Category: San Antonio Spurs

Friday roundup: Friends don’t let friends host the Olympics, and other cautionary tales

access_time personNeil deMause

Last week I teased a big project of mine that would drop this week, and it went live yesterday morning: a 57-page report, commissioned by Los Angeles economic justice advocacy group Strategic Action for a Just Economy, on whether L.A. can or should be trying to extricate itself from its hosting obligations for the 2028 Summer Olympics — something some local critics have suggested, especially in the wake of the city’s wildfire crisis and budget crisis and  immigration enforcement occupying force crisis. You can probably get a pretty good sense of the report’s findings from its title, “Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t,” but if you want slightly more details, here’s the nut graf:

While there are numerous unknowns—the history of the Olympics shows that budget questions are never resolved until it’s far too late, a path that L.A. has headed down with its agreements for the 2028 Games as well—the available documentation and history of international event hosting shows: Yes, if Los Angeles officials, or voters, decided to withdraw from hosting the Olympics, they could do so. This would come at the risk of potentially billions of dollars in damages from a breach-of-contract lawsuit and losses from expenses already undertaken. However, continuing as host also comes with a potential risk of losses that, if history is any guide, could similarly amount to billions of dollars.

The report also contains a wealth of information about Olympic financial history, including other locales’ attempts to back out of hosting major international sporting events for fiscal reasons (the Denver 1976 Winter Olympics that never happened, plus the 2026 Commonwealth Games that the Australian state of Victoria bailed on in 2023 amid concerns about snowballing costs), as well as mention of my new favorite Olympic factoid: that time they held a Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan and nobody knows how much it cost because the local organizing committee literally set fire to its financial records. It’s all here, dig in if you’re in the mood for a long, enraging read — or if not, you can instead read the excellent summaries in Torched (which includes a quote from me on this week’s revelations about L.A. Olympics chief Casey Wasserman’s history with Jeffrey Epstein) and LAist.

And now that that’s off my plate, I have plenty of time for stadium and arena bullet points, and good thing, too, because this week brought craploads of them:

  • The Wyandotte County Commission followed suit with its neighbors in the city of Olathe and voted 7-3 to approve devoting local sales and hotel tax revenue to pay off part of the state’s $2.775 billion in bonds for a new Kansas City Chiefs stadium and surrounding development. The county, to be clear, gets absolutely nothing out of kicking in its own funding (total price tag still TBD), given that the state has indicated it will go ahead with the stadium deal regardless. Kansas City, Kansas mayor and county commission chair Christal Wilson, who didn’t vote because no ties needed to be broken, wrote on Facebook that she thinks kicking in county money is warranted because it gets the county “a seat at the table” — okay, though it’s questionable whether getting to sit at the table is worth having to split the check.
  • Indiana state Rep. Earl Harris Jr. on his bill to create a sports authority to build a Chicago Bears stadium in northwest Indiana with money from (feigns coughing fit until you go away): “Indiana does sports things like this very well. When you look at the Pacers, the Colts, the Speedway, we’re very good at figuring out a good financial plan that does not hurt the taxpayer.” Um, about that…
  • Will the Portland Trail Blazers move if the city and county decline to spend $600 million on upgrades to their arena? It’s an “urgent race against time” and “the clock continues to tick,” writes The Oregonian, citing a deadline of … huh, seems like they didn’t mention any deadline, must have run out of room. (Though there was room for “Are you ready for the Nashville or Kansas City Trail Blazers?” to cite two cities that are not particularly shopping around for NBA teams.)
  • Tampa sports radio host JP Peterson insists that spending upwards of $2 billion on a new Tampa Bay Rays stadium is warranted because it “will produce millions in tax revenue and bring major events, Super Bowls, National Championship games, World Baseball Classic, MLB All-Star games” — [citation needed], my man. Also, I can save you some time: Even if a new baseball stadium does bring in millions in tax revenue, from hosting, uh, football games, when it costs hundreds of millions a year in tax expenditures, maybe that’s … not good?
  • Speaking of the Rays, fresh Rays vaportecture! I’m sticking with my comment from yesterday: Glad to see the Rays acknowledge that even after a future stadium is built, fans still won’t buy jerseys with player names because they know they’ll be sold off as soon as they reach arbitration.
  • And if you want still more Rays commentary from me, I spoke with both WMNF radio and Tampa Bay 28 TV about the ongoing dispute this week; the former is much longer, the latter offers a view of what I have on my living room walls, pick your poison.
  • Just in time for the Super Bowl (what time does it start again?), here’s a Top 40 list of things the NFL demands from Super Bowl host cities. It’s impossible to pick just one favorite, but equally impossible to beat “three championship-level 18-hole golf courses and two top-quality bowling alleys, free of charge.”
  • Plans to build an Indy Eleven a soccer stadium for a new MLS team on Indianapolis’s former heliport are on hold because something about not rewarding a city that “continues to thumb its nose” at ICE; the FAA will soon be weighing in on the matter.
  • Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson has met with NBA commissioner Adam Silver, though not in the sense of actually meeting meeting like in person, and “offered to be helpful in bringing back the Sonics” as an NBA expansion team. Seattle already has a practically brand new arena, though by the time the NBA is ready to expand it could be pushing 10 years old, is that too soon to ask for upgrades?
  • San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones says Spurs owner Michael Dell donating $6 billion to Donald Trump’s “Trump accounts” savings plan “really pissed me off” because “if you can give $6 billion for these accounts, you could have paid for your own arena.” But then Dell wouldn’t have those billions he saved by getting taxpayers to build his arena! Sounds like somebody doesn’t understand what the whole point of being a billionaire is. (Hint: It’s getting billions of dollars, not spending it.)
  • And finally on the Rays front, Frank Nockels of Land O’ Lakes, Florida asks: “If we pay for half of the Rays’ new stadium, can we get free tickets?” Ian Betteridge has some bad news, Frank.
Share this post:

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!
Share this post:

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.

Share this post:

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.

Share this post:

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.

Share this post:

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.

Share this post:

Worcester stadium red ink shows dangers of hoping to cover taxpayer costs with housing magic beans

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s now been more than seven years since the Pawtucket Red Sox owners cut a deal to get $105 million in public cash to move to a new stadium in Worcester, sparking a throwdown between economists Andrew Zimbalist (a paid team consultant), who said it w0uld all work out great, and Victor Matheson and a whole bunch of others (not collecting any consulting checks), who warned that building a stadium in order to spark economic gains from new housing next door was a bad gamble. As of last year, city tax revenues were falling short because the promised new development was lagging — so how are things going now?

A report from the city auditor to the City Council states that the Polar Park Ballpark District Improvement Financing fund has an anticipated deficit of $390,000 for the current fiscal year, and that by the end of the year will owe the city’s general fund over $2 million.

Not great, especially after the Worcester city auditor promised specifically that this would never happen! Also not great: Though Worcester Chief Financial Officer Timothy J. McGourthy said he expected the tax fund would eventually have enough revenue to cover the city’s stadium costs (including $40 million in overruns), that’s just regular taxes that any development would pay — meaning if the ballpark-adjacent housing ends up cannibalizing construction that would have taken place anyway, it’s not really a net gain. That’s something that Matheson, who teaches at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, warned about seven years ago, along with the fact that planning on a housing windfall didn’t take into account the added city costs of supporting new residents: The price tag for providing schools for even a few dozen new kids would quickly eat up any new tax revenues. In that case, even if the ballpark district fund eventually shows a profit — CFO McGourthy swears it will, someday — it will be canceled out by new losses in the city schools budget.

The Worcester city council was all set to discuss the WooSox ballpark situation at its Tuesday meeting this week, but scrapped the agenda item at the last second. Residents still turned out to testify on the subject, though, including Nicole Apostola, who had previously petitioned the council to at the very least provide more transparency about what Worcester taxpayers would be on the hook for. Apostola made clear that she would still like some questions answered, namely:

“One, why has no one been held responsible for the horrible contracts this city has been saddled with? Two, why has there never been a reckoning for the misconstruction of the doors at the park that prevent certain events from being held there? Three, why has the city not been able to take advantage of any of the revenue-generating days we were supposed to have? And most importantly, number four, exactly which services are being cut so we can subsidize multimillionaires?”

Oh, yes, the doors, we should probably talk about the doors. Three years ago, after Worcester’s new stadium had been open for two years, people started noticing that the promised flood of concerts had turned out to be, actually zero concerts. It turned out that the reason was Worcester had copied Fenway Park’s feature where the only direct access to the field is a large roll-up door in center field — and that door was built 12 feet high, whereas concert production trucks are 13 feet high. If only there could have been some way of knowing!

So LOLWorcester, sure. But this also should serve as a warning to other cities where sports projects are promising to pay back their costs with tax revenue from new surrounding development (cough San Antonio cough) that, first, there’s no guarantee the new housing will get built on time, and second, taxes on new development aren’t a free windfall, they’re needed to pay off the new costs that come with new development. After all the cautionary tales so far (cough Brooklyn Nets cough), you’d think people would have caught on by now, but yeah, nope, editorial boards are still writing how special sports district taxing zones would “shield residents from bearing the cost of development.” Shout louder, not-on-team-payroll economists, it’s hard for newsmakers to hear you with their fingers wedged so deeply in their ears.

Share this post:

How to threaten to leave town without threatening to leave town: San Antonio Spurs edition

access_time personNeil deMause

Early voting has started in the San Antonio Spurs arena public funding ballot measure, and the local news media is on the job warning that the team could move so that its owners don’t have to. Today’s report from KSAT-TV report asks the question up front — “If the team doesn’t get the downtown arena it wants, could it leave San Antonio entirely?” — and then proceeds to answer it via an odd sequence of interview subjects:

  • A guy on his way to vote, who said he would “probably” vote for the Spurs funding, because “if they lose the Spurs, they’re going to lose a lot.”
  • The owner of a construction firm, interviewed at the Spurs’ practice facility, who said, “Say my valuation of my business is $1 billion, and I can move and double that valuation in a day … Be careful what you wish for, San Antonio.”
  • Spurs lawyer Bobby Perez, who refused to answer questions about whether the team would try to move if the ballot measures were rejected.
  • Finally, sports economist Geoffrey Propheter, who noted that “There has been no threat, direct or indirect, from the Holts, at least publicly, that says they are going to move,” and that lots of other teams, such as the San Francisco Giants, have had referendums shot down, multiple times even, and not moved.

It’s all factual enough reporting, and certainly readers are going to want to know if a move could be in the offing if voters turn down the $311 million over 30 years (about $150 million in present value) that Spurs owner Peter Holt is asking for. But it’s hard to miss that the framing ends up supporting owner Peter Holt’s attempts to make this into a vote on whether to keep the Spurs — notably reaching out to Austin’s mayor in recent weeks — while downplaying the public cost (which would likely total $750 million or more) or the fact that San Antonio just built the Spurs a new arena 23 years ago amid promises by Holt’s dad of neighborhood redevelopment that never came.

All this is very much part of what we dubbed the “non-threat threat,” where a team owner denies intending to move a team, but hints that you don’t want to push him and find out, and then leaves it to elected officials and the media to sound the alarm. (It is related to, though not exactly the same as, Jerry Reinsdorf’s edict that “a savvy negotiator creates leverage,” even if it’s leverage you have no intention of using.) If the KSAT story is any indication, Holt Jr.’s attempts at framing the story this way are having an impact; though if this set of person-on-the-street interviews is representative, most people are still weighing whether the promise of exciting new stuff is enough to outweigh giving money to “megamillionaires” instead of fixing “all of the stuff that needs to be fixed, that’s not fixed,” with no one mentioning the threat of losing the team at all.

The vote is likely going to be close, and as Propheter points out, almost exactly equal numbers of these referendums succeed or fail. The more interesting part may end up being what Holt’s Plan B is if he loses: As we’ve seen both in the early days of the public stadium boom and again more recently, megamillionaires tend not to take direct democracy lying down when there’s a group of legislators they can go to for a second opinion.

Share this post:

Spurs arena vote faces “uphill battle” as poll shows residents currently oppose using tax dollars

access_time personNeil deMause

The first polls are in for the November ballot measure to raise hotel and car rental taxes and use part of the proceeds to pay about $150 million toward a new San Antonio Spurs arena, and they’re not great for Spurs owner Peter Holt: Bexar County voters who responded to the poll were opposed to the plan by a 46-40% margin, with 14% still undecided.

Considering that Holt is in the middle of $2 million in ad spending to convince county voters of why this is a good idea, this has to be a disappointing result. Voters do narrowly approve of Holt’s greater Project Marvel redevelopment project (45-40%, with 13% unsure and 2% no opinion), but that’s technically being funded by the city, not the county, even if the county is looking to help fund the arena parts of it. Also, there are actually two measures on the ballot, one to help fund a new arena, and one to pay for upgrades to the Spurs’ old arena so it can be used by the San Antonio Stock Show, and the new-arena one currently appears to be losing.

Bryan Gervais, director of the University of Texas at San Antonio Center for Public Opinion Research, which conducted the poll, told the San Antonio Express-News, “It’s fair to say that the effort to secure venue tax funding for a new Spurs arena faces an uphill battle.”

The city of San Antonio is also proposing to put in $489 million toward the arena, plus $60 million to buy land for it, which it says it can do without a public vote; however, city officials have said the whole deal will fall apart if the arena ballot measure doesn’t pass on November 4.

What’s a poor sports mogul to do in this situation? Increase his ad spending, probably, to try to drown out the opposition: While the old rule of thumb that stadium and arena campaigns only win when proponents outspend opponents by more than 100:1 doesn’t turn out to always be true, it is true that the bigger the spending gap, the bigger the margin of victory, so place those ad buys! Also, maybe drop some hints that the team might move if people don’t vote for the arena subsidy, any cities handy that you can play footsie with?

In October 2023, Austin-based Spurs Sports & Entertainment (SS&E) executive Brandon James texted [Austin Mayor Kirk] Watson an invitation to a private wine event with legendary coach Gregg Popovich.

James described the gathering as a “very deliberate plan to get the right people in the room.”

Ex-cellent.

Share this post:

Friday roundup: Spurs owner wants arena subsidies so he can be “scrappy,” A’s owner gets closer to unlocking county stadium cash

access_time personNeil deMause

Some weeks, when all the work of this website feels like an endless repetition of the same stories over and over and over again, I try to remind myself that while the general shape of the stadium swindle has remained the same over the last 30 years — boy meets stadium dream, boy uses standard playbook to demand that someone else to pay for stadium dream, elected officials cough up the dough to boy — there have been some discoveries and innovations along the way: The Casino Night Fallacy. The grift that keeps on giving. The kitchen sink gambit. Reusable entourage. Sure, it would be nice for whatever showrunner is in charge of this accursed timeline to quit reusing the same plotlines — helicopter registration fraud was a surprise season-ending twist, but that was three years ago already — but if nothing else we’re getting a deeper understanding of the intricacies of how sports billionaires funnel taxpayer money into their own pockets, and who can put a price on that? Other than the literal price of “billions of dollars of tax money a year,” obviously, but enlightenment doesn’t come cheap.

Also, no one has taken away our god-given right to point and laugh (yet), so may as well enjoy it. And on that note, here’s some fresh meat for your inner Nelson Muntz:

  • San Antonio’s KSAT-TV asked Spurs owner Peter Holt why he can’t just pay for his own arena his damn self, and Holt said “it’s a great question” and San Antonio’s small market size has “pushed us to be scrappy” and “the underdog” and “we want to continue [our] partnership with the county and the city” and the arena project will use “visitor taxes that have no impact on our local citizens” and “there’s no extra fees.” That’s neither really an answer nor exactly true, but Holt is already off and not-answering whether the team would potentially move without a new arena: “You know, we’re not focused on this election not passing. I mean, I think our belief has always been, whether it’s on the court or off the court, we have excellence and we have winning in our DNA. And so we’re confident and optimistic that this will pass, and that’s our plan.” It’s easy to be confident when you’re spending $2 million on ad campaigns to convince voters to go your way, but just in case, may as well employ the “You don’t want to find out what’ll happen if you make Dad mad” strategy as well.
  • The Clark County Commission officially approved the Athletics‘ ballpark development agreement for Las Vegas(ish), which is mostly notable because it allows A’s owner John Fisher to finally tap into $380 million in public funds that was approved way back in June 2023. Or at least Fisher can get the money once he sets a guaranteed maximum price for the stadium and spend $100 million out of his own pocket first, maybe that’s what all the concrete pillars are about? Would Fisher really shell out $100 million of his own money in order to get $380 million in public money in hopes all that will somehow unlock another $1 billion or so of somebody else’s money? He’s done dumber things before, don’t put it past him!
  • Interim Jackson County Executive Kay Barnes says she doesn’t see herself as “taking on any kind of strong initiative” on major issues during her short time back in office, but that’s not stopping her from saying she wants to see stadium projects for the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals move forward, she’s not made of stone, people.
  • The St. Petersburg city council is looking at ending the city’s Community Redevelopment Area (i.e., a TIF that kicks back property taxes to developers) for the Historic Gas Plant District now that the Tampa Bay Rays aren’t using it for a stadium development, probably. “I was very hesitant to do this,” said council chair Copley Gerdes. “More and more, I’m becoming open to it.” What’s next, hugging?
  • A couple of big-market MLB teams might be showing openness to increased revenue sharing to make MLB TV deals more like the NFL’s, which would reduce budget disparities between rich and even-richer teams but also make it easier for teams to threaten to move from big markets to smaller ones like in the NFL. Color me skeptical — big-market team owners have never willingly given up revenue before, and this could all just be openness to new kinds of TV deals while still trying to preserve the biggest slice for themselves, but we’ll see where things go once negotiations for the next collective bargaining agreement begin in earnest after next season.
  • Yes, the latest owner of the Ottawa Senators is still hoping to build a new arena at LeBreton Flats and still hoping for a taxpayer “investment” to help him along, let’s all check back in another decade or so and see if anything has changed.
  • Camden Yards’ public owners won’t get any money from the Los Angeles Rams renting out the stadium for practice before their game in London, just like they didn’t get any money when Paul McCartney played there, who needs money when you have a pro baseball team whose owner wants money more than you do?
Share this post: