Category: Chicago Bears

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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Bears execs are going to keep throwing stadium sites at the wall until one sticks

access_time personNeil deMause

With the Chicago Bears owners’ stadium dreams going nowhere with state officials and going backwards with the public, how to create some positive momentum? How about have someone leak news off the record to the local business rag that you’re looking at a new potential site maybe possibly perhaps?

After publicly labeling the former Michael Reese hospital site as unsuitable for the new venue, the team is said to be reconsidering the 49-acre property south of McCormick Place in hopes of jump-starting discussions with politicians to keep the team in Chicago, according to sources familiar with the talks.

So let’s start with this: “To keep to team in Chicago” is bald-faced propaganda, since Bears execs have never even threatened to relocate the team out of the area, and no other cities are offering them a stadium. (If Crain’s Chicago Business means “keep the team from moving to the suburbs” it should say that, but even then the Bears have no serious offers there either.)

As for this alleged new site, it’s actually an old site on the South Side near the lake that was suggested last May by Chicago’s nonprofit Civic Federation and summarily rejected by Bears CEO Kevin Warren as “too narrow.” (It’s also long been targeted by the city as the site of a new mixed-use neighborhood, no word on how adding a football stadium would pair with that.) It’s now being thrown back into the mix by [source needed] on the grounds that state officials from Chicago might like it better, though the public subsidy required is still unknown; Crain’s reports, citing nobody at all, that “the Bears understand a larger private investment is needed,” but also Civic Federation president Joe Ferguson previously noted that the Reese site is “eligible for TIF funding,” though also it’s owned by the city of Chicago, would it even pay property taxes that would have to be refunded via a TIF? So many questions for whoever is floating this idea now, too bad they’re anonymous so we can’t ask them any questions!

 

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3,000 Chicagoans vote “no” on public money for Bears stadium

access_time personNeil deMause

There was one other stadium-related issue on the ballot on Tuesday, and it was a weird one: Voters in eight precincts on Chicago’s West Side were offered a chance to decide on the question “Shall the people of Chicago provide any taxpayer subsidy to the Chicago Bears to build a new stadium?” and overwhelmingly said “no”:

With five of eight precincts reporting, “no” garnered 79 percent of the referendum vote compares to 21 percent for “yes,” according to the Chicago Board of Elections…

Just over 3,000 votes were cast on the ballot referendum with five of eight precincts reporting.

What impact does this have on the Bears‘ stadium plans, and why only five precincts? Nothing, and that’s a bit of a story: Former Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn first tried in March to get a citywide nonbinding referendum put on the ballot, but the city council didn’t approve it. So instead he gathered signatures around his West Side home to put it on the ballot locally, making it symbolic as well as nonbinding.

That said, Quinn, who has spent his time in office since leaving office in 2015 mostly pursuing referendum drives, says it’s an indication that voters don’t want to give public money to the Bears’ owners, which we pretty much already knew from polling, but sure, now we effectively have a more in-depth poll of 3,000 West Siders as well. Not that this matters much since the current governor has already been polled and is 100% against the plan, and the city doesn’t seem to have the money to do it on its own, but there are worse ways to use an election, I suppose.

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Friday roundup: Special Tampa Bay Rays roof crisis edition

access_time personNeil deMause

Seems like all anybody wants to talk about today is what the Tampa Bay Rays will do now that their stadium roof blew off and also how insensitive it is to be talking about what the Rays will do when millions of people are still without power, so let’s get right to answering your questions and/or offending your sensibilities:

  • Rays management put out a statement yesterday saying “our priority is supporting our community and our staff” and “over the coming days and weeks, we expect to be able to assess the true condition of Tropicana Field,” which is PR for “dunno yet.” Playing without a roof apparently isn’t an option because the stadium doesn’t have a drainage system for when it rains, so it looks like the Rays and the city of St. Petersburg are going to have to look into a rush job of repairing the roof on a stadium that is set to close in three years regardless. Just in case, sportswriters are over are rushing to publish their lists of other places the Rays could play the start of next season, including various minor-league stadiums in Florida, the Oakland Coliseum, the Texas Rangers‘ still-standing old stadium next door to their new one, or, sure, Montreal, maybe its roof will be fixed before Tampa Bay’s is.
  • The Tampa Bay Buccaneers‘ stadium got off without much damage after being flooded during Hurricane Milton, but the first responders using it as a shelter did have to evacuate. All of this should be having people rethink the whole “stadiums can double as emergency shelters” thing, maybe?
  • Chicago Bears CEO Kevin Warren says a Chicago lakefront stadium is still “the focus” but his stadium architects are designing a building that would be “agnostic” with regard to location, which doesn’t really make sense — you have to at least know which direction fans would be arriving from and where the sun would be, for starters — but it’s the kind of thing you do when you’re trying to play off against each other multiple cities that have all shown little interest in throwing money at you.
  • If you’ve been wondering what’s up with Diamond Sports Group’s ongoing bankruptcy and its effect on MLB TV rights, Marc Normandin has a good writeup in Baseball Prospectus. Tl;dr: Two more teams have been dropped by Diamond (the Rays and Detroit Tigers) and the Texas Rangers had their contract expire, meaning it’s likely that MLB is going to end up running TV rights for a bunch of teams in 2025. For now it sounds like the league will be paying teams based on what they were getting from Diamond, but if you want to dream on a future where MLB holds NFL-like control over the whole league’s broadcasts and doles out money evenly and market size no longer matters, I’ve got you covered.
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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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Friday roundup: Philly residents hate 76ers arena plan, Bears CEO warns Chicago not to “fall behind” in handing out stadium billions

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s finally Bandcamp Friday again, which means I can purchase and listen to everything that’s been piling up in my shopping cart all summer. (If you’re wondering: Bad Moves, Imperial Teen, Quivers, and Verboten.) But first there’s a whole week’s worth of news to get to, so let’s get to it:

  • Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker says keeping the 76ers in her city is “a priority,” but as far as a new arena goes, “we have a process here in the city of Philadelphia that we are following, and we will allow it to play itself out.” Philadelphians, meanwhile, told pollsters commissioned by the Save Chinatown Coalition that they overwhelmingly oppose the Sixers’ arena plans, by a 56-18% margin. The actual question was “Generally speaking, would you support or oppose a proposal to build a new 76ers arena in Center City, near Chinatown, or are you neutral about it?” which is a pretty neutrally worded question; after being read arguments in favor of and opposing the arena, opposition rose to a 69-15% margin, with increased traffic and congestion and fears it would hurt the neighboring Chinatown as the two main reasons. Also, only 12% said a new Sixers arena should be a priority, as opposed to more than three-quarters who listed addressing the opioid crisis, improving schools, building affordable housing, and getting homeless people off the streets as important — no one’s asked Mayor Parker yet to rank her top priorities, but maybe it’s about time someone does?
  • The owners of the Philadelphia Flyers, meanwhile, Comcast Spectacor, who are also the Sixers’ current landlords, continue to make not having a new arena built be a priority, as you would expect. Their latest gambit is to present a competing developer who they say would build a biomedical “innovation hub” on the proposed arena site; the proposal included at least one rendering, but it didn’t feature any fireworks or lens flare, how’s that supposed to compete with an arena in politicians’ eyes?
  • Chicago Bears CEO Kevin Warren, who just re-upped his team’s contract with stadium lobbyists for another $120,000 a year, says he would prefer to get a new stadium within Chicago city limits, and anyway Chicago needs one, because “we’re missing out on concerts, multiple megaevents, including Super Bowls, Final Fours” and “if we don’t wrap our arms around some of these construction projects, we’re going to fall behind as a city.” It will be left as an exercise for readers to calculate how many Super Bowls Chicago would have to host to earn back the $1.2 billion to $2.4 billion in tax money Warren is asking for, but suffice to say that it would be at least several per year.
  • Elected officials in Indianapolis are debating whether paying for a retractable roof for the Colts stadium was a good idea, something complicated by the fact that nobody seems to know how much the retractable roof cost. (“A minimum, a minimum, at least $100 million,” says former Hamilton County council member Rick McKinney, but there was no actual line item for it in the $720 million stadium budget.) The best part of the Indianapolis Star article on this is that the “was too!” position is staked out by Steve Campbell, who when the stadium was approved in 2004 was an official in City Hall and who is now the Colts’ vice president of communications and external affairs, funny how that works out. Campbell says that city officials then wanted to make sure the stadium had every possible doodad because “we knew that the next stadium that came out would have something that we didn’t have”; presumably the only reason they didn’t add in holographic replay systems is that they didn’t know where to buy one.
  • NFL owners are so rich that they’re having a hard time not paying taxes on all their wealth when they die. That’s it, that’s the whole story, Lucky Ducky wins again!
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Friday roundup: Sacramento celebrates A’s move with new golf simulators, KC residents say cap public stadium funds at one-third

access_time personNeil deMause

Sports economist Victor Matheson and I were both on a radio show this week to discuss the Cleveland Browns and Kansas City Royals and Chiefs stadium situations — you can listen to it here, but first check out the rest of this week’s stadium and arena news, it’ll be quick, I promise:

  • There’s a “major economic boost” coming to Sacramento now that the Oakland A’s are relocating there temporarily, reports KCRA-TV: A new brunch-and-golf-simulators venue is opening across the street! (It was going to open there anyway, but now that the A’s are coming, the owner is trying to open it earlier.) Also, the mayor is “in discussions” with three new restaurants! Feel the excitement!
  • There is no excitement in St. Louis, where the Cardinals are still technically in the playoff hunt, but fans in the best baseball city in the world don’t want to watch .500 baseball, it turns out, or even buy hot dogs. “I love being the hot dog lady,” says hot dog lady Karen Boschert. “I’ve cut my staff down. My prices are reasonable. You can take my food into the stadium.” Maybe she could pivot her sales pitch to point out that you can buy her food and not bring it into the stadium? Just an idea.
  • Pollsters in Missouri decided to ask an unusual question of local voters: not whether taxpayers should pay toward new stadiums for the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals, but how much. The average was two-thirds team, one-sixth state, one-sixth city and county, which is kind of arbitrary and doesn’t account for whether the public would get back any share of revenues or community benefits or anything, but sure it sounds fair. Ish. Time will tell if the team owners come back with “zero-thirds team, poke in the eye with a sharp stick public.”
  • Most of the San Antonio residents who testified at a Wednesday hearing on a $160 million Missions minor-league baseball stadium “voiced concerns and skepticism,” according to Fox San Antonio. For actual quotes we have to turn to KSAT, which notes that a local arts and social justice activist said, “This project is all about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer,” while a resident of a housing complex that would be demolished to make way for the stadium said, “I would not be able to get somewhere else, and I would end up in the street yet again.”
  • Chicago’s city budget is facing a $982.4 million shortfall, and Mayor Brandon Johnson says, “There are sacrifices that will be made,” but not new Bears and White Sox stadiums, those are important even if they would cost the city upwards of $1.2 billion and $2 billion respectively, sacrifices are for little people.
  • Team-funded studies of a Philadelphia 76ers arena say it would be great, other studies show it would be a disaster; the Philadelphia Inquirer editorial board says it’s up to the mayor and city council to figure out where the truth lies in the middle!
  • Another group of developers unrelated to either the Royals or the city has come up with renderings for a new downtown baseball stadium, and guys, you should at least look up how many players are on the field for a baseball game.
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Friday roundup: A’s charging $200 each for Sacramento tickets, DC hires NFL-linked firm to study building NFL stadium

access_time personNeil deMause

How much additional stadium news was there this week? So much so that I skipped posting anything yesterday, just so I could start on the bullet points for this roundup. That’s just how much I care about you, the readers of this site. (Also I couldn’t bear to write entire posts for any of these, they were all either too silly or too depressing or both.)

On with the news:

  • There were rumors that Oakland A’s management was going to force fans to also buy Sacramento River Cats season tickets if they wanted A’s season tickets in Sacramento next year, but it turns out that’s not true. What is true: A’s fans wanting season tickets will have to commit to buying them for the “duration” of the team’s stay in Sacramento, and tickets will run between $185 and $250 per seat per game. (UPDATE: The Sacramento Bee reports that that’s only for “premium” season tickets; it’s unclear if there will be non-premium season plans, or if so what they will cost.) At least A’s players won’t have to suddenly acclimate themselves to playing in front of crowds bigger than the intimate affairs they’ve grown used to since owner John Fisher alienated all his fans in the Bay Area.
  • Washington, D.C. is exploring building a new Commanders stadium by agreed to pay $565,000 for a feasibility study to ASM Global, which Fox5DC describes as “a company with extensive experience managing NFL stadiums,” but which is more accurately described as a subsidiary of Legends Entertainment, which is co-owned by the New York Yankees and Dallas Cowboys. Surely they will deliver an unbiased and comprehensively researched cost-benefit analysis of building an NFL stadium in D.C., why would you ever think otherwise?
  • Not only is the city of St. Petersburg forcing its top employees to pay back $250,000 in bonus checks it sent out for overtime work on the new Tampa Bay Rays stadium project, now city administrator Rob Gerdes has suspended city HR director Christopher Guella for a week as punishment, despite Mayor Ken Welch having defended the bonuses as “within budget and my administrative authority.” Gerdes says this is because the bonuses actually turned out to be illegal; Welch insists it’s just because he wanted to avoid a bad look, though if so he really should have checked first with Barbra Streisand about how well that works.
  • Illinois labor leaders are pushing for the state to fund sports stadiums for the Chicago Bears and White Sox and Red Stars, because “unions want to build,” according to AFL-CIO president Tim Drea. And they don’t like building the things that won’t get built if the state saves a few billion dollars by not building stadiums? Somebody get them on the phone with the Nevada teachers union, they have a lot to talk about.
  • Two Cleveland city councilmembers walked around the Browns stadium during an exhibition game and asked more than 3,000 fans if they’d rather the team stay at the lakefront or move to Brook Park, and most said they prefer the lakefront. Of course, since these were people at a game at the lakefront, you’d expect them to skew more toward wanting to see games there, since people who skip going to games because they’re at the lakefront wouldn’t be at a game at the lakefront. Anyway, what did the fans say about how much they want the city government to spend on a new or renovated Browns stadium? Oh, they didn’t ask about that? Opening day is two weeks from Sunday, plenty of time for the councilmembers to plan a new round of canvassing.
  • The Dome at America’s Center, former home of the St. Louis Rams, needs $150 million in upgrades, according to the stadium authority that runs it and surely would never lie about something just to get a nicer space to rent out at public expense. The dome is currently rented out for “assemblies for large conventions, Metallica and Beyoncé concerts, and even some lower-level professional football games,” which surely will make it easy to earn back $150 million, so long as Metallica never stops touring.
  • Saskatoon needs to come up with $400 million in public money toward a $1.22 billion development to include a new arena for the Saskatoon Blades, and it plans on raising the money via a long list of uhhhh, we’ll get back to you: maybe hotel taxes, maybe TIF property tax kickbacks, maybe money from the province, who knows? “What would the city look like without SaskTel Center or without TCU Place?” asked Saskatoon director of technical services Dan Willems. “Would we be able to attract newcomers and help major employers attract talent to our city without these types of amenities?” Shh, don’t tell him.
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Friday roundup: How fast is the A’s Vegas stadium going nowhere, and other questions

access_time personNeil deMause

Another week down! Have you been enjoying the Olympics so far? Did you even remember the Olympics were happening, other than to make sure you weren’t going anywhere near Paris during them? I, for one, cannot wait for the 2028 flag football competition.

Meanwhile, here’s what’s been happening:

  • Until now Oakland A’s owner John Fisher’s lack of any options for funding a Las Vegas stadium has just been widespread conjecture, but now a research note by JMP Securities analyst Mitch Germain confirms it: “The Oakland A’s new stadium currently remains in a holding pattern. The last piece of the puzzle was private financing obtained by the owner for the remaining cost of the stadium. Chatter suggests this may have hit a roadblock.” Oh wait, “chatter” could just mean Germain is reading the same conjecture? We can upgrade it to extremely widespread conjecture, at least.
  • Oakland has officially signed a deal to sell its half of the Oakland Coliseum site to the African American Sports & Entertainment Group for $105 million, paid out between now and June 2026. If AASEG fails to make the payments, then … that part didn’t make it into the San Francisco Chronicle story, it’s okay, they had bigger fish to fry.
  • The Massachusetts legislature adjourned this week without rezoning industrial land in Everett for a new New England Revolution stadium, and team owner Robert Kraft said he’s “deeply disappointed,” then threw some passive-aggressive shade by adding, “Massachusetts’ political landscape is one of the only places where creating opportunities in environmental justice communities and rehabilitation is dictated by the needs and bargaining of political leaders with outside influences.” Outside influences, eh? Were they … agitators?
  • Cleveland councilmembers want the Cleveland Browns to keep playing in Cleveland, not so sure about the whole “giving them hundreds of millions of dollars” thing, film at 11.
  • There are two competing proposals to put a sales tax increase back on the ballot to raise money for a Kansas City Chiefs stadiums, and the Jackson County legislature just voted down the one for a 0.125% hike over 25 years but is still working on the one for a 0.375% hike for 40 years.
  • Chicago Bears president/CEO Kevin Warren says he still prefers a new stadium on the Chicago lakefront that would come with billions of dollars in public money, but if that doesn’t work, Arlington Heights is nice, too.
  • Turns out someone did do a more robust analysis than the one by the Pennsylvania Independent Fiscal Office of the number of hotel room stays attributable to Philadelphia Phillies fans, and the finding was “not statistically significant.” I know Springer books are pricey, but the fiscal office really couldn’t afford $180?
  • The Atlanta Braves owners’ decision to build their stadium in the middle of the woods in the suburbs has prompted much debate, but until now it didn’t have its own Tracey Ullman parody song.
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Illinois governor says Bears stadium plan not “acceptable,” stop me if you’ve heard this

access_time personNeil deMause

A tale of two headlines:

Bears’ new stadium deal unlikely before year-end, says Gov. Pritzker

Gov. Pritzker says current Bears stadium proposal unacceptable ‘to anyone in the legislature’

Those are two very different messages! What did Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker actually say?

“Well, I’ve done a lot of research on this topic, but let me be clear, there isn’t much change,” Pritzker said Monday. “I mean, I made it clear to the Bears’ leadership that it would be near impossible to get anything done. If there was a proposal put on the table by them that could get done, you couldn’t actually get it done probably during the veto session and would have to wait until next spring. But in reality, there isn’t a proposal on the table right now that would be acceptable to anyone that I know in the legislature.”

In other words, Pritzker said that there’s no time to get a deal done before year’s end, but also that the Bears’ current plan, which involves potentially $2.65 billion in public subsidies, is DOA in the legislature — the latter of which seems more important, since that’s not likely to change in 2025 either.

Not that any of this is really news, since Pritzker previously called the Bears plan a “nonstarter” in May, then reiterated two weeks ago that his position hasn’t changed. But just as elected officials who are in favor of stadium subsidies get their every pronouncement dutifully transcribed in the local media, so too do those who are opposed to them, so don’t look gift stenography journalism in the mouth.

Speaking of Pritzker, he’s on the short list of potential vice-presidential candidates for Kamala Harris, though he might get eliminated for being too rich to quickly determine whether he owns anything embarrassing, which is just a thing that happens with our political candidates these days. If Pritzker did end up as Harris’s #2 and had to leave the governor’s mansion, that would potentially affect the Bears plans depending on who succeeded him, though leading legislators seem eager to stick a fork in them on their own. It’s now been nearly two years since Bears execs started playing footsie with Arlington Heights about a new stadium there, and playing off Chicago and its suburbs doesn’t seem to be shaking loose much public money as of yet — clearly team leadership needs to deploy more kayaks.

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