Category: NFL Draft

Friday roundup: Rays may have bot-lobbied for stadium funds, OR gov says not rubber-stamping Blazers cash is “playing politics”

access_time personNeil deMause

We’ve run off the end of April, and — spoiler alert — neither the Chicago Bears nor Tampa Bay Rays stadium situations have yet been resolved as team owners had hoped. Sportswriters often like to portray a slow approval process as dysfunction, but it can equally well be the opposite: Taking your time and driving a hard bargain are good negotiating tools, and when billions of dollars in tax money are at stake, rushing to get something approved just because the local billionaire is impatient is a great way to end up with unexpected costs. It’s still very much unknown whether residents of Illinois and Florida will end up with better stadium deals as a result of legislators taking their time, but it’s hard to imagine it’ll end up being any worse than if they’d just signed off on whatever they were presented with without reading it.

Anyway, lots of news did happen this week, even in Tampa Bay and Chicago, so let’s get to it:

  • Hillsborough County Commissioner Joshua Wostal claims that somebody sent more than 2,000 bot-written emails from a single IP address in Los Angeles urging county commissioners to hurry up and approve the Rays’ stadium deal. Wostal says he doesn’t want to move forward with any stadium plan until the Rays owners provide documentation of where they’ll get the money to finance their part of the deal, which would include more than $1 billion for the stadium plus possibly billions more for surrounding development (some of which would be recouped by tax and land breaks), though the team hasn’t actually committed to what exactly it will build; a Rays statement said only that it would provide financing details “at the appropriate time as is standard with similar public-private partnerships,” which must be ownerese for “maybe after we’ve cashed your check.”
  • Bears executives held a meeting with NFL officials this week, in which everyone agreed that the best stadium options are either in Arlington Heights or Indiana. The assembled dignitaries then warned Illinois legislators that if a stadium bill to the Bears owners’ liking isn’t approved ASAP, the team and league could meet again.
  • Count Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek among the hurry-up-and-rubber-stampers: After signing a bill to provide $365 million in state money for Portland Trail Blazers renovations, she chided city and county officials for not swiftly approving their own $235 million, saying, “This is not a time to play politics. This is a time to get it done.” (“Playing politics,” in this case, includes things like not wanting to sign a nondisclosure agreement before entering into arena funding talks.)
  • The Cleveland Browns held a groundbreaking for their new Brook Park stadium, even as legal questions remain about the state unclaimed funds money that is supposed to pay $600 million toward the project. Everyone involved is still moving full steam ahead, though: Browns owner Jimmy Haslam said that “we’re not attorneys, OK?” but after talking to actual attorneys “we do think it’ll be resolved,” while Gov. Mike DeWine reassured everyone that if this public funding plan fails, the state could always go back to his plan to raise sports gambling taxes and give the proceeds to sports teams that everyone hated. No one is saying exactly what will happen if the state — and the city of Brook Park, which is still negotiating its own $245 million in stadium spending — can’t come up with the money after stadium construction is already underway, probably because nobody wants to admit that “let the Haslams figure out how to find the rest of the money” is still an option for fear of risking the benefits of moving the Browns from Ohio to Ohio.
  • But if (greater) Cleveland doesn’t get a new stadium, how will it host a Super Bowl? Don’t worry, it probably won’t get one anyway unless it builds more hotels, says NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, who pointedly did not mention this during the runup to the stadium funding vote.
  • MLS has a prospective Las Vegas bidder for the Vancouver Whitecaps: a group led by Grant Gustavson, the 30-year-old son of Kentucky’s wealthiest billionaire. This doesn’t necessarily mean the Whitecaps will move if they don’t get a new arena deal in Vancouver — Vegas doesn’t have a soccer arena at all (though Gustavson said he’s ready to “privately finance” one, without providing details) and is getting dangerously close to a market glut of sports teams — but it’ll likely light a fire under officials in British Columbia, who already started scrambling the jets once the league announced its Vegas move threat earlier this week.
  • Team owner insists he needs state money for a new stadium, state says no you can’t have any, team owner finds an existing stadium to play in. Happy endings all around in the CT United F.C. story, unless you’re team owner Andre Swanston, who now has to settle for just selling tickets to watch soccer matches instead of getting $127 million in state aid to help boost his team’s bottom line.
  • Would this Comiskey Park–inspired stadium design be a better place for Chicago White Sox fans to watch a game? Undoubtedly, since it would bring back that ballpark’s close-to-the-action upper deck. Would it make more money for the White Sox owners? Probably not, because it would be missing the wall of luxury suites that are to blame for the current stadium’s unloved distant upper deck: Extra-nosebleedy cheap seats in modern stadiums are a feature, not a bug. Maybe work on reducing soaring income inequality that has created such a soaring market for high-priced tickets, and then we can get back to stadium design that actually works for everyone.
  • How did the economic impact go from the NFL Draft that Pittsburgh canceled school for? Not so hot, according to one restaurant worker who fought through draft-related bus rerouting only to have her hours cut because fewer customers than usual showed up. (Economists are shocked, shocked!) The city tourism agency responded with a statement that really the NFL Draft was less about bringing in new spending than “positioning Pittsburgh as a modern, globally relevant city well beyond the weekend.”
  • In related news, New Jersey transit officials are recommending that state residents work from home during World Cup matches to avoid the transit nightmare caused by rerouting trains to take fans to matches since they won’t be allowed to drive there. This could be good news for New Jersey restaurants, maybe, unless everyone just makes their own lunches those days, see why economic impact of sporting events is harder to calculate than just adding up all the fans and declaring “> ? > profit”?
  • No, the Athletics aren’t going to change their name to the “Las Vegas Black Fire” just because they listed that as a location in a job listing, it’s just the name of a co-working space in Vegas. Thanks to SF Gate for clearing this up, maybe everyone should have done a little more research before firing up the AI jersey designs.
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Friday roundup: Pittsburgh cancels in-person school while hosting NFL Draft, this is just a thing that happens now?

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s been quite a week: In case you missed it, I spent much of it keeping up with the comment storm after this Q&A about a paper on housing policy published on Monday. (Turns out people have very many feels about housing policy.) Add in a busy week of stadium news, and I should probably take the day off from typing to avoid a repetitive stress injury — but not before taking a run through the week’s additional stadium and arena news, that’s more important than my wrist tendons.

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Friday roundup: Ohio senate leader says damn the analysts’ warnings, full speed ahead on Browns’ $1.2B subsidy

access_time personNeil deMause

Nothing like a week that starts out with a plan for a $1.147 billion stadium subsidy deal and ends with it somewhere well north of $2 billion. But the Washington Commanders horror show wasn’t the only news of the week, so let’s dive in and see what else has been going down:

  • How are Ohio state legislative leaders taking the news that two different state budget analysts have said that the numbers on a proposed $1.2 billion Cleveland Browns stadium subsidy look terrible? “When the Browns put forward those numbers, they’re not putting forward numbers that they grabbed out of a hat. They’ve hired professionals on their side, too,” retorted state senate president Rob McColley. Professional economists on one side, professional clowns on the other, the truth must lie somewhere in the middle! McColley added that senators are “going to make sure that those numbers add up” and will include a “fail-safe” to ensure the state gets its money back, can’t wait to see how that goes.
  • Meanwhile, Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne has asked the state legislature for $350 million to renovate the Browns’ current stadium instead, calling it a “better, and less expensive option,” which is both true and a perfect example of the anchoring cognitive bias. Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb has already offered $240 million in city money toward renovations; this now makes three different official plans for giving upwards of half a billion dollars to Browns owner Jimmy Haslam and none for not giving him any.
  • Here’s a handy chart of where D.C. councilmembers stand on the proposed Commanders stadium deal, with the current tally being four yes, four no, three undecided, and one did not answer. There’s also a special election to fill the Ward 8 seat left vacant by the expulsion of councilmember Trayon White for bribery charges, which is expected to be won by none other than Trayon White, but that’s not till July 15 and the stadium deal has to be voted on by then (quelle coincidence!) so it won’t count, meaning Commanders owner Josh Harris and Mayor Muriel Bowser need to collect three more yes votes from the four remaining swing votes; staffers in those offices might want to take their phones off the hook for the next 11 weeks, because the full-court press lobbying campaign is doubtless going to be brutal.
  • Concessionaire Aramark is reportedly in “talks” with (Your City Name Here) Athletics owner John Fisher about investing $100 million in a Las Vegas stadium project and another $100 million in the team, if by invest you mean pre-paying concession fees that Fisher would get anyway.
  • New soccer stadiums may sound like a great idea to boost team revenues and revitalize cities, writes Aaron Timms in the Guardian, but they often don’t work out that way, leaving fans unhappy at sterile new buildings and teams struggling to repay construction costs. Unless you’re in the U.S., where it’s cities that are on the hook for much of the costs and struggling to repay them: “Stadium-led revitalization is the myth that will survive the apocalypse. New stadiums, as a vast body of academic literature shows, bring few of the economic benefits that developers, team owners, and local politicians promise. Whatever stimulus they offer to economic activity in their immediate vicinity is invariably offset by a corresponding depression in spending and investment in other areas of the same city.”
  • The people who want to bring an MLB team to Orlando say they have close to $1.5 billion lined up to buy a team, which sounds impressive until you realize MLB wants $2 billion for expansion franchises and somebody would have to build a new stadium in Orlando too, but “Orlando rich people happy to pay $1.5 billion toward a team and stadium worth double that” didn’t look as good atop the press release.
  • How’s the economic boom in Green Bay from hosting the NFL draft going? “Sales were down maybe 50%,” Cold Stone Creamery Green Bay owner Amin Elhalw said. “Gradually the closer we got to the draft, the sales were decreasing, the percentage.” Local businesses blamed draft traffic and road closures for keeping away regular customers, funny how that happens.
  • The developer of the Ybor City site in Tampa where Rays owner Stu Sternberg was at one point considering building a stadium (until it turned out nobody wanted to pay to build it for him) now says there’s no room for one, “unless the Rays can build a very tiny stadium.” Turns out building apartments and shopping pencils out better, funny how that happens.
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Friday roundup: Panthers owner seeks $1.2B renovation, Nevada could limit A’s subsidy debate to four days

access_time personNeil deMause

I was out last night seeing the even-more-excellent-than-usual The Scene Is Now and Antietam, so forgive me if I’m a little groggy as I round up the week’s leftover stadium and arena news this morning. Fortunately, there’s only … (checks Instapaper) … seriously? Well, we better get started:

  • When we last checked in on Carolina Panthers owner David Tepper, he was rumored to be looking for about $500 million in public money toward a new stadium, since his old one is almost 27 years old and hasn’t been renovated since last year. Now it’s being reported that the Charlotte City Council met back in January to discuss a $1.2 billion stadium renovation, with $600 million of it paid for by a 30-year extension of food, hotel, and car rental tax surcharges that were initially put in place to build the NASCAR Hall of Fame. Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles responded to the report by saying that “it is unfortunate that discussions that happen in closed session are shared publicly because it undermines our ability to deliver the best deal for our community” — yep, sunlight makes it hard to get things done under cover of darkness, that’s how Louis Brandeis put it, right?
  • Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo’s office says he’s “working on a package for the A’s” and “it’s our preference to see this happen before the legislature adjourns but we will consider different options if that is not possible.” The deadline for bills to be submitted during this legislative session in May 26, which would give the legislature a whole week, one day of which is Memorial Day, to read and then debate an A’s stadium funding bill; those “different options” would presumably mean calling a special session over the summer, though maybe Lombardo has something else in mind.
  • In a poll of registered Nevada voters, 41% said they supported “the State of Nevada spending taxpayer money to assist the A’s in covering a portion of the costs to build a baseball stadium in the Las Vegas area,” 38% were opposed, 14% said they neither supported nor opposed it, and 7% said they had no opinion. There was apparently no option for “Wait, how many hundred million dollars is ‘a portion,’ exactly?”
  • In a poll of Oakland A’s fans who brought banners to the game, a majority said “Fisher Out” or “Kaval = Liar,” which MLB.com initially edited out of game highlights until somebody noticed and called them on it.
  • The owners of the Chicago Bears are appealing Cook County’s appraisal of their newly purchased Arlington Heights land they hope to use for a new stadium, saying valuing the land they bought for $197 million at $197 million is “excessive.” The Bears could be on the hook for an additional $15 million a year in property tax payments if the appraisal stands, so prepare for lots of high-priced tax lawyers making arguments why a dollar is not really a dollar.
  • Speaking of lobbyists, the Washington Commanders management (still Daniel Snyder as of this writing, but reportedly soon to be Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Devils owner Josh Harris) is pushing Congress, and particularly Sen. Joe Manchin, to turn over the site of RFK Stadium to Washington, D.C., so it can be used for a new stadium. Is this because D.C. is Snyder’s, or Harris’s, or even Manchin’s, preferred location for a new Commanders stadium? Who knows! Is it because having another option to play off against Virginia and Maryland is a good way to get a bidding war going? Now yer talkin’!
  • Calgary Herald columnist Rob Breakenridge confirms that the city of Calgary would own a new Flames arena and thus it would pay no property tax, so pile on even more public cost on top of the CN$837 million already reported. How much exactly is beyond my math powers this morning, but if you want to guesstimate a round billion loonies, I certainly won’t stop you.
  • How did that huge windfall of spending Kansas City was expecting from hosting the NFL Draft work out? Not great, with a local vintage clothing store saying their business dropped 50%, and a nearby cafe saying sales were down 60%. Sure is a good thing they closed the schools for that!
  • If you were wanting a good article on the history of Philadelphia’s Chinatown, how it was torn in two by a highway in the 1960s, how the highway may now finally be capped over, and why what happened to Washington, D.C.’s Chinatown after the new Wizards arena was built there has Philadelphia Chinatown residents overwhelmingly opposed to a new 76ers arena there, the Guardian has got you covered.
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Friday roundup: NFL Draft’s $5.5m subsidy, A’s play apples and oranges with stadium math, plus Canadian wood-bat vaportecture!

access_time personNeil deMause

Let’s see, what else happened this week? Massive governmental incompetence and death in India, that has nothing to do with stadiums, let’s stay focused here, people:

  • The NFL Draft was last night, and let’s not let the occasion pass without noting that this is yet another dumb mega-event that sports leagues get cities to pay for the privilege of hosting: Cleveland put up $5.5 million in public and privately raised funds to land this year’s draft. Bloomberg Tax goes on to report that this all started about a decade ago when Butch Spyridon, CEO of Nashville’s convention authority, approached NFL commissioner Roger Goodell at a party and “pointed at the [Nashville] mayor and said, ‘You should consider moving the draft. He’ll give you free police and free venues.’” Mayors and shiny objects, man.
  • San Jose Mercury News columnist Daniel Borenstein has called Oakland A’s owner John Fisher’s demand for a massive public subsidy a “massive public subsidy,” and also “egregious” and and attempt to “mooch off taxpayers.” He also notes that A’s stadium czar Dave Kaval fudged the numbers on his claims of economic benefits, comparing $855 million in up-front public infrastructure costs with $1.4 billion in projected public benefits without noting that the benefits would be stretched out over 45 years, making them worth way less than $855 million. Borenstein calls this an “inflation adjustment” when it’s actually also the discount rate, which is a slightly different thing, but either way major props for actually doing math instead of just repeating whatever was in the team press release.
  • Baltimore is seeking bids from developers to renovate its downtown arena because, let’s see, something about the Washington Capitals maybe occasionally playing games there if it were renovated? Anyway, Baltimore’s development agency is refusing to release any details of the bids because “proprietary information,” so we’ll just have to wait to see how much Baltimore taxpayers are being asked to spend for the privilege of watching live hockey a couple of times a year.
  • Depressed about the Tennessee legislature nearly unanimously approving $22 million in sales-tax kickbacks as part of a $50-million-plus subsidy for a new Tennessee Smokies stadium? Well, at least one Tennessee legislator has a line in the sand he won’t cross: state Rep. Jerry Sexton said he was voting against public funding for upgrades to the Titans‘ stadium because he’s upset that some NFL players sometimes take a knee for the national anthem as a protest against systemic racism. That’ll show ’em.
  • The Regina Red Sox are asking for $15-20 million in public funds for a $20-25 million baseball stadium, and … oh, sorry, are you not familiar with the Regina Red Sox of the Western Canadian Baseball League, a summer wood-bat league for college players that operates exclusively in Saskatchewan and Alberta? Well, their owners want a new stadium built with public money for their unpaid players to play in, because, let’s see, scroll scroll scroll, here we go, “Currie [Field]’s old infrastructure severely limits our options for food and beverage, seating, parking and our ability to attract corporate sponsors.” Also “a dump built on a dump,” according to team president Alan Simpson, now that’s the way to get fans to turn out for ballgames! Anyway, here’s a YouTube video of renderings of what they want to build:, and though it doesn’t feature any fireworks or magic basketballs (Canadians are so boring, amirite?), it does include this guy who wore sandals to the game and is drinking some kind of beverage while leaning back against thin air, so don’t knock it entirely:
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