Category: Cincinnati Bengals

Friday roundup: Spurs, Bengals owners to seek even more public money, Olympics could cost LA $1.5B for security

access_time personNeil deMause

Congratulations, we once again made it to the end of another programming week, as well as the end (presumably) of the “Will Washington Commanders owner Josh Harris get to pocket billions of dollars of cash and tax and land subsidies?” saga. (Answer: He sure will.) Which cities’ sports funding debates could be the next to absorb the eyes of a nation, or at least the eyes on this website? Let’s run down some contenders from this week:

  • We’ve already covered the ongoing San Antonio Spurs arena debates here this week, but that earlier report on the city council’s Wednesday hearing missed the tidbit that right now the plan is for San Antonio to provide $500 million, Bexar County to provide $311 million (really only enough to pay for about half that in up-front costs, since the money would arrive over 30 years), and team owner Peter Holt to provide $500 million, which is less than the potential $1.5 billion arena cost. Spurs chief legal counsel Bobby Perez said (in the San Antonio Report’s paraphrasing) that’s “something the Spurs would have to figure out,” but that the team would pay for any overruns above the final public price tag, whatever it ends up being, which is maybe not as reassuring as he meant it to be. Perez also said that the team would not consider sharing any arena revenue to help pay the public’s share of costs because Holt will be using it to pay off his own share of costs, the public will just have to make it up in volume or something.
  • The Cincinnati Bengals owners finally signed their new lease with Hamilton County that will include at least $700 million in public subsidies, everybody relax. Though the Bengals and the county said they’re still planning on asking for even more money from the state, exact dollar figure TBD, so maybe don’t relax just yet.
  • Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Mike Sielski wrote that if Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeff Lurie wants a new stadium, he should pay for it himself, and got a flood of agreement back from readers, including that it’s a bad time to ask for public money “with hospitals closing, SEPTA broke, and schools struggling” and that “many people think that Camden Yards created the Inner Harbor, but the Inner Harbor was booming long before the Orioles left Memorial Stadium. And now the Inner Harbor has collapsed.” Good thing for Lurie that it’s almost certain none of these people will get to vote on any stadium plan, because that’s not how cities east of the Mississippi roll.
  • The owners of Boston Legacy F.C. (née BOS Nation F.C.) faced an August 1 deadline to figure out how they will pay for their share of stadium costs on top of the city’s $100-millionish, but they blew that deadline so now they get a new one of September 15. Meanwhile, mayoral candidate Josh Kraft is accusing Boston Mayor Michelle Wu of not being transparent about the total cost of the women’s soccer project, at the same time as Josh’s dad Robert is fighting with Wu about his plan to build a new men’s soccer stadium for his New England Revolution in neighboring Everett, which Wu has warned could subject Boston to increased traffic, this is the most convoluted HBO Max series plotline ever.
  • When the Los Angeles Olympic host committee promised that the 2028 Games would come at “zero cost” to the city, apparently it didn’t include security costs, which could amount to maybe $1.5 billion. There’s now growing talk of getting L.A. to pull out of the 2028 games altogether, especially now that Donald Trump has threatened to send in the military during the event; that doesn’t sound very likely, but the Unite Here hotel workers’ union has proposed a ballot measure that would require many Olympic venues to get voter approval to be used for the Games, which looks to be mostly a tactic to head off attempts to overturn the $30/hour “Olympic wage” passed by the city council in May — I take it back, maybe this is the most convoluted HBO Max plotline ever.
  • ESPN is about to own part of the NFL’s media package and the NFL is about to own part of ESPN, don’t see any potential problems there. I do greatly look forward to every football highlight on SportsCenter being accompanied by a disclaimer that “the National Football League is a part owner of ESPN,” surely a company with such a great ethical record as ESPN wouldn’t skip over that.
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Friday roundup: Commanders vote, Bengals lease, A’s stadium cost all up in the air at this time

access_time personNeil deMause

The D.C. council’s verdict on the $6.6-billion-plus Washington Commanders stadium subsidy still seems to be up in the air at this time: The council now plans to vote today, giving councilmembers a whole 24 hours to read the final stadium bill, which was just released yesterday, after the council had concluded hearings about it without most councilmembers themselves being present, as one does. Councilmember Robert White has already said he plans to vote against the bill and hopes he can get four others to go along with him and block the needed two-thirds majority; council chair Phil Mendelson seems confident that he has the votes to pass the thing, but we’ll all find out together in a few hours.

Meanwhile, let’s pass the time by taking a spin through the other stadium and arena news that unfolded, or didn’t, this week while we were all waiting for the denouement to Bowser‘s Folly:

  • The Cincinnati Bengals‘ new lease remains up in the air after Hamilton County commissioners yesterday approved it, but Bengals execs haven’t signed it yet because they’re still reading the final version. We’ll just have to wait and see whether team officials are willing to accept $700 million–plus in county stadium upgrade funding, or if they plan on asking for even more.
  • The Las Vegas A’s stadium cost is still up in the air, with estimates now around $2 billion, up from $1.75 billion, according to owner John Fisher. Does Fisher have the money to pay to do more than move some dirt around? Did he before? Only he and his accountants, and maybe Rob Manfred, know.
  • The legality of Missouri’s offer of state money for Kansas City Chiefs and Royals stadiums is up in the air, after two Republican Missouri state legislators and one citizen activist have sued to block it, arguing that it has too much stuff in it and is unconstitutionally targeted to benefit specific companies and is “a bribe” to keep the teams from moving to Kansas. Whether any of that is actually illegal, it’ll be up to the courts to decide.
  • Denver Broncos stadium plans are still up in the air, but Denver Mayor Mike Johnston said yesterday, “We’re working hard on a deal, and I think we’re close.” Where the stadium would go and who would pay how much for it remains up in the air.
  • The final city cost of repairing the Tampa Bay Rays‘ Tropicana Field is still up in the air, with current estimates standing at $59.7 million plus whatever it costs for new video production equipment, plus tariffs, plus any other sundries. Will the St. Petersburg city council keep approving additional costs? You already know the non-answer to that.
  • The economic impact of a new San Antonio Spurs arena development remains up in the air after consultants said it would be worth $18.7 billion over 30 years, then it turned out they were only clown consultants. Whatever fools the San Antonio Express-News is good enough for government work!
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Friday roundup: Bengals lease a mystery even to officials who voted for it, Congress and lobbyists pressure DC to okay Commanders’ $7B+ stadium deal

access_time personNeil deMause

How’s everyone doing out there? The news has been a lot lately, both the stadium shenanigans and the other non-stadium stuff, I get it, I’m as tempted as anyone to just shut off the outside world and watch Murderbot. Feel no obligation to read this week’s news roundup if you’re out of spoons, but do know that whenever you’re ready for it, it has some classic Rob Manfred garblequotes in it, those are kind of amusing at least:

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Taxpayers’ $350m in Bengals stadium costs could actually amount to $1B+, surprise, surprise

access_time personNeil deMause

WCPO-TV has conducted an analysis of what exactly is in the new lease that Hamilton County signed with the Cincinnati Bengals last month, and, well, if you were hoping it shows that the public cost will be less than the $350 million the two parties announced at the time, you must be new to this website, welcome! Let’s break down WCPO’s breakdown:

  • The county will contribute a maximum of $350 million toward a $470 million renovation project, with the Bengals owners covering the rest.
  • To raise the $350 million, the county plans to sell 15-year bonds, which will have to be paid off with interest. WCPO counts the interest payments as an additional $210 million expense, but that’s not really fair on two counts: 1) a bunch of that money won’t be owed for years, and money in the future is worth less than money now, and 2) really this is just the cost of how Hamilton County is choosing to finance its $350 million expense, not a change in the expense itself. So if we’re sticking to present value terms, interest payments shouldn’t count.
  • Hamilton County will also commit to several million dollars a year in “capital spending,” which is separate from renovation costs, over the next 21 years, starting at $3 million a year for the first three years, jumping to $6 million in year four, then rising with inflation after that. (The county says this is an improvement on the old lease, which had unlimited capital costs; presumably this means the Bengals will be limited to $6 million a year in holographic replay screens.) It’s a little tricky to figure out a present value figure for that, but let’s go with a little over $100 million as a reasonable lower bound.
  • Bengals ownership will pay back one-third of that in rent payments, reducing the county’s costs by a bit over $30 million.
  • The county will continue to pay for all stadium operating expenses other than game-day ones. The current county estimate for these costs is $16.9 million a year, which increasing with inflation would come to at least $300 million in present value over the course of the lease. However, WCPO doesn’t take into account that a newly upgraded stadium could come with additional operating costs for changing the bulbs on those holographic replay screens, so this number could conceivably go higher.

Add it all up, and the county’s $350 million stated cost looks more like … let’s call it “at least $700 million” to be on the conservative side. That’s less than the $1.1 billion WCPO came up with, though that blank check for operating expenses could yet end up pushing taxpayer costs into the ten-digit range. And that’s without even taking into account the additional state money the Bengals plan to seek from Ohio’s unclaimed property slush fund, which would almost certainly result in this costing state and county residents more than $1 billion combined.

The county commission is currently holding a public hearing to shed more light on the stadium funding numbers, so there may be more on this tomorrow. It looks certain that the total taxpayer cost will be “more than initially claimed,” though, which, again, we’ve seen that story before.

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Ohio really does plan to fund Browns and other stadiums by seizing billions in money it owes to private individuals

access_time personNeil deMause

Remember how the Ohio legislature proposed borrowing $600 million from the state’s unclaimed property fund to use on a new Cleveland Browns stadium and repaying it with money from an omni-TIF collecting all kinds of tax money from in and around the stadium, and then the bill passed and it was described as providing “$600 million for the proposed Cleveland Browns domed stadium in Brook Park using unclaimed funds,” and I said it wasn’t really because that was just where Ohio would be borrowing the money from temporarily? Well, about that:

The $600 million for a new Cleveland Browns stadium that the state is raiding from the state’s unclaimed property fund won’t be repaid to the fund, and the state will eventually seize any unclaimed funds held longer than 10 years….

Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer initially reported that under the plan, first proposed by Senate Republicans, such tax revenue would be used to return the $600 million to the state’s unclaimed funds account, which includes private property from things like inactive bank accounts, old safe deposit box holdings, and uncashed checks and insurance policies.

But, in fact, money seized for the new Sports and Cultural Facility Fund will never be returned to the pot of unclaimed funds.

And beginning in 2036, any unclaimed funds that have been held by the state for 10 years will automatically be diverted to the new development fund for construction work on other sports stadiums and cultural facilities around Ohio.

That’s, uh, real different, Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer! Under the final budget bill, the news sites report, stadium-related taxes will continue to flow into the state’s general fund as usual, meaning Ohio actually will be funding a new stadium for the Browns — and possibly new or upgraded buildings for the Cincinnati Bengals and Columbus Blue Jackets and who knows who else — by seizing money it’s been holding on behalf of people who left it in inactive bank accounts, old safe deposit box holdings, uncashed checks, or the like, and handing it over to sports team owners.

If you think that sounds of dubious legality, you’re not alone: Attorneys including former Ohio attorney general Marc Dann (never mind for the moment how he became former) have filed a class action suit on behalf of the owners of the unclaimed funds, saying “that’s private property that the state has decided to take for itself.” Previous to the new law, anyone with money in the accounts could claim it in perpetuity — instead, Ohio will now be able to seize anything left in the fund for ten years, and use it to pay off the sports stadiums.

States laying claim to unclaimed property after a set period of time is actually pretty common in other states, where it’s known as “escheatment,” (The word comes from an Old French term for inheritance, not from the word “cheat,” though I’m sure plenty of people will still make that connection.) Northern Kentucky University law professor Ken Katkin told WLWT that “there’s a lot of smoke here, but I think there’s no fire,” and said he expected the class action suit would face an uphill battle.

Even so, there’s another question here, which is what happens if enough people start filing claims for their unclaimed money that Ohio doesn’t have enough left to pay for its unending series of stadium projects? That’s pretty unlikely for just the Browns — the fund currently sits at a staggering $4.8 billion, and Browns owner Jimmy Haslam is only asking for $600 million of it — but if enough team owners eventually demand a cut, and publicity about the unclaimed property fund leads enough people to start reclaiming their money before the ten-year clock runs out, it could eventually be an issue.

For now, though, Ohio legislators look to have found a way to funnel billions of dollars of public money to private sports team owners without breaking the state budget, by taking the money from an escrow account where it was holding it on behalf of private individuals. Even if courts end up ruling that’s just legal escheatment, it’s money the state could have used for literally anything else — but sports team owners were shouting the loudest, so they’re the ones who end up getting the benefit of all those uncashed checks.

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Friday roundup: Commanders warn DC council “Don’t make Trump come in there,” plus Blue Jackets could join the line for Ohio subsidies

access_time personNeil deMause

Okay, that’s done, Friday roundup, let’s get to it:

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Friday roundup: Bengals land $350m in county stadium cash, will seek more from state

access_time personNeil deMause

The stadium deals are coming fast and furious now: Hamilton County and the Cincinnati Bengals owners have reached an agreement on a lease extension, four days before the team owners could have extended their current lease unilaterally. The new lease, approved yesterday by a 2-1 vote (Alicia Reese, dada poet, abstained) will run through the 2036 season (with five two-year options afterwards), and the team will receive $350 million in county money toward $470 million in stadium upgrades. The team will start paying rent for the first time (beginning at $1 million a year, gradually rising to $2 million), while continuing to receive 93% of parking revenues.

That’s a little over $30 million in public money per year of lease extension, which would be high but still short of the $43 million a year that the Carolina Panthers received last year. But the real question is: Did Hamilton County succeed in getting out from under that state-of-the-art clause that requires taxpayers to buy the team anything that other teams’ stadiums have, famously including holographic replay systems should they ever be invented? Neither the Bengals’ statement nor the county’s statement mentions this, and if it’s still in place, then you have to wonder why the county didn’t just let Bengals owners the Brown family renew the old lease and pass on giving them $350 million in cash.

And it could end up being more than $350 million: Hamilton County stated that “Commissioners plan to pursue state support as capital grants become available to grow the size of the renovation project” — which would be insane for the state to do in exchange for exactly nothing in return from the team owners, but the Ohio state legislature isn’t exactly known for its sanity lately.

More news as events warrant, then, but it certainly looks like a big win for the Browns, not to be confused with this week’s big win for the other Browns. And while we await more news, here’s more news:

  • The Kansas City Chiefs owners have officially requested an extension on Kansas’s offer of state money for a new stadium, either because they really want to move to Kansas or because they want to scare local Missouri lawmakers into sweetening the pot on the state money that was already approved there. The Kansas legislature will discuss the extension proposal on July 7; in the meantime, state senate president Ty Masterson declared: “The letter from [Chiefs president] Mark Donovan indicates that the drive to bring this historic project to Kansas is moving down the field. Now that we are in the red zone, this extension will provide stakeholders sufficient time to ensure the ball crosses the goal line” — at which point the English language itself died of metaphor overload.
  • The community revitalization levy (Canadian for TIF) that provided $300 million in tax money for a new Edmonton Oilers arena is set to expire soon, so of course the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce wants it extended for another 20 years, or else: “Extending the CRL is about making a generational investment in our city, and it directly responds to what we’re hearing from local businesses. A vibrant Downtown isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s a must-have,” said ECC CEO Doug Griffiths. Some of the money would go toward expanding the Oilers’ ICE District Fan Park, which is less a park than an event space that Oilers owner Daryl Katz can use to hold GWAR concerts; “We shouldn’t be doing secret deals behind closed doors for one or two businesses. That’s just wrong,” objected city councillor (Canadian for councilmember) Michael Janz in advance of public hearings yesterday and today.
  • The Tampa Bay Rays need to figure out where to play their home playoff games if they make the postseason, and if you want to read Ken Rosenthal expounding semi-coherently on it — sample text: “Come October, a team known for disrupting the sport might provide its wildest wrinkle yet: a public-address announcer bellowing, ‘Welcome to the 2025 postseason at Steinbrenner Field!'”— here’s the Athletic paywall, go to town. (Or, psst, you can always try archive.ph.)
  • The Marietta Daily Journal reports that the Atlanta Braves‘ stadium is producing more tax revenues than it’s costing Cobb County in tax expenditures; no, it’s not, points out Kennesaw State economist J.C. Bradbury, who notes that this fails to account for the 60% of county costs that are covered by sources other than property taxes, which puts the county comfortably back in a sea of red ink.
  • The Washington, D.C. city council has scheduled public hearings on a proposed Commanders stadium for July 29 and 30, which makes it clear that the council won’t be voting to approve the potential $7-billion-and-up subsidy deal on July 15 as team officials and Mayor Muriel Bowser had hoped. Any delay past July 15 would “jeopardize D.C.’s ability to attract premier concerts, global talent and marquee events — including the 2031 FIFA Women’s World Cup” and “slow new jobs at a time when the District needs them the most,” a Commanders spokesperson harrumphed. Council president Phil Mendelson says he still expects a stadium deal to be approved this summer; the big question is whether the council will do anything to trim the proposed record-breaking public costs or will just greenlight basically what Bowser approved. If nothing else, the hearings should be a good opportunity to fill out some of our bingo cards.
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Friday roundup: K.C. area officials debate throwing more tax money at Chiefs and Royals, as does San Antonio for Spurs, etc. etc.

access_time personNeil deMause

Six posts already in the first four days of the week, and still there’s more news that didn’t make the cut? Legislative season is brutal, man — I can’t wait for it to be over so we can get back to things like wondering if St. Petersburg is going to finish fixing the Tampa Bay Rays stadium roof by next season. (Probably maybe, apparently! There’s one item off the list already!)

And on with the show:

  • Kansas City, Missouri Mayor Quinton Lucas says he thinks he could fund the rest of a Royals stadium without having to go to voters to approve a new sales tax hike, by using “a different set of tools and entities, so much like you’ve seen the discussion in Kansas” — so that would involve kicking back existing sales taxes, presumably, instead of extending a sales tax surcharge? Meanwhile, Clay County Presiding Commissioner Jerry Nolte says if the Royals choose to build a stadium there, the county might hold a vote on a sales tax hike. None of this is going to get resolved by the end of the month, the time by which Kansas’s offer of state sales tax money for Royals and Chiefs stadiums expire; the Kansas legislature could vote to extend that deadline, but it looks like Kansas officials may be tired of being the teams’ spare-tyre lover: Kansas House Speaker Dan Hawkins says he doesn’t want to do that: “We gave them a year to get it done, and in a year, you know, they kind of keep messing around, going back and forth, and you extend it, and that’s what they’ll do. You know, the pressure is off. Then it could take another year and come back again.”
  • Bexar County voters could be asked to cast ballots in November on a 0.25% hotel and car-rental tax hike to raise about $175 million for a new San Antonio Spurs arena. This would only be one of many public revenue streams used to pay for it, presumably — the arena is expected to cost between $1.3 billion and $1.5 billion and Spurs owner Peter Holt won’t commit to how much he would chip in, just keep those subsidies coming until Holt says “stop,” thanks.
  • A 16-page slide deck from April on proposals for a new Cincinnati Bengals stadium lease has been revealed through a public records request, and some of the items include: $308 million in county spending on stadium upgrades from an existing escrow account, in exchange for the Bengals owners extending their lease through 2031; maybe a lease extension through 2036 if the county kicks in another $300 million by 2028; the Bengals paying $1 million a year rent either for the next five years (what the team wants) or for the rest of the lease (the county’s proposal); and a Bengals request to get half the tax revenue the city of Cincinnati gets from “stadium operations” to help cover stadium maintenance. And what about the question of extending that state-of-the-art clause requiring the county to build holographic replay systems if they’re ever invented, anything? No mention of that, really? Not that it matters, as this slide deck is two months old and there’s still a ton of haggling to go, but would have been nice to at least include one slide on it, just saying.
  • The Ohio Capital Journal describes the current debate over a Cleveland Browns stadium as state legislators and Gov. Mike DeWine “disagree[ing] on how to pay for it. Gov. Mike DeWine proposed increasing the taxes on gambling and Ohio House lawmakers favored issuing state bonds,” and no, Ohio Capital Journal, “issuing bonds” is not a way to pay for something, any more than taking out a mortgage is a way to pay for a house, it’s just a way to finance something but you still have to pay for it later, go back five spaces and lose a turn to think about what you have written.
  • The Connecticut state legislative session may have ended without passage of $127 million for a minor-league soccer stadium (plus other stuff) in Bridgeport, but the legislature did pass approval for Bridgeport to set up a TIF district to redirect its own tax revenues to pay for up to $190 million in development costs. This’ll surely go just great, remember how well the Bluefish worked out? Connecticut United is set to begin play in MLS Next Pro next season, probably not Bridgeport but somewhere.
  • This week was so hectic that I never got around t0 reporting on Marc Normandin’s excellent Baseball Prospectus essay from Monday about how Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf’s agreement to sell the team somewhere between 2029 and the time the sun burns out is timed to increase the savvy negotiator‘s leverage, since 2029 is when the team’s current lease expires, plus prospective buyer Justin Ishbia is a minority owner of the Nashville S.C. MLS team, and hint, hint, Nashville. The 89-year-old Reinsdorf seems determined to go to the grave leaving some juicy leverage for his son, or at least to cement his legacy as the most hardball extortionist of all time, guess you have to make your own fun when you realize you can’t take it with you.
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Bengals execs say never mind state money, just stuff whatever cash the county can find into this bag, please

access_time personNeil deMause

The Cincinnati Bengals lease and stadium negotiations are getting even weirder. When last we left off, you will recall, Hamilton County commissioners were proposing a $1.2 billion stadium renovati0n, with no clear idea where the money would come from, in exchange for team owners the Brown family not renewing their super-sweetheart lease this June and instead signing a new one that would presumably be less-sweetheart. The Bengals owners, meanwhile, were demanding $350 million in state money as part of the deal, something that seems to be dead along with Gov. Mike DeWine’s plan for a $2 billion statewide stadium slush fund.

That all was weird enough, but then this month Hamilton County abruptly fired the lawyer that was representing it in Bengals lease talks, after the new county prosecutor complained he wasn’t returning her phone calls. And then this week Bengals execs announced they would pursue a new lease deal with the county without waiting to see if Ohio would chip in any money:

Duane Haring, the Bengals’ director of stadium and event operations, stated that while the team would welcome state aid, they are prepared to move forward with Hamilton County independently.

In a statement to Local 12, Haring said the following:

“The Team appreciates the State’s openness to supporting local stadium projects, as it has historically. We continue working hard in Columbus on funding options. An agreement between the Bengals and Hamilton County can be achieved now without waiting on what the State ultimately decides.”

That would seem to put a fork in any chance of state funding, as the Ohio legislature would have to be insane to pay anything toward a Bengals stadium when the team owners had already agreed to a new lease with the county. (Though legislatures have done more insane things, come to think of it, so maybe we shouldn’t rule it out entirely.)

This is all an insanely complicated game of chicken, as the county is desperately trying to head off the Bengals owners employing a five-year option for re-upping their lease — which, lest one forget, requires the county to pay for all features that other NFL stadiums have up to and including “holographic replay systems” when and if they’re invented — while team execs are trying to figure out how to leverage that into a stadium upgrade payday before June 30, when they have to decide whether to invoke the lease renewal. With the Ohio legislature bogged down in fights over how to fund a Cleveland Browns stadium, Bengals officials appear to be ready to punt on getting state money, at least for now, to focus on whatever they can extract from the county.

The county, meanwhile, can make a case that it’s worth putting some public money into stadium renovations now in order to get out of the commitment to keep paying for future renovations — depending, obviously, on how much public money now and how much they can get out of in a revised lease. The now-fired county lawyer says he had “had 90 percent of [a lease deal] done” before getting fired, but no details have been revealed, and who knows what the new lawyers will use as their starting point.

I’m often asked by journalists, “Have you ever seen anything like this stadium fight?” and my standard response is that while every unhappy stadium deal is unhappy in its own way, there’s also nothing entirely new under the sun. This Bengals saga, though, is testing that credo — depending how it plays out, it could be a unique occurrence, though whether uniquely bad or uniquely not so bad is yet to be determined.

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Friday roundup: Bengals reno plan called “PR stunt,” plus the return of the Rays two-stadium plan

access_time personNeil deMause

Thanks to everyone who generously donated (and in some cases more than generously, you know who you are) to the Field of Schemes spring supporter drive — I have a whole lot of fridge magnets to send out! But first, there’s a weekly news roundup to get to:

  • That Hamilton County agreement to spend $80.5 million on Cincinnati Bengals stadium upgrades and repairs in exchange for no lease agreement at all turns out to be not so popular with the Hamilton County Commission, where commissioner Alicia “hugging the zero down” Reece called it “a PR stunt” because there’s no new lease while commission president Denise Driehaus countered (?) that “No one at that meeting ever said this was related to the final lease.” The county commission only has three members and the third, Stephanie Summerow Dumas, didn’t show up to yesterday’s meeting, so it’s hard to say what this means for the stadium proposal’s ultimate fate.
  • Hey, what if the Tampa Bay Rays built two stadiums, asks Tampa Bay Times opinion editor Graham Brink, one outdoors and one a refurbished Tropicana Field? Would that be cheaper or better? Probably not? Too bad, I already wrote the op-ed, and anyway this is just “back of the napkin” stuff. (Or envelope, which actually has two distinct sides. NAPKINS GOT BACKS!)
  • WAMU-FM reports that “a source familiar with [Washington Commanders stadium] talks” says funding “will likely involve the city borrowing against new tax revenues expected to be generated by any new development,” i.e., tax increment financing. The station cites a 2020 study claiming that D.C. has turned a profit on average on TIF districts — on first look it appears that the study’s authors guesstimated that development would still happen in the districts without the TIF but would take longer, which is probably a reasonable assumption but could create huge swings in the revenue numbers depending on what you mean by “longer.” I have emails out to a couple of TIF experts, I’ll update here if they have anything instructive to add.*
  • Former Cleveland Plain Dealer editorial director Brent Larkin says the Cleveland Browns stadium plans should be submitted to a public referendum, arguing that Ohio voters usually approve sports subsidy referendums anyway, so where’s the harm? Oh, and also it would be “a wildly generous gift to billionaire professional sports team owners at the same time those same elected officials are cutting aid to schools, food banks, libraries and programs for poor kids.” But anyway, it’ll probably win, so let the voters feel like they’re having a say, that’s democracy!
  • St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch has issued a proposal for redeveloping the waterfront that would include demolishing Al Lang Stadium, the old spring training ballpark that is currently home to the Tampa Bay Rowdies USL team. City councilmembers don’t sound too enthused about this, but also Welch’s managing director of city development said the Rowdies owners are “involved and they’re aware” of the plan, so maybe there’s a new soccer stadium proposal in the works? Worth keeping an eye on, if nothing else.
  • A group of downtown Kansas City businesses put up a giant sign with a giant QR code asking that a Royals stadium be built downtown. Chair of the Downtown Council of Kansas City: Gibb Kerr, managing director of the K.C. office of Cushman and Wakefield, a major developer, who surely would not be in position to profit from a downtown stadium, the Kansas City Star would certainly tell us if it were.
  • Work has begun at the proposed Las Vegas A’s stadium site on making it even flatter, this is what passes for progress these days.
  • Los Angeles Dodgers ticket prices are going up, and so is their payroll, and Forbes “contributor” Dan Schlossberg (author of “41 books and more than 25,000 articles about baseball”) concludes that the payroll must be driving up the ticket prices — sorry, Dan, that’s not how it works, there’s a book you might want to read if you have time between writing them.
  • Economist Joe Cortright has done his own analysis of the Portland baseball stadium income tax diversion proposal that I estimated could leave Oregon taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in the hole and determined that the total hole would be more than $600 million.
  • I was on WOSU’s “All Sides with Amy Juravich” on Wednesday to discuss the Browns and Bengals situations, and you can listen to it here. For those who are wondering: Yes, Andy Zimbalist and I did run into each other on the Zoom call as my segment ended and his began, and no, there were no punches thrown.
  • You can buy a piece of the shredded Tropicana Field roof at Tampa Bay Rays games for $15, with the money going to a Rays charity, and doesn’t the city own the roof remnants, shouldn’t the money be going to the general fund? Anyway, if anyone in the Tampa area has been looking for a National Hairball Awareness Day present for me, hint, hint!

*UPDATE: Eight minutes after I hit publish on this post, sports economist and tax expert Geoffrey Propheter replied to my question about the D.C. TIF study. Propheter said it “falls short of academic standards for economic policy analysis” because it doesn’t try to analyze how tax revenue from TIF developments compares to comparable plots of land, but rather just compares actual developments to hypothetical ones that would (according to the study’s assumptions) see different kinds of development take place. He concludes: “I don’t understand how anyone would use this study to justify a TIF for a Commanders stadium.”

And while I was writing the above, Greg LeRoy of Good Jobs First (disclosure: I’m doing some paid work for them, not on the subject of stadiums or TIFs) chimed in to note that D.C. TIF districts like the one for Gallery Place have had to be expanded to siphon off sales taxes from other nearby neighborhoods in order to break even.

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