Category: NBA

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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Spurs owner wins vote to unlock $889m in arena subsidies after outspending opposition 32-to-1

access_time personNeil deMause

Voters in Bexar County, Texas approved two measures yesterday to raise hotel and car rental taxes and use the proceeds to help build a new San Antonio Spurs arena and renovate their old one to be a year-round stock show and rodeo venue. Though early polling last month had showed Proposition B trailing 46-40%, the arena measure squeaked through by a 53-47% margin after the pro-arena campaign pumped at least $7 million, almost all of it from Spurs owner Peter Holt, into campaign ads urging voters to “keep the Spurs in San Antonio, baby,” while the opposition campaign had spent only $219,000 at last count.

Of the proceeds from the new tax hike, $311 million will go to the Spurs for their new arena, and $192 million to redo the old one for the rodeo. In both cases, though, that’s money paid out over the next 30 years — meaning the $311 million will only be enough to pay off about $150 million of Holt’s arena expenses in the present day. The passage of the ballot measure, though, also unlocks a pile of other public funding: In August the San Antonio city council approved spending $489 million in sales and property tax proceeds toward the arena, contingent on yesterday’s county vote, bringing Holt’s total thus far to $639 million; there’s also a proposal for the city to spend $225-250 million on traffic upgrades around the new arena site, which if approved next spring will raise the overall public subsidy to as much as $889 million.

That is starting to get to where, as they say, you’re talking about real money — especially for building an arena to replace one that is only 23 years old and was just renovated 10 years ago. But by threatening that the team would leave (for somewhere unspecified) if public funds weren’t approved, as well as hammering on the idea that taxes on hotels and car rentals and the arena itself aren’t really tax money because reasons, Holt successfully convinced a slim majority of county residents that this arena will bring the promised redevelopment riches that the last one promised and failed to. As a prize, he will now get a $1.3 billion arena by putting down only about $500 million of his own money, and he can presumably expect to recoup some of that through things like the sale of naming rights and jacking up ticket prices, while the city and state will have to cover their share without any cut of arena revenues.

This is pretty much how democracy works in America right now: The public gets to vote on things, occasionally, but other times their elected representatives vote without consulting them, and in either case rich dudes who want tax subsidies get to spend millions of dollars on lobbyists and campaign ads in order to win hundreds of millions in return. I’ve been saying for 27 years now that Field of Schemes is actually a book about the need for campaign finance reform, and it just becomes more true with each passing year. Though at least the Spurs’ terrifying mascot is happy now — our system of governance works fine for those who own it.

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Cleveland mayor wants new taxes to fund Cavs, Guardians upgrades to avoid using old taxes to do so

access_time personNeil deMause

This week’s candidate for weirdest headline, from yesterday at Cleveland.com:

Bibb to Cavs and Guardians: No more bailouts until there’s a new game plan to fund stadium repairs

So once the Cavaliers and Guardians owners agree to a new way to fund stadium repairs, then Mayor Justin Bibb will agree to bailouts? Wha? Let’s read further:

Bibb told reporters at a recent news conference that he wants to create a special financing district that could collect small fees on parking, dining and entertainment in the Gateway District. The mayor said it’s a “practical, pragmatic” way to generate revenue to help maintain Progressive Field and Rocket Arena.

“Fees” on parking, dining, and entertainment are more commonly known as “sales tax surcharges,” and applying these to the entirety of the Gateway District — which includes not just the Cavs arena and Guardians stadium, but a bunch of malls and restaurants and other attractions — would represent additional tax money that locals and tourists alike would have to pay toward maintaining and upgrading the teams’ venues. That’s in one way better than the city having to scrounge around every couple of years for more cash to spend on upkeep, but in another way worse in that the city would be implementing a new tax to funnel upgrade money to the team owners ad infinitum, presumably even after the expiration of the current leases (2034 for the Cavs, 2036 for the Guardians) during which the city took over major capital repairs for the teams in exchange for them agreeing to stay put a few more years.

If the Cavs and Guardians aren’t ready to pursue new revenue streams, Bibb said City Hall won’t approve another bailout.

“I made it clear to the teams,” Bibb said. “I’m not tapping the general revenue fund until we look at these other concepts.”

“Take my tax money or I won’t give you any more tax money” is a novel approach, I’ll grant you that. Bibb says using surcharges in a New Community Authority, or NCA, would “shift the cost of stadium repairs away from residents and toward visitors who attend games and dine nearby,” but 1) residents go to see Cavs and Guardians games, that’s exactly who Cavs and Guardians fans are, and 2) even if this were all tourist money, it’s still tax money that the city could choose to collect and keep, but would instead be turning over to the team owners. (Cleveland currently has a similar taxing district on the lakefront, but that’s designated for building public spaces, at least, not for upgrades to privately controlled sports venues.)

One weird twist about Ohio NCAs is that property owners have to opt in to them, so it’s entirely possible all the landholders whose restaurants and malls would get newly tax-surcharged could tell the city to pound sand and there would be no new revenue at all. (The stadium and arena are co-owned by the city and the county; it’s an interesting question if the Cavs and Guardians, as tenants, could opt out of being taxed to fund their own upgrades.) Cleveland.com theorizes that “business owners would support it because the Cavs and Guardians drive foot traffic that keeps the Gateway District lively,” but that presupposes that 1) business owners will assume the Cavs and Guardians will leave without new taxes, despite those leases being in place for another decade and 2) they think game-day foot traffic is valuable enough to be worth getting saddled with as much as a 5% tax hike.

All this is coming to a head because the cigarette and alcohol taxes that were originally used to pay for the Gateway venues and later extended to pay for upgrades are coming up short of what the teams want, and local voters are currently so steamed by the Browns moving to suburban Brook Park that they may not approve a renewal of those taxes anyway. Mayor Bibb is also famously steamed about the Browns moving, or at least was until Browns owner Jimmy Haslam agreed to make $80 million worth of payments to his city, but he’s stuck with those leases for the near future, and would rather raise taxes just in the sports district than on all of Cleveland.

Even if it’s public money either way, you can kind of see where Bibb is coming from. Or you could point out that the whole Gateway complex was pitched as economic development that would pay for itself but instead is requiring ever-higher levels of public subsidies, and there’s a time to stop throwing good money after bad. At this point it would probably require breaching the teams’ leases and letting them walk if they want, but since neither has any great immediate options for relocation (Brook Park isn’t going to build two stadiums) and they can walk in another 9-to-11 years anyway, there’s an argument to be made for calling their bluff now and seeing what their owners do once the subsidy faucet is shut off.

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Spurs owner pours $6.5m into campaign to win Tuesday’s arena subsidy vote

access_time personNeil deMause

Early voting is underway for San Antonio Spurs owner Peter Holt’s ballot measure to get $311 million in Bexar County tax money over 30 years (about $150 million in present value) as part of a $750 million public funding deal, and here’s what’s happening:

Guessing at what will happen when the polls close is always fun, and with surveys showing county voters slightly opposed to the arena funding measures, and being outspent by only a 32:1 ratio often being enough to defeat a sports subsidy measure, it’s fair to say that Holt is going to need all of that $6.5 million to spend on last-minute campaign ads. Not that a defeat on Tuesday would be final: As Wolff observed, there’s nothing stopping Holt from coming back with a slightly different plan — he could even do so the very next year, lots of other team owners have! His arena is just 23 years old and was just renovated 10 years ago, you’d think he’d be in no rush, but billionaires gonna billionaire, it’s how they got to be billionaires in the first place.

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

access_time personNeil 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

access_time personNeil 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.

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