Seattle NBA expansion team – Field of Schemes

Friday roundup: Rays stadium could erode beach sand funds, Oakland mayor sends message to MLB owners on A’s-to-Vegas

July 14, 2023 Neil deMause

I published four posts in the first four days of this week despite a router (finally replaced last night) that was doling out packets with an eyedropper, and now the internet itself isn’t letting me consistently load the site, so you’ll forgive me if the Friday roundup is a bit perfunctory or late, won’t you?

On with the news, typed out for now in a Notes file:

Sports subsidy advocates like to argue that spending tourist tax money on stadiums doesn’t really cost local governments anything because it can only be spent on tourism projects anyway, but what then of news that a Tampa Bay Rays stadium in St. Petersburg could eat up all the county hotel tax money that is needed to replenish the county’s beaches?
The New York Times’ new non-union sports department has an interview with Oakland mayor Sheng Thao about how she met with MLB commissioner Rob Manfred after he claimed there was no stadium offer in Oakland for the A’s to present him with 31 copies (one for him and one for each MLB owner) of her city’s stadium offer. Thao said she wanted “to ensure that the [relocation] committee understands all of our deal points” and also said that “absolutely” she would consider improving her offer. All of which could just be covering all her bases so she can say she tried, but also could be playing to the crowd of MLB owners who’ll be voting on the A’s-to-Vegas move, in hopes that at least eight of them are fearful enough of trading a top TV market for MLB’s smallest, or just hate John Fisher enough, to vote “no,” either of which is certainly possible.
Baltimore Orioles execs have started lobbying Congress for federal money for “revitalization efforts” in the Camden Yards area, according to disclosure forms uncovered by Politico. How much money they want isn’t the kind of thing listed on lobbyist disclosures, but it’s definitely fresh territory in terms of public funding asks, albeit expected once Joe Biden announced a ton of federal infrastructure spending and sports teams smelled blood in the water.
Milwaukee Brewers business operations president Rick Schlesinger has provided a list of some of the reasons team execs want about $350 million in state money to renovate the stadium, and they include: 22-year old boilers, obsolete field chillers (?), and TV wiring that needs to be upgraded to fiber optics. Damn, I should have kept renting — under sports logic, I apparently could have demanded that my landlord pay for my new router…
Charlotte mayor Vi Lyles says spending $120 million on a new tennis center is about “creating jobs in this community” WFAE’s race and equity desk asked if that’s really so, but didn’t ask any actual economists who might be able to answer the question, so gotta give this a B-minus at best.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver says the league will consider both Seattle and Las Vegas for expansion teams once the league signs a new TV rights deal in 2025. Both cities have new arenas already, so maybe they can get away without building even newer ones, though I dunno, Climate Pledge Arena will be five years old by then, who knows how the field chillers will be holding up.

Okay, I can access the site again, going to hit publish on this before Mercury goes back into retrograde. Stay cool, and see you Monday!

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Friday roundup: This post is all about the Bears (or the bears), even the parts with no bears

October 7, 2022 Neil deMause

What did we learn this week, class? We learned that bears are good for SEO, that elected officials can vote down democracy, and that rich people like public subsidies because it’s where the money is. In another sense, of course, no one has learned anything, which is why we are still here, 24 years into this website, still with the bullet points of outrage to mark the end of the week, every week, never ending or changing, oh now I see why you perk up when there are bears:

The Buffalo Bills and Erie County missed their September 1 deadline for finalizing a stadium agreement, and may miss their October 15 deadline, but what are deadlines among friends? “If we get it done before October 15, great,” said Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz. “If we get it done in the last few hours like Kaleida did, great. If it takes a few extra days, great.” The bit about New York taxpayers spending $1 billion while the Bills owners contribute negative $90 million has been set in stone for a while, so really it’s over but the shouting over a community benefits agreement, out of sight of the public, lord knows, you don’t want those people and their ideas getting in the room when the grownups are talking.
The city of Oakland and the A’s owners missed their October 1 deadline for finalizing a stadium agreement, and the Las Vegas Review-Journal thinks that “could be good news for Southern Nevada” in the sense that maybe the Oakland deal will fall apart and the team will move to Las Vegas and Southern Nevada will have to spend a billion dollars instead of Oakland. Silly Review-Journal, allow me to introduce you to the sage Mark Poloncarz, and also the 184th rule of acquisition.
When will Seattle get a new NBA team? asks the Los Angeles Times. (scroll scroll scroll) Okay, no actual answer in the article, but Macklemore is getting impatient, that’s sort of like a deadline, no?
A Baptist pastor who supports a development group led by former Sacramento mayor, former NBA star, and sexual harassment charge magnet Kevin Johnson that wants to redevelop the site of the Tampa Bay Rays‘ Tropicana Field is opposed to the Rays getting to redevelop the stadium site, because then KJ wouldn’t get to do it. Really, that’s the whole article, must not be anything else newsworthy going on in Florida’s Gulf Coast.
The Columbus Crew owners only pay $10 a month in rent on their new stadium, but they still managed to be late with the check.
It’s not super-interesting news that the owners of the Kansas City Current NWSL team broke ground on their $110 million stadium (which was supposed to be publicly funded but the owners decided to ask for $6 million in tax credits once they realized it would cost $110 million) this week, but any article about a ceremonial groundbreaking that manages to begin “Just over 200 hundred years after French fur traders landed here via the Missouri River and settled in rough cabins along its banks” deserves a Pulitzer for Chutzpah.
Finally, some actual news that we don’t hear every week: A Georgia judge has blocked a deal for $700 million in property tax kickbacks for a construction project, on the grounds that the people seeking the money didn’t actually show how it would help the local economy or create jobs or any of the other reasons why they said they should get $700 million. True, it was an electric car plant and not a sports facility, and also the only reason the judge was able to weigh in at all was some convoluted financing scheme that she needed to sign off on, but now the would-be subsidy recipients will have to settle for the $500 million in other tax subsidies that they’re already getting. I swear this started out being good news, sorry for the late plot twist, but I don’t write these storylines, I just report them.

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Friday roundup: Everybody hates Dan Snyder and his stadium plans, A’s could (maybe) get (some kind of) public money in Vegas

May 27, 2022 Neil deMause

Reporting in briefly from a country that blocked Google News, so the news net may let a few things slip through this week:

Washington Commanders owner Daniel Snyder spent $100 million to buy 200 acres land in the middle of nowhere, Virginia for a potential stadium, but may not build there after all because it’s the middle of nowhere, and also the Virginia state senate doesn’t seem inclined to throw money at him. At this point, Snyder is so personally toxic that he should probably just sell the team to someone less universally despised, but he doesn’t wanna and the NFL doesn’t seem inclined to make him, so here we are.
Oakland A’s president Dave Kaval says the team is still considering whether to move to Las Vegas, been there, done that, read the tweets. Meanwhile, Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority CEO Steve Hill says that while he doesn’t think hotel-tax money would be made available to the A’s for a stadium, “there’s a spectrum of possibilities for that partnership and I think it’s worthwhile to explore some of them” and “I think there’s a broad set of options that could be helpful in making this move forward,” which could mean anything or nothing, reply hazy, check again later.
The NBA is reportedly ready to expand to Seattle and Las Vegas soon, which would keep existing teams from using those cities as relocation threats but would also bring in a potential $6 billion in expansion fees, decisions, decisions.
The Tempe city council will discuss a potential Arizona Coyotes arena next Thursday. There will be a public comment period, so presumably this meeting won’t be behind closed doors; the council will either vote to ask for more info and begin negotiations or kill the deal entirely, so there’s still a ways to go on this one.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed bills providing a 1% hotel tax hike to put toward a new Tennessee Titans stadium and kicking back state sales taxes to the Chattanooga Lookouts to help them pay for a new stadium. It’s still not exactly clear how much each subsidy will amount to, but 1) it’s a bunch and 2) there’ll almost certainly be more subsidies to come, so no need to try for a final tally right now anyway.
Long Beach is ready to propose its way-too-small site as the location for a new Los Angeles Angels stadium again, it’s all so adorable.
The NFL is still hoping Los Angeles Rams pays the $790 million court settlement with St. Louis over him picking up and moving the team, but just in case he doesn’t, the league has forced each of the league’s teams to tithe $7.5 million as a down payment on the cost.

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