Category: Buffalo Bills

Friday roundup: Hamilton County hires guy who negotiated Rays deal for St. Pete to help with Bengals talks, this should go just great

access_time personNeil deMause

This has been a week, but it seems they all are these days. One glint of hope on the horizon: The second annual Sports Economics Conference has been scheduled for the University of Maryland, Baltimore County for April, which means I get to hang out with some of the smartest (and funniest) minds studying stadiums and other aspects of the sports business world, and you get more liveblogs like this.

Until then, the regular weekly news will have to suffice. Let’s open up the ol’ news bag and see what — oh dear oh dear, best to get started right away:

  • I have advocated before for local government to hire professional help in their negotiations with sports team owners over stadium construction and leases, so it’s potentially welcome news that Hamilton County, Ohio has hired David Abrams of Inner Circle Sports to help with its talks with Cincinnati Bengals execs — “potentially” because until now I had never heard of Abrams, or Inner Circle Sports, so it’s hard to say whether he’ll be bringing inside knowledge of how the opposite side of the table operates or just feed them the league line that pouring lots of public money into private projects is good, actually. I do see that Inner Circle was paid $1.25 million to work for St. Petersburg and Pinellas County on their stadium deal with the Tampa Bay Rays, and that couldn’t have turned out worse for the public despite the Rays owner having zero leverage, so maybe let’s hold our applause until we see the results here.
  • A Boston city council vote to block the demolition of White Stadium so it can undergo a $200 million rebuild, $100 million of which would be paid for by the city, mostly for the benefit of BOS Nation F.C., fell one vote short Wednesday when councilor Liz Breadon didn’t show up to the meeting, leaving the council deadlocked at 6-6. One of the “roughly three dozen” people who showed up to protest the stadium plan yesterday called the tie vote a “huge win,” which isn’t really how huge wins work; there’s still a lawsuit in progress that could block the plan, but it’s unclear if it will be heard in time to halt the demolition, which if it progresses would take off the table a cheaper rehab of the existing structure just for high school sports, as opponents are hoping for.
  • Speaking of the NWSL, Denver is getting a franchise! And a new stadium, maybe, the expansion team’s owners say they’re planning one, more details about things like cost and public cost later, don’t worry your pretty heads.
  • The first phase of renovation work on the Milwaukee Brewers‘ stadium that’s costing taxpayers close to $500 million has been approved, and it will include such things as a $10 million “public gathering space,” because there just aren’t enough places to publicly gather at a baseball game. There’s also plans for a future vote to spend $25 million on winterizing the stadium so concerts can be held there in the winter — something that would work a lot better if not for the fact that, as Holy Cross economist Victor Matheson points out, big stadium concert tours take place pretty much exclusively in the summer. See why I’m looking forward to this Baltimore conference? (Side note to newbies: Once you’ve read this site for long enough, you’ll recognize that for the sick burn that it is.)
  • New York Gov. Kathy Hochul watched the start of the Buffalo Bills‘ playoff loss at a Bills sports bar in Albany, because of course she did, and the Times is on it! “I am just going to bury my head in my hands for eight hours straight,” one fan said afterwards, presumably at the game result, but there are lots of other good ways to intepret that.
  • Season tickets to Salt Lake Bees games will jump from $9-18 to $17-47 when the team moves into its new stadium this year, thanks in large part to the team’s stadium capacity going from 15,400 to 8,000, and much of that being made up of luxury sections that can only be purchased on a season basis:
    (Salt Lake Bees) Daybreak Field suite layout.
    Truly, we are not far from that glorious future where sporting events will only have one seat, and it will be sold to the highest bidder.
  • I recently recorded an episode of the great Conversations With Sports Fans podcast, and if you want to hear me talk in great detail about being a New York Mets fan, as well as a sports fan in general in this current era, click that link back earlier in this sentence, you know the one.
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Friday roundup: Chiefs hire clown consultants for fan poll, Bears try to conjure stadium money with magic words

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s Friday of another week, and at this writing Los Angeles is still extremely on fire. For a good writeup that also has a sports spending angle, check out yesterday’s excellent article by the excellent Alissa Walker, in her excellent 2028 Olympics newsletter Torched. Her takeaway from the fires darkening her skies: “Here’s what residents should ask themselves when surveying LA’s ashen neighborhoods: if our leaders haven’t yet put together a coherent strategy for something we supposedly want to happen in LA in three years, how can we believe that they’re going to put together a coherent strategy to address the worst-case scenario that confronts us now?”

We don’t always get the life-changing megaevents we should have seen coming that we want, we get the ones we … no, “deserve” isn’t right, either. Maybe: All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players, and if it’s not too much trouble I would really like to have a word with the playwright.

Meanwhile, in the parts of the country where only our hopes for an equitable, democratic system of government are on fire:

  • Kansas City Chiefs ownership is going to email its fans asking them whether they want a new or renovated stadium, and if that doesn’t already raise all kinds of questions like “How will they make sure it’s scientific?” and “Shouldn’t this be up to all Kansas City area residents, not just those on the Chiefs’ mailing list?”, wait till you see who’s conducting the survey. This is clearly a push poll, yet the K.C. media is reporting it as a way to “decide the stadium debate,” add journalism to the list of things that are on fire.
  •  Chicago Bears chair George McCaskey says “we’re making progress” on a new stadium while team president Kevin Warren says “downtown still remains the focus” but also “we have 326 acres of beautiful land in Arlington Heights” and “I remain steadfast that the goal we have is shovels in the ground in 2025.” Pretty sure that’s not how performative utterances work, but points for trying!
  • The Los Angeles Rams playoff game has been moved to Arizona because of the fires, and Newsweek is upset that the stadium there is named after an insurer that canceled insurance coverage for homes in areas at high fire risk. One would hope that the denial of coverage would discourage people from building (or rebuilding) in fire-prone areas, but the state of California provides insurance if private insurers won’t, and anyway you don’t need insurance if you buy a house with cash rather than taking out a mortgage so it won’t discourage the truly rich; trying to solve societal problems with economic incentives always seems to run into the problem that some people’s incentives are more economic than others’.
  • Cincinnati business and political leaders debated (at the local Rotary Club, of course) where the city should build a new arena, which is a nice way to avoid discussing the $560 million in sales taxes, alcohol/tobacco/cannabis taxes, and rideshare surcharges that it’s currently proposed the city spend on the project. Mayor Aftab Pureval said of the arena, which would be the new home of the Cincinnati Cyclones ECHL team, looks like, and that’s it: “We’ve got to do everything we can not to kick this down the road again, but to come together as a community, have a call to action and decide, ‘Yes, we’re doing it,’ and that needs to happen now.” Or, you know, “No.” “No” is also a decisive action!
  • Ohio state senate president Rob McColley says if the state is going to put $600 million into a new Cleveland Browns stadium, “There would have to be an ability to be paid back.” That’s a reasonable demand for state lawmakers to make, though McColley went on to say “I think there very well could be conversations regarding that going forward, but we’ll see,” which makes it sound less like a requirement than a thing that legislators will maybe ask for but not refuse to do a deal without, doesn’t anybody ever read my articles?
  • The Salt Lake Tribune ran a big article on whether history shows kicking back property taxes to a new Utah baseball stadium would require taxes to be raised elsewhere, and while I will freely admit I lost track of some of the fiscal details when it started talking about “mosquito abatement districts,” the answer is yes, obviously yes, cutting property taxes in one place either causes them to rise elsewhere or for services to be cut, that’s how math works.
  • There are new renderings for the Buffalo Bills stadium that is costing New York taxpayers $1 billion and costing Bills fans a pile of money in PSL fees, and they come with extra fireworks! Also a quote from NFL stadium consultant-for-life Marc Ganis about how the stadium will feature “airiness and interaction” and not for “a sophisticated urban environment where people want to get dressed up and go to the game” but for “fans who take great pride in showing up when it’s snowing,” all of which is a nice way to say “We could have built a roof but that would have been too expensive, you live in Buffalo, deal with it.”
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Friday roundup: More Rays scuttlebutt, Sixers arena advances, nobody’s buying pricey Bills PSLs

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s been three whole days since we checked in on the Tampa Bay Rays stadium situation! Do you feel bereft? Do Rays execs and Tampa Bay–area elected officials feel bereft? If a press statement falls in a forest and there’s no one around to aggregate it, does it make a sound?

None of this, and more, will be answered in this week’s news roundup:

  • The Tampa Bay Times sports desk has certainly been chiming in on the Rays situation, with columnist John Romano, who first reported on Rays owner Stu Sternberg’s threats to move the team if he didn’t get stadium bonds approved ASAP, declaring that what is needed is “a hero” or “a savior” or “a fairy-tale knight” to “step up and purchase a large hunk of the franchise and pay for a stadium, or at least provide a stadium financing plan that does not involve more than a half-billion in public dollars.” Why a half-billion? Who knows! Where does Romano think Sternberg will go if no buyer steps in? Dunno, though he predicts the team will “be on the move, at least temporarily, when 2026 rolls around and Tropicana is still not fixed and the Rays do not want to be stuck in an 11,000-seat spring training stadium.” (The number of cities that could have significantly larger stadiums ready to go by 2026 is zero, or maybe one if neither the Athletics nor San Francisco Giants have territorial rights to Oakland.) The most logical short-term solution is for Sternberg and local electeds to get together and agree to pay the $55 million it would cost to repair Tropicana Field for the short term, with Sternberg agreeing to extend his lease a few years in exchange; it would take a lot of pride-swallowing, especially on Sternberg’s part, so it probably won’t happen, but the alternative looks like it’ll be a whole lot of baseball seasons in minor-league parks somewhere.
  • The group that wants to bring an MLB team to Orlando — formerly led by former Magic executive Pat Williams before his death this summer — also chimed in, saying that while they would never interfere in the business of St. Petersburg, if the Rays did want to move to Orlando, they’re confident that Orange County political leaders “can provide an attractive public/private partnership stadium financing structure that benefits all stakeholders involved.” The last time they brought this up, the “public” part involved $975 million in hotel tax money, one of the same revenue sources that St. Petersburg had been looking to use on its new Rays stadium. (Though it’s often said that Florida counties can spend this on tourism promotion and building things like stadiums and convention centers, it can also use some of it for zoos and beaches and river cleanup and even transportation and sewer infrastructure, something lots of Floridians would like to see counties do.) The Orange County Commission has passed on this idea in the past; we’ll see if it goes over any better with the Rays as a potential target.
  • The Philadelphia city council voted 10-3 to approve creating a tax-kickback district for a new 76ers arena and a new “arena district” to manage neighborhood impacts, which are expected to be extensive. More arena votes are scheduled for the next council meeting on Tuesday.
  • Cleveland and Cuyahoga County are each being asked for $20 million for Guardians and Cavaliers stadium and arena repairs, with another $30 million ask on the table right behind that. If there’s a small silver lining, it’s that this is money the city and county already agreed to spend, it’s just that the cigarette and alcohol taxes that were supposed to fund it are coming up short, so now taxpayers will have to dig into another public pocket.
  • How are those super-pricey Buffalo Bills PSLs selling? Extremely poorly: Only 10% have sold so far, and the rate of purchases is slowing. If they don’t sell out, the Bills owners are on the hook for coming up with the money elsewhere, at least, so at least it won’t be an additional public disaster like the 1990s Oakland Raiders PSLs were.
  • The Chicago Bears owners and Arlington Heights have finally agreed on a property tax valuation for the land the team wants to build a stadium on in that Chicago suburb, but also they say they still really want to build a stadium in Chicago, raising the question, as the Chicago Sun-Times puts it, of “whether the Bears’ latest announcement is [just] a push for leverage in stadium negotiations that have now stretched over three years.”
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Bills stadium price tag clears $2.1B, public still only paying for $1B of it, yay?

access_time personNeil deMause

The Tampa Bay Rays stadium fiasco is dominating the headlines right now, but I don’t want to ignore the news out of Buffalo, where the Bills‘ $1.5 billion stadium is now going to cost at least $2.1 billion, because the economy or something:

Bills president Pete Guelli said he was not surprised by the amount, given how the numbers have been tracking up since construction began 16 months ago. And he said the projected total represents the commitment the Pegulas have to the community because they are sticking to their vision for the facility without cutting corners to reduce costs.

Previous reports cited “increased labor and material costs” for the rising price tag — Guelli didn’t explain why it’s since gone up even more, or indicate whether the pending deportation of a large chunk of the construction workforce has been factored in. Bills owners Terry and Kim Pegula remain on the hook for all cost overruns beyond the $1 billion committed by the state and county, leading to this hilarious moment:

Love the fact that the Erie County exec said that the cost overruns are actually good news because it makes the county's $250M giveaway to the richest family in upstate NY a smaller percentage of the total stadium cost. apnews.com/article/bill…

— Victor Matheson (@victor-matheson.bsky.social) 2024-11-19T16:09:55.662Z

Props to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Erie County executive Mark Polancarz, I guess, for making sure the Pegulas would be responsible for any costs over the initial $1.4 billion. Significantly fewer props for putting up $1 billion in public money in the first place without allowing any public or legislative debate, as one does, but Hochul in particular needs all the Ws she can get right now.

 

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Friday roundup: Browns owners sue to block Modell Law, still no Vegas stadium finance plan from Fisher

access_time personNeil deMause

We have a lot to cover today, but first I would like to encourage you to donate to Matthew Sweet’s GoFundMe for stroke recovery if you’re a fan of his music and haven’t yet — he sounds like he’s in a bad way, he couldn’t afford health insurance on a musician’s income (especially being off the road for much of the last four years thanks to the pandemic), and needing to have health insurance is still a thing in the U.S. for some reason. Here’s hoping that the money raised will help allow him to make a significant recovery, and that someday even people without hit songs will be able to afford medical care and the Pentagon will need to hold a bake sale.

But enough about the unfairness of the modern American economic system, on to … well, you know:

  • With the city of Cleveland considering whether to file suit under the Art Modell Law to force Cleveland Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam to offer the team for sale to local buyers before decamping to suburban Brook Park, the Haslams have taken the preemptive step of suing to block the Modell law on the grounds it violates the U.S. Constitution’s Commerce Clause and is too vague and probably a bunch of other things, the typography on the PDF is really hard to read. “Today’s action for declaratory judgment was filed to take this matter out of the political domain and ensure we can move this transformative project forward to make a new domed Huntington Bank Field in Brook Park a reality,” said Browns COO Dave Jenkins, which is a nice way of saying, “These damn ‘laws’ and ‘democratic procedures’ were getting in the way of our stadium plans, that could not be allowed.”
  • Speaking of things getting in the way of the Browns’ Brook Park dome plans, Cuyahoga County executive Chris Ronayne has reiterated that he doesn’t want Ohio taxpayers footing $1.2 billion of the stadium bill, saying, “We have looked at the facts, and the facts are that, and I said it before, that the Brook Park play just doesn’t work. It doesn’t work from a financial standpoint, and it’s frankly very detrimental to our future.” Added Cleveland city law director Mark Griffin: “I want to say this to our state legislature … and to this court system: If you make moves to try to gut this city of one of our key corporate partners and money maker, all of us will remember. You will be up for reelection. You would have to deal with the city of Cleveland in some way, shape, form, or fashion, and none of us will ever forget it.”
  • John Fisher will not be presenting any financial details of his Las Vegas Athletics stadium plan at the Las Vegas Stadium Authority’s October 31 meeting, I’m sure you’re all shocked to hear. The authority will discuss his proposed lease agreement for the stadium, but the actual language doesn’t appear to have been posted yet on the authority’s website, guess it’ll be a surprise! Marc Normandin has more on the Vegas clown show at Baseball Prospectus.
  • The Green Bay Packers have agreed to future rent increases at Lambeau Field after previously demanding a rent freeze so it could instead put the rent savings into paying for stadium upgrades. The Green Bay council unanimously rejected that proposal, and Packers execs agreed to annual 2.75% rent increases worth about $30 million in total present value — turns out sometimes pro sports franchise owners do take “no” for an answer, though obviously the Packers are a bit of a special case in terms of franchise ownership.
  • WTOP-TV quotes University of Maryland business professor Michael Faulkender as saying a renovated Washington Capitals and Wizards arena could benefit the surrounding Chinatown because “Generally when people come down for an event, they’re not just going to go straight to the event. They’re also going to, perhaps, come in early, go to restaurants, maybe stay afterward, go to bars,” which 1) they really don’t that much, 2) those that do are already there, since the arena is already in place. Faulkender added, “It may, on the margin, attract people to live closer to it, if they’re regular fans of one of those teams,” and attracting new residents to displace existing ones is exactly why people say the arena has been bad for D.C.’s Chinatown, Faulkender can just stop now, I think.
  • If you were wondering what former Arizona Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo was up to and had your money on asking for tax kickbacks for a proposed $1 billion minor-league and college hockey arena in Reno, Nevada, you’re a winner!
  • New York Gov. Kathy Hochul says her $1 billion Buffalo Bills stadium subsidy was necessary because five other cities were trying to steal the Bills otherwise. She didn’t name any of the cities, of course, but we know what one of them must have been.
  • I wrote a long explainer for Defector this week on where the proposed Philadelphia 76ers arena deal falls on the bad-to-awful spectrum, if you’ve been wanting a long explainer on that. And I did an interview with ABC Tampa about where the Tampa Bay Rays might play next year with their stadium roof in tatters, if you want to hear me expound on that, or just missed seeing what I have on my living room walls.
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Friday roundup: A’s dunno where 2025 playoff games (LOL) would be played, NY ethics panel probing pols’ use of Bills suite

access_time personNeil deMause

Thanks to travel plans, much of this week’s roundup was written on Wednesday and Thursday, so if there’s anything that needs updating, please just note it politely in the comments and we’ll take it from there.

  • If the no-city-designation Athletics make the postseason next year — stop snickering, it’s mathematically possible, at least until the 2025 season actually gets underway — they haven’t decided yet if playoff games would be played in Sacramento’s 10,600-seat stadium or somewhere else, though the team did issue a statement that “A’s season ticket holders will have priority purchase access for tickets.” The right to buy playoff tickets for a city to be determined, that should boost season ticket sales even more than “watch Aaron Judge hit homers off our pitchers,” John Fisher’s remaining staff are truly marketing geniuses.
  • In other A’s news, a Las Vegas stadium groundbreaking has been set for the second quarter of 2025, which means nothing since breaking ground doesn’t necessarily mean building anything. And the son of ex-A’s owner Walter Haas says it’s “unforgivable” that Fisher is choosing to move the team instead of selling it to someone else who would keep it in Oakland.
  • The Buffalo Bills gave New York state officials a luxury suite as part of a 2012 lease deal to get $130 million in stadium upgrades, and New York state officials sure do love sitting in it: One game last December saw Gov. Kathy Hochul, assembly speaker Carl Heastie, and assembly majority leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes all hanging out in the I Love NY suite — along with Heastie’s girlfriend and college roommate, who the Buffalo News notes in passing are “both registered lobbyists,” which may be the most telling part of this whole story. (State officials who use the suite have to make a contribution to charity equal to the value of the tickets.) Anyway, the suite is only supposed to be used for “encouraging and fostering economic development, tourism and public awareness for the City of Buffalo, Erie County and the State of New York,” so the state ethics commission is investigating whether state officials just hanging out and watching Bills games might be illegal; though presumably the suite helped cement the new stadium deal rammed through by Hochul that made New York the poster child for handing over $1 billion in tax money with no legislative debate, and that’s a kind of public awareness, right?
  • Chicago Bears CEO Kevin Warren said he’d be willing to share a stadium with the White Sox, or maybe just share a strategy for shaking loose public dollars, who can be bothered to ask the difference.
  • Ottawa Senators owner Michael Andlauer and the federal National Capital Commission have a September 20 deadline to work out a deal for a new hockey arena at LeBreton Flats, something that’s been in the works for … good grief, ten years now, how time flies. When last heard from, Andlauer was talking about the government funding half of a $900 million arena; neither he nor the NCC gave many details this week other than “still talking,” and that deadline appears to be a self-imposed one, so this is less actual news than a placeholder for real news to come soonish, maybe, because a sports billionaire said it is. Why yes, journalism is broken, thanks for asking!
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Buffalo fans offered chance to lend money to themselves to pay for new Bills stadium

access_time personNeil deMause

I’ve gotten used to wading through a lot of weird and badly reported stadium news, but this headline yesterday from Buffalo’s soft-rock WTSS-FM straight-up baffled me:

Buffalo Bills Fans Can Own a Piece of New Stadium

Umm, what? The new Bills stadium will be owned by the state of New York, will be paid for overwhelmingly by state and county taxpayers, and will have pretty much all of its revenue streams (including naming rights) go to Bills owners Terry and Kim Pegula. Something is off here — there’s a link to a Buffalo News story, that’s not too promising, but maybe it’ll at least shed a little light:

For one day only, the Erie County Comptroller’s Office will make “Bills bonds” available for Western New Yorkers, Bills fans and other “small investors” to purchase on the retail market.

Okay, so in fact Bills fans cannot own any part of the new stadium — but they will be able to, for a minimum of $5,000, buy a piece of the stadium’s debt. Then they’ll get the money repaid, with interest, by the county, which will use tax money that otherwise would belong to them, Erie County residents. It’s like an isoceles triangle!

This doesn’t really do anything to help the Bills stadium get built: If small investors didn’t buy the bonds, big ones would. So it’s really just a marketing gimmick to make fans feel like they’re a part of the team, even though when they invest in the regular bond market they don’t feel like part owners of, say, the New York State Thruway. Hopefully they’ll at least get a nice certificate, suitable for framing, ideally with this image of giant mega-bison on it.

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Friday roundup: More Bears $2.6B stadium subsidy fallout, plus Indianapolis switches soccer horses

access_time personNeil deMause

Before we get to the news: I hope that those of you who enjoy using dark mode are enjoying the new dark mode plugin I installed this week (DarkMySite, if anyone cares), which seems, unlike the old one, to actually mostly work. If you haven’t tried it out and want to, click the little moon symbol at bottom right and take a load off your eyes!

Also, a special shoutout to a couple of FoS readers (unnamed, but you know who you are) who either sent in a large lump sum of cash or upped their monthly Patreon pledge for no reason at all in the last week. As I forget if I explicitly mentioned, I quit my previous day job last month, which should give me more time to devote to this site; and while I do have a new regular gig that seems promising, every step towards making this site self-sustaining is hugely helpful, so a huge thanks to all you supporters, at any level. (And for those who haven’t yet taken the plunge: There are still about a dozen more Vaportecture art prints, get ’em before they’re gone!)

Okay, enough of that, time’s a-wasting and there’s a whole week of news remainders to dig through:

  • The fallout continues from the Chicago Bears owners’ $2.6 billion stadium subsidy demand (see the updates for the math behind the updated figure), with so much more today that we’re going to have to break out the second level of bullet points:
    • Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson says it’s no contradiction that he said during his mayoral race that the city shouldn’t spend billions of dollars on a Bears stadium when there were “dozens of other urgent needs” and now thinks this is a great idea, on the grounds that he, a “middle child” from a “working-class family,” got to talk to billionaires and make sure they put some “skin in the game” and also the stadium will be “transformational” and “the Bears are staying in Chicago” and “the type of economic development this project brings” and “14 more acres of space for our children in the city of Chicago to benefit from.” Is all that the best use of $2.6 billion? I’m sorry, we’re out of time for questions, thank you for coming.
    • The Chicago Sun-Times editorial board did get a chance to ask Bears CEO Kevin Warren what would happen if the team got its $1.225 billion in taxpayer money for the stadium and nobody came up with another $1.175 billion to build new underground garages and park space, and Warren replied: “I’m not going to think negatively about that now. … If that’s the conclusion that … you want to reach now, then you can say that. I’m being positive about it … and being very transparent as far as what we need from the different three phases with this stadium project.” So, optional when projecting the city’s costs, not optional in the sense that you don’t want to go there in terms of what happens if the city doesn’t come up with another billion-plus dollars, got it.
    • Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker reiterated yesterday that he’s agin’ the whole kit and kaboodle, saying: “I’m skeptical of the proposal that was put forward and I’m even more skeptical of the ability to get enough votes for it in the General Assembly.”
    • Chicago Sun-Times columnist David Roeder suggests that if the Bears (and White Sox) want public money, they should give the public a cut of ownership of the team, though some stick-in-the-mud (okay, it’s me) points out that sports leagues love nothing more than to head off the possibility of public ownership, even blocking one-time San Diego Padres owner Joan Kroc from gifting her team to the city of San Diego on the grounds that that just isn’t done.
  • Way back in 2019, the Indiana state legislature approved giving $112 million toward a new soccer stadium for the Indy Eleven soccer team, provided owner Ersal Ozdemir got his team promoted from the USL to MLS. At the time, this seemed like an easy enough lift, since all the other kids were doing it, but it hasn’t happened yet, and now apparently Indianapolis mayor Joe Hogsett has gotten tired of waiting, announcing that he’s putting in a bid with another ownership group to get an MLS expansion team, using the same tax kickbacks that Ozdemir was looking to get. Ozdemir, who already broke ground on his stadium site last year, though it’s unclear if he’s actually started construction, is naturally enough extremely unhappy with this latest news, accusing Hogsett of “preparing to walk away” from “years of good-faith negotiations” and instead give the public money to some other soccer guy instead of him. Will there be lawsuits? Stay tuned!
  • A “hotel entrepreneur and former longtime Kansas City resident” got space on the Kansas City Star op-ed page to argue that Kansas Citians who voted against a tax subsidy for Royals and Chiefs stadiums missed an opportunity to become like Denver, where “the Coors Field development inspired a stunning downtown renaissance” where “dozens of restaurants, bars and clubs opened to serve crowds before and after the 81 hometown games each year.” I once again wish that I still had a copy of the chart someone once showed me that indicated that most of the development starts in Denver’s LoDo district actually preceded the construction of the Rockies stadium; if I can dig it up, I’ll post it here as an update.
  • The Arizona state senate is considering a bill to allow the state to approve “theme park districts” like the one Alex Meruelo wants for a Coyotes 2.0 arena, without city governments weighing in. (It did so by virtue of hollowing out an already-state-house-approved bill to give first responders access to treatment for PTSD and inserting theme park district language instead, which Arizona calls a “strike everything amendment” but “zombie bill” is a much better name.) This could make it easier for Meruelo to have the state levy a sales tax surcharge in his arena district that would be kicked back to him for construction costs; we’ll have to wait and see what the state senate thinks of it.
  • Buffalo Bills owners Terry and Kim Pegula may sell up to a quarter of their team to help raise money for their share of a new stadium, after construction costs have soared by a reported $600 million. In case you needed more evidence that many if not most stadiums are money losers that are only built so that team owners can cash subsidy checks, here’s your Exhibit A.
  • Arlington, Texas is spending $4.2 million to upgrade the Texas Rangers‘ old stadium, which the team moved out of after 2019 into a new publicly funded one, because, according to Arlington Mayor Jim Ross, “it’s a regional injection of all economic development.” The stadium is currently home to the XFL Arlington Renegades and occasional concerts.
  • What more could happen to Montreal’s Olympic Stadium after costing $1 billion to build and hundreds of millions more to fix the roof on and now $870 million to fix the roof on again? How about catching fire and needing $40 million to fix the damage? You gotta wonder if the Big Owe is just trying to put itself out of its misery at this point, but Montreal officials aren’t getting the message.
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Friday roundup: Nevada legislator says she voted for A’s stadium because she didn’t understand it, and other great moments in U.S. politics

access_time personNeil deMause

Before we get to the week’s news roundup, a couple of programming notes. First off, my apologies for the ads that have kept appearing in the middle of posts on this site — I keep telling Google Ads not to put them there, and it keeps ignoring me. I think I may have finally succeeded in turning those off, but do let me know if they reappear for you. I may end up dropping Google as this site’s ad provider if it keeps this up — that is, if I don’t drop Google anyway for firing workers upset that it successfully created Project Nimbus from the famous science fiction novel Don’t Create Project Nimbus.

Second, I know that the Dark Mode function is pretty broken again, often displaying dark gray type on a black background. I’m in discussions with the plugin provider about bug fixes, and also once again looking for alternatives that work more consistently. In the meantime, you can sometimes get it working by refreshing your browser; if that doesn’t work, just don’t use Dark Mode for now, and hopefully everything will be back in working order before your eyeballs explode from the screen glare.

And now for the news:

  • Nevada assemblymember Danielle Gallant tried, despite a very unhappy dog in the background, to explain her vote last summer for $600 million in public money for a new stadium to bring the Oakland A’s to Las Vegas, and ended up having to apologize for not understanding how the financing worked at all. “I hope future errors you make are met with more kindness than some of the responses I received,” tweeted Gallant, presumably inviting those among you who haven’t accidentally given $600 million to a billionaire sports owner to cast the first stone.
  • Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, who previously praised Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf’s proposed stadium development that would require $2 billion in public subsidies and said “everything is on the table here,” now says that some things are off the table: “I’ve always said that ownership has to put some skin in the game,” Johnson told reporters this week, adding that he opposes kickbacks of city ticket taxes to Reinsdorf to help fund the project.
  • If you’re a Buffalo Bills fan outraged that the team is charging as much as $50,000 for personal seat licenses before you can even buy tickets to their new stadium that is being built with over $1 billion in your tax money, good news: Now you can instead be upset about the fact that Gov. Kathy Hochul agreed to make the PSLs exempt from sales tax, costing you and your fellow New Yorkers around another $25 million. Or I suppose you can be upset about both, but life is short, you have to pick your priorities.
  • Tampa Bay Times opinion editor Graham Brink, who previously defended spending $1.5 billion in public money on a new Tampa Bay Rays stadium on the grounds of “collective pride,” is now back with a list of other ways it would allegedly be a good deal: extending the Rays’ lease will keep the team in town longer, their development partner is “the real deal,” they’re using stadium designers who’ve designed stadiums before, owner Stu Sternberg has an “astute front office,” and … that’s all he’s got so far, stay tuned for “Economists may say Rays stadium is a boondoggle, but aren’t puppies great?”
  • Meanwhile, if you ask St. Petersburg residents if $1.9 billion is too much to spend on a Rays stadium, they say yes, and if you ask them if a new stadium would be a good idea in the abstract without telling them how much it would cost, they also say yes! The truth must lie somewhere in the middle!
  • Where will the Kansas City Royals and Chiefs owners turn for stadium money now that voters told them where to stick their sales tax hike? “It’s not something that’s going to just kind of be thrown up into the ether out of nowhere,” says Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas of city funding, and a spokesperson for Gov. Mike Parson says there’s no state money in the works either. Clay County Presiding Commissioner Jerry Nolte says he hasn’t heard from Royals execs lately, and there’s no talk of fresh funding from Jackson County after the sales-tax plan failed, which leaves only … the team owners’ pockets? KMBC-TV for some reason doesn’t mention this option in their article, the internet must have run out of bits before they got to it. The Kansas City Star, meanwhile, reported on noted sports business expert George Brett’s thoughts on whether the teams will now move out of town, it’s truly not a great week for Kansas City journalism.
  • Now that the Arizona Coyotes are moving to Salt Lake City in the fall, everyone wants to know what the team will be called, and new owner Ryan Smith confirms that it will “start with Utah.” No word yet on what it will rhyme with or how many syllables, but presumably Smith will reveal that eventually — just maybe not this fall, don’t want to rush into things, “Utah Professional Hockey Club” sure has a nice temporary ring to it.
  • Tempe city councilmember Randy Keating has complained that the reason the Coyotes are leaving town is because team execs “ran a terribly inept campaign” for arena subsidies. Better luck next time finding ways to overcome massive public opposition, Randy, there’s got to be a way around this whole “democracy” thing.
  • A’s concessionaire Aramark threatened to fire stadium workers who openly criticize the team’s coming move out of Oakland, which turns out to be a violation of labor law, who could have known?
  • This Ringer article on fan opposition to the A’s departure is really long for anyone who already knows the basics, but its deep dive into the history of fan protest movements does quote Field of Schemes and also includes the priceless quote from Oakland activist Bryan Johansen that his goal is “to fucking haunt John Fisher for all of eternity,” so it’s worth it if you have the time.
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Buffalo sportswriter: Bills fans aren’t actually mad about $50,000-a-ticket PSL fees, says some guy

access_time personNeil deMause

As noted on Friday, Buffalo Bills season ticket holders are up in arms about having to pay as much as $50,000 per seat in personal seat license fees just to get equivalent seats at the team’s new stadium, for which they and other New York state taxpayers are putting up just over a billion dollars. Only … maybe they’re not? That’s the bold conclusion of Buffalo News NFL columnist Ryan O’Halloran after talking with, let’s see, an “industry source”:

“The truth is very different from what’s out there,” an industry source told me. “The community is super behind it.”

So let’s try to picture what happened here: O’Halloran, after reading about disgruntlement among Bills fans over PSLs, decided to look into the matter. Rather than talk to any Bills fans, though, he called someone in the seat-license industry — possibly someone with the Bills or Legends Entertainment, the part–Dallas Cowboys–owned company that the Bills owners hired to conduct the PSL rollout — who said people are signing up at a “really exciting” rate. (The source also provided a bunch of fact-adjacent stats like “the average time of visit [to a PSL showing] is one hour, 40 minutes.”) We don’t know how the source knows this, or if they’re just straight-up lying about it, because O’Halloran allows the source to characterize what’s going on without revealing who they are or their potential self-interest.

This is just a flagrant violation of journalistic ethics, which say that anonymity should never be granted to people who are trafficking in opinion or speculation, and sources should always be identified in as much detail as possible so readers can be clear on their potential conflicts of interests. Honestly, this column alone should be grounds for discipline and/or firing of both O’Halloran and whichever Buffalo News editor greenlit it, unless there’s some extenuating (looks at calendar) … ohhhh, I get it, this is an April Fools joke! I take it all back, this is an extraordinarily clever satire of terrible sportswriting that bends over backwards to serve team owner interests, well played!

(If despite all this you still would prefer to hear from actual Bills fans about what Bills fans think, head over to the Bills season ticket holder page on Facebook, where you can read such sentiments as “I tried to get information about the PSL’s in other sections, like more towards the 30 yard line or the 20 yard line they couldn’t tell me” and “I bet all these people sold time shares before being hired to pitch these PSL’s” and “Will the Bills revoke my psl if I [resell some of my tickets and] don’t get a $5,000/year ticket reseller license like the Sabres are doing?” All good things for local journalists to investigate, if the Buffalo News has any left on staff.)

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