Category: NHL

Friday roundup: On being a fan of the World Cup without being a fan of the FIFA World Cup 2026™

access_time personNeil deMause

Before we start with this week’s roundup, a note about the World Cup: I’m enjoying it! The one-game knockout format, even in its dumb expanded iteration, is great for generating drama, and when you mix in international politics and colonial history, you get even more opportunities for hilarity.

But I enjoy most sports, even the dumb ones. The issue about sports mega-events like the World Cup and the Olympics isn’t whether they should exist, but whether they should exist in their current form, as means for extracting tons of money from host cities and delivering it to corrupt oligarchs. The reports just keep coming in confirming that any claimed economic benefits of hosting the games are overwhelmed by the public costs — look, here’s another one from Atlanta about vendors trying to get their money back after being suckered into joining a city-sponsored program for World Cup-related booths that turned into what one called “a financial nightmare” — and while big public watch parties are fun, you don’t actually need to have the World Cup in your city, or in your country, to hold one. The World Cup, like pretty much all sports at this point (I may be willing to make exceptions for curling and Ultimate Frisbee), has been weaponized to transfer money from the many to the few, which is why we keep complaining about it here every week. If we have to live under toxic capitalism, the least we should get to do it the joy of pointing and laughing.

Anyway, here’s a bunch of dumb stuff that’s gone on recently that is likely to cost you money on the grounds that sports are fun, please enjoy ridiculing it:

  • Washington, D.C. is preparing to sell $975 million in personal seat licenses allowing fans to buy Commanders tickets and use the proceeds for stadium construction, which momentarily excited me until I realized it looks like the PSLs will be funding the team’s share of costs, notwithstanding the city’s involvement in doing the sales. Anyway, some quick long division determines that team officials are presumably planning to ask for an average of $15,000 per seat for the mere right to spend hundreds of dollars apiece for tickets, though it’s always possible the team will have to take a loss on the whole transaction if fans aren’t willing to pony up that much.
  • Congratulations, everyone in the United States: You now get to help pay for $25 million in road work around the new Cleveland Browns stadium in Brook Park, after that city won a grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation for “reconfigured freeway ramps and streamlined local roads [that] will lead to the stadium and the surrounding entertainment district.”
  • The city of Oakland may try to sell the Oakland Coliseum and its neighboring arena in separate deals after concerns that wavering plans for redevelopment of the stadium site are holding up the arena sale. The Coliseum is set to finally be entirely empty next year, after the announced departure of the Roots USL Championship club to, uh, somewhere, they’ll get back to you on that.
  • Two contrasting headline styles in reporting on the return of corporate stadium names after FIFA decreed them unallowable during the World Cup because they might compete with their own sponsorship contracts: “Lumen Field returns as Seattle says bye to World Cup and Seattle Stadium” vs “Praise Be: ‘Philadelphia Stadium’ Once Again Bears the Name of Our Corporate Financial Overlords.” Well played, Philadelphia sports site Crossing Broad, even if you do appear to be mostly an excuse to run lots of posts promoting sports gambling.
  • Not sure which is more on the nose for 2026, a proposal to have the Bay Area’s Cow Palace host a data center now that it’s been superseded by the Golden State Warriors‘ new arena or a related proposal to have it host a helicopter landing pad. No word yet on whether these would require public money, but given that a data center is involved, probably.
  • New Dallas Stars vaportecture renderings, though they’re mostly unspecific and from a great distance, aside from the one that appears to show fans watching a Stars playoff game on a giant video screen atop a new team store, which is maybe even more on the nose for 2026.
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Friday roundup: Portlanders balk at giving Blazers owner $600m, KC gives initial okay of $235m to expand 2-year-old soccer stadium

access_time personNeil deMause

Too damn hot! Gonna see how few words I can use today, to save electricity, y’know. That headline already caused voltage reductions across Brooklyn!

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Plano just approved how much money exactly for a new Dallas Stars arena?

access_time personNeil deMause

I didn’t make it to this week’s annual sports economics conference in Maryland that starts this morning, but a special guest blogger has offered to report back on the stadium papers presented there, so please tune back in later today for that. (UPDATE: now underway!) In the meantime, I’ve taken on the task of figuring out exactly what the Plano city council approved yesterday for a new $1 billion Dallas Stars arena development in the north Dallas suburb. Piecing it together from various news reports, mostly a useful explainer from the Dallas Morning News:

  • The council unanimously approved creating a tax increment financing district that would siphon off all new property tax revenue from the arena and surrounding development — described as “other sports and entertainment venues, retail, restaurants, residential development, public spaces and related infrastructure improvements” — for 41 years, with this TIF providing an estimated $700 million that would be used to pay off bonds for the Stars’ arena.
  • The city would own the site and the arena, while Stars owner Tom Gaglardi would lease it for terms that “are to be negotiated.” Gaglardi and partner developers Levin Holdings and Cawley Partners would co-own the rest of the development in the TIF district, with their property taxes kicked back to Gaglardi to help pay for the arena.
  • The council approved an upcoming public vote to create a “venue tax” to provide additional funding for the arena — but while that normally means a ticket tax, in this case, the Morning News reports, “the city could ask voters to consider a combination of several kinds of taxes, aimed at visitors, on things like car rentals, hotel occupancy, event parking, event admissions and facility use per game and player.” Unlike a ticket tax, which mostly ends up coming out of team owners’ pockets, much of that would money that would actually drain the public treasury.

Hockey Reddit, meanwhile, is already LOLing at the prospect of the Stars trying to better their finances by leaving downtown for a less easily accessible location for many residents, though the money from the real estate play should help defer some of those concerns. (Best comment so far: The team should be renamed “The Slightly Farther North Stars.”)

None of this is set in stone, as Gaglardi has as yet only issued a nonbinding letter of intent, plus that lease agreement needs to be negotiated and any new taxes voted on. All we can say for sure is that the city would be out at least $700 million in tax breaks — money that normally would go to paying for public services to support a new development — plus potentially hundreds of millions more in new “venue” taxes plus possibly additional tax exemptions on the city-owned arena, all of which could easily push the public cost to more than $1 billion.

In exchange, Plano would ensure the presence of the Stars for 30 years, at least assuming the eventual lease doesn’t contain an out clause allowing them to leave or demand new upgrades later, hard to say since it isn’t written yet! But here’s Stars president Brad Alberts talking about how committed his organization is to this agreement:

“There’s the wedding. We’re planning for the wedding,” he said. “That’s a good way to think about it. Can we walk away from the wedding? Sure. Are we intending to? No.”

Now that’s what you like to hear from your fiancé! We’ll likely hear more in coming months in the run-up to that arena vote, though it’s always possible we won’t find out for sure until the last minute.

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Stars owners announce move to Plano as soon as city agrees to pay $700m for new arena

access_time personNeil deMause

This has been quite a week already for Dallas sports franchises announcing arena plans without quite committing to them: On Monday, the Mavericks owners declared that they had “entered into option agreements” to maybe purchase 104 acres at the former Valley View Mall site in north Dallas to use for a new arena. (The total price hasn’t been made public, but 20 acres of it would cost $50 million. The Mavs owners are putting down about $200,000 a month to hold the option open.) The project would also — if the team owners go through with the purchase, and then build it — possibly include “a vibrant mixed-use destination anchored by a state-of-the-art arena, along with restaurants, entertainment options, public green spaces and family-friendly experiences.”

Just 24 hours later, Stars owner Tom Gaglardi announced that he, too, was absolutely thinking about the possibility of considering moving to the site of a shopping mall, maybe, this one in the eastern suburb of Plano:

Tuesday, the Stars announced that it submitted a signed, non-binding letter of intent for a proposed sports and entertainment district at The Shops at Willow Bend.

The team said that the proposed mixed-use development, being advanced jointly with Levin Holdings & Cawley Partners and Centennial, could include sports, entertainment, retail, dining and public gathering spaces “anchored by a future Dallas Stars arena.”

“This project would present a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for our franchise,” said Tom Gaglardi, the Dallas Stars’ owner, governor and chairman. “We eagerly await the vote by the Plano City Council and look forward to continuing the conversation to be part of the redevelopment of The Shops at Willow Bend.”

Neither an option agreement nor a nonbinding letter of intent — sorry, a signed nonbinding letter of intent — is a promise to do anything, of course. First, Gaglardi needs the Plano council to approve some niceties like, what exactly would those be?

According to the letter of intent, the city is expected to contribute up to $700 million in funding toward the project from TIRZ revenue and other available funds. Development costs for the arena are expected to be around $1 billion.

Ah, $700 million, a small detail! A TIRZ is Texas’ version of tax increment financing, where any rise in property taxes on a site is kicked back to pay off the bonds that built the project getting taxed, a kind of fiscal perpetual motion machine that it takes either advanced economics or the wisdom of Oscar Madison to see through as still being public money. In fact, the TIF district the city of Plano is considering would cover more than 900 acres; the city would also own the arena, while the Stars would get every lick of arena revenue. (Whether the team would pay any rent is yet to be negotiated.) The $700 million, according to an agreement the Plano council is set to vote on Monday night, only includes “public infrastructure,” while “interest on debt” is listed as TBD, making it unclear if this is $700 million worth of public bonds or $700 million in tax revenues over time plus interest or what.

(For those just tuning in for the first time: The Mavs and Stars currently both play in an arena that is just 25 years old, but which both team owners have decried as obsolete. Sports marketer Craig Sloan of Playfly Sports explained this as “it seems like the life cycle of a stadium or arena is moving towards 20 to 25 years,” which isn’t really an explanation, though economist Rod Fort’s suggestion, also from 2001, that “I don’t see anything wrong, from an owner’s perspective, with the idea of a new stadium every year” might be.)

On the Mavs side, meanwhile, the team’s casino-operator owners, who have previously expressed interest in building a combined arena and casino complex in Dallas, notwithstanding that casinos aren’t yet legal in Texas, now insist that they’re thinking of nothing of the sort:

In a statement to The Dallas Morning News on Tuesday, Welts reemphasized the absence of gaming elements from the team’s plans for a new entertainment district, including a new arena, corporate headquarters, practice facility, hotel, retail and dining.

Asked if those plans will change in the future, Welts said, “No, our plans will stay consistent with no casino component.”

Nobody is saying how much public money would go into a Mavs arena district, though the Valley View site already sits in a TIF district, which could provide a chunk of Dallas city property tax money to start things off. Assuming that all these options are actually actualized, which is just as TBD as any potential public costs. First step: Monday’s vote in Plano, then we’ll see where the remaining chips fall.

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Friday roundup: County tells Rays no stadium approval by June 1, Blazers and Wild get pushback on subsidy demands as well

access_time personNeil deMause

Welcome to any new readers who are joining us for the first time this week in the wake of all the news craziness about the Kansas City Royals and Chicago Bears stadium deals. It’s Friday, which means it’s time for a speed run through stadium and arena news items that were otherwise overlooked this week. But first, one city has seen developments in its stadium wrangle that deserve attention at a bit more length:

One of the standard ploys in the sports stadium demand playbook is what in Chapter 4 of Field of Schemes we called the “two-minute warning”: Setting a deadline, arbitrary if necessary, and using it to get elected officials scrambling to determine how to fund a new sports venue with public dollars without taking time to think about whether to do so. But playing chicken, obviously, comes with the risk that your opponent won’t blink first, and that’s what appears to be happening to Tampa Bay Rays owner Patrick Zalupski, who has been informed that Hillsborough County will not be meeting his June 1 deadline for signing off on a stadium deal that could total anywhere from $2 billion to a lot more in public costs:

That deadline, the team has said, is necessary not only for the ballpark to open in time for the 2029 Major League Baseball season, but for the deal to be feasible at all.

On Thursday, the county attorney’s office informed the team that meeting such a deadline is improbable, according to a memorandum obtained by the Tampa Bay Times.

A timeline, the memo reads, “cannot be reasonably considered” until all involved parties reach an agreement on the terms. After a preliminary agreement is reached, “it would likely take at least 60-90 days” to negotiate the deal’s development and funding obligations.

That’s perfectly reasonable, given that the county’s memorandum of understanding for the stadium still includes a lot of open questions and there is no MOU yet at all for the rest of the development that Zalupski says he wants to build atop what’s currently Hillsborough College’s Dale Mabry campus. But it also messes with Zalupski’s timetable — not just that he wants to open a new stadium by spring 2029 (probably overly optimistic anyway, given that stadiums take three years to build and he’d have to tear down part of the college campus before he could begin construction) but that he desperately wants to get the deal approved this legislative session, before his pal Ron DeSantis is term-limited out of the governor’s office at the end of 2026.

Tampa Bay Rays CEO Ken Babby has already warned the county that “we would have no choice but to evaluate alternatives” if the June 1 deadline isn’t met, but Zalupski’s options are limited there: He’s not likely to be able to negotiate and push through a stadium plan in another city (Orlando has a big sign! Greensboro exists!) by June 1, so he’s going to be left having to work out a deal without the hammer of having Florida’s governor in his corner.

One alternative would be for the Rays owner to walk back some of his demands in Tampa. Leading Rays stadium deal critic county commissioner Joshua Wostal has said he’d consider approving just $268 million in hotel tax money, saying, “Start acting like a serious bidder. The offer is out there.” Of course, $268 million is a whole hell of a lot less than the $1 billion in city and county money that Zalupski wants, but maybe he’d be happy to take his $1 billion or so in state-gifted tax-exempt land and run with it, and give up on shaking down Tampa and Hillsborough County quite so hard? The only way to find out is to ask, and kudos to Hillsborough County officials for seemingly understanding that it’s both their right and their responsibility to haggle, and not being bullied into rushing into a deal.

Anyway, sorry for the Tampa-specific digression, on to the bullet points now:

  • Also in no hurry to rubber-stamp a rushed sports venue deal: The Portland city council, whose members are balking at signing a nondisclosure agreement to engage in Trail Blazers arena funding talks or sign a letter to the NBA supporting an arena deal. “If you want the public to support using public money to remodel a stadium, then you need to make the case to them in public about why using those funds is better than some alternative,” councilmember Mitch Green wrote on Bluesky. Blazers owner and renowned cheapskate Tom Dundon has already landed $365 million in state money toward arena renovations, but it looks like the remaining $235 million in city and county money could be a slightly harder lift.
  • And in yet another pushback to a sports subsidy demand, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has said that while he personally would be fine with giving the Wild $200 million in state money for arena renovations, “it’s going to be a tough lift in a non-budget year to be able to get that done.” Okay, that sounds less like “no” and more like “come talk to us in 2027,” and given that Wild owner’s Craig Leipold’s lease doesn’t expire until 2035 he can afford to wait, but it still counts as a kind of pushback.
  • Kansas News Service has done a deeper dive into Missouri’s potential funding for a new Kansas City Royals stadium at Crown Center, and found that it could be less than advertised: Last year’s Show-Me Sports Investment Act limits state funding to whatever sales and income tax revenue a team paid in the year before a stadium deal is agreed to, and for the Royals at Kauffman Stadium in 2025 that was likely in the $15-17 million range. That would only cover around $250 million in stadium bonds, a fair bit less than the “at least $350 million” to $900 million numbers that have previously been floated. If the state coughs up less, it could bring the public stadium subsidy down to $1.3 billion — unless the city’s $600 million that has yet to be negotiated turns out to be more than $600 million counting things like a repair fund, in which case it’d be more again. It’s becoming ever clearer that this whole thing is barely penciled out, let alone inked, but headline writers gonna headline write.
  • Whenever a sports team owner or elected official points to the Atlanta Braves‘ Battery stadium district as an example of a sports development project paying for itself, I make a point of linking to Kennesaw State University economist J.C. Bradbury’s paper on how no it di’n’t. But even academics know that nobody likes to read academic papers, so Bradbury has penned an essay for The Conversation — titled “Sorry, Tampa Bay, mixed‑use districts don’t reverse the dismal economics of sports venues” — that lays out exactly what did and didn’t happen in Cobb County, Georgia: The Braves owners are bringing in an extra $97 million a year from the Battery, while the county is running a loss of about $15 million a year. If it seems crazy that this sea of red ink is being held up as the kind of success story that other cities should emulate, such is the magical power of being a sports team owner in a country where journalism has long since given up fact-checking the press releases of rich dudes.
  • The wandering Athletics just released a new promo video for premium seating at their under-construction-and-they-swear-they’ll-finish-it Las Vegas stadium, and it is a hilarious supercut of what SF Gate describes as “AI-generated scenes of AI-generated people walking through the AI-generated models of what the club sections of the park might look like.” I’m not sure whether my favorite bit is how the AI fans are all wearing what appear to be A’s jerseys with the A’s logo removed or the multiple extreme closeups of wine glasses, but I can agree with Oakland sportswriter Dan Moore’s comment that “when I close my eyes and think ‘baseball’ I literally think the exact opposite of this.” SFGate further reports that they reached out to A’s officials to ask how much if any of this represented what a Vegas A’s stadium might actually look like as opposed to just AI hallucinations, but “an A’s spokesperson initially asked for a deadline extension to respond and then later came back and declined to comment,” LOLAthletics.
  • In less encouraging modern journalism news, WKYC reports “Cavaliers‘ impending playoff run already boosting business for downtown Cleveland bars,” citing precisely one owner of a bar a block from the arena who is “expecting steady traffic throughout the day,” which isn’t the same thing as “already boosting” at all. Bar owners more than one block from the arena were presumably unavailable for comment on whether they anticipated empty barstools while everyone was off watching the Cavs.
  • Friends don’t let friends who are concerned about being constantly surveilled and possibly targeted for being associated with people on New York Knicks and Rangers owner James Dolan’s enemies list go to Madison Square Garden.
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Sabres exec says team deserves up to $400m in state cash because of “all this going on at the arena”

access_time personNeil deMause

Buffalo Sabres owner Terry Pegula, fresh off getting over a billion dollars in state and county money for a new stadium for his Bills NFL team, has already hired a lobbyist to seek public money for a $400 million renovation of the arena his hockey team plays in. And Pegula got some good omens today from the Buffalo News, which reported that all the foot traffic Sabres generate downtown is a huge boon to Buffalo, according to, oh come on, you knew it was coming:

“All this going on at the arena helps,” [Sabres head of business operations Pete] Guelli said. “The arena is the anchor for downtown, and the Sabres are the primary tenant, so those two properties have to operate at a high level and at some point, there needs to be a long-term solution.”

“Sabres exec says team deserves up to $400m in state cash because of ‘all this going on at the arena'” would have been a less sexy headline than “Downtown foot traffic from KeyBank Center a boon for Sabres in lease talks,” I guess? Google Analytics will tell me soon enough, but it does have the advantage of being true, if that still matters anymore.

Weirdly, Guelli actually makes a great case against the Sabres (and the Pegula-owned pro indoor lacrosse Bandits) being the key “anchor” to downtown, given that he notes the Buffalo arena went from hosting 140 events in 2024 to 178 in 2025, with close to 200 expected in 2026. The Sabres still only play the same 41 regular season home games a year (though a few more are added when they make the playoffs, which they should finally this year for the first time in human memory) and the Bandits nine, so the vast majority of events at the arena are taking place with or without the teams. The NHL Draft will be held there this year, and that wouldn’t happen without the Sabres, but also it’s not going to happen there more than once a decade or so regardless, so that’s small potatoes. Overall, the 30-year-old arena seems to be doing great, which undercuts the idea that it’s somehow decrepit and in desperate need of an overhaul.

There’s also the issue that most of these events draw mostly locals, so this is largely money that would be spent regardless, if not necessarily in downtown Buffalo, somewhere in Erie County or at least New York state. So at the very least it makes more sense for the city to put money into it than the state, which would only be moving spending around with no gain—

The county owns the arena building, while Buffalo owns the property it sits on. County officials would like to get out of the arena business and could do so during the new lease negotiations, which may bring the state increasingly into the fold.

Sigh. Gov. Kathy Hochul is a Buffalo native and has already shown herself to be inclined to shovel state money at Buffalo business interests — see the Bills, above. We’ll see if the state legislature feels the same way, if she even gives them a chance to discuss it this time.

None of which is to say that upgrading the arena is a bad idea, necessarily, or that its public owners — whichever level of government ends up getting stuck with the deed — shouldn’t be involved. If a renovation really would generate even more arena business, though, government should be able to negotiate a cut of that for taxpayers, whether it’s in terms of arena revenues or lease payments or what. The Sabres currently pay no rent or ticket taxes on the arena, or property taxes for that matter, so there’s lots of room for improvement in that regard. What say you on that, Mr. Sabres Head of Business Operations — whoops, he’s off already, guess we’ll have to wait and see if the Buffalo News asks him about it next time, LOL.

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“Privately funded” Bulls/Blackhawks arena development asks for $55m in tax breaks, could seek more

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s been almost two years since the owners of the Chicago Bulls and Blackhawks announced plans for a $7 billion development housing-and-concert-space-and-hotels-and-0ther-stuff project on the parking lots around the United Center arena, without exactly indicating who would be paying for it, though it’s been widely described as “privately funded.” And now we have one sliver of an answer: a $55 million property tax break.

[Chicago Mayor Brandon] Johnson introduced the estimated $54.7 million in property tax incentives to the City Council on March 18. Under Cook County’s Class 7b special assessment, the project’s property tax rate for the first phase would be 10% for the first 10 years, 15% for Year 11, then 20% for Year 12…

“Cook County incentives such as a Class 7B are standard incentives designed to encourage private investment in underserved areas, and this project is exactly that,” [an unnamed United Center] spokesperson said. “Developments across Cook County routinely pursue these types of incentives, and we’ve done so with the understanding that the development will generate significantly increased property tax revenue over time.”

Developments across Cook County indeed receive tons of property tax breaks — it’s a Chicago specialty — but that doesn’t necessarily make them a great idea. Yes, a new development will pay more in property taxes than parking lots would have, but it would also come with new costs, starting with schools for all the kids at the new housing to attend; and that’s assuming that any new development at the United Center doesn’t lead developers to build less somewhere else in the city, which is very much something that can happen. (The Chicago Tribune editorial board points out that the planned music theater could also siphon off concerts from other city venues.) As for categorizing the arena’s Near West Side environs as “underserved,” that’s possibly a bit of a reach when it’s had the second biggest increase in property values in the entire city since 2000.

That said, $55 million in tax breaks for a $7 billion project wouldn’t be the worst sports-related development deal, if that’s all that Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf and Blackhawks owner Danny Wirtz would be pocketing—

The project is also in a tax-increment financing district, which could give city officials another way to subsidize the project or the infrastructure it needs, including a new station on the CTA’s Pink Line.

Sigh. Okay, file this one under “Public cost: TBD” for now. Maybe we’ll learn more once the Chicago city council, which unanimously approved the project itself last year, takes up consideration of the tax breaks, at a time also TBD.

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Friday roundup: Bears battle drags on, Blazers subsidy heats up, 15 teams now angling for Ohio unclaimed funds cash

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s Friday! But because of other commitments, I’m writing this from Thursday evening! So if there’s any breaking Friday morning news, complain about it in comments, and we’ll get to it on Monday, which for me will probably be Sunday. You following all that? Doesn’t matter, just read your bullet points, they’re good for you:

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Wild owner asks Minnesota for $362m in renovation money, because his arena is so busy

access_time personNeil deMause

Good news, everyone! Minnesota Wild owner Craig Leipold is no longer asking for $394 million from the state of Minnesota for upgrades to his now 26-year-old arena, as he was last year at this time. Instead, he’s only asking for $200 million in state money, some unspecified share of which will go toward St. Paul’s convention center, along with $162.5 million in money from the city.

That’s not a lot better, but it is better! Unless, that is, you instead compare it to the plan that Leipold and city officials downgraded to last year when their initial demand went nowhere at the statehouse, which would have involved only $50 million in state money, something this deal would be worse than. But at least Leipold — who has a net worth of $3.6 billion, according to, and I am not making this up, Superyachtfan.com —  is promising to extend the Wild’s lease (by an unspecified number of years) in exchange for the renovation cash, though since his current lease is not set to expire until 2035 anyway, that wasn’t exactly an urgent problem.

What is an urgent problem, apparently, is that the Wild arena needs to “remain competitive — attracting top performers, cultural events, and, of course, sports,” as St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her was quoted saying in a press release issued this morning. Leipold clarified last year that this meant “competitive within our local market,” which takes at least a little chutzpah when the whole reason you have to compete with the Timberwolves‘ arena across the river is because your franchise didn’t want to share it with them and demanded its own. Leipold also proclaimed that his arena is “booked 150 nights a year with events and entertainment – more than any other venue in Minnesota,” which sounds pretty competitive in its local market, though it’s true that the T-wolves owners have been talking about upgrading their arena for years to incorporate such things as “augmented reality,” you can’t afford to let A-Rod open a Google glass gap!

The state legislature summarily ignored Leipold’s ask last year, but clearly hope springs eternal, especially with the state budget in somewhat less dire shape than it was a year ago. Mayor Her said she plans to fight hard for the state subsidies, while “above all” being “committed to being a good steward of taxpayer dollars,” who said comedy was dead?

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Friday roundup: Bears face choice which state’s $1B+ in cash to accept, Rays stadium plans face growing questions

access_time personNeil deMause

As expected, the Indiana state senate gave overwhelming (45-4) final approval to a Chicago Bears stadium subsidy package yesterday, and Gov. Mike Braun signed it into law less than an hour later. This is still a very preliminary plan — we don’t know, among other things, how big a stadium tax diversion district would be, which could go a long way toward determining if Bears owner George McCaskey would receive $400 million or $1 billion or $4 billion or what in taxpayer money. With the state government having signed off, though, that decision will now be left up to an unelected state sports authority and the city of Hammond, and neither of those is likely to have the best interests of Indiana taxpayers as a whole in mind. (Not that state legislators were necessarily thinking about that either, but at least they’re supposed to, if I’m reading the representative democracy FAQs correctly.)

At the same time, an Illinois house committee responded to events across the state border by moving forward a “megaproject” bill that Bears execs have said they require for any new stadium in Arlington Heights. The bill would allow localities to exempt any project costing over $500 million from local property taxes and instead allow it to pay a lower payment in lieu of taxes rate that developers would negotiate with the local government; for projects worth over $2 billion, like the Bears stadium, the negotiated tax rate would be allowed to be as low as zero. Property tax guru Geoff Propheter estimates the value to the Bears from this measure would be about $67 million a year, which would amount to just over $1 billion in present value. (CORRECTION: Propheter emails to say the $67 million a year was already translated into present value, so this could actually be a $2 billion tax break.)

If the bill succeeds — Chicago-area legislators are trying to block it, as they would, since there’s nothing in it for their constituents — it could also, notes Jon Styf at The Center Square, lead to data centers or battery farms demanding similar tax breaks. And because the value of those projects would count toward the local tax base without paying their usual share of local taxes, other property tax owners would end up getting soaked to cover the difference — something that should put in a slightly different light Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s comments yesterday that Indiana is setting itself up for “massive increases in taxes” while Illinois is having “really positive discussions” with the Bears.

This is going to be a difficult choice for Bears execs, given that there are lots of unknowns with both states’ offers — Illinois has also still yet to decide on how much in infrastructure money to provide to an Arlington Heights Bears project — plus the question of where the Bears owners actually think it would make more sense to play in terms of selling tickets. Fortunately for McCaskey, there’s no deadline to make a decision, so he can sit back and hope the bidding war continues to escalate. For a team owner whose options only a few months ago were a rock and a hard place, to be fielding multiple billion-dollar-plus offers is a pretty impressive an accomplishment, guess leverage really does work!

And this week in the rest of the sports extortion world:

  • Members of the Tampa Sports Authority have some questions about a proposed Rays stadium, namely how the authority will staff a stadium if Gov. Ron DeSantis goes ahead with slashing the property taxes that fund its budget, where the city of Tampa and Hillsborough County would come up with about $1 billion worth of stadium funding when the county has $1.5 billion in unmet transportation needs, and whether the planned Rays complex would include any much-needed affordable housing. Replies hazy, ask again later!
  • Meanwhile, Rays officials are planning public visioning sessions for their proposed Tampa stadium project, stock up on post-it notes!
  • The Franklin County Convention Facilities Authority has asked for $100 million in state unclaimed funds money to help pay for a $400 million Columbus Blue Jackets arena upgrade, joining the Cleveland Browns, Cleveland Guardians, Cleveland Cavaliers, and Cincinnati Bengals as teams lining up to tap that state slush fund, it’s like you can’t even put out a sign reading “FREE MONIEZ!!!” anymore without billionaires lining up to take it.
  • Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser told a local business and real estate conference, “We won a World Series, Stanley Cup, hosted an All Star game for MLB and MLS. We’re going to have the NFL Draft. And we will have the Super Bowl, so I think that qualifies as the sports capital.” The result was “a big ovation,” according to WTOP, though whether this is because business leaders don’t understand how sports works or will cheer anything that results in one of their number pocketing a $7 billion check is left as an exercise for the reader.
  • Los Angeles Angels owner Arte Moreno determined that his team’s fans don’t care about winning by issuing a survey that didn’t including “winning” among the categories fans could pick as a priority, that’s one way to justify only signing players who are clinically dead.
  • Speaking of Jon Styf, he and I had a long talk about the proposed Bears subsidies this week in which I concluded, after seeing NFL owners’ standard stadium subsidy demands climb from $1 billion to $2-6 billion in the course of just a year, “It makes me wonder why teams don’t just ask for $10 billion or $1 trillion. Clearly it’s not like there’s any point at which legislators will start saying ‘No.’” Apologies in advance for giving them ideas.
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