Category: Cincinnati Bengals

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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Hamilton County reveals deal to pay $64.5m for initial Bengals renovation, with way more to come

access_time personNeil deMause

The Cincinnati Bengals stadium negotiations have been a weird one: Lurking beneath the talks is the fact that 1) the Bengals’ lease is historically awful for Hamilton County, which is on the hook for any upgrades needed to keep the stadium “state of the art” and 2) the lease expires next year, but the team owners have the option to extend it for five more two-year terms if they want. So a lot of the haggling has been about how much in stadium renovations the county is willing to pay the Brown family for to make the old lease go away.

So this development yesterday is just plain weird:

Chris Wetterich of the Cincinnati Business Courier (via Sports Business Daily) reports that the Bengals and the league will foot the bill for $120 million of improvements, with Hamilton County picking up $64.5 million. The $184.5 million project is described as the “first phase” of a potential $830 million overhaul of the venue…

The short-term deal to improve the stadium is separate from whether the Bengals will exercise their right to extend the current lease, or whether the two sides will strike a long-term agreement.

On the one hand, given the terrible lease, the Brown family kicking in almost two-thirds the cost of upgrades isn’t so bad a deal — though 100% of the benefits from the “renovated suites and lounges, better concession areas, and improvements to the stadium plazas” will go to the team, and about half the team’s cost will be covered by the NFL’s stadium fund. On the other hand, with the lease about to expire anyway, Hamilton County really has no reason to honor the lease terms at this point, since the Bengals owners declaring them in breach of contract and canceling the lease would if anything be doing the county a favor. So what we have is the county handing over $64.5 million for upgrades so the Bengals can boost their profits — plus another $16 million in “maintenance, operations, and capital repair obligations” — in exchange for absolutely nothing, as the Brown family hasn’t agreed to either a new lease or tearing up the old one.

On top of this, there’s that eventual $830 million overhaul, which will paid for by reply hazy, try again later:

As of the execution of this MOU, the County and Team anticipate that the primary funding and financing sources for the Stadium Renovation and Modernization Program will be comprised of fair and equitable contributions from: (i) County; (ii )Team/NFL; and (iii) State of Ohio, in the general context of reasonably comparable funding structures in other NFL peer markets and shall also take into consideration the funding commitments made by the Team and County throughout the term of this Agreement.

The agreement, which will be voted on by the Hamilton County Commission next week, is just a memorandum of understanding laying out the general outlines of a stadium plan. So it’s not entirely clear what the county would actually be agreeing to here, and how much of this is just the Bengals owners and the NFL putting their best foot forward in hopes of winning a lucrative deal for a more substantial renovation from the county. (And from the state of Ohio — the MOU emphasizes that “the Team and the County agree to work together to seek additional funding and financing sources from third parties for the Stadium Renovation and Modernization Program.”) Either way, for the county to agree to anything without the Brown family agreeing to either cancel the old lease or agree to a new one (“Nothing in this MOU is intended to, nor shall be deemed orconstrued to, alter the terms of the Lease or Earlier MOUs”) is a bizarre negotiating tactic by the county — maybe there’s another shoe yet to drop, but right now this looks like county commissioners handing over $80.5 million in exchange for no concessions from the team owners, which is … I’m going to go with “not great.”

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Ohio legislators considering passing both Browns stadium subsidy plans at once, maybe

access_time personNeil deMause

When last we left off with the great Cleveland Browns stadium shakedown, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine had had his plan to spend $600 million in new sports gambling taxes on a stadium shot down by the state legislature, which instead wanted to spend $600 million in existing sales, income, and other taxes on a stadium, but DeWine was still considering whether to veto that. Can’t we all just get along?

At last, a compromise solution of sorts seems to be in the works, courtesy of several Republican state senators, who say they’re preparing a kind of hybrid of the two plans: State Sen. Lou Blessing has introduced a bill to create a permanent fund for stadium projects and youth sports using increased gambling taxes, but maybe with the omni-TIF stadium district still in place, too? It’s all very muddled, even before you get to this:

While [state Sen. Lou] Blessing said he wasn’t sure whether either of his budget amendments would be accepted, he said he believes that his fellow senators are “amenable” to the governor’s assertion that they need to find a long-term solution to funding stadium projects in Ohio.

Otherwise, he said, if the Browns and/or Bengals get state assistance, it will open the floodgates for other pro sports teams in the state to come asking for help with their own stadium projects.

Right, can’t have every team owner in the state demanding their own public stadium funding, better head that off by, uh, creating permanent stadium funding that any team owner can tap into, wait, not sure we thought this through all the way…

From the sound of things, state senators are still trying to figure out exactly what they’ll support, which undoubtedly will rely on what the governor will support, which in turn will likely rely on what the governor can get the legislature to approve. It’s all a big tangled mess of political gamesmanship, but when all the elected officials in the state want to give money to the local sports billionaire but just can’t agree on which pot of money to use, there’s generally a compromise close at hand. Still not sure what would then happen with the $600 million that Cuyahoga County and the city of Brook Park would be expected to come up with, given that one seems uninterested in helping the team move out of Cleveland proper and the other has a tax base the size of a thimble, but plenty of time to cross those bridges once they come to them.

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Friday roundup: Oregon okays $800m in MLB stadium spending because “transformative”

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s been a minute since I’ve issued an appeal for new supporters for this site, so: If you aren’t already a supporter of this site, please consider becoming one! There are both monthly and one-time options, and in addition to subscriber benefits like receiving all the stadium and arena news in your email inbox and getting whatever tchotchkes I come up with next, you ensure the piece of mind that comes from knowing you’re helping to keep this site going into its 28th year, which just began this month! Shedding light on the sports subsidy game in any way that affects actual policy turns out to be harder than even a professional cynic like myself thought — for all the reasons this site covers every day — but if we can all just keep it up for another 28 years, I think we might finally start getting somewhere.

As always, thanks to everyone who is contributing now or has contributed in the past — it not only lets me pay the ever-increasing costs of hosting this site and enables me to spend time writing it without going broke, it’s heartening to know that people think this issue is important enough to devote your hard-earned dollars to. Or maybe you just like pointing and laughing at billionaire failsons, that works, too. I hope to be able to keep this site going until it’s no longer necessary, at which point you’re all invited to the victory party, if any of us are still mobile enough by then to dance.

And with that cheery thought, here’s your weekly dose of ways everything still mostly sucks now:

  • The Oregon state senate voted 24-5 to approve $800 million in public bonds toward building a Major League Baseball stadium, just as soon as Portland gets a Major League Baseball team. Senators say the project will pay for itself by using money from player income taxes (it won’t) and that it will be a “forward-thinking, transformative opportunity” and “a showcase of what is beautiful, central, core to our constituents of Portland,” which is giving money to ex-Nike execs so they can have their own private sports team, I guess? Please enjoy your requisite J.C. Bradbury Simpsons meme, it’s well earned.
  • What do Washington, D.C. councilmembers think of the news that their mayor is on the brink of agreeing to spend $850 million toward a Commanders stadium at a time when the district budget is just red ink up to its eyeballs? “Is this really going to cost us close to a billion dollars?” asked council chair Phil Mendelson, while economic development committee chair Kenyon McDuffie called it a “once in a lifetime opportunity” before being asked how the city could afford it and replying, “I haven’t seen the details.” It’s okay, all the other kids are doing it!
  • Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman says he does not support the Cincinnati Bengals owners’ request for $350 million in state money toward stadium renovations, and wants to hold out for a deal where taxpayers “can actually make money” like … the Cleveland Browns deal? I’m getting kind of tired of linking to my explanation of the Casino Night Fallacy, but seeing as this seems to be some sort of mass delusion that state legislators are signing up for, maybe it can’t be explained enough.
  • The Kansas City Chiefs and Royals owners are still kicking tires on potential stadium sites, yep, that’s excuse enough for a news story, nothing else journalists should be spending their time covering, probably. Local business leaders say it’s important, anyway, and if we didn’t have a free and independent press taking its editorial directives from the local chamber of commerce, where would this country be?
  • Modesto, California is trying to build a stadium to get a soccer franchise. Of all the 2025 things that you never expected we would be living through, that’s one of the 2025iest.
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Friday roundup: Bengals want $350m in stadium money from Ohio, A’s still insist Vegas stadium is happening for real

access_time personNeil deMause

The spring legislative season is always exhausting, but at least we’re already up to … April 11, is that all that it is? At least we can hope that all the team owners lining up for stadium and arena money have already gotten their bills submitted, though plenty of subsidy demands have emerged this late or later: Today is in fact the second anniversary of the Maryland legislature approving $1.2 billion in public money for renovations for the Baltimore Orioles and Ravens (a number that would eventually grow to an unlimited number depending on how much in taxes comes in) essentially without warning, so it wouldn’t be that much of a shock to see a surprise demand emerge from out of nowhere.

And speak of the devil:

  • Hamilton County and Cincinnati Bengals owners the Brown family have declared that if the state of Ohio is set on giving $600 million in tax money to the Cleveland Browns for a new stadium, it should also give $350 million to the Bengals for renovations. The entire renovation plan would cost $830 million and would include a new scoreboard, suite upgrades, new roof canopy, new seating, and improved walkways, escalators, and elevators — which sounds like a lot for that work, honestly, unless the suite bathrooms would be getting diamond-encrusted faucets — and would presumably include county money as well, though officials didn’t specify how much. “Our lease ends before theirs,” griped Hamilton County commissioner Stephanie Summerow Dumas. “Just wondering why is there so much focus on the Browns.” (Hmm, can’t possibly imagine why.) No word on whether the Bengals owners would tear up that insane state-of-the-art clause in their lease as part of the deal, you would think that would be important to ask, I’m looking at you, Cincinnati Enquirer.
  • Newly appointed West Sacramento Athletics president Marc Badain has declared that the team is still on track for a June groundbreaking for its Las Vegas stadium, blaming “skeptics” and “negativity” for the idea that John Fisher may not be able to find $1.15 billion in construction costs on top of the $600 million he’s set to get from the state of Nevada. “There’s a lot of people that make a living out of questioning the success of sports venues and what they actually do for a community,” said Badain, and while on the one hand I feel seen, I do question his description of this as “making a living,” as well as questioning whether a groundbreaking actually means you’re going to build a stadium given that just about anyone with a few shovels can hold one — whoops, there I go with the skepticism again, Badain sure has me pegged!
  • The Denver city council has some skeptics about spending $70 million for land and infrastructure for a NWSL stadium, with councilmember Sarah Parady saying, “We are facing the collapse of global financial markets. … I think we’re gonna be sitting here in a year [and] we will have paid in our amount of money from our incredibly scarce dollars that we are going to need for so many fundamental needs in the city.” Also concerning is the estimated additional $80 million in property taxes the city would be giving up by agreeing to buy and own the land under the stadium, according to  University of Colorado-Denver economist Geoffrey Propheter, who is not only a local but also the expert in calculating such things.
  • Just a few months after $900 million in tax money was approved for upgrades to the Utah Jazz and Utah Hockey Club‘s Delta Center and the Salt Palace convention center, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox’s office abruptly expanded the project’s TIF district last Friday to also redirect taxes from two luxury hotels, an apartment tower, and parking facilities on an adjacent block, providing an additional $59 million in tax money kicked back to the developer, according to Propheter. (That developer would be Jazz and Hockey Club owner Ryan Smith — quelle coincidence!) Then on Tuesday the Salt Lake City council unanimously approved creating the embiggened tax district, with councilmember Victoria Petro bemoaning that “we had no options” but adding that “there is no decimal point here that has been taken with anything less than the gravest consideration,” assuming the gravest consideration can be applied in just two work days.
  • “Salt Lake Bees’ new stadium in Daybreak expected to bring economic impacts, growth to local businesses” was the headline on Utah’s ABC4 website on Tuesday, and if you’re wondering “expected by whom?” and your guess was the owner of a single local coffee shop, you’re a winner!
  • Bridgeport, Connecticut now has an idea for how to pay for a $75 million minor-league soccer stadium, and it’s a TIF district, surprise, surprise. Also the full cost would now be $100 million, and would involve additional state money as well, but who can put a price on being one of the umpteen million cities to have a team in one of the nation’s two warring sets of soccer leagues?
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WTH is up with that “Bengals should move to Chicago” story?

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s always fun when you get to see how stupidity breaks out in real time, and so it was with the story growing over the last few days that the Cincinnati Bengals ownership could respond to the looming expiration of their lease by moving, and in particular by moving to Chicago. This, it turned out, was less a rumor — a rumor needs to be spread by multiple people — than conjecture, or maybe just a looming deadline and the desperation of one man, NBC Sports’ Mike Florio:

With the [Chicago] Bears getting nowhere when it comes to finagling taxpayer funding for a new stadium, the solution could come from having a second team play there.

Instantly, the inventory of games would double, from 10 to 20. It would become much easier for the Bears (and possibly the other team, unless it’s just a tenant) to pay for the building with minimal public assistance.

Enter the Bengals. They’re less than three months away from the final countdown to the expiration of their lease at Paycor Stadium. During the league meetings this week, executive V.P. Katie Blackburn said the quiet thing out loud — after 2025, the Bengals can go wherever they want to go.

It’s easy to come up with a list of cities that currently have no NFL teams. But the best outcome for the Bengals, and the Bears, could be to partner up in a new Chicagoland stadium. Lakefront or Arlington Heights. Wherever. The revenue from 20 NFL games each year, along with everything else that could be hosted in a fixed-roof building, should be able to pay for the building.

It’s hard to know where to even begin. Yes, splitting the costs of a $2 billion or so stadium between two teams would make it somewhat more affordable — but there’s little sign that the revenue from 20 NFL games a year plus “everything else” that could be hosted there would pay for a new building. After all, the Bears and Bengals each play 20 combined home games a year (including preseason) right now, so those revenues would have to rise by about $7 million per game — that’s $100 more per ticket sold, in a future Chicago where the two teams were fighting for the same fan dollars — just to break even.

Still, it was off to the news cycle races, as the Cincinnati Enquirer and multiple other outlets repeated Florio’s suggestion without asking anyone if it made any sense; something called Motorcycle Sports even chimed in, calling it a “bold idea.” USA Today’s Bengals Wire at least called it the “worst possible take,” though in doing so the site still managed to amplify Florio’s fantasy by sending clicks its way. (I realize I’m doing the same here; fact-checking bad reporting is always tricky to do without giving more air to the original misinformation, what whatcha gonna do.)

None of which matters for the idea of the Bengals moving to Chicago, because there is zero sign that either the Bengals or Bears owners would ever consider it. But it does help cement the idea in people’s heads that the Bengals might move somewhere, which is exactly what Bengals VP Katie Blackburn was hoping to do last week by saying, “We could, I guess, go wherever we wanted after this year if we didn’t pick the option up. So, you know, we’ll see.” (A statement, incidentally, that was called “a powerful, loaded comment“ by one Mike Florio.) That option is to extend the Bengals’ legendarily lucrative lease for five years, something the Bengals owners are mulling doing unless Hamilton County coughs up a sweet enough renovation deal to entice them to sign a new lease with fewer holographic replay system guarantees. Threatening to move the team at the same time as you’re threatening to stay and extend your sweetheart lease is … I think “bold idea” sums it up pretty well, don’t you?

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Friday roundup: Bucs want “major renovation,” won’t say yet who’d pay for it

access_time personNeil deMause

Today’s main event will be the liveblog of day two of the sports economics conference at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, which tons of presentations on stadiums and stadium-adjacent topics, but first here’s the regular Friday weekly news r0undup, written entirely on Thursday! If anyone’s roof blew off this morning, it’ll just have to wait till Monday.

  • Tampa Bay Buccaneers owner Joel Glazer wants a “major renovation” of his stadium once the Bucs’ lease expires in 2028, funded by, uh: “We’re going through a phase right now where we’re assessing the stadium and what might be needed. And I know [Hillsborough County and the Tampa Sports Authority are] assessing the stadium and what might be needed, and once both of us are done with our assessments, then we come together and go talk about it, work through things.” Asked last summer about Bucs stadium funding, Tampa city spokesperson Adam Smith said team execs “haven’t approached the city about anything like that” and “we don’t expect them to”; either that was code for “paying for this is the county’s problem” or Smith really believes in the power of positive thinking.
  • Unlike the [Sacramento] Athletics, the Tampa Bay Rays have managed to sell out their 10,000-seat minor-league stadium in their opening series, even at prices running more than $100 for every seat that comes with an actual seat. Tampa Bay Times columnist John Romano blames this on the Rays needing to make up for “a potential loss of revenue from ticket sales, concessions, luxury boxes and the associated costs of relocating for a year,” not the desire to capitalize on artificial ticket scarcity. It’ll be interesting to see if those high prices hold up once the Florida summer heat hits — for what it’s worth, there are still plenty of seats available for next week’s series against the Angels.
  • Speaking of the Rays, the clock officially ran out on their St. Petersburg stadium deal on Tuesday, and now owner Stu Sternberg is free to shop around for another city that wants to give him a billion dollars. Anyone? You in the back? You were just stretching your arms? I see.
  • Cincinnati Bengals VP Katie Blackburn was asked what’s up with the team’s lease that’s set to expire in 2026, and replied, “We could, I guess, go wherever we wanted after this year if we didn’t pick the up option up. So, you know, we’ll see.” NFL move-threat stan Mike Florio of NBC Sports called this “a powerful, loaded comment“; one might also argue that it’s exactly the kind of vague non-threat threat that you issue when you don’t actually want anyone noting that no cities have newer stadiums ready to offer. Potato, potahto!
  • The Jacksonville Jaguars need a place to play for two years while the city of Jacksonville is paying for stadium upgrades, so they’re asking Orlando to play them to play there, cool, cool.
  • A Massachusetts judge ruled that the demolition and reconstruction of White Stadium for the Boston Legacy F.C. can move forward, though opponents say they’ll continue to fight against it. (Boston Legacy, btw, is the new name for the much-derided BOS Nation F.C. women’s soccer team, presumably meant to honor the easiest way to get into Northeastern.)
  • Chicago Bears president Kevin Warren says the team is now focused on building a stadium in Arlington Heights, except for the portion of its focus that is on the Chicago lakefront. More news as actual news comes in, not just attempts at leverage plays.
  • Los Angeles elected officials are finally starting to get steamed about how the 2028 Olympics are being planned in a city that is recovering from disastrous fires, though so far it seems to be mostly about where the sailing competition will be held. If history is any guide, the real outrage won’t come until the Games actually begin.
  • Wondering how the affordable housing promises attached to the Brooklyn Nets arena are going? Does “Empire State Development (ESD), the gubernatorially controlled authority that oversees/shepherds the project, says it might enforce the $2,000 a month penalties for each unbuilt apartment, though that process may be fraught” answer that question? If you’re wondering why ESD only “might” enforce the penalty clause that was designed to make sure developers actually build what they promised, ESD VP Arden Sokolow says that if the state fined them, “you wouldn’t be getting any housing there,” whereas this way … oh, would you look at the time, we’ll have to cut off questions there!
  • Former Anaheim mayor and illegal helicopter registrant Harry Sidhu was sentenced to jail time for deleting emails to hide them from an FBI investigation into soliciting bribes related to a proposed Los Angeles Angels stadium deal — if you had “two months in federal prison plus a $55,000 fine” in the betting pool, you’re a winner!
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Ohio legislature proposes omni-TIF to funnel tax money to Browns and other stadiums

access_time personNeil deMause

Ohio’s Statehouse News Bureau has obtained the draft legislation that would provide $600 million worth of state tax dollars to Cleveland Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam for construction of a new stadium, as well as potentially more money to other teams such as the Cincinnati Bengals, and an initial read reveals some interesting details:

  • The proposed state budget amendment would allow the state legislature to redirect all state taxes “attributable to the professional sports franchise,” after first subtracting out how much in state taxes were paid by the sports facility district in the year prior to the first year of a team’s lease. This would include taxes levied under chapters 5739, 5741, 5747, and 5751 of the state code, which are sales tax, use tax, storage tax, income tax, and commercial activity tax.
  • The district is defined as “the geographic area encompassing the land upon which the 19 transformational major sports facility mixed-use project is located,” with no apparent limit on the size of the area within which taxes will be kicked back.
  • The money would be available to any “transformational major sports facility mixed-use project,” which would be defined as any project that 1) includes a “major sports facility,” 2) includes any size of mixed-use development, and 3) “is expected to generate increased state tax revenues.”

This is, in technical budget terms, some damn sweeping legislation. By allowing the state to create stadium and arena districts of any size where all new sales, income, and other tax revenues are kicked back to the team to pay construction costs, the bill would effectively prioritize projects on otherwise vacant land — or at least land that can be made vacant by the year before the stadium lease starts. And there’s no provision for determining whether the “new” tax revenue in a stadium district would be new to the state as a whole — meaning Ohioans could end up paying a team to move its economic activities from one part of the state to another, then 20 years later paying them again to move it back.

There have been plenty of sports projects in the past funded by tax increment financing, or TIF, projects, which usually just mean kicking back increased property taxes; occasionally, other taxes are rolled in too, creating the less common mega-TIF. This legislation ups the ante even further, and really deserves a new name: “Omni-TIF” has a nice ring to it. The state legislature will be debating what’s in the final budget until next Tuesday, April 1, with a full floor vote slated for the following Wednesday, April 9 — we should get a sense by then how much this language would be expected to cost Ohio taxpayers, but with the ability to draw a circle of unlimited size around a stadium and kick back and any all taxes from it, looks like the sky’s the limit.

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Ohio gov calls $600m Browns subsidy too pricey, pushes own plan for $2B in stadium subsidies

access_time personNeil deMause

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has come out against the Cleveland Browns owners’ proposal to funnel $600 million in state taxes (and $600 million in city and county taxes) to a new stadium in Brook Park, saying it’s too expensive. But wait, I hear you ask, didn’t DeWine just propose his own massive sports subsidy fund that could be worth $2 billion or more? The governor has an explanation, kinda:

“That bond that would generate $600 million will cost over $900 million. Every penny of that will come out of general fund dollars in the future to pay the bond down,” DeWine said. “That is a ton of money to be taking out of our budget that we need, to spend money on schools, that we need to spend money on mental health challenges. We have a lot of things that we need to focus on in this state.”

First things first: Saying $600 million in bonds will cost $900 million to pay off is technically accurate — same as a $500,000 mortgage could cost you $1.2 million in payments over time — but not all that helpful, given that you’re getting to make a bunch of those payments in the future, as a tradeoff for not coming up with all of the money now. So that extra $300 million is a financing cost, not a construction cost; the cost in present dollars of raising $600 million through future payments including interest is still $600 million. Using nominal dollars instead of present value can be a great way to make a project that relies on borrowing sound more expensive — 900 is bigger than 600! — but it’s really fiscal sleight of hand.

That said, DeWine is correct that the Browns plan would still mean taking more than $30 million a year out of the state budget. But what about his $2 billion stadium fund, to be paid for by raising sports gambling taxes to bring in an extra $130-180 million a year? It wouldn’t use existing taxes, but it would still use tax money — and that tax money would no longer be available to the state if it wanted to raise gambling taxes for some other reason down the road. Other states have used increased gambling taxes to help out their general funds, while Ohio until now has dedicated gambling tax money for K-12 schools; needless to say, at some point there’s a point of diminishing returns where if you start raising gambling taxes too high, gambling companies start leaving the state and your tax revenue will stop going up, so this is money you only get to spend once.

The best way to think about dedicated taxes like these is as two separate decisions: 1) Do we want to raise taxes? and 2) What should we do with the proceeds? Whether raising gambling taxes in Ohio is a good idea is one thing; deciding to spend the resulting $2 billion on sports venues vs. something else is very much another. DeWine is, notably, also looking to raise cigarette taxes by $1.50 to fund a $1,000 child tax credit and cannabis taxes from 10% to 20% to fund things like a suicide hotline and drivers’ ed programs, but he has not explained why the gambling taxes couldn’t go for those things instead of pro sports.

In any event, Ohio now has two competing stadium bills, one to spend $600 million for the Browns, the other to raise $2 billion and figure out which teams to spend it on later. Those are not likely to be the two best options for Ohioans, so if the compromise ends up being “let’s meet somewhere in the middle,” you might want to hold on to your wallets.

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Friday roundup: A’s hire ex-Raiders stadium czar, Texans want renovations paid for by somebody

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s been another week, and, yeah, it sure has. Feeling this very strongly this morning, you all go on ahead and read this week’s bullet points while I get my second wind.

  • The Athletics have new Las Vegas stadium renderings (pretty similar to the last batch, only with more entourage) and a new president, Marc Badain, who formerly worked in the same role for the Las Vegas Raiders before abruptly quitting. Badain’s role in getting the Raiders’ stadium built (with $750 million in public money) and the fact that the Nevada legislature is coming back into session this year have people speculating that Badain could be on board to go back to the state for more cash to fill owner John Fisher’s budget hole; there’s no actual evidence that’s in the works that I can tell, but this entire project has been little more than tea-leaf reading for close to two years, why stop now?
  • New Houston Texans president Mike Tomon says he doesn’t want a new stadium, just renovations to the old one. The Houston Business Journal reports: “As far as funding potential renovations to NRG Stadium — which, coupled with projects around NRG Park and maintenance, could cost billions of dollars — Tomon said it’s too early in the process to determine what that would look like.” Lobbying strategy still hazy, ask again later.
  • The A’s and Tampa Bay Rays playing in minor-league stadiums this year are “cautionary tales of what happens when big, complicated challenges are met with half-measures and inaction,” writes ESPN’s Jeff Passan, who apparently missed the parts about how the A’s are in Sacramento because they alienated Oakland officials enough to torpedo talks of a lease extension there and the Rays are in Tampa because a hurricane blew their roof off, and neither of those things would be changed even if local officials hadn’t engaged in “inaction,” which they actually didn’t. Friends don’t let friends read Jeff Passan think pieces, is the lesson here.
  • San Antonio’s “Project Marvel” that would include a new Spurs arena, convention center expansion, and other crap has “tepid” 41-36% support, according to a new poll. The plan could be up for a public referendum as soon as this November, so that undecided 23% should start reading up on the details ASAP.
  • The San Jose Giants have agreed to extend their lease from 2027 through 2050 in exchange for $5 million in public stadium upgrades, and I’m going to go out on a limb and call this not that bad — the Single-A team has even agreed to double its rent payments from $20,000 a year to $40,000, which is next to nothing but not completely nothing. It’ll probably come out next week that San Jose has to turn over development rights to 10,000 acres of land or something in addition, but until then I’m filing this under “could have been so much worse.”
  • Someone wrote in to Cincinnati Enquirer sports columnist Jason Williams to ask if Hamilton County residents could have a re-vote on the tax hike that is paying off the Bengals stadium, and Williams replied, not a bad idea, it could be expanded to help fund a new arena, too. Pretty sure that’s not what the letter writer meant, Jason.
  • There’s actual video of actual cranes doing actual work to build Inter Miami‘s new stadium, maybe this thing will actually open eventually, even if the 2026 target date still seems ambitious. Or it could be the latest fake video, for all we know, hard to trust anything coming out of south Florida these days.
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