Category: Buffalo Bills

Friday roundup: Tampa council slams brakes on Rays stadium approvals, A’s find an investor (maybe sorta)

access_time personNeil deMause

Lots of other news this week while we were off on Portland Trail Blazers watch:

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Friday roundup: Pelicans owner seeks deal for state-funded velour, ballot measure on Royals stadium could face court fight

access_time personNeil deMause

First off, a special note of thanks to all the FoS supporters who get daily posts by email for your patience while I’ve spent the last week or two figuring out how to make the formatting more readable on mobile devices. (The actual code took just a few minutes to write; figuring out where to insert it in the convoluted system that sends out notices as soon as posts are published was a much longer saga.) I hope this reduces your eyestrain, even at the risk of easier access to stadium news raising your blood pressure.

And speaking of stoking ire, here’s the rest of this week’s news items that didn’t make the daily cut:

  • New Orleans Pelicans owner Gayle Benson is reportedly working on a lease extension with the state of Louisiana to be signed by the end of this year, which could be a 10-year deal with additional five-year options like Benson’s Saints got. No one’s saying a word about the important stuff — how much the state would kick in for arena renovations as part of the deal, and whether Benson would pay any added rent or revenue sharing to help repay the state’s costs — but given that the Pelicans owner has previously said she wants more luxury suites with crushed velour furniture in order to boost the team’s profits, which are currently only about $77 million a year, don’t hold your breath on this “public-private partnership” including a ton of private.
  • A Kansas City labor organization has succeeded in getting enough signatures to put a vote on the November ballot on whether to use city money to fund a new Royals stadium. Mayor Quinton Lucas has declared “the train’s already left the station” and threatened to get the deal signed off on before November, to preclude the public from having a say; the group Missouri Workers Power has threatened to sue to block Lucas from doing so, citing legal precedents where courts struck down legislative actions taken on issues where voter initiatives were pending.
  • North Carolina house speaker Destin Hall is not so crazy about the idea of setting aside a pile of state money to build a Raleigh-area baseball stadium for a proposed MLB expansion team, saying, “Private companies should pay for their own facilities instead of relying on the General Assembly. However, if someone presents a proposal showing that North Carolina taxpayers would get a strong return on the investment, I am willing to consider it.” State senate leader Phil Berger, who lost his primary by 23 votes in March, has been the main advocate of a stadium funding bill; both Hall and Berger are Republicans, while Democratic Gov. Josh Stein said this week, “We’re eager for this opportunity to be considered, and we’ll do all we can to support it.”
  • Some Illinois state legislators don’t seem inclined to revisit tax subsidies for a Chicago Bears stadium no matter what Gov. JB Pritzker says: Comments this week (all from Pritzker’s fellow Democrats) included, “What the Bears wanted was a blank check We not only said no but, excuse my language, hell no,” “If you come to the table in Springfield and you are a liar, it doesn’t bode well for you,” and “The big issue that came about was, Are we going to give billionaires more taxpayer dollars?”
  • A Cuyahoga County councilmember is suggesting using part of the proceeds of a 0.25% sales tax surcharge meant to cover building a new jail and repairing a courthouse to instead pay for repairs and upgrades to the Cleveland Guardians stadium and Cavaliers arena, because surely there’s nothing else the county could use that money for. Just not paying for unlimited upgrades ad infinitum and daring the team owners to give up their sweetheart leases — or even threatening to do so in order to get the team owners to agree to a compromise solution — remains an option, guys.
  • Neighborhood leaders around the Chicago Fire‘s proposed stadium at the The 78 site say if the city is going to devote tax money to parking garages for the stadium, it should also kick in for a community benefits agreement to provide funding for transit access, affordable housing, anti-displacement protections, public infrastructure, and support for local businesses. Whether to view this as a vital instrument of democracy to ensure that regular citizens can get dealt into public spending priorities or just a way for developers to buy off local community leaders by cutting them in on the deal is, as always, a reasonable question.
  • Most of the news coverage of the economic impact of the World Cup has disappeared as coverage of the games themselves has taken over, but Seattle’s KUOW did check in on local businesses this week and found that food outlets near the stadium that sell drinks or quick grab-and-go food items are doing great while businesses farther away or those that sell things fans may not crave before or after a soccer match (Vietnamese cookies, vintage clothing) are having a miserable time of it. Yup, checks out!
  • Buffalo Bills ticket prices are too damn high, clearly we need to reduce red tape so the Bills can build more seats.
  • Yes, that Crain’s Chicago Business article claiming Bears tax subsidies weren’t public money was real bad, but as Geoffrey Propheter reminds us, it’s still no Bridge Detroit.
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Friday roundup: NC may earmark $700m for stadium for imaginary MLB team, Steelers could seek upgrade on “expiring” 25-year-old home

access_time personNeil deMause

Before we get to this week’s news roundup, some old business from last week: I shamefully forgot to give a shoutout to John Mozena for his outstanding liveblog of the stadium-related papers at University of Maryland-Baltimore County’s annual sports economics conference after I was unable to attend. Please check out John’s work at the Center for Economic Accountability and throw some coin his way if you like, or at the very least get some of his free “Pay For Your Own Damn Stadium” stickers.

Back in the present, you’re stuck with me, and I’m stuck with this week’s avalanche of news items:

  • The North Carolina legislature is debating whether to set aside unspecified hundreds of millions of dollars in its final budget for a stadium for a potential future MLB expansion team “in or near Wake County,” which would mean the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill “Triangle” area, as distinct from the Greensboro-Winston-Salem-High Point “Triad” area that voted down paying for a stadium to lure the Minnesota Twins back in 1998. The state has a $700 million Economic Development Project Reserve that it can designate for “high-yield” development projects, and while sports stadiums are nobody’s idea of high-yield in terms of actual measurable impact, there’s got to be somebody somewhere willing to write a consulting report claiming otherwise.
  • Former Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Charlie Batch says team ownership is ready to get back on line for a new or renovated stadium now that their current home is 25 whole years old: “Thirty years is the expiration date. Guess what Acrisure Stadium is? Twenty-five years. So I promise you, conversations are happening behind the scenes to figure out kind of what the next move is as the Rooneys are looking for an upgrade in their stadium.” The next move, apparently, is to send your former-players-turned-YouTube-creators out to talk up how stadiums just straight-up become obsolete after 30 years and somebody has to build you a new one and see if that flies.
  • Illinois’ efforts to retain the Chicago Bears in the wake of team execs’ announcement that they’re absolutely, definitely (maybe) moving to Indiana remain very much undead, with Gov. JB Pritzker saying his state is ready to act but first needs “the Bears to focus on what they want,” adding, “they have not been clear about what is the bill that they need, and how do they need to look, and then, can they get the votes necessary to get it done in the House and the Senate.” State house stadium bill sponsor Kam Buckner noted that both that body and the state senate have passed competing bills — there’s also now a third one, filed by State Rep. Martin McLaughlin despite the legislature not even being in session, that would raise the size thresholds on a “megaprojects” bill to where it would only apply to an Arlington Heights stadium — and “the Bears have to decide what makes most sense for them, which one of those bills is the bill they can get behind and wrap their arms around that can help them remain here in the state of Illinois,” adding, “We cannot have a special session until we have a deal. You don’t call a special session to draw up a flight plan. You call a special session to land the plane.” The hope here seems to be that if Bears officials pick a favorite tax break bill and declare that it’ll be enough to get them to stay in Illinois, that’ll get legislators in both houses to vote for it, which is absolutely the kind of bootstrapping your own momentum thing that you try to do when you’re pushing legislation that just got nowhere.
  • Building a stadium district in Denver’s Burnham Yard railyards may be easier said than done for Broncos ownership, given little details like the land is mostly zoned only for industrial use. This is Broncos owner Greg Penner’s problem, of course, except that, as the lengthy Denver Post article on this only reveals down in its 28th paragraph, Penner could end up asking for TIF property tax breaks to pay for his larger development. “The track record for delivering on these promises by teams in development,” noted University of Colorado Denver economist Geoffrey Propheter, “is shaky. And that’s being super generous.” (Credit where credit is due to the Post: “The naked man, in retrospect, was the least of Sean Herman’s worries” is an excellent teaser lede, though still not quite up there with “The freighter captain, the cop, the guy from the private security firm, the Swiss Army major, and the reporter never saw the pirates coming.”)
  • Athletics owner John Fisher now says his mistake in announcing a stadium plan in Las Vegas was not talking to the media himself enough about it: “Not hearing from me, I think, led to frustration from, frankly, the media. Like, who is this guy? Is he hiding? Who’s the real John Fisher?” He then went on to tell The Athletic absolutely nothing about how he plans to make a $2 billion stadium (with $600 million in public subsidies) in what would be MLB’s smallest market work out, especially when his development partner Bally’s may bail on its part and leave Fisher to fund such additional amenities as a $100 million parking structure. Hearing from John Fisher, it turns out, also leads to frustration, who’da thunk it?
  • San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones would like Spurs minority owner Michael Dell (net worth: $246 billion) to pay for some or all of her city’s $489 million share of a downtown arena. Dell hasn’t responded to her request, and Stanford University Roger Noll says that’s likely because the multibillionaire knows spending your own money on new sports venues is a dumb idea — “the incremental benefits of having a new arena are not as big as the cost” — which is why it’s only worth it if you can stick taxpayers with the bill.
  • The Minnesota Vikings‘ 10-year-old stadium needs a new roof because it got damaged by hail three years ago, but insurance should cover it, or at least the Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority does not believe “substantial use of public funds” will be required, which is slightly less reassuring than “insurance should cover it.” Anyway, it’ll probably never hail this bad in Minneapolis again, right?
  • The first of the Buffalo Bills‘ family of stainless steel buffalo statues has arrived, and fans are excitedly pointing out that bisons don’t really look like that! They’re not even usually made of steel!
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Friday roundup: Rays execs propose “squishy” MOU to unlock stadium vote; Bears tax hike proponent crushed in reelection bid

access_time personNeil deMause

Now that the Tampa Bay Rays stadium push has been pushed back to beyond the end of this legislative session, maybe we can get on with looking at some of the week’s news from other cities. Though wait: Could the Rays actually be on the verge of agreeing to an actual MOU with the city of Tampa and Hillsborough County, which might be voted on as early as next week? Or maybe: Is this just a vague outline of an agreement, not even looked at yet by actual city councilmembers or county commissioners, meant to convince the state legislature that it should move ahead with its own Rays funding? But what about: OLEICAT?

Okay, fine: There is a draft MOU, and it is this. Its very first word is “NON-BINDING,” and it changes some stuff around from the last proposed MOU. Instead of this public funding plan from the city and county:

  • $272 million from the county’s Community Investment Tax 0.5% sales tax surcharge that was passed by voters after promises it wouldn’t be used for stadiums
  • $268 million from county hotel taxes
  • $132 million from county cash reserves
  • $30 million from the county disaster relief funds
  • $224 million from the city of Tampa via the Drew Park TIF district
  • $74 million from reply hazy, ask again later

It would now be this:

  • $360 million from the county Community Investment Tax
  • $263 million from county hotel taxes
  • $40 million from more county hotel taxes
  • $30 million from county stormwater infrastructure funds
  • $100 million from the city of Tampa via the Drew Park TIF district
  • $80 million from the city Community Investment Tax
  • $103 million in county money from reply hazy, ask again later

The first set of numbers totaled $1 billion and the second one is $976 million, meaning the total public cost has gone down very slightly! Rays owner Patrick Zalupski would still keep all revenues from the county-owned stadium; he appears to have dropped his demand for a $10/year rent for now, with the MOU only saying that a lease agreement with the county will be negotiated at a later date.

Rays CEO Ken Babby issued a statement boasting that the new MOU “protects all public funding currently allocated for police, fire, emergency management or response functions,” which is true inasmuch as it doesn’t dip into those particular budget pockets, but not true inasmuch as city and county governments with $975 million less in overall tax money than it would otherwise will find it harder to fund those things.

The new MOU was negotiated with city and county staff, not legislators, so this still has to get voted on by the Tampa city council and Hillsborough County commission — and then, since it’s nonbinding, presumably voted on again at some later date once all those blank spaces in the budget are filled in. (Tampa council chair Alan Clendenin described this MOU as “on the squishy side.”) In the meantime, this stopgap measure is intended to convince the state legislature to move ahead with approving its share of the deal while Zalupski’s buddy Ron DeSantis is still governor. It’s all a lot of balls to keep in the air, but if it all works out, the Rays’ stadium plan could at least live to fight another day.

Okay, now the rest of the news:

  • Add another casualty to the list of elected officials who have been voted out of office and/or shot in the butt for their support of taxpayer-funded sports subsidies: Porter County council president Andy Vasquez got stomped in his Republican primary to stand for reelection, and one reason may be that he supported a 1% county food and beverage tax surcharge for a Bears stadium in Hammond, whereas his opponent opposed it. (Hammond is in Lake County, not in Porter County, but the Bears are seeking tax money from both.) The counties aren’t set to vote on the tax subsidies until after a deal is struck to bring the Bears to Indiana, which seems like it would be the dumbest kind of throwing good money after bad possible, but hey, all the kids are doing it!
  • In tax subsidy news on the other side of the Illinois-Indiana Bears border war: Amanda Kass of Good Jobs First, who earlier this week worried that the Illinois megaprojects bill that the Chicago Bears owners want so they can get up to $2 billion in tax breaks on an Arlington Heights stadium would turn the state’s property tax base into “swiss cheese,” has penned an analysis of the bill along with Kristan Wong Karinen of Good Jobs First and Rita Jefferson of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy for Crain’s Chicago Business and concluded that it would result in “a direct property tax cut for corporations that other residents will pay for.” And since any projects costing at least $100 million would be eligible for the tax breaks, it would be down to individual municipalities to decide — which is especially worrying, they write, given that “billionaire developers come to the table with sophisticated financial models and experienced attorneys. Communities don’t.”
  • The Missouri legislature snuck $80 million into this year’s state budget for “wastewater, stormwater, and water infrastructure,” and some legislators are concerned it could be a stealth attempt to set aside money for a Kansas City Royals stadium project. “This is the stuff that makes me sick,” said state senator Maggie Nurrenbern, who noted that other programs received budget cuts even as this potential stadium slush fund was created.
  • “Vancouver city council could approve a deal by July with a potential ownership group in pursuit of a Major League Baseball team,” reports Business in Vancouver, before further reporting that “so far, no ownership group has publicly shown an interest.” But if some billionaire shows up wanting to get an MLB expansion franchise, and if they can come up with a way of building a stadium, and if MLB actually decides to expand, then Vancouver is willing to get in line along with Sacramento and anyone else.
  • No, the Atlanta Braves Battery project really doesn’t turn a profit for Cobb County, that’s not how math works.
  • Buffalo Bills fans have noticed that the new stadium they’re paying for with their state and county tax money so that team owners can make more money is charging more money for tickets, and now they’re unhappy.
  • The New York/New Jersey World Cup host committee has rented school buses to provide 18,000 rides to this summer’s soccer matches for only $20, providing a relief to fans but potentially undercutting New Jersey’s attempts to recoup its World Cup expenses by gouging on train fares. New York state taxpayers will be footing $6 million of the bus cost, courtesy of Gov. Kathy Hochul.
  • What do you get when you combine AI slop with clickbait vaportecture? The nightmare fuel that is “Ballparks Reimagined: If Every MLB Team Built a Stadium From Its Soul,” which is if anything even slightly more horrifying than the YouTube version three years ago.
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Stadium questions the media shouldn’t even bother asking

access_time personNeil deMause

If you’ve been reading this site for any length of time, you’ll know that I’m a big fan of Betteridge’s Law of Headlines, which states, to save you from having to click through, that “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.” It’s not 100% accurate — sometimes the answer is yes, and sometimes even definitely maybe. But most of the time it’s a sign that a reporter spent a bunch of time on investigating a question, realized the answer was boringly obvious, and their editors decided to post the query as the headline instead, hoping to at least get clickthrus from readers curious to find out the details. (Which is pretty much how most headlines are designed to work these days anyway.)

Which brings us to these two recent, I’m going to call them “news stories,” though one is an item accompanying an All Things Considered radio item and the other is a repost of a Substack post:

Downtown Minneapolis is struggling. Would a new Wolves and Lynx arena help?

Pretty easy to guess no here, given that the Timberwolves and Lynx already play in a downtown Minneapolis arena, even if it’s one where, as one fan told Minnesota Public Radio, has “restrooms [that] look like they’ve been there for 20 years.” (Presumably whenever her own restrooms get too old, she moves to a new house?) And in fact, the author of the piece knows the answer, because there’s Kennesaw State University economist J.C. Bradbury down in the later grafs saying the answer is no, and it “isn’t some rogue opinion I have. It’s something that’s shared by the entire disciplin. If you ask doctors, ‘Is smoking bad?’ They’ll universally say yes. If you ask economists, ‘Are stadiums bad public investments?’ They’ll universally say yes.”

The article then pivots to talking about how much expensive arenas are to build these days (true), and how the “aging Target Center is mostly upper deck seats” which makes tickets more affordable (possibly slightly true, but probably not so much). It’s not clear why any of this story exists, though the accompanying radio piece does feature T-Wolves co-owner Alex Rodriguez (yes, that one) describing a new arena as “an anchor to the community,” so presumably this was pitched as an investigation of that claim — though if so, sticking in one quote from an economist halfway down saying this question has been asked and answered and then running a headline making it seem like an open question … that’s a choice, certainly.

Then there’s whatever you call this, which ran last week in the Rochester Beacon as a reprint of local reporter Gary Craig’s Substack column:

Is the new Bills stadium really such a bad deal for taxpayers?

Going to go with yes here, because (waves hands generally at everything that has been written about it on this website and elsewhere). But sure, let’s hear how spending $750 million in state money and $250 million in county money to move the Buffalo Bills across the street could be a good deal for taxpayers:

Tucked away in New York’s 2021 analysis of costs for a new Buffalo Bills stadium is this tidbit: “Personal income tax, primarily related to Bills team payroll, is the largest single fiscal revenue source, generating approximately $19.5 million per year for the State of New York.”

That number was likely low then, and with the increasing salary cap in the NFL, is certainly low now. Experts with whom I’ve spoken estimate the annual income tax revenue likely will be upwards of $30 million from the Bills and visiting teams…

These income taxes are numbers not often talked about in the debate over public financial support for a new stadium.

Uhhh, is this for Substack’s new posting-while-smoking-crack vertical? The benefit of getting income taxes from player payrolls is talked about all the damn time by team owners and pro-stadium-subsidy politicians — in fact, here’s then-Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker doing so about a new Milwaukee Bucks arena 10 years ago. The problem is threefold:

  1. Math: Even $30 million a year in new income tax revenue isn’t enough to cover $1 billion in public spending — it’d be worth a little less than half of that in present value. So even by Craig’s own logic, the answer to his question is yes, it’s a bad deal for taxpayers.
  2. New vs. existing revenue: The Bills already play in Buffalo, so this is income tax money that the state and county will be getting regardless of what stadium they play in. It would only become a windfall if you assume the Bills would have moved without a $1 billion stadium subsidy, which LOL.
  3. The but-for: Even if the Bills did move, the money Bills fans currently spend on tickets would likely be spent on something else within Erie County and certainly New York state, and would go to pay other salaries that would generate income taxes. It wouldn’t be a 1:1 replacement, no — a portion of the Bills salaries are paid by TV rights money, and that would indeed depart — but some of the tax revenue would remain, making the $1 billion taxpayer expense look even worse.

“I’m still trying to do a deeper dive on the stadium financing,” concludes Craig, and maybe he should have finished his research before posting this, or at least before letting the Rochester Beacon reprint his off-the-cuff thoughts. Anyway, hope this helps, not sure honestly why I’m still trying to critique a journalism world that is invariably headed slopwards, I’ll have to do a deeper dive on that impulse someday.

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Friday roundup: What if schools got all the money they needed and sports teams had to hold bake sales to build stadiums?

access_time personNeil deMause

Yes, that story about nobody knowing how much the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics cost because the Olympic committee literally set fire to its financial records is incredible, and yes, I really need to make a fridge magnet about it. This is more a note to myself than to you all, feel free to skip ahead to this week’s speed-round bullet points:

  • Cleveland mayor’s office chief of staff Bradford Davy said of the Guardians and Cavaliers owners’ insistence on more public money for venue upkeep and upgrades that “we are going to have to make sure that those relationships are strong and thoughtful,” but also that “the general revenue fund cannot be held accountable” and the city needs to look for other revenue sources that wouldn’t take away from spending on basic city services. I see where this is inevitably going, just be sure to say no to soufflés.
  • Also in Cleveland news, a federal judge has declined to issue an injunction against the state of Ohio’s use of unclaimed private funds to pay $600 million toward a Browns stadium plus more for other private sports projects, but is letting a lawsuit against the spending to move forward. It’s unclear what will happen if the Browns get their state check and the state then either loses its case or has its unclaimed private fund pool drained by state residents applying to get their money back — look for other revenue sources, I guess, it’s all the rage!
  • A consultant hired by the Wisconsin Professional Baseball Park District has issued a report concluding that the Milwaukee Brewers stadium parking lots could hold $700-800 million worth of development, which if fully built out and taxed would supply $18.8 million a year in property taxes. True, the land is owned by the state stadium authority and so is tax-exempt, but maybe the district could cut a deal for payments in lieu of property taxes with some as-yet-unidentified developer, despite “environmental issues” like the parking lots being partly in a flood zone? Anyway, the Brewers’ president of business operations called it a “good first step,” that’s enough to build an entire headline around, print it!
  • Ottawa Senators owner Michael Andlauer has hired a team of lobbyists to push for public money from the federal and provincial governments for the new arena that the team has been fighting for since before their old owner died. It’s not clear exactly how much the lobbyists are asking for beyond money for “infrastructure financing and other government programs,” but the Ontario government does have an $8 billion infrastructure fund sitting right there, which you know must get Andlauer salivating. The local media is also reporting that Andlauer wants a similar deal to the one the Calgary Flames owners got in which about $300 million is coming from the province of Alberta and $537 million from the city of Calgary, but also that the Sens owner “has publicly stated that the organization will not be asking the City of Ottawa for taxpayers’ money.” Say no to soufflés, Michael!
  • Springfield is still looking at building a pro soccer stadium. Which Springfield? All of them, probably?
  • Rhode Island officials have refinanced their Pawtucket soccer stadium bonds with the terrible interest rate and somehow managed to be both paying even more this time and also having the state treasury for the first time be the backstop for bond payments. GoLocalProv reports that “the Rhode Island Commerce Corporation and the Pawtucket Redevelopment Agency have refused to comment on the new financing scheme,” and can you really blame them?
  • If you’ve been craving a supercut of the Buffalo Bills-themed Hallmark movie (horrifyingly not the first NFL-team-themed Hallmark movie) only containing the parts where the male romantic lead talks about how great the new Bills stadium is, Defector has got you covered.
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Friday roundup: Denver mayor says he’ll fight to the death to give George Lucas’s wife $170m for a soccer stadium

access_time personNeil deMause

I had a birthday this week, and nothing says “Yes, you’ve been writing this blog since you were 32 years old and you’re apparently going to have to keep at it well into old age, you got a problem with that?” than becoming a Field of Schemes supporter! There are both one-time and recurring payment options, many of which give you the chance to get one of just ten remaining copies of this Vaportecture art print before they’re gone forever, so act now!

Or just keep on reading and commenting, honestly, that at least makes me feel like this entire project has been worth something, even if the central problem it has detailed shows no sign of slowing down. I remain inspired by the Straight Dope‘s tagline “Fighting Ignorance Since 1973 (It’s Taking Longer Than We Thought),” though the fact that the Straight Dope stopped publishing in 2018 without declaring victory over ignorance is sobering, admittedly.

Anyway, onward!

  • Denver Mayor Mike Johnston has heard the NWSL expansion Denver Summit owners’ threat to pursue a “parallel path” in unspecified neighboring cities at the same time as trying to win over a city council not crazy about handing them maybe $170 million in cash and tax breaks, and he knows just how to respond: by offering to do whatever it takes to get Summit co-owner (and Broncos co-owner, and wife of billionaire George Lucas) Mellody Hobson to build in his city. “Over my dead body will I let the Broncos stadium leave Denver,” said Johnston on Wednesday. “Over my dead body am I going to let the Summit stadium leave Denver. We want that site to be here.” Noooooo, that’s not at all how you haggle, you’re doing it all wrong! It remains to be seen whether the Denver city council will take up Johnston on his “dead body” offer.
  • Residents of Kansas’s Johnson County are “seething” over the possibility of the Kansas City Royals building a stadium there, according to the Kansas City Star, though the Star also reports that a poll found 53% of residents support the idea and 40% oppose it. But also 40% of respondents said the Royals should stay put at Kauffman Stadium vs. 26% who wanted them to move to Kansas, a good seethe is so hard to find these days.
  • How did New York Mets owner Steve Cohen take his plans to build a casino next to his stadium from distant longshot to likely winner? One part, two local anti-casino activists write in the New York Daily News, involved hiring two community board members (one now the councilmember-elect for the district) as consultants, while also holding fundraisers for the local state assemblymember. The main reason for Cohen’s success may still be that the state senator who was his main opponent also turned out to be the most disliked person in Albany, but throwing money around to local officials couldn’t have hurt, either.
  • Buffalo Bills fans appear to have given up and bought the hated personal seat licenses required to get tickets at the new publicly funded stadium scheduled to open next year, with nearly 90% of the PSLs reportedly having sold. All of the $250 million in proceeds so far will go toward paying Bills owner and superyacht captain Terry Pegula’s $1 billion in stadium expenses, none of it toward paying New York state and Erie County taxpayers’ $1 billion in stadium expenses, because standard business practice something something.
  • It’s still not clear where Athletics owner John Fisher will find the $1.4 billion he needs to build an entire ballpark in Las Vegas, but he’s certainly building something: Construction crews started pouring concrete for the lower deck this week. There’s been no word when he’ll hit the $100 million spending mark that will allow him to access $380 million in public money, let alone what he’ll do once that money runs out as well, but if nothing else Fisher is committing to the bit.
  • The owners of Sacramento Republic F.C. have only just started building their new soccer stadium, and they’re already seeking permission to expand it from 12,000 to 20,000 seats, just in case they ever want to.
  • Asked how new Tampa Bay Rays owner Patrick Zalupski is doing at coming up with plans for a new stadium, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred somehow managed to say, “With respect to the go-forward issue, Patrick and his group are hard at work getting the lay of the land in the Tampa Bay region to find out what their options are.” Language is always evolving, and Manfred is truly an inspiration in breaking new ground about where it will go in the future, or as he would say, the go-forward time.
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Sabres extend lease five years in hopes Buffalo’s wallet will re-open by then

access_time personNeil deMause

Buffalo Sabres owners Terry and Kim Pegula had an expiring arena lease and no way to use it to extract arena upgrades from Erie County, which is too busy with helping build a new stadium for the Pegulas’ other team, the Bills. What to do? Why, just extend the old lease until the time is riper for arena subsidies, that’s what:

The Sabres will operate this season under the existing terms of their lease with Erie County and then for the four seasons after – or until a new, long-term agreement can be reached.

This comes as the Sabres negotiate with the county and other parties for a more modern lease than the current one first developed around three decades ago. It’s a process that will likely also involve the state, and possibly the city, and a request for public funding to pay for improvements and upgrades at the arena.

Expiring leases, it turns out, are only a ticking clock for public officials; for team owners, they can be moved at will. (The Sabres lease, like many sports leases, gave the Pegulas an option to extend their lease under the existing terms, which include free rent.) The Buffalo News reports that Erie County could be looking to get out of the arena business, which may mean dumping the Sabres’ home ice on the state, which would then presumably be on the hook for the bulk of upgrades, just like it was for the Bills stadium. That should make downstate taxpayers wary, since they’re already paying for a new stadium for a team hardly any of them ever watch, though “and possibly the city” should make Buffalo taxpayers wary as well.

Sabres COO Pete Guelli said he hoped the team could “be part of something that could help revitalize the City of Buffalo,” while Erie County executive Mark Poloncarz said he wants a revamped arena to be “part of a continued entertainment district that is key to the future of the city,” so everyone is on the same page here as far as being convinced that a glitzier hockey arena would boost the city’s economy. (SPOILER: It wouldn’t.) Looks like it’ll be a few more years before all this comes to a head, by which time everyone will be able to point to the visible impact of the new Bills stadium and, you know, are you sure you want to put this off, Pegulas?

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Friday roundup: San Antonio okays $489m arena subsidy to prove “love” for Spurs, plus: invasion of the soccer zombies

access_time personNeil deMause

First things first: As expected, the San Antonio city council voted yesterday to move ahead with plans to give $489 million in tax revenues to Spurs owner Peter Holt to use toward a new arena. The actual council action was two votes: One to reject Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones’s proposal to pause arena talks until an independent economic review could be conducted, and one to allow the city manager to “complete negotiations and execute a nonbinding Term Sheet,” notwithstanding that a term sheet already exists — it’s unclear what the city manager is authorized to negotiate going forward from here, not to mention exactly what the council has actually committed itself to given that the term sheet is nonbinding. Councilmember Edward Mungia said that “we still have the ability to get out of this deal at any point before other project deals are signed,” but didn’t specify if the council would have to vote to withdraw from the deal or still needs to vote on a binding agreement or what.

Jones, who votes as a member of the city council because San Antonio has that kind of city government, voted against the arena subsidy, as did councilmembers Teri Castillo, Ric Galvan, and Leo Castillo-Anguiano. Mungia and the “more business-friendly” councilmembers, as the San Antonio Report put it, voted in favor: Sukh Kaur, Marc Whyte, Marina Aldrete Gavito, Misty Spears, Ivalis Meza Gonzalez, and Phyllis Viagran. As Viagran explained her vote: “You either trust this team … or you don’t. I’ve heard so many people say, ‘We all love the Spurs.’ … But do you really?”

There’s still some possibility of an independent economic analysis down the road, or more hearings to see if public support for the project is still as “tepid” as it was earlier this year. (Jones is also pushing for a public referendum on the city’s spending next spring, but we’ve seen how her proposals go over with the business-friendly councilmembers.) And, of course, Bexar County voters can still throw a wrench into things in November if they vote down the ballot measure that would give Holt around $150 million worth of county tax money on top of the city funds. Regardless, in the first round of the Project Marvel arena battle, the San Antonio council has spoken, and its verdict is “Nothing says ‘I love you’ like half a billion dollars in public money so you can boost your sports team’s profits.”

Who else is loving who this week and how? Never thought you’d ask:

  • Like everyone else, I’m still trying to wrap my brain around MLB’s new set of TV deals that are supposed to be finalized soon, with Apple out and Peacock in and ESPN in on some things but out on others. As far as what it will mean for teams’ media revenues — and, by association, how footloose teams can be about moving into smaller media markets to seek more lucrative stadium deals — it sounds like teams’ cuts of media revenue won’t change much, it’ll just be that ESPN will increasingly be the ones selling the right to watch games, and they’ll be making you pay for an ESPN subscription on top of an MLB.tv subscription to do it. Only 17 years until the last World Series, get your baseball-watching in now!
  • Buffalo Bills owner Terry Pegula bought his $100 million superyacht in 2021, the year before he got $1 billion in state and county tax money for a new stadium, but people aren’t any less unamused at the juxtaposition. One wonders if this might even have become an issue in New York state legislative hearings on the stadium subsidy, if there had been any.
  • Manchester United seeking public money for their planned stadium project isn’t new news, but it did just get the attention of the Guardian, which called the team’s plan to seek hundreds of millions of pounds to clear land for the stadium a “sinister US tactic.” Which is fitting, given that Man U is owned by sinister Tampa Bay Buccaneers owners the Glazer family, though maybe not for much longer.
  • What would happen if a minor pro sports team — say, the Pittsburgh Riverhounds of the USL Championship — wanted to issue renderings of their proposed stadium expansion (to be “paid for with public and private funding, although details have not been provided“) but couldn’t afford the Pro version of Microsoft Stadium Wizard? We have the answer, and it is a hellscape of identical featureless soccer zombies, please enjoy your nightmares:
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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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