Category: Minnesota Timberwolves

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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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: Commanders warn DC council “Don’t make Trump come in there,” plus Blue Jackets could join the line for Ohio subsidies

access_time personNeil deMause

Okay, that’s done, Friday roundup, let’s get to it:

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Friday roundup: Leaked analysis says Royals stadium could cost taxpayers $6B wut

access_time personNeil deMause

Gonna be a bit of a weird roundup today, gang, because the Kansas City Star dropped this bombshell last night:

A new Royals ballpark in downtown Kansas City would cost Jackson County taxpayers far more than its $1 billion sticker price.

It’ll be more like $4.4 billion to $6.4 billion, if the stadium sales tax and other payments required by the current lease agreement extended 40 years beyond its expiration date in 2031, as the Royals have suggested.

6.4 what now? Is this one of those stress dreams where I’m going to laugh about how I could ever have found it believable once I finally wake up?

If you don’t feel like reading the whole Star article, or just can’t see it through all the pop-up ads, here are some of the main points:

  • The 0.375% sales tax surcharge that funded the most recent Royals and Chiefs renovations currently generates about $53.4 million a year. [CORRECTION: The $53.4 million includes the parks tax and other payments listed below. I’ve adjusted the rest of the calculations that follow — the overall math doesn’t change much.] If that is extended by 40 years like Royals owner John Sherman wants, and sales tax receipts rise as expected, that would generate between $1.3 billion and $2 billion for the Royals alone according to a financial analysis that County Administrator Troy Schulte conducted last week and which someone “associated with the Legislature” leaked to the Star.
  • The Royals would get another $170 million, again over 40 years, from its half of a county parks tax and other payments from the city and state.
  • “What shocked Schulte,” writes the Star, was that Jackson County would face a projected $2.9 billion in increased insurance payments over the next 40 years if a new Royals stadium were built. The Royals’ current stadium comes with an annual insurance bill of $800,000; for a new stadium that would start at an estimated $4.5 million, then rise by a staggering 10% a year.

Some immediate caveats: None of the numbers above are in present value, meaning spending in the year 2070 is counted the same as spending now, which is not really kosher at all. And that 10% a year insurance hike sounds crazy on the face of it, plus also wouldn’t that imply that insurance on the Royals’ current stadium would rise as well, making the incremental cost less?

Still, even if it’s not $6.4 billion, we’re talking about a shit-ton of taxpayer money here. Using my best back-of-the-envelope scribbling and this present value calculator, it looks like the future tax surcharge diversion would be worth something in the range of $500-700 million in present value. The insurance bill, depending on your assumptions, could be up to $500 million. So it’s very likely well over $1 billion worth of taxpayer costs here, and that’s without any public infrastructure spending or property tax breaks or anything else that might eventually get rolled in as well.

If nothing else, this certainly explains why County Administrator Frank White sees $300 million paid out over 20 years as a preferable counteroffer: It very much is. It’s still maybe not a great counteroffer, since that’s almost $200 million in present value, but it beats $1-billion-plus all to hell.

So, yeah, that happened. And other things happened this week too, so let’s get to them as well:

  • Tampa Bay Rays execs presented their $600 million-ish stadium subsidy demand to the St. Petersburg city council yesterday, with city consultant David Abrams beaming that “You only have to look to the Battery in Atlanta to see how there was nothing there, the amount of economic impact that has happened in Cobb County for the Atlanta Braves has been nothing short of astounding.” Sorry, that is incorrect, but we have some lovely parting gifts. Rays exec Brian Auld also told the council that it has to approve a stadium deal by next spring in order for the stadium to be open in 2028 because “if we miss that opening date, this entire endeavor becomes impossible,” an assertion he backed up with I’m sorry, my time has expired.
  • Meanwhile, the Tampa Bay Times editorial board wrote an editorial this week that praised the city of St. Petersburg for its “transparency” by getting the Rays to share economic projections for their new stadium project with the city council by promising not to let the public see them, which is a new twist on the meaning of that word. “This marks a good start in what could be a beneficial new era for area residents and the Rays alike,” wrote the board; it will be left as an exercise for readers to determine what innovative definition the Times is using for “beneficial.”
  • The African-American Sports and Entertainment Group, which was announced with great fanfare a couple of years back as the city of Oakland’s choice to redevelop the Oakland Coliseum site, isn’t doing too well, with two of its eight owners suing the others for something about unfairly diluting their shares by creating multiple LLCs in Delaware. The group has already seen its plans for a WNBA team in Oakland get derailed by the league granting an expansion franchise to San Francisco instead, and getting a new NFL team for Oakland has always seemed kind of pipe-dreamy, so yeah, definitely not doing too well.
  • It’s been a couple of years since we’ve heard about the Minnesota Timberwolves owners — yes, A-Rod and that other guy — and their desire for a new arena to replace their renovated-in-2017 old one, but somebody asked Minnesota city council candidates what they think of paying for one, and they’re not crazy about the idea. “Subsidizing billionaires’ hobby investments is not a responsible use of taxpayer dollars — especially when there is no evidence that these tax outlays provide a return on investment,” said councilmember Elliott Payne.
  • Add Country Club Hills to the list of Chicago suburbs interested in being home to a new Bears stadium if the team’s owners want to pay to build one themselves, which they don’t.
  • The Arizona Diamondbacks are in the World Series, which means it’s time for more articles about why their owners think they need a new stadium. Also pitcher Merrill Kelly cast aspersions on Chase Field’s air-conditioning, saying, “I’m definitely sweating more here than I am other places”; there might just be other reasons for that, Merrill.
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Friday roundup: Pelicans, T-Wolves arena demands floated by sportswriters whether owners are talking about them or not

access_time personNeil deMause

Hey, remember just a few months ago when people could legitimately argue that the age of sports stadium and arena subsidy demands was coming to an end? That was before the Buffalo Bills, Arizona Coyotes, Chicago Bears, and Cleveland Guardians all joined the Oakland A’s and Tampa Bay Rays in seeking government money for new or renovated buildings, and now you can barely turn around without some new team joining the chase for the public purse:

  • The New Orleans Pelicans suck, and the New Orleans Times-Picayune asks: Maybe a new arena would help? The resulting billion-word article doesn’t really answer the question, but it does reveal that owner Gayle Benson (who also owns the Saints) says she needs “some big arena investments to stay competitive,” meaning either a renovation of their 22-year-old arena or a brand-new one, and the team’s lease expires in 2024, and Benson is 74 years old and her succession plan is for the Pelicans (and Saints) to be sold on her death with the proceeds given to a charitable foundation, and she says one requirement will be that the teams stay in New Orleans, but you know they could potentially leave, so isn’t it better to be safe than sorry? (Why a billionaire who says she’s giving away her wealth to charity because “I don’t need any more money” needs more revenue to “stay competitive” is another question the Times-Picayune article doesn’t answer.)
  • Meanwhile in Minneapolis, Minnesota Timberwolves and Lynx owners Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez say they have “have no plans to move” the teams without a new arena, but that isn’t stopping the Minneapolis Star Tribune from reporting that they’ll move the teams without a new arena, because it’s been five whole years since their current arena got a $145 million renovation, and “I can vacuum the floor of my Chevy and repair the cigar burns on the seats. At the end of the day, it’s still a Chevy.” Also, Lore said that adding “augmented reality,” which apparently means fans wearing Google Glass-type glasses so watching in real life can be more like watching on TV, could be “incredible,” so this is totally something to dedicate an entire sports column to, how could anyone possibly think otherwise?
  • On the Bears front, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker has declared that “I have not had any discussions, haven’t been approached by anybody, neither the city nor the Bears themselves, so it’s not something we’re currently looking at, like I said we’re focused on our own fiscal situation.” The headline that WLS-TV put on this was “New Chicago Bears stadium in Arlington Heights won’t be paid for by IL taxpayers, Gov. Pritzker says,” which isn’t quite what he said, but I guess “New Chicago Bears stadium in Arlington Heights won’t be paid for by IL taxpayers yet, Gov. Pritzker says” didn’t rank as high in SEO.
  • Tampa Bay Rays owner Stuart Sternberg isn’t putting up a sign inside his stadium for the postseason promoting his plan to move the team to Montreal half the year after all. “I made a big mistake, a real mistake in trying to promote our Sister City plan with a sign right now in our home ballpark. I absolutely should have known better, and really, I’m sorry for that,” said Sternberg. “I knew that a sign would bring us attention. And we do want the attention. I just didn’t completely process that now isn’t the moment for it.” Of course, one could argue that he’s already gotten the attention, so why does he need the sign, but that would be churlish, right?
  • Orange County Superior Court Judge David Hoffer has ruled that Anaheim city officials need to look harder for records on how they decided to sell 150 acres of land to Los Angeles Angels owner Arte Moreno for a cut-rate price of $150 million. The ruling was part of a now-18-month-old lawsuit seeking to overturn the deal as being in violation of open-meetings laws.
  • Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer says he’s “become a real obsessive about toilets,” adding: “Toilets, toilets, toilets.” The Clippers’ new arena will have a record number of toilets per fan, and Ballmer says, “The architects keep getting on me. You’re supposed to call them ‘fixtures’ instead of toilets. But it’s the same thing. We’re putting a whole lot more toilets than anyone else in the NBA.” Also: toilets.
  • Hey, remember this crazy $1.7 billion lotus-blossom-shaped stadium for the Guangzhou Evergrande soccer team? You will be sad to learn that Evergrande is close to bankruptcy and doesn’t even have naming rights to the team anymore, and the stadium now looks like this and may never look like anything more. Unfinished, half-built stadiums are becoming quite the rage in international soccer, which if nothing else is making for some great vaportecture.
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How about I start a rumor that the (throws dart) Buffalo Bills are moving to (throws dart again) Greensboro?

access_time personNeil deMause

Some days here on the internets, puzzling out news coverage is like detective work: Why is everyone suddenly talking about this one thing? Like, today, this greeted me:

Say what now? I had seen previously that Alex Rodriguez (and e-commerce billionaire and “city of the future” envisioner Marc Lore, but you don’t get to be in the headlines when your partner is A-Rod) was in talks to buy the Minnesota Timberwolves from local billionaire Glen Taylor, and also that people were alarmed that there’s no language in the sale agreement requiring that the team stay in Minnesota, and then that Taylor insisted Rodriguez and Lore had promised him the team would stay put. That was all like a week ago, so what changed?

The common thread, it turns out, was this solitary item buried deep in a column by Pioneer Press sports columnist Charley Waters, after such momentous reports as “Outfielder Torii Hunter, Jr., 26, son of the former Twins outfielder, is batting .176 between Double-A Rocket City and Triple-A Salt Lake with three home runs in 20 games for LA Angels minor league affiliates” and “Among protocols for the MIAC baseball playoffs were prohibiting sunflower seeds at venues”:

There’s buzz now that Kevin Garnett, who is said to be worth more than $200 million, will be heavily involved in the Timberwolves basketball department if he joins franchise investors Alex Rodriguez and Marc Lore if/when they gain full control in 2023. The word is Garnett, the ex-Timberwolf, wants the franchise to remain in Minnesota but Rodriguez wants to move it to Seattle, where he played for seven seasons.

And that’s the whole of it. A sportswriter needs to fill column inches, reports (or makes up) some speculation about who does or doesn’t want to move the local basketball team, and the rest of journalism is off to the races, couched with the disclaimer “reports say.” My favorite of these is Fansided’s Dunking With Wolves site, which wrote up its story like this:

The “Rodriguez wants to move the team to Seattle” bit is … interesting. While a frequently-mentioned possibility, there hasn’t been a sourced rumor to date suggesting that it’s truly what A-Rod wants to happen. Until now, that is.

Followed immediately by:

Then again, there isn’t anything resembling sourcing here, just a “the word is” rumor, which is certainly Walters’ style in these articles.

Yup! Unfortunately, the state of the click economy is now such that anybody can say anything — so long as it’s someone with a major news platform or enough Twitter followers — and a news story springs full-blown from it, like Athena from Zeus’ head or mice from moldy grain. This is not a new observation, but it remains a distressing one for anyone who thinks that the goal of news reporting should be trying to figure out what’s true, not trying to figure out what people want to talk about the most. (Or

But wait, you say, aren’t you doing the exact same thing with this post? I mean, I hope not: The goal is to cast some light on the workings of the news business, and hopefully spread some media literacy to those who might otherwise just read the headlines without checking on their sources. (Tl;dr: Don’t do that.) But if I wake up tomorrow to see that someone is reporting that “reports say” the Buffalo Bills are looking to move to Greensboro, N.C. — a team and a city that I literally picked at random with the help of random.org — it’ll give me a laugh, anyway. A sad, rueful laugh, but that’s better than nothing.

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Outgoing owner promises A-Rod won’t move T-Wolves to Seattle, everyone immediately wonders if A-Rod will move T-Wolves to Seattle

access_time personNeil deMause

Glen Taylor, the billionaire former Minnesota state senator who owns the Minnesota Timberwolves, is in the midst of selling his team to online marketing billionaire Marc Lore and not-billionaire-but-pretty-wealthy former disgraced baseball star Alex Rodriguez for around $1.5 billion, and given that neither of those guys are locals, it’s immediately sparked heightened speculation about whether the team could move, maybe to Seattle, which is still on the hunt for a replacement for the Sonics. In response, Taylor told WCCO-AM that his sale agreement contains language to keep the team in town; as reported by the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which Taylor also owns:

“We have it in the contract, they have signed the contract to do that,” Taylor said…

Taylor said in his interview with Chad Hartman that the NBA does not want to see the Wolves moved out of Minnesota to another city like Seattle.

“The real agreement is with the NBA. The NBA will make the decision if somebody’s going to move or not move,” Taylor said. “The NBA will not approve of the Timberwolves moving from here to Seattle. It’s in the NBA’s interest that in Seattle, that a new team is formed. It’s an economic decision that’s in the interest of all of the owners.”…

He also said the new owners “are not going to pay” $1.5 billion to buy the Wolves then another $2 billion or so to move the team.

“That’s the assurance that I have that they aren’t going to move it out there,” Taylor said.

So, we have: Lore and A-Rod won’t move the team because they signed a contract saying they won’t; the NBA won’t let them move; and the NBA might let them move, but would charge the owners so much money to do so that it wouldn’t be worthwhile. That’s totally clear and not at all inconsistent!

In response, the Star Trib linked to an article it ran last July wherein several legal experts said it would be difficult to make a permanent non-relocation agreement in a sale contract enforceable, or to get one approved by the league:

“You could have some contingencies … and I’m sure there could be a provision that relates to keeping the team in place,” said Eldon Ham, an author and professor of sports law at Chicago-Kent College of Law. “But I don’t think it would be able to extend forever.”

At the crux of any guarantee to keep the Wolves in Minnesota would be how long that guarantee would last or how harsh the financial penalty would be for breaking it. Ham said any kind of agreement that makes outlandish demands, like a 30-year promise to keep the team in Minnesota, might not make it past league approval, which requires a $1 million fee just to apply, he said.

“The league itself has to approve all this,” Ham said. “So if you have a ridiculous contract, they’re just going to tell you: ‘We’re not approving this stuff.’”

So, what’s really going on here? Clearly, Taylor, who still needs to maintain his local cred if only to keep Minnesotans from threatening to burn his newspaper in effigy, is trying to do all he can to say that if the Timberwolves ever move, it’s not his fault. So he’s putting in some kind of clause in the sale agreement, but also noting that the NBA would want a ten-figure payoff to let Seattle back into the league, something the new owners are unlikely to put up just to move from one mid-size city to another mid-size city — all of which is true.

But as we’ve seen here time and again, move threats aren’t just about actual threats to move, but ways to (say it all with me now) create leverage for owners to extract concessions from local elected officials. The T-Wolves’ Target Center just got a $140 million renovation in 2017, helped along with $74 million in public money, but at 31 years old it’s also the second-oldest arena in the NBA, and you just know how shiny new sports team owners hate not having the shiniest new buildings to go with their freshly acquired baubles. Hence how there’s somehow only one remaining NBA arena built before 1990, seriously, what kind of planned-obsolescent world are we living in, people?

Anyway: There’s no reason to think that Lore and A-Rod will move the Timberwolves, but there’s also every reason to suspect that they would not be unhappy for the possibility of the Wolves moving to continue to be front-page news in, oh, say, the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Especially if talk of a new arena, or another round of renovations to this one, begins making the rounds. This is all conjecture, mind you — maybe A-Rod will declare “Today, I am a Minnesotan!” and vow that the team will only leave over his dead body — but it’s conjecture informed by a whole lots of sports shakedown history, so let’s just say that if this isn’t the last we hear about Wolves-to-Seattle rumors, don’t be surprised.

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Friday roundup: Warriors rail stop turns pricey, West End stadium undead again, Montreal mayor meets with would-be Expos owners

access_time personNeil deMause

Superbrief mode today:

  • Expanding light-rail service to the Golden State Warriors‘ new arena is now expected to cost at least $62 million, which is a lot for Muni Metro, though not for some other transit systems. The Warriors owners are kicking in $19 million, but the rest will be funded by tax money from the arena district, which may or may not be enough to cover the entire nut. Tim Redmond saw this coming.
  • F.C. Cincinnati owners are officially pivoting back to the West End stadium site that it had declared dead last month after not getting offered enough property-tax breaks on the land. How come? Team CEO Jeff Berding said of the other two options, Oakley is “not as close to the urban core as desired,” and the team couldn’t secure land in Newport, Kentucky. Sounds like the West End has the club over somewhat of a barrel, which it should be able to use to ensure the team pays full property taxes, at least, though some residents may be more concerned about keeping out a stadium entirely over fears it will further gentrify their neighborhood.
  • The mayor of Montreal is meeting today with an ownership group that wants to bring a new Expos MLB team back to town. “We don’t need a cent from the city of Montreal, but we need a little help,” prospective co-owner Stephen Bronfman said earlier this week; your guess is as good as mine what that actually means.
  • Minnesota taxpayers have spent $1.4 billion on new or renovated sports venues over the past 20 years, if anyone is counting.
  • The Pawtucket Red Sox‘ stadium demands continue to be stalled, if anyone is keeping track.
  • “A deputy in one of Russia’s 2018 FIFA World Cup host cities has claimed that a latest inspection by the world’s footballing body has neglected a missing column at a newly built stadium.” You’ve just got to read the whole Moscow Times article now, don’t you?

 

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FC Cincy mulling Kentucky tax kickbacks to pay its entire stadium cost, and other week’s news

access_time personNeil deMause

All the news that wasn’t fit to print this week:

  • FC Cincinnati now wants the Port Authority of Greater Cincinnati to own its stadium since Hamilton County doesn’t want to. (Does “own” mean “pay for”? Reply hazy, ask again later.) Or maybe Newport, Kentucky, since, according to team president and former city council members Jeff Berding, that would allow the team to recoup its entire $100 million through tax increment financing kickbacks of property taxes paid on the property. How would it generate a whole $100 million in TIFs? Reply hazy, ask again later.
  • Would-be Seattle arena builder Chris Hansen hired University of Washington public finance professor Justin Marlowe in May to compare the economic impact of his Sodo arena proposal to that of the KeyArena renovation plan, and he has issued his report, which says that the Sodo plan would create three times as much tax revenue for Seattle ($103 million over 35 years vs. $34 million for Key). On the other hand, the Key plan would include some kind of sharing of arena revenues, though that wouldn’t kick in until the Key developers got their share, and, yeah, basically it’s a muddle. On the whole, it seems to give the edge to Hansen’s plan, if only because that arena would pay property taxes, but I’d need to sit and break down the math to say exactly by how much, and I’ve been waiting for time to do that all week, so clearly it’s not happening. Reader exercise!
  • Oakland A’s executive VP Billy Beane promised that once the team gets a new stadium, it will stop trading all its decent players once they start to get expensive: “There’s only one way to open a stadium successfully, and that’s with a good, young team. … Really what’s been missing the last 20 years is keeping these players. We need to change that narrative by creating a good team and ultimately committing to keep them around so that when people buy a ticket, they know that the team is going to be around for a few years.” Which could make sense if a new stadium draws enough fans that having a winning team boosts revenues enough to pay for player salaries, though we’ve heard this song and dance before elsewhere.
  • The Nashville Sounds‘ new stadium was supposed to cost taxpayers $37 million, but it ended up costing $91 million.
  • What does $74 million in public subsidies buy Minnesota Timberwolves fans and staff? New seats, new restrooms, new locker rooms, an ice floor that doesn’t leak, two new loading docks, and a big glass wall, because everybody’s gotta have one of those.
  • The athletes’ village from the 2016 Rio Olympics is now a wasteland of unsold condos, because everything the Olympics touches turns to trash.
  • A homeless camp has arisen on the site of the planned Las Vegas Raiders stadium. Make your own metaphors.
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Stadiums now just big-ass billboards and public subsidy generating machines, face it

access_time personNeil deMause

Today in sports teams sell ad rights for lots and lots of money:

The [Atlanta] Falcons organization has sold corporate sponsorships at Mercedes-Benz Stadium totaling more than $900 million in contractually obligated long-term revenue, SportsBusiness Journal reports in this week’s edition.

That’s $900 million over several decades, so not really worth $900 million toward today’s construction costs. Still, it should go a long way toward helping pay off the Falcons‘ $1.6 billion stadium, especially when the team is already getting tax money worth nearly $700 million.

Also today in sports teams sell ad rights for lots and lots of money:

The Minnesota Timberwolves and Lynx named five new “founding partners” on Monday who will help pay for the $130 million renovation of Target Center now underway…

In exchange for its sponsorship, each founding partner will receive a customized package with the two teams. Each package will offer a yet-to-be disclosed “physical presence” inside the arena, plus outdoor and indoor digital signage and category exclusivity.

That Minneapolis Star Tribune article doesn’t mention it, but the Target Center renovation also got $48 million in public funds.

These are only two data points, obviously, but they do help explain why team owners are so eager to build new facilities despite tons of evidence that they don’t bring in all that much more money in actual arena revenues. New sports venues aren’t just new sports venues — they’re also new billboards, and corporations are more willing to throw money at slapping their names on a fresh canvas than on one that’s been written on already a bunch of times, even if it’s dubious whether there’s any real business value.

Plus, of course, it’s way easier to ask for public money for new (or renovated) buildings than it is to just ask for straight taxpayer handouts because you want to boost your profits. When future alien anthropologists try to puzzle out why we spent so much of our time building and then tearing down places to watch mass sporting spectacles, it’ll be fun to see how many tries it takes before they arrive at “it was the best way to separate people from their wallets.”

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