Category: NFL

Chiefs seek ideas for Kansas dome, Missouri gov counters with roof offer of his own (cost TBD)

access_time personNeil deMause

Ugggh, I really did not want to have to write a whole item on Kansas City Chiefs execs issuing a request for proposals for Kansas stadium designs and “negotiating for land near the Kansas Speedway” because we already knew they were playing footsie with Kansas, this isn’t really news. If there were indications that this meant team owner Clark Hunt is more serious about moving across the state line, sure, that would be worthy of note; but since ginning up a move threat looks pretty exactly like planning a move, and in fact team owners don’t really have to decide which they’re doing at the outset, we’re still on the “play off neighboring states against each other” square of the game board.

But when no news gets an actual response, that’s when it bubbles up out of the quantum field and turns into news, and we have now reached that point:

As the Kansas City Chiefs weigh whether to play future games in a renovated Arrowhead Stadium or a proposed dome in Kansas, Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe on Tuesday floated a potential mixture of the two concepts aimed at keeping the team in his state….

“There’s some interesting architectural improvements to make to Arrowhead that could be conducive to an all-weather protective environment without being a full dome,” Kehoe told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “I would say, look at some of the structures that are in Europe that may have some sort of fabric device that goes over it.”

Yes, many soccer stadiums in Europe have fabric roofs! So does the Los Angeles Rams stadium, and it’s even freestanding without touching the seating bowl, so probably an even better comparable for what you’re considering, Gov. Kehoe. And putting a retractable roof over the stadium was actually proposed way back in 1968 when it was first designed, this really is quite the day for non-news news.

The catch, obviously, is that adding a roof over the Chiefs’ current stadium could be quite spendy. (Kehoe said nothing about a price tag or how it would be paid for.) The closest anyone has gotten to talking about real dollars and cents this week was the Kansas Reflector, which checked in with economist J.C. Bradbury — whose eagerly awaited new book “This One Will be Different: False Promises and Fiscal Realities of Publicly Funded Stadiums” will be out in 2026 — about whether a new stadium would pay off for the public, and you can practically hear his exasperated sighs between the lines:

“If you went and called a doctor for a study on the dangers of smoking, you wouldn’t be able to find a doctor who would say smoking is good for you, right?” Bradbury said. “If you would ask economists about the economic benefits of stadiums, you probably couldn’t find an economist who would say that they’re beneficial. But no one wants to listen to economists on that.”

But, J.C., the Kansas Reflector wanted to listen to you! And gave the story the hard-hitting headline “Chiefs weigh stadium in Kansas, but economist doubts economic gains” … okay, maybe the paper could have chosen a stronger word than “doubts.” Give it another decade, and maybe we can get the media up to “questions” or even “mistrusts”!

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Will the Commanders name their stadium after Trump? A mini-investimagation

access_time personNeil deMause

I was traveling yesterday and missed the big (?) news (?) about how “a senior White House source” has been in touch with Washington Commanders owner Josh Harris about having Donald Trump’s name on the Commanders’ new stadium, something that White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said “would be a beautiful name, as it was President Trump who made the rebuilding of the new stadium possible.” (Citation needed on both of those facts, Karoline.)

That Trump wants his name on a football stadium should come as no surprise, as he wants his name on pretty much everything. That Harris is talking to him about it is also unsurprising, as it’s clearly good politics to meet with Trump and at least pretend to listen to him until his attention wanders elsewhere. Actually calling it “Trump Stadium” is another story, for a bunch of reasons:

  • Naming rights are worth a lot — as much as $30 million a year, which even spread over 30 years can be worth almost half a billion dollars in present value — and that’s money Harris won’t eagerly give up. He could try for some kind of hybrid name, like “[Corporate Name Here] Stadium at Trump Field,” but he’s likely to be limited to a smaller group of potential buyers if the official brand is saddled with an unwanted partner, especially one as polarizing as Trump.
  • ESPN reported that “a source with firsthand knowledge of the process” said Harris “doesn’t have the authority” to choose a name on his own, and “the city would be involved in that decision, and the Park Service would be involved.” That’s not necessarily true: D.C.’s term sheet with Harris grants the team “exclusive rights to manage, operate, market, and control the Stadium,” which presumably includes the right to name it. (Harris is explicitly guaranteed all the proceeds from stadium naming rights.) The city and Park Service could perhaps present some roadblocks in the case of a name they didn’t like, but then so could Trump if he doesn’t get his way.
  • Stadium names, to put it mildly, come and go. Unless Trump is successful in getting it contractually guaranteed that his name will be on the stadium in perpetuity, there would be nothing stopping Harris from quietly removing it once he’s out of office. (Or, more hilariously, printing it in the smallest type size imaginable.)

So this is all firmly in the category of things to wait and only take seriously if anyone at the White House still remembers it a month from now, like the time Trump said he wouldn’t allow the stadium to be built unless the Commanders changed back to their old name or the time he threatened to take away NFL tax breaks if players kept protesting racism. Or, you could run story after story about what D.C. residents think and what people on the internet think and what Tip O’Neill would think, that’s also a choice.

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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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Sportswriters alarmed as Bears again do not get $1B in tax money toward new stadium

access_time personNeil deMause

The Illinois legislature adjourned Friday without approving any Chicago Bears stadium bills, and people be reacting:

  • Phil Rogers, writing as a Forbes “contributor,” reports that “the wait goes on as the team tries to find the necessary funding for needed infrastructure upgrades and assurances on property taxes.” Inserting both “necessary” and “needed” is piling on the sports owner perspective a little thick, but probably on brand for a guy who once co-wrote a book with Bud Selig.
  • Gene Chamberlain, the Bears correspondent at Rogers’ old workplace, Sports Illustrated, complains that the the McCaskey family is only “looking for a frozen tax rate which has already been negotiated with surrounding taxing bodies, and about $855 million for infrastructure,” but Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker “falsely depicted the Bears as attempting to get the stadium built by public funds,” because infrastructure isn’t a stadium and tax breaks on a stadium aren’t … wait, let me start over.
  • Bloomberg News calls it a Bears “fumble,” because you know how non-sports news outlets especially always love the sports puns. Bloomberg also describes the Bears as “stuck with an outdated stadium and fans longing for a new football coliseum,” which 1) Soldier Field may be unloved, but it was just completely rebuilt in 2002 which isn’t all that long ago and 2) fans don’t especially seem to be longing for what the Bears owners want to build.
  • The Chicago Sun-Times reports that “Bears sources” say the team could start looking at stadium sites outside Cook County, writing that “numerous suburbs have courted the team,” though notably not by offering any of the money that the McCaskeys want. Also said Chicago suburbs are all in Illinois, which is the state whose legislature just declined to approve that billion dollars or so in tax money, so this may not be as promising an option as you think, Sun-Times.

So anyhoo, the McCaskeys did not succeed in getting around a billion dollars from the state of Illinois, will continue to seek ways to get around a billion dollars from the state of Illinois, stop the presses. This is pretty much the exact same set of stories that ran back in June when the state legislature adjourned then without giving the Bears owners a wad of cash. At least this time around the Sun-Times didn’t describe the session as expiring “without the Chicago Bears breaking the line of scrimmage in Springfield” after the failure of legislation that “could’ve thrown the team a block in their rush to the former Arlington International Racecourse” and Bears lobbyists being “left on the Capitol sideline” — though the paper’s headline did say that the owners’ last-minute offer of $25 million “doesn’t move ball forward in Springfield for new stadium,” it’s a sickness, I tell you.

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Friday roundup: Bears offer Illinois dimes on the dollar toward stadium, Browns considering $150k-a-seat PSLs

access_time personNeil deMause

Apologies for this week’s late roundup — I had to retrieve my now-repaired laptop from the shop and get settled back in before writing this. On the bright side (for you, the information-craving consumer of sports subsidy news, surely not for me, the lowly scribe of such reports), even more stuff happened while I was at the store, so you get to enjoy bonus material as a result!

  • The Chicago Bears owners responded to Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s demand that before getting any state help with a new stadium, the team must pay off the state’s $350-500 million in remaining debt on Soldier Field: How about $25 million instead? The response from legislators has been mostly LOLBears: State Rep. Kam Buckner called the offer “inadequate” and “disrespectful,” while Pritzker deadpanned, “I’m not sure what it’s tied to, what they’re asking for in return for it. I think if they’re donating $25 million to support the people of Chicago or the people of Illinois, that’s always a good thing.”
  • Did the Cleveland Browns owners forget to mention that as part of their new stadium in Brook Park, they’re considering charging personal seat license fees of as much as $149,300? Must have slipped their mind, along with how much of those fees would apply to the Haslams’ share of stadium costs and how much to the public’s $600 million and up cost. (Pretty sure the answers are “all” and “none,” respectively, since that’s how it always works.)
  • Also on the Browns front, the Crain’s Cleveland Business editorial board writes that Mayor Justin Bibb’s proposed deal to get $80 million worth of payments in exchange for letting the team move to Brook Park “leaves a bit of a bitter taste” but may be the best Cleveland can get given that “team owners hold the leverage in an environment where cities are desperate to retain their teams.” Or, at least, they do when the state legislature hands out $600 million to the team to help it move from one part of the state to another. Fixed that for you!
  • The Seattle Sounders owners are seeking outside investors to buy a minority share of the team, with the proceeds possibly being used toward building a new soccer-only stadium, possibly at its Longacres training site in nearby Renton. That’s a lot of possiblys, for sure, but Sportico values the Sounders at $825 million and soccer-specific stadiums generally go for less than half that, so … possibly.
  • CT United F.C. will begin play in MLS NEXT Pro next year playing home games at venues scattered across Connecticut, while it waits for a new stadium to be built in Bridgeport — which is to say, while it waits for the state to decide to give it $127 million to build one. “On the merits of the actual math, the jobs, the housing, the economic impact and aligning with what the priorities have been stated for this administration, it aligns perfectly,” said CT United owner Andre Swanston, take his word for it, he’s just a disinterested hundred-millionaire.
  • “Will the College Football Playoff title game bring economic boost to the Tampa Bay area?” WTSP-TV actually looked at the results the last time it hosted the CFP championship in 2017, and nope: A promised $250-350 million economic impact turned out to be just $720,000 in added sales tax receipts, while hotel tax receipts actually went down. “If that were the case, why is every major city and community bidding on these major events?” asked Hillsborough County Commissioner Ken Hagan. Because you’re all idiots?
  • No, the “sky stadium” Saudi Arabia plans to build for the 2034 World Cup doesn’t look like this, it looks like this. The former is AI generated, the latter, honestly, is probably AI generated at well, but maybe AI generated on purpose by the people who actually plan to build it? With more than half of the internet now AI slop, it’s arguably bigger news when something isn’t a fake, no?
  • And finally, if you’ve worn out the entertainment value of the yule log, we now have the Athletics Las Vegas stadium construction camera. You’re welcome.
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Chiefs owner to decide soon how much to demand for what kind of stadium and where, maybe

access_time personNeil deMause

One of the prerogatives of being a sports team owner is you get to have your every utterance turned into a full-length news article, and Kansas City Chiefs owner Clark Hunt took advantage of this on Monday, revealing that he’s definitely going to demand a new something somewhere:

“I wouldn’t say we’re in limbo. Stadium projects move at their own pace,” Hunt said. “We’ve learned over the years that you can’t really force them to go faster, even if you want them to. And so it’s just important for us to keep working on both options.”

“Both options” here means either renovating the Chiefs’ current stadium or building a new one “somewhere in the metropolitan area” either in Missouri or Kansas, which is technically more than two options, but whatever. If Hunt chooses renovation, he said, “there’s a chance that we would be on a ballot next year,” which presumably would mean another vote for Jackson County along the lines of the one that residents decisively rejected in April 2024, to provide county money on top of the $750 million in state money Missouri already has promised.

It’s unlikely that Hunt is still really thinking about what he wants here, given that the Chiefs stadium shakedown saga has been ongoing for more than three years. He almost certainly is, however, still weighing how to best use his leverage to extract the maximum in taxpayer money — for example, if he puts a county funding measure on the ballot next year, how can he still threaten to move to Kansas if it fails, given that Kansas wants an answer by the end of this December? It’s a lot of work being a billionaire and demanding more billions, you wouldn’t want to be in Hunt’s diamond-encrusted shoes, let me tell you.

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How much is Cleveland’s mayor giving up in exchange for $80m Browns payout?

access_time personNeil deMause

Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb and the Cleveland city council are fighting over whether the council will get to rework Bibb’s settlement of the Browns stadium standoff, and I almost wrote about it yesterday but didn’t because 1) I slept late, 2) my regular computer is in the shop and it takes me forever to type anything on the old one, and 3) it didn’t seem like that big a deal, Bibb’s proposed payoff (described as $100 million but really more like $80 million in present value) may not be amazing but it’s whatever. Until this:

How did the entire Plain Dealer editorial board miss that the "$100 million deal" with the Browns obligates Cleveland to commit to funding an unspecified amount on infrastructure improvements to support the Brook Park stadium?

— J.C. Bradbury (@jcbradbury.com) 2025-10-27T11:45:14.479Z

Hmm? Jimmy Haslam has asked for $70 million in state money for road improvements for the Brook Park stadium site — this on top of $600 million in state money for the stadium itself, and despite saying openly that he’ll keep the team in the state even if he doesn’t get it — but is he asking for city money too? I asked Bradbury, and he pointed me to this in the Browns’ press release about the Bibb agreement:

Parties to mutually support infrastructure plans related to road and air travel with respect to both the Brook Park stadium mixed-use project, the modernization of Cleveland-Hopkins International Airport, the development of the Cleveland lakefront, including the redevelopment of the Burke Lakefront Airport property.

I think that means that Haslam and Bibb will both “support” the infrastructure plans as in work together to get them approved by the state, not support them with actual cash. (While I could certainly see Haslam wanting city cash toward road improvements, it’s hard to see him offering to put his own money in.) So this probably isn’t a commitment of more city money. Though Bradbury certainly has a point that somebody in the media should ask Bibb to clarify this, something that reporters interviewing Bibb and other reporters doing the same and those writing explainers seem not to have done.

And either way, Bibb agreeing to team up with Haslam to lean on the state (and the council) to okay the Brook Park deal isn’t great. The council has say over city spending, so Haslam getting to give the city a payoff and then demanding how it be used (to rehab the waterfront where their current stadium stands) is a sucky precedent. As is the notion that an $80 million payoff can not only buy the city’s silence, it can buy its support of state highway spending when Clevelanders pay Ohio taxes, too.

The bigger problem here, though, is how this entire deal is being negotiated: The Haslams get to lock in each level of subsidy, then go for more, whereas the public is at best fighting to hold the line. Even if Cleveland getting $80 million in exchange for dropping its legal challenges turns out to be maybe an okay tradeoff, the Browns owners get to keep haggling for more subsidies as long as they want — Bibb revealed last week that team negotiators wanted any settlement contingent on getting Cuyahoga County to put money into the Brook Park stadium, and while the mayor successfully resisted that being a condition, the Haslams still plan on pushing for county money on top of state cash anyway.

The city council, at least, seems intent on closely examining Bibb’s proposed agreement, saying Monday night that it will subject the legislation to four separate committee votes. Here’s hoping that at least one of those committees will use its time to investigate the fine print.

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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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Missouri official tags ballot measure to repeal $1.5B stadium subsidy with language warning it would make Chiefs move

access_time personNeil deMause

A Missouri law firm is trying to get a pair of ballot initiatives on the November 2026 ballot to overturn the $1.5 billion in Kansas City Chiefs and Royals stadium money the state legislature approved in June, and instead direct the same amount of money to fund Medicaid in the wake of federal cuts. But we can’t even talk about that, or at least the Missouri news media can’t, because right now everyone is focused on Secretary of State Denny Hoskins’ summary language for the ballot measures, which is uh:

“Shall Missouri law be amended to repeal the ‘Show-Me Sports Investment Act,’ which provides state bonds, appropriations, and tax credits for professional sports stadiums and related events, thereby likely causing the Kansas City Chiefs to move their stadium from Missouri to Kansas?”

Leading the Missouri Independent to add:

There is no mention of the Royals, an omission that sparked a flurry of questions — and criticism.

Excuse me, I have other questions! Like why is the secretary of state editorializing in ballot initiative language about how the Chiefs need subsidies or they’ll move to Kansas, when 1) it’s not at all clear that team owner Clark Hunt is serious about a move or just using it as leverage and 2) Hoskins didn’t also warn of, say, the likely consequences of a “no” vote on Medicaid funding levels. (I’ll skip asking about why it says the Chiefs would “move their stadium” like they would back a truck up to it and tow it across the border.) Seriously, dude, what’s your deal?

When asked by The Star why the question mentioned the Chiefs and not the Royals, Hoskins’ spokesperson Rachael Dunn said the language focused on the “clearest, most immediate potential consequence based on information available at the time of review” and was not based on any internal knowledge of either teams’ plans.

So the Chiefs moving to Kansas is “clear” but not based on any “internal knowledge,” meaning Hoskins got it from watching TV, probably? It’s just how policy is made these days.

Hoskins’ office also said that the initial draft summary is just the “first bite at the apple,” with advocates able to take Hoskins to court if they disagree with the language — something that Brad Ketcher, the lawyer who is working on the ballot measures, said is tantamount to intentionally writing a crap summary to force proponents to waste time in court: “Hoskins is all but admitting that he drafted flawed language with an eye toward slowing the measure.”

Slowing the measure could end up a key factor, as there is also the question of whether the Chiefs and/or Royals will finalize their stadium funding before the ballot measure can be voted on: Don’t forget that the St. Louis Cardinals previously got public stadium money despite local referenda barring sports subsidies, because courts ruled the money had already been allocated by the time voters voted. But, sure, let’s debate whether the ballot language should also warn that the Royals will move to Greensboro, that’s an excellent use of everyone’s time.

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Friday roundup: Stochastic parrot edition

access_time personNeil deMause

Guys! The AI industry needs our help! Nobody wants AI, and AI has lots of AI, so AI is paying AI to make more AI and sell it to AI and making it up in stock price, and that can’t end well! Let’s help out by asking poor li’l ChatGPT to write this week’s Friday roundup, I’ll check in and see how it does:

Friday roundup: Bears still begging, Thunder still building, and Jaguars still staircasing

[Not terrible, not great. Really the headline should reference the top items, and also what the hell is “staircasing” supposed to mean?]

It’s Friday, which means it’s time once again to spin the roulette wheel of public cash and see which stadium and arena schemes landed on taxpayers this week:

[“Spin the roulette wheel of public cash” is a terrible turn of phrase. Also, to complete the metaphor, the wheel should be “landing on” various schemes, not the schemes landing on taxpayers.]

  • San Diego’s Midway Rising plan to replace Pechanga Arena with a new 16,000-seat venue and a pile of housing and retail is inching toward a December 5 planning commission deadline, with the city still wrangling over traffic impacts, affordable housing quotas, and who gets the upside from the $3.9 billion redevelopment. Because nothing says “revitalization” like betting on a 1970s arena site to turn into a housing solution via sports subsidies.

[I haven’t written much lately about Midway Rising, which would replace the former home of the San Diego Clippers, among others, with one of those mixed-use district that are all the rage now, including a new arena. The whole project would cost $3.9 billion, and if ChatGPT knew that it could look back at old articles to understand this week’s, it would have found Voice of San Diego’s explainer about how the project would get an Enhanced Infrastructure Financing District, which is basically a TIF that would kick back property taxes around the site to the developers. How much in taxes? Voice of San Diego didn’t say, and ChatGPT didn’t email property tax economist Geoff Propheter to ask, and Geoff hasn’t gotten to my email yet, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. The last line, meanwhile, is a decent attempt at FoS-style snark, but points off for it not meaning anything.]

  • Oklahoma City’s new $900 million Thunder arena is still on track for a 2028 opening, after voters okayed a 1% sales tax to fund most of it. The latest renderings feature lots of glass and “urban integration,” which probably means the public will be paying for a very expensive window. Construction could start in 2026, with the city touting it as a 21st-century civic monument and critics calling it a half-billion-dollar bribe to keep the team happy through 2050.

[Oh come on, you link to fresh vaportecture and don’t even run the images, let alone clown on the woman in the short-shorts who is about to jog right into a stair railing? Also, how is it a half-billion-dollar bribe when the public is spending $850 million? Zero stars!]

  • The Chicago Bears are back trying to convince Illinois taxpayers to help fund their new domed stadium in Arlington Heights, which team execs insist is the “only viable” site. They already own the land, but are still pushing for $855 million in public infrastructure money, because no NFL owner can resist a good subsidy play before kickoff. If they can pull this off, they say they’ll even be nice enough to bid for a Super Bowl in 2031.

[This is not news. Or rather, it was news last week, which is when we covered it.]

  • Penn State’s $700 million Beaver Stadium renovation keeps creeping forward, promising better luxury seating and a closer-to-the-field fan experience, though the main takeaway seems to be that even college football programs are now acting like pro franchises when it comes to stadium arms races. There’s also an Adidas sponsorship wrinkle, just to make sure the project stays as corporate as possible.

[College football programs have been acting like pro franchises for a long time, but they’re outside the scope of this site because life is short. If all it cost to cover college stadiums was consuming every last drop of water on the planet, I guess I might consider it.]

  • The Albany Firebirds’ Arena Football League announced an expansion team in Saginaw, Michigan — the Michigan Arsenal — which will play at the Dow Events Center. It’s minor-league stuff, but still one more example of how arena football owners keep testing the limits of how many taxpayer-subsidized arenas are lying around waiting for someone to fill a few dates on the calendar.

[The — what? First off, the arena football league is now called Arena Football One, and the Firebirds are just one of its nine teams. The Arsenal will indeed play in Saginaw, in a stadium built in 1972. I don’t see anything to complain about here, or even to care about, unless you are an arena football fan in central Michigan, in which case today’s your lucky day, I guess?]

  • Charlotte’s Bank of America Stadium is getting a new 4,400-seat indoor concert venue next door, courtesy of Panthers owner David Tepper’s entertainment arm. The new hall will slot nicely into his plan to turn every patch of Uptown into “TepperWorld,” assuming the city doesn’t mind another dose of infrastructure subsidies wrapped in the language of “music tourism.”

[Nobody is calling it “TepperWorld.” And most of the $650 million in public money Tepper got for his stadium development wouldn’t be for “infrastructure subsidies.” And “music tourism” is an actual term (people traveling to go see music, I’m doing it myself soon), though not one that’s particularly in play in Charlotte.]

And that’s the week in stadium boondoggles: one new dome, one giant glass box, one mega-housing-sports mashup, and a staircase in Jacksonville that somehow counts as “progress.” Same time next Friday — unless one of these cities goes broke before then.

[Giant glass box? Staircase? Either ChatGPT is drunk or I am.]

Okay, let’s shrug off the italics and see what other actual news the robots chose to ignore:

  • The Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency has reassigned the Cleveland Browns‘ proposed road upgrade plan back to committee, with one county commissioner saying, “So many questions out there in my mind that I don’t know how we move forward at this point.” But Jimmy Haslam is hungry for his $70 million in road money nowwwww.
  • North Kansas City Mayor Jesse Smith said in a press statement yesterday that he’s engaged in “substantial” talks with the Kansas City Royals owners over a new stadium and remains “committed to transparency throughout this process” but also that talks will be confidential for now, which is a lot of mixed messages, frankly. North Kansas City has a population of 4,467, so it’s probably a fair bet that most of the talks are around how to get the county and state to foot the bill for this thing, even more than they already are.
  • The New England Revolution‘s attempts to build a stadium in Everett already drew complaints from Boston officials that they’d need to be consulted on traffic and other impacts, and now four other cities — Malden, Medford, Chelsea and Revere — want in on those talks too. This is maybe going to be a while.
  • Port St. Lucie is spending $27.5 million on a minor league soccer stadium, and WPTV asked two local barbers how it would it affect the economy.
  • Not to be left out, Denver7 examined how a new Broncos stadium would affect the local economy by talking to a coffee company owner and a personal trainer.

And that’s the week in stadium boondoggles: Some stochastic parrots, hallucinated staircases, and terrible journalism. The future, in other words! Same time next Friday — unless the robots have taken over and are talking to themselves by then, and we can go spend all our time on music tourism until the economy collapses.

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