Category: NBA

Jazz, Mammoth win $1-a-year arena rent until 2125, how much will that cost Salt Lake City?

access_time personNeil deMause

One of the most common questions I get from journalists new to the world of sports subsidies is “Where can I find a list of how much public money went to each stadium and arena?” and my answer is always Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha no. There have been attempts, like Judith Grant Long’s 2013 magnum opus Public-Private Partnerships for Major League Sports Facilities, which took her ten years to research and was almost instantly out of date — one reason being that it turns out publicly announced figures for stadium spending are only the tip of the iceberg, with other things like tax breaks and discounted hidden below the waterline. And how much a team owner will benefit from costs they won’t be paying in the future turns out to be really tricky to project, which is how you end up with Washington, D.C. officials saying a Commanders stadium would cost $850 million and a land-use economist saying the actual number is somewhere between $7 billion and $26 billion, depending on the future value of land that D.C. is forgoing collecting property taxes and rent on.

All of which brings us to the latest news from Salt Lake City, where Utah Jazz and Mammoth* owner Ryan Smith just landed an eye-opening lease extension on the land under his arena:

The deal includes provisions that can extend the agreement for as long as 100 years for as low as $1 per year. … The lease was set to expire in 2060. Under the new agreement, Jazz Arena Investors can rent the land for as little as $1 per year, as long as it keeps up with certain provisions over the next 30 years…

After 2055, the arena owner can extend the lease every 10 years for up to seven times, accounting for the remainder of the 100-year deal. After 30 years, the Reinvestment Agency could assess “market rent” rates if conditions aren’t met.

*(Yes, the former Arizona Coyotes have been renamed the Utah Mammoth, in case you missed it. And yes, the plural of “mammoth” is “mammoths,” but these are the Mammoth because oneness or something, or maybe just because whoever filed the trademark request forgot the “s,” who can say?)

Okay, so Smith gets to have his NBA and NHL teams play at the Delta Center for $1 a year — or “less than the cost of a candy bar,” as the Salt Lake Tribune helpfully explains for anyone who doesn’t know how much a dollar is worth — through the year 2125 if he wants, though Salt Lake can start charging real rent starting 60 years from now if Smith moves both teams out by then. All of this is for an arena and surrounding district that Smith just got $900 million in state and city tax money to upgrade, even though neither the state nor the city owns it nor will be getting any revenue from it.

That’s a pretty sweet deal, but how sweet? To figure that out, we would need to know what the going rate is for rent on a large piece of Salt Lake City real estate with a sports arena sitting on top of it, which, needless to say, it’s hard to find comparables for. In fact, we actually need to know not just the going market-rate rent now, but what it is likely to be until shortly before the founding of Starfleet Headquarters. We could guesstimate a current value of Salt Lake City commercial land at about $2 million an acre, but we would still have to know how many acres of land Smith is getting control of (the entire arena district site is 100 acres, but this would only be for part of it, if I’m reading the news reports correctly), plus then subtract out the value of the $1-a-year rent Smith is already set to get through 2055. I’ve asked Geoff Propheter, who did the D.C. subsidy estimate, to run similar numbers here, and he says he’ll get back to me once he can get more details.**

Plus, there’s also the value of the leverage Smith is buying: Because it’s not an actual 100-year lease but just a series of lease options, Salt Lake City can’t demand more rent from him, but he (and his children and grandchildren and AI descendants) absolutely will be able to threaten not to renew his lease if he thinks it will enable him to demand more public money in the future. It’s a perfect “grift that keeps on giving” scenario, in other words, which is maybe not the sort of thing that your city council should be approving unanimously with little debate.

Anyway, if anyone asks you how much public money Ryan Smith is getting for his privately owned arena, feel safe in saying “around a billion dollars” and leave it at that. It may not make for a nice data point on a bar chart, but it has the benefit of being undeniably true.

**UPDATE: Propheter has done a quick estimate of the value of the additional 70 years of lease extensions plus the additional 26 acres of land Smith will be getting on top of the 10 acres he already has, and come up with: $2 billion in present value, give or take. So maybe “around $3 billion” is a better answer for how much public money Smith is set to get overall, depending on how he plays his cards with threatening to opt out of his lease.

Share this post:

Friday roundup: Spurs, Bengals owners to seek even more public money, Olympics could cost LA $1.5B for security

access_time personNeil deMause

Congratulations, we once again made it to the end of another programming week, as well as the end (presumably) of the “Will Washington Commanders owner Josh Harris get to pocket billions of dollars of cash and tax and land subsidies?” saga. (Answer: He sure will.) Which cities’ sports funding debates could be the next to absorb the eyes of a nation, or at least the eyes on this website? Let’s run down some contenders from this week:

  • We’ve already covered the ongoing San Antonio Spurs arena debates here this week, but that earlier report on the city council’s Wednesday hearing missed the tidbit that right now the plan is for San Antonio to provide $500 million, Bexar County to provide $311 million (really only enough to pay for about half that in up-front costs, since the money would arrive over 30 years), and team owner Peter Holt to provide $500 million, which is less than the potential $1.5 billion arena cost. Spurs chief legal counsel Bobby Perez said (in the San Antonio Report’s paraphrasing) that’s “something the Spurs would have to figure out,” but that the team would pay for any overruns above the final public price tag, whatever it ends up being, which is maybe not as reassuring as he meant it to be. Perez also said that the team would not consider sharing any arena revenue to help pay the public’s share of costs because Holt will be using it to pay off his own share of costs, the public will just have to make it up in volume or something.
  • The Cincinnati Bengals owners finally signed their new lease with Hamilton County that will include at least $700 million in public subsidies, everybody relax. Though the Bengals and the county said they’re still planning on asking for even more money from the state, exact dollar figure TBD, so maybe don’t relax just yet.
  • Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Mike Sielski wrote that if Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeff Lurie wants a new stadium, he should pay for it himself, and got a flood of agreement back from readers, including that it’s a bad time to ask for public money “with hospitals closing, SEPTA broke, and schools struggling” and that “many people think that Camden Yards created the Inner Harbor, but the Inner Harbor was booming long before the Orioles left Memorial Stadium. And now the Inner Harbor has collapsed.” Good thing for Lurie that it’s almost certain none of these people will get to vote on any stadium plan, because that’s not how cities east of the Mississippi roll.
  • The owners of Boston Legacy F.C. (née BOS Nation F.C.) faced an August 1 deadline to figure out how they will pay for their share of stadium costs on top of the city’s $100-millionish, but they blew that deadline so now they get a new one of September 15. Meanwhile, mayoral candidate Josh Kraft is accusing Boston Mayor Michelle Wu of not being transparent about the total cost of the women’s soccer project, at the same time as Josh’s dad Robert is fighting with Wu about his plan to build a new men’s soccer stadium for his New England Revolution in neighboring Everett, which Wu has warned could subject Boston to increased traffic, this is the most convoluted HBO Max series plotline ever.
  • When the Los Angeles Olympic host committee promised that the 2028 Games would come at “zero cost” to the city, apparently it didn’t include security costs, which could amount to maybe $1.5 billion. There’s now growing talk of getting L.A. to pull out of the 2028 games altogether, especially now that Donald Trump has threatened to send in the military during the event; that doesn’t sound very likely, but the Unite Here hotel workers’ union has proposed a ballot measure that would require many Olympic venues to get voter approval to be used for the Games, which looks to be mostly a tactic to head off attempts to overturn the $30/hour “Olympic wage” passed by the city council in May — I take it back, maybe this is the most convoluted HBO Max plotline ever.
  • ESPN is about to own part of the NFL’s media package and the NFL is about to own part of ESPN, don’t see any potential problems there. I do greatly look forward to every football highlight on SportsCenter being accompanied by a disclaimer that “the National Football League is a part owner of ESPN,” surely a company with such a great ethical record as ESPN wouldn’t skip over that.
Share this post:

San Antonio mayor calls for “pause” on Spurs arena, city council says how’s okaying $500m in two weeks sound?

access_time personNeil deMause

The San Antonio city council held a hearing on the San Antonio Spurs‘ proposed Project Marvel arena-and-convention-center-and-other-stuff development yesterday, but while it had been teased as a discussion of CSL’s predictably questionable economic impact report on the project, it turned into a throwdown between the mayor and the council about whether to worry about economic impact at all:

  • Newly elected Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones asked for a “strategic pause on this entire effort” in order to conduct a “full independent review” of the costs and benefits of the deal.
  • Seven out of 10 city councilmembers said screw that, they were ready to go ahead with a vote on the arena project as soon as August 21. “I trust the Spurs,” said councilmember Phyllis Viagran. “I know the Holts. I know they want to be here, and they’re the majority owners. So I’m ready to tell you, Erik, move with the lawyers and continue to get this done and bring it to us for a vote.”

What exactly the council would be voting on to approve remains a little unclear: There’s been talk of using the city’s share of hotel and property taxes, but no word on a specific cost breakdown. City officials have said that the total city subsidy would amount to $500 million, but haven’t provided details; Jones told KSAT that three years into negotiations, “we still don’t have a final number” for how much the project will cost.

Any council vote will be “nonbinding,” so presumably further council votes will be needed down the road to approve a binding version of whatever it is the council thinks it’s giving a thumbs-up to this month. A full independent review of the costs still sounds like a great idea in the meantime, but it also doesn’t sound like the bulk of the council is interested in that, not so long as they have their report from clown consultants in its clear plastic binder.

 

Share this post:

County sets November ballot on first $150m of Spurs arena subsidies, way more to follow

access_time personNeil deMause

Residents of Bexar County, Texas, will go to the polls in November to vote on raising taxes on hotels and car rentals to help fund a new San Antonio Spurs arena, after county commissioners voted 4-1 to put it on the ballot.

Because we can’t have nonconfusing things, the ballot measure will come in two parts:

The first asks if voters are willing to spend $191.8 million for upgrades and expansions to county facilities on the East Side, including the Frost Bank Center, the Freeman Coliseum and the San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo Grounds.

The second question will ask whether to use the remaining funds — up to $311 million — to help fund a new downtown arena for the Spurs.

So if one wins and not the other, will the taxes only be raised partway? Will they still both go up, but the money will only be spent on one of the two uses? San Antonio Express-News? KENS-TV? Anyone?

The tax hike would only raise $311 million for the Spurs over 30 years, so it would only cover about $150 million of up-front arena costs. But not to worry — team owner Peter Holt is also looking for about $500 million in city money from existing hotel and business taxes, and hasn’t ruled out additional asks toward the arena or the larger Project Marvel, which would include a convention center expansion and new hotel and Alamodome upgrades and other stuff, and is expected to cost more than $3 billion in total, of which Holt would commit to putting in about $1 billion. None of those additional subsidies are expected to require public votes.

And how does Holt, who unlike most of his fellow NBA owners is not a billionaire but a mere hundredmilllionaire, justify asking for all this public money for his private sports venture?

“For context, of the 30 NBA teams, the 14 smallest-market teams all have publicly funded arenas. The average is 70% public funds. … The most recent, Oklahoma City, is 95% funded by public funds,” Holt said.

Ah, “all the other kids are doing it.” A classic!

Holt was notably quiet about the Convention, Sports & Leisure consulting report that projected the development could be worth $18.7 billion to the city, possibly because word was starting to get out that the report was, well, let’s call it crap:

The forecast is “jaw-droppingly vacuous” and doesn’t include market, cost or risk analyses, said Susan Strawn, a member of “No! Project Marvel” and former District 1 City Council candidate.

CSL provided no explanation of the data underlying its assumptions and no study of alternative uses for the public funding that’s expected to flow into the district, she said during a press conference Monday outside the Alamodome.

And FoS convention center correspondent (and University of Texas at San Antonio professor) Heywood Sanders adds:

In 2003, CSL forecast that an expansion of Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania Convention Center would boost hotel room night generation from an annual average of 503,000 to 786,000. In 2024, the expanded facility generated 411,315 hotel room nights. It’s never even come close to that 503,000 number again.

Other projections by the consulting firm have also missed the mark.

There’s still a long way to go before all the boxes are checked for this project, and San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones has been strongly critical of it, saying Holt should be asked to kick in a share of team revenues. Still, that won’t stop Holt from trying to lock in his first tranche of subsidies in November, before asking for his next few hundred million. Keep that up long enough, and pretty soon you’re talking real money!

Share this post:

Friday roundup: Commanders vote, Bengals lease, A’s stadium cost all up in the air at this time

access_time personNeil deMause

The D.C. council’s verdict on the $6.6-billion-plus Washington Commanders stadium subsidy still seems to be up in the air at this time: The council now plans to vote today, giving councilmembers a whole 24 hours to read the final stadium bill, which was just released yesterday, after the council had concluded hearings about it without most councilmembers themselves being present, as one does. Councilmember Robert White has already said he plans to vote against the bill and hopes he can get four others to go along with him and block the needed two-thirds majority; council chair Phil Mendelson seems confident that he has the votes to pass the thing, but we’ll all find out together in a few hours.

Meanwhile, let’s pass the time by taking a spin through the other stadium and arena news that unfolded, or didn’t, this week while we were all waiting for the denouement to Bowser‘s Folly:

  • The Cincinnati Bengals‘ new lease remains up in the air after Hamilton County commissioners yesterday approved it, but Bengals execs haven’t signed it yet because they’re still reading the final version. We’ll just have to wait and see whether team officials are willing to accept $700 million–plus in county stadium upgrade funding, or if they plan on asking for even more.
  • The Las Vegas A’s stadium cost is still up in the air, with estimates now around $2 billion, up from $1.75 billion, according to owner John Fisher. Does Fisher have the money to pay to do more than move some dirt around? Did he before? Only he and his accountants, and maybe Rob Manfred, know.
  • The legality of Missouri’s offer of state money for Kansas City Chiefs and Royals stadiums is up in the air, after two Republican Missouri state legislators and one citizen activist have sued to block it, arguing that it has too much stuff in it and is unconstitutionally targeted to benefit specific companies and is “a bribe” to keep the teams from moving to Kansas. Whether any of that is actually illegal, it’ll be up to the courts to decide.
  • Denver Broncos stadium plans are still up in the air, but Denver Mayor Mike Johnston said yesterday, “We’re working hard on a deal, and I think we’re close.” Where the stadium would go and who would pay how much for it remains up in the air.
  • The final city cost of repairing the Tampa Bay Rays‘ Tropicana Field is still up in the air, with current estimates standing at $59.7 million plus whatever it costs for new video production equipment, plus tariffs, plus any other sundries. Will the St. Petersburg city council keep approving additional costs? You already know the non-answer to that.
  • The economic impact of a new San Antonio Spurs arena development remains up in the air after consultants said it would be worth $18.7 billion over 30 years, then it turned out they were only clown consultants. Whatever fools the San Antonio Express-News is good enough for government work!
Share this post:

Spurs arena taxpayer cost could reach $1B, local media says this won’t cost taxpayers anything

access_time personNeil deMause

San Antonio Spurs owner Peter Holt proposed a plan late last week that would require the public to cover between $700 million and $1 billion of the cost of a new $1.2-1.5 billion arena, and how did the local paper of record, the San Antonio Express-News, cover it?

The Spurs are looking to kick in $500 million for a downtown arena, spend another $500 million on nearby development projects, and contribute $60 million for childcare initiatives, discount tickets and other offerings in an effort to persuade San Antonio and Bexar County leaders and voters to support public funding for the facility.

Sure, that’s a choice. It almost certainly doesn’t help that Holt was very specific about the $500 million share he proposes to cover — plus cost overruns, though what constitutes a cost overrun on an arena with no established projected cost is an interesting epistemological question — but much more handwavy about where the public money would come from: He wants $500 million in business tax and hotel tax revenue from the city, plus an undetermined amount of money from Bexar County, perhaps $175 million of which would come from a 0.25% hike in hotel and rental car taxes set to go before voters this November. Journalism shuns a hard-number vacuum, so “Spurs owner offers $500m toward arena” works better as a headline than “Spurs owner asking taxpayers for unknown hundreds of millions toward arena,” even before considering that the former is what was boldfaced in Holt’s open letter, anything in boldface must be important and true, that’s just how it works, right?

News4SanAntonio did a slightly better job of laying out the relative costs, with a pie chart showing $500 million coming from Holt, $500 million from the city, and $200 million from the county — though the reporter then undercut that by pointing to each section of the pie and saying “this doesn’t come from your tax money, this doesn’t come from your tax money, this doesn’t come from your tax money,” which is a funny way of describing a chart where two of the sections are literally tax money. The argument is presumably that because it’s only “tourists” who pay hotel and car rental taxes (not really, but let’s go with it), this is free money — but regardless it’s money the city and county could raise to spend on anything other than a new toy for the local NBA owner, so it’s still a net loss.

There’s still a ways to go on the proposed Spurs arena deal, including that November vote to authorize county tax hikes, and San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones is already making noise about asking Holt to kick in more from naming rights, merchandise, ticket, and concession sales, especially since the city is projecting a $220 million budget deficit by 2030. Still, this is a “transformative” plan called “Project Marvel,” who can say no to that, everyone loves things called “Marvel,” right? Oh, hmm, maybe Holt should rebrand this as Project Cinephile.

Share this post:

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:

Share this post:

Houston sports venues need almost $3B in upgrades, if you’re not too picky about what “need” means

access_time personNeil deMause

The Harris County Houston Sports Authority’s building committee has estimated how much the Astros and Rockets venues will need in maintenance costs in coming years, and it’s a bundle: $836.5 million over the next 20 years for the Astros, and $635.81 million for the Rockets. The numbers, according to the Houston Business Journal, come from a study by Tennessee-based public facility consultant firm Venue Solutions Group, which previously estimated that the Texans‘ stadium needs $1.4 billion in renovations.

When price tags like these get floated, there are always two questions: 1) Is this for renovations the buildings need or just that the team owners want? and 2) Whose responsibility is it to pay for them? Buildings do need maintenance, but they also become what’s been called “economically obsolete,” which means they could make more money if they were schmancier — the second should reasonably be considered less a problem for the public landlord that owns the buildings and more a problem for the billionaire owners who’d like to be even more billionairey.

Let’s start with the need vs. want question: More than half of both the Astros ($448.27 million) and Rockets ($339.24 million) money is slated for “architectural renovations,” which means things like moving walls and rearranging layouts. It’s not something you do to keep a building from falling down, in other words, so much as to rejigger how you organize your building’s interior. Among other things, Chron.com reports that the Rockets’ “premium and legacy level need an upgrade to be more enticing,” which certainly seems to be edging more into “want” territory than “need.”

As for whose job it is to pay for snazzing up the venues, HBJ has this to say:

The Houston Astros and Houston Rockets are responsible for maintenance costs at their respective facilities.

However, leases for the Astros and Rockets require the sports authority to renovate Daikin Park and Toyota Center to keep them in first-class condition. In particular, the Astros’ 2018 lease extension requires HCHSA to obtain additional funding for renovations by Dec. 31, 2030. If the organization does not do so, the Astros have the option to terminate their lease effective March 31, 2035.

When the Astros moved into their stadium in 2000, they agreed to a 30-year lease, but that was extended to 50 years in 2018, with an additional $2 million a year in rent money to be used for maintenance and capital repairs. But somewhere along the way Harris County agreed to a state-of-the-art clause, meaning the lease binds the county to keep renovating the stadium along the way. That’s the same kind of subsidy-that-keeps-on-subsidizing that Hamilton County in Ohio is trying to get out of regarding the Bengals, so if Astros owner Jim Crane terminated his lease early, he’d arguably be doing Harris County a favor. (The Rockets’ lease already expires in 2034, so it’s not as clear what Harris County would be risking there by not giving their arena a $635 million facelift.)

What would really be nice here is a look at the VSG report itself, but if it exists anywhere online, it’s well-hidden. (VSG hasn’t even added the Houston venues to its online portfolio yet.) Until then, everyone please agree to report that the Astros and Rockets owners want almost $1.5 billion in upgrades, not that that’s what the buildings need — and that while denying it could mean having to renegotiate the team’s leases, it’s not like there are any other sixth-largest media markets in the U.S. out there that they could move to instead.

Share this post:

Friday roundup: Arizona senate votes to give $500m to D-backs owner for stadium upgrades

access_time personNeil deMause

At 10 pm last night, the Arizona state senate voted 19-11 to approve spending $500 million in state money on stadium upgrades for the Arizona Diamondbacks. The bill had been passed by the state house in February but had stalled in the senate as Gov. Katie Hobbs and other bill proponents tried to round up enough votes for passage.

What did Hobbs agree to change in order to win over reluctant senators? Not a whole hell of a lot, at first reading:

  • The city of Phoenix’s contribution will be capped at $3.5 million a year in sales tax money, a little over half what Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego had estimated her city would be on the hook for under the original bill.
  • An increase in Maricopa County contributions to match the city’s cost.
  • No use of state income taxes from team employees, as was proposed in the original bill.
  • A provision by which if the Diamondbacks owners don’t spend $250 million of their own money on renovations, the state legislature can repeal the stadium subsidy and leave the team responsible for paying the full debt.
  • Probably other stuff, I’m still reading the bill.

It’s a weird laundry list, especially all the rejiggering of which level of government will contribute what — Gallego apparently demanded a city cost cap before she would sign off on the bill and thus flip some Democratic senate votes to yes, but the contribution amounts needed to still be tied to sales tax receipts to maintain the Casino Night Fallacy, so instead we get this odd mishmash of set dollar figures and dedicated tax revenues.

In any event, the overall thrust of the legislation is the same: A half-billion dollars will be pulled from city, county, and state sales tax revenues that would otherwise go to the general fund, and will now instead be siphoned off and sent back to D-backs owner Ken Kendrick to use for renovations to Chase Field. In exchange, Kendrick will agree to a new lease to keep the team in Phoenix through … oh, sorry, that hasn’t been determined yet, he insisted on the state approving public funding first before agreeing to what he would provide in return, because that’s totally how reasonable negotiations work.

The bill still needs to go back to the state house for a re-vote on its amended form, and then on to Hobbs for her signature, but those look like mere formalities at this point. Add Ken Kendrick to the list of billionaires who got commitments for several-hundred-million-dollar taxpayer checks this year because local officials were either too afraid of the possibility the team would move, too besotted with the alleged economic benefits of a team, or too beholden to lobbyists and campaign contributors to say no. Representative democracy: It’s not going great!

Lots of other stuff happened this week before last night’s vote in Arizona, let’s get to that:

  • Oklahoma City Thunder owner Clay Bennett has finally agreed to lease provisions in exchange for the $850 million in arena money he got from the city a year and a half ago, and they’re pretty skimpy: The team will pay about $2.4 million a year in rent, rising with inflation, and agree to a $1 ticket surcharge to go toward a capital improvement fund; anything above that for maintenance and operations will be on the city to provide. Also, Bennett will keep all the proceeds from sale of the new arena’s naming rights, plus will get exclusive rights to buy and develop the arena site, with the sale price going back to him to pay for his arena. “Worst arena deal in history” is a high bar to clear, but Oklahoma City seems determined to be in the running for it.
  • The mayors of both St. Petersburg and Tampa say they’re happy the Tampa Bay Rays are up for sale, Tampa Mayor Jane Castor calling it “a very positive step” and saying her city’s “bid is dusted off and we’ve sharpened our pencils,” while St. Pete Mayor Ken Welch said he’s “excited about the possibility of new ownership” and focused on ” the fulfillment of the economic promises made to the historic Gas Plant District community.” The preferred Tampa site is also being targeted by the owner of the Tampa Bay Sun women’s USL team for a possible soccer stadium, but as nobody has the slightest idea how any of this would be paid for, it’s a little early to start worrying about competing stadium requests.
  • Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne and some county councilmembers are shouting at each other about whether a Brook Park Cleveland Browns stadium would be an affront to Cleveland or a windfall that’s too good for the county to pass up. Not that Cuyahoga County’s position matters all that much, but with the Ohio state legislature still in its staredown, somebody’s gotta provide the juicy quotes that drive the click machine.
  • The New York Times’ Athletic sports site is excited that sports stadium subsidies are now also for the ladies, if you needed any more reasons to stop reading the Times. (They offer games-only subscriptions, you don’t have to give up Spelling Bee!) The Kansas City Star editorial board, meanwhile, is worried that Missouri’s recently proferred (but not yet accepted) stadium subsidies for the Chiefs and Royals has too many unknowns and that spending public dollars on sports teams is “deeply regrettable” if also “sadly, the world in which we live,” if any of that makes you more interested in reading the Kansas City Star.
  • MLB commissioner Rob Manfred will be at the Athletics‘ stadium site groundbreaking in Las Vegas on Monday, this is gonna be the best Potemkin village ever!
Share this post:

Friday roundup: K.C. area officials debate throwing more tax money at Chiefs and Royals, as does San Antonio for Spurs, etc. etc.

access_time personNeil deMause

Six posts already in the first four days of the week, and still there’s more news that didn’t make the cut? Legislative season is brutal, man — I can’t wait for it to be over so we can get back to things like wondering if St. Petersburg is going to finish fixing the Tampa Bay Rays stadium roof by next season. (Probably maybe, apparently! There’s one item off the list already!)

And on with the show:

  • Kansas City, Missouri Mayor Quinton Lucas says he thinks he could fund the rest of a Royals stadium without having to go to voters to approve a new sales tax hike, by using “a different set of tools and entities, so much like you’ve seen the discussion in Kansas” — so that would involve kicking back existing sales taxes, presumably, instead of extending a sales tax surcharge? Meanwhile, Clay County Presiding Commissioner Jerry Nolte says if the Royals choose to build a stadium there, the county might hold a vote on a sales tax hike. None of this is going to get resolved by the end of the month, the time by which Kansas’s offer of state sales tax money for Royals and Chiefs stadiums expire; the Kansas legislature could vote to extend that deadline, but it looks like Kansas officials may be tired of being the teams’ spare-tyre lover: Kansas House Speaker Dan Hawkins says he doesn’t want to do that: “We gave them a year to get it done, and in a year, you know, they kind of keep messing around, going back and forth, and you extend it, and that’s what they’ll do. You know, the pressure is off. Then it could take another year and come back again.”
  • Bexar County voters could be asked to cast ballots in November on a 0.25% hotel and car-rental tax hike to raise about $175 million for a new San Antonio Spurs arena. This would only be one of many public revenue streams used to pay for it, presumably — the arena is expected to cost between $1.3 billion and $1.5 billion and Spurs owner Peter Holt won’t commit to how much he would chip in, just keep those subsidies coming until Holt says “stop,” thanks.
  • A 16-page slide deck from April on proposals for a new Cincinnati Bengals stadium lease has been revealed through a public records request, and some of the items include: $308 million in county spending on stadium upgrades from an existing escrow account, in exchange for the Bengals owners extending their lease through 2031; maybe a lease extension through 2036 if the county kicks in another $300 million by 2028; the Bengals paying $1 million a year rent either for the next five years (what the team wants) or for the rest of the lease (the county’s proposal); and a Bengals request to get half the tax revenue the city of Cincinnati gets from “stadium operations” to help cover stadium maintenance. And what about the question of extending that state-of-the-art clause requiring the county to build holographic replay systems if they’re ever invented, anything? No mention of that, really? Not that it matters, as this slide deck is two months old and there’s still a ton of haggling to go, but would have been nice to at least include one slide on it, just saying.
  • The Ohio Capital Journal describes the current debate over a Cleveland Browns stadium as state legislators and Gov. Mike DeWine “disagree[ing] on how to pay for it. Gov. Mike DeWine proposed increasing the taxes on gambling and Ohio House lawmakers favored issuing state bonds,” and no, Ohio Capital Journal, “issuing bonds” is not a way to pay for something, any more than taking out a mortgage is a way to pay for a house, it’s just a way to finance something but you still have to pay for it later, go back five spaces and lose a turn to think about what you have written.
  • The Connecticut state legislative session may have ended without passage of $127 million for a minor-league soccer stadium (plus other stuff) in Bridgeport, but the legislature did pass approval for Bridgeport to set up a TIF district to redirect its own tax revenues to pay for up to $190 million in development costs. This’ll surely go just great, remember how well the Bluefish worked out? Connecticut United is set to begin play in MLS Next Pro next season, probably not Bridgeport but somewhere.
  • This week was so hectic that I never got around t0 reporting on Marc Normandin’s excellent Baseball Prospectus essay from Monday about how Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf’s agreement to sell the team somewhere between 2029 and the time the sun burns out is timed to increase the savvy negotiator‘s leverage, since 2029 is when the team’s current lease expires, plus prospective buyer Justin Ishbia is a minority owner of the Nashville S.C. MLS team, and hint, hint, Nashville. The 89-year-old Reinsdorf seems determined to go to the grave leaving some juicy leverage for his son, or at least to cement his legacy as the most hardball extortionist of all time, guess you have to make your own fun when you realize you can’t take it with you.
Share this post: