Dallas Mavericks – Field of Schemes

Mavericks, Stars owners launch war for Dallas arena supremacy, taxpayers hold on to your wallets

October 29, 2025October 29, 2025 Neil deMause

A shooting war has broken out between the owners of the Dallas Mavericks and Stars, with the Mavs owners filing suit yesterday against the Stars owners for … well, it’s complicated. But suffice to say that it all looks to have to do with two elements that are increasingly common factors in sports arena scheming: an expiring lease, plus a battle for dominance between a city’s NBA and NHL franchise owners.

When the Minnesota North Stars first relocated to Dallas in 1993, they shacked up with the Mavericks in Reunion Arena, a then 13-year-old arena owned by the city. The two teams convinced the city to spend $420 million to replace that arena with the American Airlines Center in 2001, and have been co-tenants there ever since, paying $2.2 million a year each in rent and other payments. (No, you are correct, that does not come close to paying off a $420 million construction cost.)

Ever since Sands casino owners Patrick and Sivan Dumont (along with Miriam Adelson) bought majority control of the Mavericks from Mark Cuban in 2023, however, they’ve been increasingly focused on building a new arena-and-casino complex somewhere in the Dallas area. (Casinos aren’t legal in Texas, but the Mavs owners aren’t sweating that part just yet.) Stars CEO Brad Alberts said at the time of the sale that he was fine with going it alone at the current arena, possibly with some renovations, but needed to wait to hear the new Mavs owners’ plans first.

Since then, things have deteriorated fast. Late last year, the two teams failed to reach agreement on a planned $300 million renovation of the current arena — to be paid for half by the city of Dallas, the rest either by the two teams jointly or the Mavs owners alone, depending on who you ask. This was immediately followed by the Mavs seizing the Stars’ half of the arena operating company and withholding their arena revenues. The conflict only escalated with yesterday’s lawsuit filing, in which the Mavs owners charged the Stars owners with breach of contract for moving their corporate headquarters from Dallas to nearby Frisco — in 2003 — and with obstructing improvements to the current arena.

Why the Mavs owners would want to pay to renovate an arena they want to move out of is an excellent question; there’s some speculation that they were simply hoping to lock the Stars into the current arena to keep them from building their own new one. And sure enough, since everything fell apart the Stars owners have begun talking up the possibility of building a new arena themselves, possibly in nearby Plano, or possibly in Frisco, The Colony, Arlington, or Fort Worth.

If all this is starting to sound familiar, it’s likely because of the recent throwdown in Philadelphia between the Flyers and 76ers owners. That was a slightly different scenario — their arena is privately owned, solely by the Flyers owners — but it played out similarly: Sixers owner Josh Harris launched plans to build his own new arena to outcompete the Flyers for concerts, and eventually used this as leverage to get the Flyers owners to agree to jointly build a new arena at the current site. (There’s since been talk of a similar possible dispute in Boston between the Celtics and Bruins.) Two arenas in even a moderately large market can be tough on the owners, who are left needing to compete for concert dates and may even have to offer discounts to land them; but threatening to build competing arenas can be a lucrative game of chicken if you think you can force your fellow team owner to agree to an arena deal that benefits you to avoid being second fiddle in their own city.

Both team owners are playing their arena leverage plans close to the vest, but this whole situation is well worth watching, especially as the teams’ leases expire in 2031 and they’re both hoping to use that to their advantage. Each has several Dallas-area cities they can try to play off against each other for arena subsidies, but at the same time both need to outmaneuver each other, something that the city governments could themselves use as leverage, if they play it smart. Hoping that city officials play things smart is usually a bad bet and early indications aren’t great, but there’s at least a chance here, so fingers crossed!

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Friday roundup: Pritzker endorses “infrastructure” spending for Bears, Royals could soon propose Kansas vaporstadium

October 24, 2025 Neil deMause

It’s Friday, which means I had to take valuable time away from reading about the Mafia luring rich people into playing in rigged poker games in order to hang out with NBA players who scored 6.6 points a game so that I could instead sum up the rest of this week’s stadium and arena news, for you, because I care.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker is once again saying his condition for allowing a new Chicago Bears stadium is that first the team owners must pay off the remaining $500 million in Soldier Field reconstruction debt (or $356 million, definitely somewhere in there), which as we discussed last month is both a reasonable ask and an arbitrary one. Pritzker also said he’d be okay with helping to build roads and infrastructure but not a stadium, which is kind of a slippery slope when the team is demanding an incredible $855 million in traffic and transit upgrades, and the biggest stadium subsidy in U.S. history was just approved involving mostly not direct stadium spending. Given his past statements, Pritzker probably isn’t trying to leave the door open for massive state subsidies while claiming he’s protecting the public purse, but if he were, this sure is what it would look like.
Kansas State Senate President Ty Masterson says he expects the Kansas City Royals owners to soon propose a new baseball stadium at the Aspiria site (formerly a Sprint corporate campus) in Overland Park, to take advantage of Kansas’s offer of $700 million worth of sales tax kickbacks and lottery money (maybe, if it can find enough sales taxes to kick back) that state officials say is only on the table until the end of December. Two local residents, one of whom used to serve in the state legislature, told Fox4KC that they think this would be a bad idea because traffic; meanwhile, Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe has been holding regular phone meetings with both Royals and Chiefs execs to discuss stadium possibilities in his state, so if nothing else an Overland Park proposal would help Royals owner John Sherman create some of that sweet, sweet leverage.
NPR has taken a look at soaring sports ticket prices and concluded that the reasons are that team owners 1) would rather sell fewer seats at higher prices because that’s more profitable, 2) are able to charge more for tickets thanks to dynamic pricing, and 3) are offering more club seats and other “premium experiences,” and while all of those are true enough as pricing strategies, they don’t really explain why teams are only doing this now. Maybe it also has something to do with the fact that there are more and more Americans today who can afford premium ticket prices, and they’re the only ones spending any money because there are also more and more Americans who can’t afford anything, and this has been the trend for the last four decades? I wrote about this in 2002 — along with how stadium subsidies have been letting team owners rebuild with more club sections and fewer cheap seats, helping drive up ticket prices — and again in 2006 and again in 2024, guess this counts as writing about it again in 2025, it’s taking longer than I thought.
Sacramento Mayor Kevin McCarty and West Sacramento Mayor Martha Guerrero are teaming up to try to land an MLB expansion team, with a stadium to be funded by reply hazy, try again later. McCarty says he’s fine with a stadium being in West Sacramento, while adding that Sacramento residents need to “support the A’s here, show that we are worthy of a Major League franchise,” good luck with that.
“Leading sports economist calls current deal to publicly fund Spurs arena ‘insane’” is an entirely unsurprising headline if you know anything about sports economists or the insane Spurs arena funding proposal that could cost taxpayers $750 million or more to replace the NBA’s 11th-newest arena, but it’s still an impressive one to see in the run-up to a voter referendum on helping to fund said deal. (No, of course it wasn’t in the San Antonio Express-News — they just can’t quit claiming the public costs aren’t really public costs, preferably in at least one editorial a week.)
Speaking of hiding stadium subsidies in the infrastructure budget, something called Smart Cities Dive has taken a look at how stadium projects for the Washington Commanders, Denver Broncos, and Carolina Panthers have all saddled taxpayers with huge costs even while claiming to be privately funded. It’s enough to make you think maybe people are finally catching on that you need to read the fine print before praising “private” deals that aren’t, and … okay, never mind, we still have some work to do in that department.
Dallas is spending $3.7 billion to tear down its convention center and build a new one, because that always works out well, and the Dallas News reports that the 20 acres of land that will be freed up as a result could provide a space for a new arena for the Mavericks, whose owners are looking for between 30 and 50 acres of land for an arena district. Yeah, I don’t get the math either, but city council ad hoc sports recruitment and retention committee chair Chad West says, “If we need to move mountains to keep them, then so be it,” so maybe he’s looking at putting an actual mountain on the old convention center site, if it’s steep enough it could provide additional acreage?
“Will the Jaguars franchise move to London?” asks USA Today’s headline, answering its own question eight paragraphs later with “The Jaguars will not be moving to London.” Guys, I’m pretty sure Ian Betteridge meant his law of headlines as a cautionary tale, not as an instruction book.

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Brewers were never going to move, says team owner while accepting $500m to keep them from moving

December 6, 2023 Neil deMause

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers signed the Milwaukee Brewers stadium renovation subsidy bill yesterday as expected, providing $500 million in public funds to go along with $110 million from team owner Mark Attanasio if you’re counting future dollars the same as present-day ones and ignore who gets naming-rights revenue on the state-owned stadium, or just under $500 million in public funds compared to more like $0 from Attanasio if you do a more complete analysis. And Attanasio actually brought up (or was asked about) whether he really would have moved the team without public money like unnamed sources had hinted to a local newspaper in advance of the legislative vote, and gave an answer, sort of:

Attanasio said during the signing that the Brewers have received inquiries from other cities about relocating but moving was never an option. He said he understands how painful it was for the community when the Milwaukee Braves left for Atlanta in 1966. He did not name the cities inquiring about hosting the Brewers…

“We never considered going anywhere else,” Attanasio said. “We always wanted to be here.”

Joanna Cagan and I previously came up with the term “non-threat threat” for the way team owners drop hints about relocation without ever actually outright saying they’ll move, but maybe it’s time for a new phrase for this second half of the maneuver, in which owners simultaneously deny they ever would have dreamed of leaving town while also thanking taxpayer largesse for keeping them in town. Jerry Reinsdorf did it, and Mario Lemeiux did it, and Zygi Wilf did it; at this point, Attanasio is clearly reading from a standard playbook, albeit one that requires reporters not to say “Wait what?”

Anyway, Attanasio has his taxpayer boodle now, so if this is going to be any kind of teachable moment, it’ll have to be for future move threat rumors. Like, say, the one where Dallas city councilmembers are saying the city should consider building the Mavericks a new arena to replace their 22-year-old one because “We need to keep the ‘Dallas’ in the Dallas Mavericks,” even after team owner Mark Cuban — who is selling majority control of the team but will retain operational control — said, “I will say on the record the team is not moving anywhere.” Maybe he’s lying, sure, but the minute you start assuming move threats without the local team owner even having to hint about them, that’s when you get into negotiating against yourself, and that way $500 million checks lie.

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Friday roundup: MSG throws campaign cash around, Commanders on pace for new stadium (someday), OKC to build two arenas?

August 19, 2022August 19, 2022 Neil deMause

It was a slow week for stadium and arena news — even money-grubbing plutocrats and their elected-official pals like to go on vacation in the summer — but there are still a few more items of note that didn’t make it to posts of their own:

Madison Square Garden owner James Dolan, who is currently waiting out state decisions on both the Penn Station redevelopment that could try to relocate the Garden and the arena’s never-ending $50 million–plus-a-year [CORRECTION: currently $43 million a year and rising] property tax break, has been sprinkling campaign donations around the state legislative races. Gothamist asked the ten state senate candidates Dolan’s PAC has funded what their thoughts were on the tax break, and four said they want to keep giving MSG tax money, one said they didn’t, and five didn’t deign to answer. Given that bills to repeal the exemption have never even gotten a committee hearing, that should probably be no surprise, but $400,000 in campaign ads never hurts to shore up the positions that elected officials are already taking.
Washington Commanders president Jason Wright said “I think we’ll still be able to hit our timeline” for a new stadium, without actually saying what that timeline is, that’s one way for no one to be able to prove you wrong. The Commanders’ currently lease has another five years to run, but as we’ve seen many times before, leases can almost always be extended, so basically Wright is saying here that “we still want a new stadium, hopefully once people forget what an ass my boss is.”
Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said last fall that he wants a new arena to replace the team’s 20-year-old one, but then this week Stars CEO Brad Alberts said “it’s a great place to play for a long time” but “it needs a renovation.” Is this good cop/bad cop, pivoting to a more politically palatable plan, something else? Once, we had government beat writers who could (sometimes) explain what’s going on, but this was reported by a guy who mostly seems to know about railroads, so he may need a little time to get up to speed on arena financing.
Oklahoma City has approved construction of a new arena — no, no, not the new arena for the Thunder, that’s still under negotiation, this one is at the state fairgrounds for horse and livestock shows. The $102 million project is getting $77.3 million in public money, most of that from OKC’s MAPS sales-tax hike, which helped pay for the Thunder’s current arena and may help pay for a new one; as Robert Moses found, having your own revenue stream targeted for stuff you want to build is a great way to get to build stuff.
The owners of the New Jersey Jackals indy-league baseball team have announced they’re moving out of Yogi Berra Stadium in Montclair, which is weird since that stadium always seemed to be the only reason the Jackals existed in the first place. Though here comes a potential bid from Paterson for the Jackals to play at their rehabilitated Negro League ballpark, Hinchliffe Stadium, so maybe the Jackals owners are just trying to see if they can take advantage of the decimation of the minors to shop around the local stadium glut for a better deal.

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Mark Cuban wants to replace Mavericks’ 20-year-old arena “just because”

November 15, 2021November 15, 2021 Neil deMause

The Dallas Mavericks‘ arena turned 20 years old this summer, which means the Mavericks only have 10 years left on their lease, which means of course it’s time for team owner Mark Cuban to start talking about building a new one. He didn’t provide a lot of details in talking to the Dallas Morning News, but he did rattle at least a saber or two:

Cuban in the next breath told The Dallas Morning News without being asked: “I’d say the likelihood of us staying at the AAC right now is less than 50%.” …

“It’s going to take five or six years to build anything,” Cuban said. “So we’re not that far off from making a decision.” …

Why?

“Just because,” he said. “I think it’s time. You know, the AAC is beautiful and it’ll last forever. There’s just more things I want to do.”

Cuban then said that parking inconveniences near the arena are one issue — because it’s totally easier to build a whole new arena than to build a parking garage, or even a shuttle from the site of the team’s practice facility a mile away, which Cuban is thought to be eyeing for a new arena — and added that “it’s not optimized for fan experience coming into the arena any longer, like it was in the beginning.”

This is not the first time Cuban has talked about building a new arena: Five years ago, he floated (no pun intended) the idea of building an arena on the 20th floor of a skyscraper, which was quickly categorized under “things that Mark Cuban just says because he’s Mark Cuban” and then forgotten. He also said two years ago that it would take “five, six years” for him to decide whether to renew his lease in 2030, so either he’s ahead of schedule or he considers another 3-4 years to be “not that far off.”

The big question, as always, is who would pay for the rich guy’s new toy. The current arena got $125 million in public money, toward what after cost overruns ended up being a then-record $420 million price tag; going halfsies seems to be a common practice for sports stadiums in the Dallas area, though as we’ve seen before, there are lots of ways for taxpayers to be hit with additional tabs that aren’t construction costs per se. Cuban is worth $4.5 billion at last check, so he could certainly afford to fund a new building entirely out of his own pocket, but so could these guys, and they’re instead looking for one of the biggest sports subsidies ever — it’s not about what you can spend, it’s about what you can convince other people to spend.

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Friday roundup: Ex-D.C. mayor says his $534m Nats stadium expense was worth it, Clippers arena stymied by car trouble, MLS franchise fees to go even higher

October 25, 2019 Neil deMause

Shouldn’t posting items more regularly during the week leave less news to round up on Fridays? I’m pretty sure that’s how it’s supposed to work, but here I am on Friday with even more browser tabs open than usual, and I’m sure someone is still going to complain that I left out, say, the latest on arena site discussions in Saskatoon. I guess lemme type really fast and see how many I can get through before my fingers fall off:

The Washington Nationals will host their first-ever World Series games starting tonight, which means it’s time to look at whether the city’s $534 million stadium expense has paid off (the mayor who approved it says yes, a local economist says no!) and at what’s happened to some of the business owners who were forcibly relocated to make way for the stadium (some of them are going to the games, but that doesn’t mean they’re happy about the whole eviction thing!). This is all presumably more interesting than actually watching the games on TV, which fewer and fewer people are doing — I know I’m probably not a representative data point, but I for one haven’t been watching much because I’ve reached my capacity for 1) postseason baseball, 2) John Smoltz, and 3) that Postmates ad where the guy falls out the window.
The California Air Resources Board still doesn’t want to sign off on the Los Angeles Clippers‘ proposed arena, as far as I can understand it because the board thinks more arenas mean more events and thus more people driving fossil-fuel-burning cars to them? I mean, maybe, but wouldn’t this be an argument for banning every new sports venue, let alone every shopping mall or anything else you have to drive to? Not that I’m opposed to that, mind you, just trying to understand the logic here.
MLS commissioner Don Garber says that the expansion fee for the league’s next new team will be more than $200 million. despite MLS teams’ average operating income being around –$2.8 million a year. Ahem.
The Atlanta Dream are moving to a smaller arena nearer to the airport, which should do wonders for attendance by people who like to fly to other cities to watch WNBA games. Or maybe people who want to catch a WNBA game while waiting to change flights?
The Los Angeles Dodgers owners are spending $100 million on a new centerfield plaza to include “food, entertainment, and a statue of Sandy Koufax,” and some local residents are concerned this will create more traffic and noise. No, I can’t explain anything in that sentence, just chalk it up to 2019 being unutterably stupid.
“This premium era of sports—taking the largely populist experience of going to a game and turning it into a luxurious one—began out of necessity. As player salaries rose in the 1970s, so did the need for teams to find new ways to generate revenue,” writes a magazine for rich people, which gets completely backwards the causal relationship between player salaries and ticket prices, but I guess rich people prefer to read that high ticket prices are the fault of greedy players rather than themselves having too much money to burn.
Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban says he will take another “five, six years” to decide whether to keep his team at its current arena, which is all of 18 years old.
A former Mobile BayBears exec says Mobile’s Hank Aaron Stadium may never get another minor-league baseball team now that the BayBears are leaving town, because the stadium is too antiquated. Hank Aaron Stadium in 22 years old.
The Milwaukee Bucks are replacing 3,500 cup holders at their one-year-old arena, because the old ones were no longer state of the art.
The Atlanta Falcons suck, and nobody wants to go see their games even if they do play in a snazzy new stadium with $2 hot dogs.
NYC F.C. still wants to build a new stadium of its own, and a poll of South Bronx residents and business owners shows they’d be fine with that, so long as the team pays property taxes, unlike the Yankees. Hey, what ever happened to that rumored plan to rush through approval of a stadium before Election Day, anyway?
A reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal went to the trouble of timing how long it takes to drive from the Raiders‘ new off-site parking lots to their new stadium in “normal traffic,” which would be very useful if only the presence of a 65,000-seat NFL stadium wasn’t likely to change what “normal traffic” will be. Seriously, does the Review-Journal even have editors anymore, or have the bots taken that over too?

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Mark Cuban wants to build NBA arena 20 stories in air, proves he’s still Mark Cuban

April 5, 2016 Neil deMause

Oh hey, did I forget to post a link to the story where Dallas Mavericks owner/all-around crazy guy Mark Cuban said he wants to build an arena suspended 20 stories in the air? Here’s a link to that. And here’s what Cuban said about his crazy idea:

“My dream — and this is like the long, long, long, long shot — is to build an arena 20 stories up in the air, where every seat has a view of downtown, whether it’s north, south, east or west,” Cuban said.

Asked how he came up with this vision, Cuban laughed and said, “That’s what I do.”..

“Imagine being 20 stories up, taking a page from ballparks like Pittsburgh and other places that have amazing views,” Cuban said. “That’s ‘a vision.’ It’s not necessarily a slam dunk. But that’s part of the thinking process.”

Also part of the thinking process is usually thinking, and what Cuban’s idea makes me think of is the way that concert and event promoters hate arenas where the floor isn’t at ground level (Madison Square Garden being the classic example), because then you have to move amplifiers and stage props and circus elephants by elevator. Also, that the view one generally wants in a basketball arena is of basketball, not what’s outside the arena. Also that what gives Pittsburgh’s baseball stadium such great views isn’t its height (it’s one of the shortest MLB stadiums) but the fact that it’s across the river from downtown Pittsburgh. Maybe Cuban should move the Mavericks to a more scenic city like Pittsburgh? Or better, move downtown Pittsburgh to Dallas?

Cuban added that he’d need to start building a new arena in about the year 2023, because his lease at American Airlines Arena expires in 2030, and obviously no one has ever heard of such a thing as renewing a lease.

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