Category: Cleveland Browns

Friday roundup: Rays to play 2025 in Tampa, and other things to make people mad

access_time personNeil deMause

The verdict is in for where the Tampa Bay Rays will play the 2025 season while waiting for their roof to be (probably) repaired, and the answer is: Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, spring-training home of the New York Yankees and rest-of-the-time home of the Tampa Tarpons. I’m going to go ahead and call this a fine enough decision: The stadium holds 11,000 people, not too far off of the Rays’ average 2024 attendance of 16,515; as a spring training site, it has major-league amenities; and it’s still in the Tampa Bay region, so Rays fans won’t have to drive across the state or the country to get to games. Plus, there are multiple fields on the site, so there’s no worry about schedule conflicts, since the Tarpons can just play on one of the back fields while the Rays take over the main one.

Of course, it’s also not in Pinellas County, which is already ticking off Pinellas County commissioners who already held up a vote on approving bonds for a new Rays stadium last month amid concern that the team might play elsewhere for a season or three. Commissioner Chris Latvala, who voted against the stadium deal in July, called the decision “unfortunate,” saying, “there’s going to be over $1 billion public funds dedicated from Pinellas residents to the Tampa Bay Rays, and the thank you that the Rays gave them was to play the games across the bridge in Hillsborough County.” Commissioner Rene Flowers, meanwhile, who voted for the deal in July, told the Tampa Bay Times she’s now not sure if she’ll change her vote, saying, “I’m waiting to see how it looks for us financially” — spoilers, Rene, it still looks just as bad as it did then.

And then there’s this tidbit:

The Yankees will receive about $15 million in revenue for hosting the Rays, a person familiar with the arrangement told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because that detail was not announced. The money won’t come from Tampa Bay but from other sources, such as insurance.

Um, Associated Press, you drunk posting? First off, “Tampa Bay” is not a government entity, it’s a collection of disparate municipalities and counties, so who isn’t the money coming from, exactly? And “such as insurance” is both awfully vague and puzzlingly specific, as the only insurance policy that’s been discussed is that held by the city of St. Petersburg, which is already committed to paying for a chunk of the estimated $55 million cost of repairing the Tropicana Field roof.

Still many questions, in other words. Anyone else want to chime in?

“I’ll be excited to set a record for rain delays in a season,” Rays reliever and union player rep Pete Fairbanks said.

And as for the week’s other news:

  • Orlando’s stadium formerly known as the Citrus Bowl is set to get $400 million in county-funded renovations, something that Orlando mayor-for-life Buddy Dyer first proposed last year and which the county gave preliminary approval to back in January. The money would come from the “tourist development tax” — the same pool of hotel-tax money that Pinellas County is currently debating whether to hand over to the Rays — which according to the authorizing legislation can be used for building stadiums, or building auditoriums, or funding aquariums or museums or zoos or beaches or advertising tourism or a whole lot of other things, so long as the purpose is to get more tourists coming to your county. It’s actually somewhat difficult to argue that renovating a stadium that hosts a handful of college football games each year in order to make it “fully symmetrical” is what’s needed in order to encourage tourists to go to freaking Orlando, but this is what the county commission is being asked to vote on in the next couple of weeks, with a straight face.
  • A report by consultant Econsult Solutions Inc. commissioned by the city of Cleveland claims that the Browns leaving downtown would cost the city $30 million in annual economic activity and $11 million in annual tax revenue, which on the face of it doesn’t make any sense since Cleveland doesn’t have any taxes that are at 36.7%. A quick look at the report itself doesn’t reveal any more methodological details, except that Econsult apparently calculated its estimate that Cleveland would lose 29% of Browns-related spending by dividing the population of the city by the population of Cuyahoga County, LOLconsultants.
  • Personal seat license prices at the new Tennessee Titans stadium are in some cases going up from $750 per seat to $10,000 a seat, and season ticket holders are not pleased. But at least the PSL money will help pay off the public’s $1.2 billion share of the construction — oh, what’s that, the seat license money is entirely going to pay off team owner Amy Adams Strunk’s share of the costs? The Hog Mollies didn’t mention that part!
  • The city of Oakland’s sale of its half of the Oakland Coliseum site to private developers is on hold, apparently because Alameda County is dragging its feet on the transfer of its half of the site which it had previously sold to A’s owner John Fisher. No, that doesn’t make sense to me either, it looks to involve a lawsuit in progress charging that the sale violates the state’s Surplus Land Act requiring that public land first be offered up for development as affordable housing — similar objections were raised about the Los Angeles Angels deal, you may remember, but that fell apart before it was ever resolved, so who knows what’ll happen here.
  • One long-rumored stadium site the Kansas City Royals definitely won’t be moving to is the old K.C. Star building, because it’s being converted into an “AI innovation facility.” A local wine bar owner called this “not the most exciting thing for the neighborhood” but at least a plan that wouldn’t require displacing local businesses, which is probably about right.
  • Diamond Sports Group, aka Bally Sports aka FanDuel Sports, has emerged from bankruptcy reorganization, with lots of consequences for the MLB, NBA, and NHL teams it formerly provided cable broadcasts of. ESPN has a rundown, but the main takeaway is that a bunch of teams are going to getting less TV money than they expected, which will effect everything from their player budgets to the relative importance of market size in terms of team profitability, while fans will get some new options including the ability to do pay-per-view of single games for a mere (?) $7 a pop. More on this as more dominoes fall, maybe, or check Marc Normandin’s Marvin Miller’s Mustache newsletter later this morning, if I know him he’ll be weighing in on this.
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Friday roundup: A’s exec says Fisher really does have Vegas stadium money (no, you can’t see it)

access_time personNeil deMause

Before we get to the bullet points, and I know how much you all love the bullet points, there is pressing news we have to discuss first, which is that Athletics owner John Fisher has the billion-dollars-plus he needs to build a stadium in Las Vegas. Sort of. Maybe. According to a guy:

Athletics owner John Fisher and his family will invest $1 billion into the construction of a stadium in Las Vegas and U.S. Bank and Goldman Sachs will offer a $300 million loan, club executive Sandy Dean said Thursday.

Dean made his remarks to a special meeting of the Las Vegas Stadium Authority board.

Dean said four letters will be presented at the Dec. 5 authority meeting asserting construction details and financing will be in place. Final approvals are expected to be made at that meeting to allow construction of the $1.5 billion, 30,000-seat domed ballpark with a capacity for up to 33,000 fans.

So it’s official: Fisher has financing in place for his Vegas stadium … well, no, he will have financing in place by December … or he’ll have a letter (or four) stating that financing is in place?

[One] letter, Dean said, asserts the Fisher and his family have the ability to meet their financial commitment. Dean said [another] letter from U.S. Bank will show that through a review of the owner’s finances that it “concludes the Fisher family has more than sufficient resources to fund the equity investment that’s required to build the stadium.”

Except! Here’s video of Dean saying that one of the letters will be “from John Fisher indicating that his family will invest a billion dollars in support of the project here in Las Vegas.” So which is it: Is the Fisher family committing to spend $1 billion on a Vegas stadium, or just avowing that it  is worth $1 billion? We already knew the latter — Vegas convention center authority chief and unregistered A’s lobbyist Steve Hill keeps saying it, among other things — but that’s not the same as actually figuring out what the family would liquidate to pay for the stadium: the San Jose Earthquakes? The Gap?.

(Dean also said Fisher is still looking to sell minority shares of the team at inflated prices because “it would be good coming to Las Vegas to have outside partners from Las Vegas,” but not because he needs the money, oh no: “The ability to finance the stadium is independent of that.”)

The question all this keeps coming back to isn’t “Where can a billionaire find a billion dollars?” but rather “Is the Fisher family ready to throw a billion dollars of its own money down a stadium hole?” The number of stadiums that can cover their own construction costs is slim; the number that have done so that are in their leagues’ smallest market and include a pricey dome is zero. Which is why people are eager to see Fisher put actual money on the table; promises of a letter next month that will maybe describe actual money on the table is not quite the same thing.

Sorry if all that was anticlimactic. And now, this week’s bullet points:

  • Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost wants to intervene in the Cleveland Browns‘ lawsuit against the city of Cleveland seeking to block the use of the Art Modell Law to block the team from moving to a new stadium in Brook Park. Yost says the team’s claim that the law, which requires that teams be offered up for sale to local owners before being relocated from their current home city, is “unconstitutionally vague” is “wrong,” and since Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam only sued the city, he needed to file a motion to intervene on behalf of the state. Feel the excitement!
  • Philadelphia councilmember Mark Squilla may have come down in favor of letting the 76ers owners build an arena next door to Chinatown, but he has an idea for ensuring that the neighborhood isn’t disrupted: a zoning overlay to “require affordable housing, restrictions on types of businesses, and limits on the size of new storefronts to discourage chain restaurants from crowding out traditional Chinatown retail,” in the words of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Adds the Inquirer: “The precise language mandating how any of this would work has yet to be added to the bill.” This is on top of proposing a tax increment financing district to kick taxes collected in Chinatown back to local businesses to offset any rise in rents as the result of increased property values — pretty sure that would only risk encouraging landlords to increase rents more knowing businesses would be getting subsidies to help pay them, need to go back and check my Intro to Economics textbook chapter on microeconomics.
  • The World Series is over and I didn’t get around to discussing the New York City Economic Development Corporation’s claim that each Yankees and Mets home playoff game generated $20-25 million in economic activity, but suffice to say I talked to an EDC spokesperson who told me (on background, so I’m not supposed to quote them directly so I’m not) that the analysis was based off a previous model from 2022 that puts together assumptions from the city tourism board plus assumptions from the Yankees and then applies a multiplier. Also, they look at “anonymized cell phone data”? No, you and I are not allowed to see the actual model, so no further details about WTF this means will be available.
  • Spotlight on America has a piece on how Tempe, Arizona said no to funding an Arizona Coyotes arena and how other cities could follow its lead, which is all well and good until it concludes by lauding late Seattle Seahawks owner Paul Allen for his commitment to Seattle, when Allen actually paid the city to hold a referendum so he could get $300 million in public money for a football stadium, then refused to open his books like he promised in exchange for the money, seriously, what?
  • Perhaps you would prefer a deep dive into the toilets at the Los Angeles Clippers‘ new arena? Perhaps you would prefer I hadn’t phrased it that way? Sorry, you’re getting both!

 

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

access_time personNeil deMause

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

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

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

access_time personNeil deMause

The Cleveland city council may be preparing an Art Modell Law suit over Jimmy and Dee Haslam’s plan to move the Browns to suburban Brook Park:

The law, Ohio Revised Code Section 9.67, says that no professional team owner can leave a taxpayer-supported stadium without first signing an agreement with the host city. Or team owners must provide at least six months’ notice of their intent to leave. Within those six months, they must give the city or local investors a chance to buy the team.

“Our city ordinances require the city to enforce the Modell Law,” Law Director Mark Griffin said in a statement to Signal Cleveland. “That is what we are going to do. In order to protect our taxpayers’ investment and keep the Browns downtown, we are following the law and putting together our litigation response.”

This is an interesting twist: The Art Modell Law was passed by the state in 1996 after then-Browns owner Art Modell moved that iteration of the team to Baltimore to become the Ravens, prompting the construction of the current Cleveland stadium to get a new NFL team that would go by the same name. The Cleveland city council previously passed a measure back in May calling on the mayor to enforce the law; former mayor Dennis Kucinich, who wrote the Modell Law when he was an Ohio state legislator (and who is currently running for Congress, where he previously served four terms, on a weird-for-him anti-immigration and deficit-cutting platform), has urged the city to act, and even suggested he might file suit himself on behalf of taxpayers if it doesn’t.

There are some drawbacks to the Modell Law: It doesn’t spell out penalties for if the Haslams ignore its provisions, doesn’t say whether they can say “Fine, we’ll sell the team to the first local buyer who can give us $100 trillion,” and hasn’t been tested in court yet, though it was waved around in 2018 to get Columbus Crew owner Anthony Precourt to sell the team (to the Haslams, ironically) rather than moving it to Austin. Still, it is undeniably a stick, and one that the city of Cleveland can use to try to force the Haslams to return to the negotiating table to stay in town rather than moving to a new suburban stadium that no one has figured out how to pay for yet. Though the risk is always that they could end up “winning” the right to throw a few hundred million dollars at the Browns, even though the Haslams don’t have anyone else offering them the same at the moment; someone really needs to write a FAQ for lawmakers on “How Not to Bid Against Yourself for Dummies.”

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People in Ohio feeling all the feels about Browns owners’ demand for $1.2B in Brook Park dome funding

access_time personNeil deMause

All kinds of reactions this weekend to the Cleveland Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam’s announcement that they plan to build a $2.4 billion stadium in Brook Park that they haven’t figured out how to pay for:

  • Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb claims losing the Browns to the suburbs will cost the city $30 million a year — in tax revenue? economic activity? he didn’t say — according to “an economic impact study” the city commissioned (which Bibb evidently forgot to attach to his press statement). This is probably clown economics, depending on what it even means, and it seems weird for Bibb to be trying to make the Haslams’ case that their team’s presence is worth a lot, though it’s also possible he’s trying to talk the state of Ohio into not funding the team’s move to Brook Park. More on this if that study ever turns up and if the crayon is legible.
  • Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown issued a press statement saying, “Overwhelmingly, people want them to stay in Cleveland but greedy billionaire sports owners think they can do whatever they want” and calling on the Haslams to keep the team in Cleveland. He did not, it appears, call on state officials not to provide public funding for moving the Browns to Brook Park, something the Haslams have said they want to the tune of at least $1.2 billion.
  • Some fans love the proposed move (“it’s great”), other fans hate it (“We’re the Cleveland Browns not Brook Park Browns”), still other fans have mixed feelings (“I like the fact that we’re getting a dome. I hate that it’s moving out”). Apparently if you ask enough different people a question you’ll get different answers!
  • Chuck D remarked, “Why revisit the Richfield Coliseum nightmare that you had?” and “What the fuck?” before asking music reporters at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction of Kool & The Gang if they wanted to talk about LeBron James, which no one did.

Brook Park Mayor Ed Orcutt, meanwhile, said the stadium deal is at “at the 50-yard line” and that “we still have to bring people to the table” including county executive Chris Ronayne, who previously said he’s not interested in helping the Browns move out of Cleveland. Asked if this means the project will be more difficult to finalize than people think, Orcutt replied, “Well, in politics sometimes we have differences of opinion, or even if you’re just having a conversation over an adult beverage, hanging out and watching some sports.” (For those who don’t speak fluent Mayor, that’s a yes.)

As much as it’s easy for TV stations to send its reporters out to ask random Browns fans what they think of the dome plan, the only thing that really matters here is how state and county officials plan to handle the Haslams’ $1.2 billion tax kickback request, and nobody is covering that yet. No one particularly thinks that Gov. Mike DeWine is going to pull a JB Pritzker and tell the Haslams that the taxpayer cash bank is closed, but it would be nice to know what position he and other elected officials have on that $1.2 billion subsidy request. Hey, Ohio journalists, there’s a scoop just waiting for you, get at it!

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Friday roundup: Browns officially want $1.2B for Brook Park dome, Chiefs will take whatever stadium money someone offers

access_time personNeil deMause

Thanks to those who’ve re-upped as FoS supporters in recent days without my reminding you. There are still a handful of numbered Vaportecture art prints left, so donate now if you think that’s the kind of thing you’d like, or if you don’t want that thing near your house at all but just want to support the work of this site.

Speaking of work, there’s a whole lot of it today:

  • Cleveland Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam have confirmed they are indeed focusing on a new domed stadium in suburban Brook Park, releasing a statement yesterday saying, “The transformative economic opportunities created by a dome far outweigh what a renovated stadium could produce with around 10 events per year.” The statement also said that “this stadium will not use existing taxpayer-funded streams that would divert resources from other more pressing needs,” which neatly obscures the fact that it would use $1.2 billion in new taxpayer-funded streams that would divert resources from other more pressing needs. And headlines like “It’s official: Cleveland Browns moving to Brook Park” remain premature, since nobody in state or local government has approved the $1.2 billion in tax money yet, so really we’re still just at “Browns owners’ #1 choice is someone giving them $1.2 billion,” and who wouldn’t want $1.2 billion? I bet you could roll around in it real nice.
  • Speaking of non-announcements, Kansas City Chiefs owner Clark Hunt says he might want to move to a new stadium in Kansas, or move to a new stadium in Missouri, or renovate his current stadium in Missouri, whatcha got? “I certainly don’t expect to have anything finalized by [next spring], but I’d like to know the direction that we’re heading in that time frame,” said Hunt, which isn’t even a fake deadline, come on, man, don’t you know you’re supposed to set a date and then move it later if necessary? Do I have to call you up and read Chapter 4 to you out loud?
  • In extremely unsurprising news, NFL owners unanimously approved Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan’s plan to accept $775 million in public money to pay for stadium upgrades. “The NFL believes in Jacksonville. I believe in Jacksonville, and I know our fans and the people throughout the community believe in Jacksonville,” Khan said after the vote from London, where his team will keep on playing one “home” game a year under the new deal because one can always believe in two places at once.
  • As if Chicago doesn’t have enough new stadium demands, Chicago Fire owner Joe Mansueto says he’s looking at building a soccer-specific stadium as well. Mansueto says it would be privately funded, but they all say that, so if he does settle on a location and a plan, it’s worth keeping an eye on the fine print.
  • For everyone writing up your “Where will the Tampa Bay Rays play in 2025?” articles, please cross Durham, North Carolina off the list, Bulls management says there’s no room there. Also if you’re wondering what is being done with the Rays stadium roof that was blown off last week, you can buy bits of it on eBay.
  • Green Bay Packers management says it wants to sign a 30-year lease extension on Lambeau Field and pay for all stadium upgrades in that time and just wants the city of Green Bay to freeze its rent in exchange. That’s probably not a terrible deal, but it would cost city taxpayers something — $30 million, according to city operations chief Joe Faulds — and the current lease runs through 2032 with a 10-year team extension option, so one can see why the city might not jump at the chance. Anyway, let this be a reminder that even fan-owned sports teams can demand public money, nonprofits got the profit motive too.
  • It took 27 years for this Tom the Dancing Bug cartoon to come true, but with cities like Tulsa offering cash payments for remote workers to relocate to their cities, you too can now be Ned Balter.
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Blogger again claims Browns owners want Brook Park dome, just as soon as they get $1.2B in public cash

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s time for another missive from NEOtrans, the Cleveland blog that first reported that the Browns owners were seeking a new stadium rather than renovations to their existing one way back in June 2022. The blog’s proprietor, railroad expert Ken Prendergast, has a particular propensity for stories with no named sources, and his latest is no exception:

It seems that the clock has run out on city of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County leaders on keeping the stadium downtown for the Cleveland Browns football team’s home games. NEOtrans has learned that the Browns’ owners, the Haslam Sports Group, are due to make an announcement soon, possibly by the end of this month, that they will put all their efforts into building a new covered stadium in suburban Brook Park.

Prendergast gives no indication — not even a “sources close to the team” or anything — who he has learned this from, so there’s no way to tell if this is news or a rumor he heard from someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about or an attempt by somebody to put pressure on Cleveland city officials to up their ante or what. And on top of that, it’s a rumor we’ve heard from him before: Back on August 6, Prendergast wrote, “In the coming weeks, the owners of the Cleveland Browns will reveal their plans to build a $3.6 billion domed stadium and associated development in the Cleveland suburb of Brook Park.”

That was ten weeks ago, so this still qualifies as “coming weeks,” but only barely. The latest post doesn’t provide any new info on Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam’s decision, repeating earlier reports that the stadium would cost $2.4 billion and the Haslams would want $1.2 billion of that in public money.

As for the Haslam’s half, there’s more unsourced reporting on where that could come from:

The Browns appear eager to tap a new source of capital. In August, the National Football League (NFL) owners approved the use of private equity investment as a component of the ownership structure of its teams. Private equity firms could purchase as little as 3 percent or as much as a 10 percent equity stake in a team…

Based on that value, a firm could pay anywhere from $180 million to $600 million to take an equity stake in the Browns. That, perhaps as much as anything, is why the Browns are now focused on Brook Park.

Huh? Sure, the Haslams could sell 10% of their team to private equity to raise half their private share of a stadium cost. But before this they could have likewise sold 10% of their team to a minority owner, or used 10% of their team as collateral for a bank loan, or sold some of their other $4 billion worth of assets, or any of a number of other things. Billionaires don’t generally lack ways to raise cash for a stadium deal — even A’s owner John Fisher has sources of money, if he can figure out how to pay it back — so much as ways to raise cash that don’t cost them more than they’d make on the deal, and giving up 10% of a franchise worth $6 billion according to CNBC ($5.1 billion according to Forbes, the more conventionally used guesstimate) would be a significant cost, especially since the theoretical private equity goons would presumably want a cut of future revenues from the hypothetical future stadium.

This whole “NFL teams can tap private equity money” bit is making the news rounds at the moment — look, here’s Forbes contributer (aka unpaid blogger) Phil Rogers theorizing that it’ll make it easier for the Chicago Bears to raise money for their own $2 billion–plus stadium. But while it does increase the universe of potential investors in NFL teams, it doesn’t change the main calculation: how to get public funding for these buildings, since that wouldn’t have to be paid back out of owners’ pockets.

The public price tag for a Brook Park stadium for the Browns remains $1.2 billion, which the Haslams have previously said would come from “innovative funding mechanisms with local, county, and state officials that would leverage the fiscal impact of the project,” whatever that means. Brook Park doesn’t have any significant money, Cuyahoga County says it’s not interested in paying to help move the Browns out of Cleveland, and there’s been no word lately of Gov. Mike DeWine offering to carry the bulk of the $1.2 billion load — so we’re back at “Haslams want a suburban dome as soon as someone else agrees to pay for it.” They can “announce” that as their first choice if they want, but until someone shows up with a $1.2 billion novelty check, it’s more a wish than an agreement.

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Hamilton County officials to Ohio: Whatever state money Browns get, we want the same for Bengals

access_time personNeil deMause

Sorry I missed this one last week: Alicia Reece, one of the Hamilton County commissioners proposing a $1.2 billion Cincinnati Bengals stadium renovation with no actual proposal of how to pay for it, has said that her county should get the same amount of state money that the Cleveland Browns get for their new stadium, assuming they get any:

“You can’t give everything to Cleveland and leave us with the scraps,” Reece said during Tuesday’s public meeting of the Hamilton County commissioners.

The state of Ohio hasn’t actually offered anything toward a Browns stadium yet, though Gov. Mike DeWine met with Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam and Cleveland officials last month to talk about the stadium plans, and his spokesperson said the governor is generally in favor of spending public money on stadiums. Though apparently DeWine is aware of the slippery-slope aspect of giving money to one team owner and having all the others in your state show up, hats in hand:

“When you do something with one stadium and one team, that obviously creates a desire all the way through, to do it multiple times,” DeWine said in answer to a question at a Columbus Metropolitan Club forum [in May]. “And that that is what the legislature and I have to be cognizant of and think about as we look at kind of one-off proposals: what is this do to every other team in the state?”

What is this do, indeed? So far, state legislators haven’t seemed super-enthused about lading gobs on money on the Haslams, and are only likely to get less so if the Bengals have to get equal billing. Still, local officials in both Cleveland and Cincinnati are going to be leaning hard on the state to help “solve” their stadium “problems” — so, even if neither team is threatening to move out of state and it shouldn’t matter to state legislators where in Ohio the Browns and Bengals play, don’t be too surprised if DeWine’s response is less “not my table” than “how big a check, exactly?”

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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: Royals float stadium atop public park, A’s financial plan may not be ready until December

access_time personNeil deMause

And so we come to the end of another programming week, one that at least managed to avoid having anyone propose building a new privately used stadium in a public park — oh, wait!

  • Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas has revealed that Royals owner John Sherman is considering other downtown stadium sites after there was so much opposition to his plan to build one atop the Crossroads neighborhood, and naturally one site is on top of a public park, that will go over so much better. Also, Washington Square Park and the adjacent site that would be used for the stadium only total 11.6 acres, which isn’t really enough for a modern MLB stadium and certainly not for one plus a whole entertainment district like Sherman wants. (The Crossroads site would have been 17.3 acres.) Can’t wait to see how the eventual renderings avoid explaining this!
  • Oakland A’s owner John Fisher’s financing plan for a Las Vegas stadium is “rounding third and heading home,” according to Nevada authority chair and unregistered A’s lobbyist Steve Hill, which is another way of saying it may not be ready until early December. Yesterday’s stadium authority meeting did include a bunch of lease details, like Fisher committing to keep the team in Vegas for 30 years but having the option to extend it to 99 years if he wants, and Fisher having the option to buy the stadium for its appraised value at the end of each lease term, and if there’s anything Nevada taxpayers get out of the lease other than $600 million in debt and tax expenditures, the news coverage didn’t mention it.
  • Cleveland.com has noticed that $461 million in city spending on Browns stadium renovations over 30 years isn’t the same as $461 million now, good work, gang. (Their estimate of the present value of Mayor Justin Bibb’s offer is about $234 million, mine was $240 million, reasonable people can disagree.) They also note that it’s not clear in Bibb’s plan who would sell the stadium bonds — Bibb’s office sent a terse text: “City will not bond. Some other public entity” — or how they would be paid off if alcohol or cigarette taxes fell short — Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam didn’t text “Not us. Taxpayers somehow,” but they really didn’t have to.
  • Speaking of the Browns, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has entered the chat.
  • The California state legislature is auditing the Los Angeles Angels lease extension that was approved in 2019 by Anaheim Mayor Harry Sidhu while he was in the midst of negotiating a new stadium deal in exchange for (allegedly) demanding $1 million in campaign contributions. There was previously some talk on the Anaheim city council about voiding the lease on the grounds that the whole deal was covered in slime; we’ll see where this audit leads, if anywhere.
  • WUSA-TV reported this week that the Washington Wizards and Capitals arena renovation deal with D.C. still hasn’t been finalized despite passing a July deadline, and I’m still waiting for any other news outlets to think this is worthwhile news and not just haggling over the fine print, but keep one eye on it nonetheless.
  • The Dodger Stadium gondola project lives! No matter how dumb an idea it is!
  • This has nothing to do with stadiums, but if you think I’m going to pass up an article that begins “Billionaire Milwaukee Brewers owner Mark Attanasio has allegedly been stealing sand from an exclusive Southern California beach,” you don’t know this site at all.
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