, print it!
  • Ottawa Senators owner Michael Andlauer has hired a team of lobbyists to push for public money from the federal and provincial governments for the new arena that the team has been fighting for since before their old owner died. It’s not clear exactly how much the lobbyists are asking for beyond money for “infrastructure financing and other government programs,” but the Ontario government does have an $8 billion infrastructure fund sitting right there, which you know must get Andlauer salivating. The local media is also reporting that Andlauer wants a similar deal to the one the Calgary Flames owners got in which about $300 million is coming from the province of Alberta and $537 million from the city of Calgary, but also that the Sens owner “has publicly stated that the organization will not be asking the City of Ottawa for taxpayers’ money.” Say no to soufflés, Michael!
  • Springfield is still looking at building a pro soccer stadium. Which Springfield? All of them, probably?
  • Rhode Island officials have refinanced their Pawtucket soccer stadium bonds with the terrible interest rate and somehow managed to be both paying even more this time and also having the state treasury for the first time be the backstop for bond payments. GoLocalProv reports that “the Rhode Island Commerce Corporation and the Pawtucket Redevelopment Agency have refused to comment on the new financing scheme,” and can you really blame them?
  • If you’ve been craving a supercut of the Buffalo Bills-themed Hallmark movie (horrifyingly not the first NFL-team-themed Hallmark movie) only containing the parts where the male romantic lead talks about how great the new Bills stadium is, Defector has got you covered.
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Spurs arena subsidy could reach $1.3B, setting new NBA record for taxpayer money

access_time personNeil deMause

One of the standard items in the stadium campaign playbook is “moving the goalposts” — setting a target for public funding, then once you get it, asking for more on top. It’s a tactic that goes back well before the sports subsidy boom of the last 40 years, at least to New York highway czar Robert Moses, whose go-to move was to use all his available funds to launch a contruction project, then go back to the government for more because what good is half a bridge?

San Antonio Spurs Peter Holt is proving to be a master goalpost-mover, piecing together a series of different taxpayer funding asks while hoping no one will do the math to see what it adds up to:

  • In August, he got the San Antonio city council to approve funneling $489 million worth of future property and sales taxes to a new arena as part of his “Project Marvel” downtown development.
  • In November, he spent at least $7 million on a successful referendum campaign to win $311 million in future Bexar County hotel and car rental taxes to be used for the arena project. (Note: I’ve been reporting that this is $311 million paid out over 30 years, which would only cover about $150 million in current arena costs, because that’s what much of the reporting has said; other reporting and some documents, however, imply that the county would pony up $311 million now, and pay it off with significantly more money over time. The ballot language itself, frustratingly, doesn’t say which it is. I’m continuing to research this, please drop a line if you can provide any concrete confirmation.)
  • Next up, he has another proposed ballot measure set for a vote next May, this time to sell city bonds to provide $250 million in road upgrades so that people can actually get to the arena that they are paying to help build with both their city and county taxes. (This would only be the “first phase” of the traffic work; somewhere, Robert Moses is smiling.)

The only risk of going back to the well so many times is that eventually, people may catch on that you’re starting to talk about real money. And that may be happening to Holt, as the San Antonio Express-News is hinting that San Antonio voters may not like being seen as a bottomless well:

Those improvements — including highway ramps, intersection work and new parking spaces — will likely eat up a sizable chunk of the bond program that will go to San Antonio voters. That means less money for neighborhood projects, which could make the bond a harder sell to voters who already weren’t on board with the downtown arena plan.

(The May vote also would only be for city residents, which could be significant as the November vote was pushed over the top by some wealthy suburban districts.)

The San Antonio Current went into more detail on all this last week, reporting that UT-San Antonio political science professor Jon Taylor thinks that voters could be turned off not just by being asked for repeated bond issues for the arena project, but by a potentially worsening economy:

“One of the biggest problems they face is that we do not know how bad this economy is going to get between now and May,” Taylor said. “How are you going to be able to sell voters on a half-billion-dollar bond proposal that will raise taxes or cost the city money in the face of likely city budget deficits? Will the mayor be on board with it?”…

“The things that get hit first [in a recession] are tourism and conventions,” Taylor said. “So, the prospects of getting a bond passed and convincing people that in a recessionary economy this is a good thing to do — instead of being more prudent with taxpayer money — is a hard sell and an uphill climb.”

If you noticed that Taylor said “half-billion-dollar bond proposal,” that wasn’t a typo: Next May’s ballot measure may actually be for $500 million, as the San Antonio Water System’s chilling plant may need to be relocated to make way for a new hotel that would be part of the project. That would bring the total public subsidy to somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.3 billion, or almost exactly what the arena itself will cost to build. That would also be by far the largest arena subsidy in history, all to replace a venue that is the 11th-newest in the NBA, in a city already dealing with staffing cuts to balance its budget. That indeed sounds like a hard sell — Holt should probably dig under the sofa cushions now for a few million dollars to spend on campaign ads next spring, just in case.

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Friday roundup: Rays plan return to upgraded Trop, soccer stadiums in every city not working out so well

access_time personNeil deMause

This was a light posting week, as I was traveling and the airline mayhem as the result of the government shutdown … didn’t actually affect me at all, my flight was uneventful and actually landed ahead of schedule. The cab ride from the airport hit a lot of traffic, though!

Stadium and arena news was light as well, presumably everyone was distracted by one scandal or another, but there’s still plenty to chew on:

  • The Tampa Bay Rays confirmed that they’ll return to Tropicana Field next spring after roof repairs are done, along with “an expanded main videoboard, new video displays behind home plate and along both foul poles, a new sound system and updated suite interiors.” The city is, as required in the team’s lease, paying for $59.7 million in repairs ($7.65 million has been covered by insurance); the team owners are paying for upgrades, though they haven’t revealed how much they’re spending, and determining things like whether replacing the interior of a flooded luxury suite with a nicer interior is a repair or an upgrade could get dicey, hopefully someone either in city government or in the local media is keeping an eye on that, please?
  • “Can Soccer Stadiums Revitalize American Cities?” asks the New York Times, with the big reveal being: Nope. “Mixed-use development components, particularly ones that include housing, are often delayed or, to date, are incomplete,” reports the Times. “And those projects, experts say, don’t always bring in the revenue and economic activity that are promised.” Ian Betteridge is shocked, shocked.
  • The owner of the Des Moines Menace is seeking state money for a $95 million soccer stadium for that minor-league USL team as well as a yet-to-be-created women’s pro soccer team, and the Des Moines Register is asking if it will revitalize Des Moines like soccer stadiums have other cities, guess they couldn’t get past the Times paywall. (Psst, use archive.ph.)
  • The Los Angeles City Council officially voted to oppose the Dodger Stadium gondola project, with one councilmember calling it “an insult to our communities, and the process has been an insult to our collective intelligence,” yup, that tracks. The ultimate decision is up to the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which wrapped up its public comment period on the proposal yesterday.
  • The Philadelphia 76ers arena plan for the edge of Chinatown is dead, but the controversy over how the site will be “revitalized” lives on, with Sixers owner Josh Harris planning to start demolitions soon and neighborhood advocates saying that’s only “going to make the situation worse with no real guarantees that it will get better.” But blight is good for getting development projects approved, so it could end up being better for Harris, why doesn’t anyone ever think of the poor little rich boy?
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Friday roundup: Royals “poll” fans on why they need a new stadium, plus still more soccer teams, so many soccer teams

access_time personNeil deMause

I’m posting this week’s roundup from the road, so apologies if any news slipped through the cracks, and I’ll try to catch up with it next week. But at least I’m not shutting down my site to take a full-time editing job: While I’m very happy for Tom Scocca’s bank balance and health coverage, he’s one of the best writers and most astute political analysts in an increasingly threadbare media landscape, and his writing at Indignity and elsewhere will be sorely missed.

In happier news … hahaha, what am I saying, most of this news is dismal as always. But anyway in LOLdemocracy news:

  • Kansas City Royals officials are surveying selected fans about their thoughts on three potential stadium locations — Downtown/Near Downtown, Clay County/North Kansas City and Johnson County/Overland Park — some of which surely is meant to serve as a push poll, given that it only includes one positive option about the team’s current home (“Kauffman Stadium is still a great place to watch a game; There is no reason for the Royals to leave”) and two negative ones (“Kauffman Stadium is past its prime and needs to be replaced by a modern ballpark that is surrounded by an entertainment district with shops, restaurants and bars” and “I love the ‘K’, but it lacks the amenities of modern ballparks and our region would be better served with a brand-new ballpark in a different part of town”). And while surely team owner John Sherman will use the actual responses in some way, you know that his main concern is who he can extricate the most public money from — and by naming three potential locations, he also creates leverage to get the most public money from whichever site he or fans might prefer otherwise, so really win-win-win for him!
  • Raleigh may be asked to build a new stadium for the NC Courage and North Carolina F.C. (currently about to go on hiatus before jumping to the USL’s new top tier intended to compete with MLS) soccer teams, and Green Bay may build a stadium for new minor-league soccer teams, and Rancho Cordova may get tax incentives to help build a $175 million arena for an indoor soccer team, hands up everyone who knows where Rancho Cordova is or that the U.S. has an indoor soccer league! In any event, everybody still gets a soccer team, cities really don’t have to rush to pay for stadiums to get one, you have to beat them away with sticks at this point.
  • Tampa Bay Business and Wealth (?) headline: “The data is in: Mixed-use stadiums win big for cities and fans.” Actual report (?) by consultants JLL (“We believe in the power of real estate to shape a better world”) linked to in the article: “Attendance trends from the 2025 MLB regular season show that stadiums in Lifestyle Market ecosystems drive elevated attendance, even when team performance is poor” (mostly based on the success of the Atlanta Braves, who drew well in 2025 despite sucking largely because people still  bought tickets thinking the entire starting rotation wasn’t going to get injured) and “By 2040, we predict that at least half of MLB organizations will announce plans to develop a new stadium or perform a major redevelopment of their existing venue” this seems to be more winning big for team owners than for fans or cities, you know?
  • MLS commissioner Don Garber is headed to Vancouver to complain that the Whitecaps don’t get first dibs on dates for playoff games and have to share food and beverage revenue with their government landlords, can you imagine the nerve of those Canadians?
  • On Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb’s proposal for a sales tax surcharge district to fund Guardians and Cavaliers upgrades, Cleveland.com reports that “on Reddit, users on r/cleveland and r/cavs were largely united around the same message: billionaire team owners should pay for their own stadiums. They rejected the idea that beers or hotdogs should cost more,” while “on Facebook, the reaction was more skeptical — and often sarcastic.”
  • We already knew that the Baltimore Ravens were working on a nearly-half-billion-dollar renovation funded mostly by tax dollars, but “The Ravens are investing an additional $55 million for the improvements, with the stadium authority set to reimburse the team up to $35 million of that amount” is a new twist, not to mention a new definition of “investing.”
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