Calgary Flames – Field of Schemes

Friday roundup: Flames’ $1B-ish arena subsidy approved, Jaguars’ $1B-ish stadium subsidy termed something “everybody” wants, plus the world is literally on fire if anyone cares

October 6, 2023October 6, 2023 Neil deMause

Welcome to the first Friday of October, following a September that was the hottest on record, so much so that one climate scientist called it “gobsmackingly bananas.” It’s all fun and games to joke about cities building stadiums that will soon be underwater or for populations that will have to flee unlivable conditions, but it’s also super-weird sometimes to be writing about a now four-decade-long trend of erecting ever newer sports venues with ever larger construction carbon footprints, often prompted by the need for roofs and air conditioning to protect from the hostile air outside, to draw fans who are expected to fly in from out of town via the most climate-worsening mode of transportation ever invented — and especially weird to then read articles that end with a note that researchers say “overwhelmingly pointed to one action as critical: slashing the burning of fossil fuels down to zero.” That … does not seem to be happening? Is there a point at which journalism that drily reports on the cliff that humanity’s car is about to drive off of is maybe not the most responsible journalism? Discuss.

And with that, on to the latest ways in which rich dudes are plotting to make off with taxpayer money while the world burns:

A “finalized agreement” for a new Calgary Flames arena was approved yesterday, with no new details about how the financing would work. So we’ll just have to assume it’s still an $837 million public subsidy, plus of course the cost overruns, obviously the public is going to cover the cost overruns, duh. Maybe it’s best just to assume that every stadium and arena deal involves around a billion dollars in public cash, give or take? That certainly seems to be where we’re headed.
Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan gave an exclusive interview to Action Sports Jax while in London for a Jaguars home game — oh man, this sentence is already not starting out promisingly — and said “the buck stops with me” in terms of spending $1 billion on upgrading the team’s stadium, and “I think everyone wants to see this work.” Does everyone, though? NBC Sports’ Mike Florio reports that Deegan went on to say that “80 percent say [they] don’t want to spend the money, 80 percent don’t want to lose the Jags,” but actually well over 80% of those polled don’t approve of the $1 billion public expense and well under 80% are afraid of losing the Jags. “Basically, she hopes to not be the mayor who lost the Jaguars to London,” concludes Florio, but more so it appears that she hopes to be the mayor who ginned up fear of losing the Jaguars to London to cover her butt for delivering a much-hated $1 billion handout to a billionaire.
The Wisconsin legislature held a hearing yesterday on the somewhat less than a billion dollars in tax money being proposed for the Milwaukee Brewers, at which Republican state Rep. Rob Brooks defended his plan to hand out tax money on the grounds that it’s not really tax money because some of it would come from the income taxes paid by players who are currently paying it now into the state treasury. Meanwhile, a Milwaukee community advocate complained way down in the 17th paragraph that it was an “insult and degrading” to ask Milwaukee residents to pay $200 million toward a stadium most of them never visit, and also that it was disrespectful to make them wait hours to speak while team officials and members of the legislature got all the early speaking slots; whether other people testified along the same lines, who knows, journalists gotta get back to their desks to bang out copy, they can’t be hanging around hearing rooms all day long.
Golden State Warriors owner Joe Lacob says he “might be interested” in buying the Oakland A’s if John Fisher gives up on moving them to Las Vegas and sells them, which is pretty lukewarm but still likely to boost the spirits of the “SELL” crowd. It also raises the question of whether MLB can legitimately approve the A’s move when there’s a local buyer interested in keeping the team in town, though hahaha MLB can make up whatever rules it wants, it’s not like a court would hold the league financially liable for disobeying its own rules to allow a team to move … hmm.
Whoa, the Tampa Bay Times actually ran an article expressing some criticism of the proposed Rays stadium! Admittedly, they still got it wrong — adding up future interest costs as if they’re part of present costs is bad financial logic, just like you wouldn’t calculate the price of your new house by adding up all your future mortgage payments over the next 30 years — but hidden costs could yet end up pushing the deal’s public cost over $1 billion anyway, so I’ll be generous and give the Times credit for being half-right.
The TB Times also ran a 2,200-word article this week about the company building out the Rays’ surrounding development that quoted no one except the developers and their current or former business partners, so at least some things about the world are still predictable.
Some people who live near the former site of RFK Stadium want a new NFL stadium to bring the Washington Commanders back, and some want them to stay the hell away. The answer clearly must be somewhere in the middle, sure as the sky is green.
Kansas City voters could be forced to vote twice on an extension of a sales tax hike to fund Royals and Chiefs stadiums, because reasons. How would that work, exactly, if it’d be the same sales tax hike? Article too short, ask again later.
One of the plaintiffs suing to block a proposed referendum to overturn the Las Vegas A’s stadium deal is also a lobbyist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which failed to disclose that in its reporting on the lawsuit. Whoopsie!
The city of St. Louis ended up spending $19.6 million on a Rams stadium that was never built, and it may have been the least costly part of the whole St. Louis Rams experiment.
The Philadelphia 76ers‘ proposed Chinatown arena faces an “uncertain future” amid opposition from local residents, according to WHYY, and while this falls squarely into the “one thing’s for sure — no one knows” school of reporting, the local opposition part certainly checks out.

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Friday roundup: Panthers owner seeks $1.2B renovation, Nevada could limit A’s subsidy debate to four days

May 5, 2023 Neil 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: Calgary to pay bulk of Flames arena overruns, and why stadium subsidies are a “high school lunch table thing”

April 28, 2023 Neil deMause

Just a week with the largest stadium subsidy ever getting final approval, immediately followed by the largest arena subsidy ever getting initial approval. And the week, being an insensate unit of measure with no sense of mercy, wasn’t done with us yet:

Not all of the details of the proposed $837 million Calgary Flames arena subsidy deal are being kept a state secret, it turns out: The Globe and Mail reports that city taxpayers will also be on the hook for the bulk of any cost overruns. A city spokesperson said that the Flames owners and the city will share cost overruns, but only for the arena itself, a practice rink, and a parking garage; overruns on transit and infrastructure will be entirely on the public. Further details of how overruns will be covered will be “considered part of the next phase of work,” said Calgary spokesperson Ryan Murray, adding that the city has yet to “nail down the formal agreements that will set the fulsome course” for the project — he probably meant definition 1c of “fulsome,” but some of the other ones are even more appropriate.
Plans for an A’s stadium in Las Vegas may still have at least $500 million in funding holes, but that hasn’t stopped Google Maps from labeling the proposed site “Future Home of the Las Vegas Athletics MLB baseball team.” Feel free to propose a correction.
And speaking of the A’s, here’s a long interview with economist J.C. Bradbury about whether it makes any sense for Vegas to devote a huge pile of money to a baseball stadium. If you’ve read previous interviews with Bradbury, you probably already know the answer, but it’s still a good read, especially if you want to understand my near-certain future references to “high school lunch table thing” and “fiscal illusion,” which are excellent concepts that deserve broader play. (As is this Bradbury tweet from yesterday, he’s on a roll this week.)
And speaking even more of the A’s, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred says if that team moves to a new stadium in Vegas and the Tampa Bay Rays get a new stadium in their current home, it’ll be time to start thinking about adding expansion teams, and Nashville could get one if it plays its cards right. Manfred didn’t say what cards those are, despite the clickbait headline “Rob Manfred reveals what it will take for Nashville to get Major League Baseball team,” but it’s certainly reasonable to expect that one of them rhymes with “schmadium schmubsidies.”
WHYY-TV wonders whether a new Philadelphia 76ers arena could “jumpstart” development in the city’s Market East neighborhood, but given that it notes that commercial vacancy rates there are currently “on par” with the rest of the downtown area, maybe it’s asking the wrong question? And hey, what about all the tax breaks the project would potentially be eligible for, are we ever going to get more reporting about that? No? Cool, cool.
Arizona Coyotes execs are “worried” that they’ll lose their Tempe arena vote and have to move as soon as next season, according to Twitter, and Twitter wouldn’t lie to you!
I swear I read this headline and initially assumed that Rising Mississippi must be the name of a USL soccer franchise, can you blame me? This is a clear sign that I need to step away from Google News for a bit — have a good weekend, and see you all back here on Monday.

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Calgary officials to keep Flames arena details secret until after election, this is fine and normal

April 27, 2023April 27, 2023 Neil deMause

More news following Tuesday’s surprise announcement that the city of Calgary and province of Alberta plan to spend $837 million in public money on a new arena for the Flames, just over a year after saying anything over $300 million was too pricey:

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says she hopes the arena doesn’t become a campaign issue in May 29’s provincial elections, and she and city officials have apparently found a way to accomplish this: According to opposition leader Rachel Notley, “When we asked for more detail [and] if we could get a copy of the agreement, we were told no. All parties have agreed that agreement must remain confidential for six to eight weeks.” (Smith’s office denied that there are any secret agreements, saying all financial details are on the city’s website; all I could find was this report to the city council, which includes a reference to several attachments of “restricted executive summaries of the key deal terms,” none of which are actually attached.) Not sure how exactly that works out in metric weeks, but it certainly means that Smith gets to have the campaign boost of announcing a new arena for the Flames without having to say how precisely the project finances will work — who will get arena revenues? naming rights money? will the Flames pay property taxes? how binding will the team’s lease be? — until after the vote.
A city councillor in Edmonton is griping that they didn’t get any provincial funding for their team’s hockey arena, and suggesting that maybe the province could kick in some money to build additional development near the Oilers arena. Smith’s response: “We’re prepared to have a conversation as well if there’s additional work that we need to do in Edmonton so that both of our downtowns in Calgary and Edmonton can grow together.”
“Calgary tackles housing crisis by spending $867 million on new home for the Flames,” reports The Beaverton, concluding: “At press time, most politicians in Alberta were falling over themselves to agree with the arena deal because hockey good.” A+, no notes!

Seems like there’s still a chance that the Flames arena funding will become an issue in the provincial elections, and that Notley’s opposition New Democratic Party, if elected, could throw a wrench into things. Or, you know, not, since then they wouldn’t have an election coming up, and also hockey good. Guys, I think we may have found some bugs in representative democracy, we might want to pull it from distribution until we can issue a patched version.

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Calgary, Alberta agree to spend $837m on Flames arena just 16 months after saying $300m was their limit

April 26, 2023 Neil deMause

Well, that came pretty much out of nowhere:

City officials say they’ve reached a deal in principle to replace Calgary’s aging Saddledome…

The costs, as announced Tuesday, total more than $1.2 billion.

That’s significantly higher than the previous arena estimate, which had increased to $634 million when CSEC, owner of the Flames, withdrew. That deal involved more than $300 million in public money. Talks restarted late last year.

First of all: The CBC said “aging,” everybody drink! Second of all: The reporting is otherwise accurate that since the Flames owners withdrew from their previous arena deal in late 2021, not only has the total cost of the project somehow grown from $550 million to $1.2 billion (the arena itself is now budgeted at $800 million, with the rest for such sundries as a parking garage and the ever-popular “other costs“), but the public’s share has gone from $300 million to $837 million, $537 million of it from the city and $300 million from the province. I’m not 100% sure that this would be the most expensive hockey subsidy of all time — Judith Grant Long, please update your spreadsheets — but I can’t think of one larger. And it certainly seems to be a sign that Flames execs knew what they were doing when they bailed on the previous plan because they didn’t want to pay $10 million in cost overruns.

This deal is still far from final: Though the Calgary city council reportedly approved the deal in a unanimous vote yesterday — public hearings, schmublic hearings — nobody knows yet where the provincial money would come from, and there’s a provincial election coming up at the end of May that could change who’s in power. All the same, the Calgary arena situation went from “Public won’t put in more than $300 million, Flames owner says ‘then screw it'” to “Here’s a check for $837 million, don’t spend it all at once” in a relative eyeblink.

More once the dust settles, I’m sure, but this is a major raising of the bar for indoor sports arena subsidies, coming the same day Nashville already raised the bar on outdoor sports arena subsidies, in a city that was once known for holding the line on sports subsidies. It’s a good day to be a sports billionaire, no matter what sport, and no matter what country.

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Alberta premier declares Flames arena a “critical” priority, offers provincial money on top of city’s $300m

October 27, 2022 Neil deMause

Plans for a new Calgary Flames arena, which was set to be built with roughly $300 million in city subsidies until the Flames owners abruptly backed out last December over being asked to pay $10 million in cost overruns, got a major boost on Tuesday when Alberta premier Danielle Smith abruptly offered to “assist the city and [Flames] in achieving a successful outcome” by sending in a provincial legislator as her “personal representative” and offering to send provincial funds as well:

As a former Olympic host city, Calgarians are passionate supporters of both professional and amateur sport…

Calgarians are a former Olympic host city? Shouldn’t that be “As residents of a former Olympic host city”? Alberta needs copy editors! But I digress.

Simply stated, Calgary needs a new world class event centre and arena, and the time to commence with this project is now.

Given the critical cultural and economic import of this project to Calgary and the Province, I would like to identify potential ways that our Government can assist the City and CSEC in achieving a successful outcome for this initiative.”

To that end, Smith appointed provincial legislator Ric McIver to be her point person on making sure an arena gets built. And in his first press conference as Flames arena czar, McIver immediately made clear that the “ways” the province can assist the project would include stacks of loonies:

“Mayor Gondek wouldn’t be much of a mayor if she didn’t ask for money from the province,” McIver said.

“I think everyone will get something out of it. If the negotiations … are successful, all of Alberta will. I think it’s a very important part of the business climate here in Calgary. If we’re going to fill up those towers downtown with workers, I think having professional sports teams is a really important element of that. It’s economic development, it’s culture.”

(McIver did not apparently elaborate on how moving the local hockey team from one arena to another will get more people working downtown, or if he did the Calgary Herald didn’t say.)

This is good news if you’re getting-things-done-ist, and probably bad news if you’re a don’t-keep-shoveling-good-public-money-on-top-of-bad-ist. Neither Smith nor McIver specified how much provincial money would be on the table, but by effectively waving around a blank check, they certainly opened the door to Alberta taxpayers covering the Flames’ $10 million funding gap, if not more. But hey, who can put a price tag on culture?

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Friday roundup: The only thing crumbling faster than the Saddledome roof is American journalism

September 16, 2022 Neil deMause

And so we come to the end of another week, one where I’ve been reading a lot about bears and consensual cannibalism. (But not among the bears. Bears are above considering such things, presumably.) But anyway, you want to hear about more pleasant things, like, uhhh, the terrible state of journalism in 2022? Maybe I should consider adding some more bears to these posts.

Bits of concrete are falling from the Saddledome roof, but that happens to concrete and isn’t a structural issue, so the Calgary Flames arena is “currently safe and structurally sound,” according to city general manager of infrastructure services Michael Thompson. Any concrete-repair costs would be definitely worth factoring into currently ongoing discussions over building a new Flames arena after the previous plan was halted when neither the city nor the team owners wanted to pay for rising cost overruns, but it’s far more likely it’ll just be the subject of lots of tweets saying “The old arena is literally falling apart, build a new one already!” if history is any guide.
St. Louis’s new mostly-but-by-no-means-entirely-privately-funded soccer stadium was supposed to open this upcoming weekend with a minor-league St. Louis SC City2 game, but instead will not because a city work crew outside the stadium accidentally knocked out power. It’s hard to tell what’s going on, really, because the city won’t talk about it, but a member of the St. Louligans supporters’ group declared the whole situation to be “a huge bummer,” which is hard to dispute.
Not saying op-ed sections in newspapers are an inherently bad idea that should be entirely rethought, but when the Philadelphia Inquirer ends up running a long opinion piece by the would-be developers of a new Sixers arena that asserts that the arena “will be privately funded and not require public subsidy” (spoiler: this isn’t true) and links that phrase to an Inquirer profile of the developers that actually says nothing of the sort, maybe op-ed editors should at least be doing as aggressive fact-checking of rich people’s opinion pieces as they do for normal people.
I throw plenty of shade on Axios here for being an attempt to reduce all human communication to a set of over-boiled-down bullet points, but this Axios listicle about Richmond’s new stadium for the Flying Squirrels minor-league baseball team that includes the city’s claims of huge tax windfalls without even mentioning once how much the city would spend on the project provides a lovely case study of journalistic badness. And that’s without even getting into the fact that nobody is asking why Richmond’s stadium renderings include a lower deck that appears to slope down away from the field, though given how the Flying Squirrels are doing this year, maybe the city thinks it’d be easier to sell tickets to watch the backs of other fans’ heads than whatever is passing for baseball.
Though then we have the Indianapolis Star writing an article about a new arena for the Indy Fuel minor-league hockey team that doesn’t mention how much the arena will cost or how much the public will be expected to kick in for it, so maybe it’s just that most journalism has descended to the level of reprinting press releases. (Or maybe Gannett has just laid off anyone with the time or skills to do anything more than that.)
Missing all those posts here from the spring about all the public money being wasted on a new Buffalo Bills stadium? Instead enjoy this report (from the Investigative Post, one of the few news outlets to do real reporting on the Bills stadium funding) on how nearby Niagara County is funneling $124 million in tax breaks to Amazon for a new warehouse with jobs paying barely over minimum wage. (Amazon will also get state tax kickbacks, because that’s how Gov. Kathy Hochul rolls.) But at least they’re stable jobs, what with the boom in online ordering meaning Amazon will continue to need more and more warehouses forever … sorry, say what now? Oh. Well, hopefully at least the Amazon workers will get some state-of-the-art cupholders.

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Gary Bettman can’t stop demanding new NHL arenas, he’s out of control, run for your lives

May 5, 2022May 5, 2022 Neil deMause

The job of a North American sports league commissioner is first and foremost to help the league’s owners make moar money, mostly by rattling whatever sabers he has handy, and NHL commish Gary Bettman knows this chapter and verse. So with Calgary Flames owner Murray Edwards still looking for a lucrative arena deal after backing out of their old one — oh, did you forget that Edwards still wanted a new arena just because he hasn’t mentioned it lately, you silly person! — Bettman stepped in Tuesday and fired the threat cannons:

“If we’re going to hold any league events here, there needs to be a new building,” he said.

“I don’t think that comes as a surprise to anybody.”

Perhaps it would come as more of a surprise if Bettman indicated what he meant by “league events”? Is that, like, the All-Star Game? Or … are there any other events the NHL holds other than the All-Star Game and regular league games? It’s not like the Stanley Cup is held at a neutral site, so they can’t withhold that like the Super Bowl. What the crap, man? (Here’s a Global News video of Bettman saying the above. “Ressurected” is, uh, a Canadian spelling?)

Bettman went on to say:

“I think it’s a priority for the City of Calgary, I think it’s a priority for the Flames, I think it’s a priority for the people that live in Calgary and want concerts and family shows in addition to NHL hockey.”

Does the NHL produce concerts now? I am so confused. Here’s another article, maybe this shines more light on it:

The Hurricanes’ PNC Arena is “no longer up to modern NHL standards, nor is the area around it,” according to Luke DeCock of the Raleigh NEWS & OBSERVER. Bettman said, “We like being here and I know [Hurricanes Owner] Tom [Dundon] likes being here and wants to be here. But obviously there’s work to be done to make sure that the team and the community have something that is today’s standards.”

Wait — that’s not even about the Flames, though it’s from the same day! It’s about the Carolina Hurricanes, whose owner Tom Dundon just got $81 million in exchange for extending his lease by five years until 2029, though he also has an out clause where he can leave early by paying way less than $81 million, and anyway Dundon wants the area around the arena to become a “hub of a new commercial district with offices and residences and restaurants and a sports book and an outdoor concert venue and space laser cannons” and okay I made one of those up but anyway 2029 is right around the corner, get Bettman on the case! The commissioner must have some time after his 3 o’clock press call shaking down Calgary to shake down Raleigh, right? Look, just put in on his calendar, I’m sure he’ll come up with something to say off the cuff, he’s been doing this for long enough. Thanks, we’ll send him a nice gift basket for his trouble.

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Friday roundup: David Beckham still cursed, Calgary arena plans still undead, but baseball has giant bases now, don’t say nothing ever changes

March 11, 2022 Neil deMause

So, the baseball lockout is over. A bunch of things changed (universal DH, two extra playoff teams, bigger bases and, apparently, thumbs), but most of the basic economics of the game like revenue-sharing didn’t, so there’s probably no major impact on stadium subsidy incentives. If I notice any exceptions, you’ll be the first to know.

Meanwhile, back in the same old, same old:

A vote of the Miami City Commission on Inter Miami’s stadium plan at Melreese golf course has been delayed for the third time in a month, ostensibly because of issues with placing a public notice in the newspaper, but more likely because it doesn’t have the needed four out of five votes. As a reminder, the Inter Miami soccer stadium plan wouldn’t require any public money but would require selling public parkland, and also is cursed, probably because David Beckham once opened a mummy’s tomb or something.
The Calgary city council responded to the rising cost overruns that caused the Flames owners to walk away from their arena subsidy deal by appointing a committee to try to find a third party to try to find a fourth party to come up with the missing money, in exchange for the people’s ovation and fame forever, or something. “I think it is not if the event centre gets built, it is when the event centre gets built,” said councillor Sonya Sharp, which has a famous last words feel about it, yes, but also it seems like the Calgary council is determined to find a way to give the Flames $300 million, so we may be here a while.
Oh, here’s some relevant baseball lockout news, sort of: It’s been reported that the Tampa Bay Rays, famed payroll cheapskates (and successful at winning in spite of it), made a contract offer to top free agent Freddie Freeman before the lockout began. Is this a sign that the Rays aren’t in as dire financial shape as team owner Stuart Sternberg insists? That Sternberg figures a marquee player will help their campaign to get massive stadium subsidies from Tampa or St. Petersburg? Or, given that the report is from never-met-an-owner-he-didn’t-like baseball reporter Jon Heyman, that Sternberg figures it’ll help their stadium campaign for people to think he was thinking of signing Freeman, whether he was or not? Now that the lockout is over and spring training about to start, Freeman could sign somewhere any minute now, so we’ll see how real that rumor was, maybe.
Buffalo’s Investigative Post has sued Erie County to get hold of that engineering study of the Bills‘ current stadium that shows how much it would actually cost to maintain it instead of building a $1.4 billion new one, and which the county refuses to make public because “safety” something something. Odds that the study is made public before the state legislature has to vote on a stadium funding bill later this month: pretty much zero, but if nothing else we may have some fodder for I-told-you-sos.
Jacksonville Jaguars president Mark Lamping says he’ll be watching the Bills talks carefully, as his team is seeking renovation money for its 26-year-old stadium: “It’ll be very interesting to see what happens with the Bills’ stadium. Certainly, when you think of Buffalo and Jacksonville, the comparisons are valid in terms of the emotional ties the NFL franchises have to their city and region.” Anchoring!
Rock Hill, South Carolina’s plan to sell $225 million in bonds to fund a practice facility for the Carolina Panthers has apparently hit a snag — can’t imagine why, given that the start of this sentence isn’t completely insane at all — and York County may have to step in to borrow the money instead. I wonder what I said back when this was first announced two years ago, let’s see: “it’s tough to come up with new ways to laugh to keep from crying.” Yep, still valid!

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Friday roundup: VA proposes spending a damn billion dollars on Commanders stadium, all other news pales in comparison

February 11, 2022February 12, 2022 Neil deMause

That Virginia bill to create a football authority to build a Washington Commanders stadium isn’t just authorizing legislation, it turns out — last night it also got financing details during a senate committee hearing, and the numbers are jaw-dropping: $1 billion in state money toward a $3 billion stadium, to be paid off from “a projected $3 billion dollars in tax revenue from the new stadium” over 30 years.

The first question to ask, obviously: Would this be actual new tax revenue, or money kicked back from existing taxes in a stadium district (a TIF), or what? WUSA-TV, which appears to be the only news outlet that was paying attention to last night’s state senate finance and appropriations committee hearing, cited bill sponsor Sen. Richard Saslaw (D-Fairfax) as promising that borrowing $1 billion for a stadium “does not create a penny of debt.” (Yup, he said that.) WUSA also cited George Mason University business professor and former Commanders exec George Perry as saying this “doesn’t appear” to be taxpayer funding, though in an accompanying video Perry also warned that a football stadium open only a handful of days a year shouldn’t necessarily be expected to spark a ton of surrounding development, so who the hell knows, man.

The bill’s financing plan doesn’t look to have been posted to the senate committee’s website yet, despite a promise there that “presentation materials are posted to our Web page at the beginning of each meeting,” so this one news report is really all we have to go on so far. Further updates on Monday, I hope; in the meantime, settle in from the sticker shock over maybe the biggest NFL stadium subsidy proposal in history with some other news from the week that was:

The Arizona Board of Regents approved the plan for the Arizona Coyotes to rent Arizona State University’s 5,000-seat arena for the next three seasons, though the team will have to start the 2022-23 season on an extended road trip since the arena won’t be open until December. Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo will have to spend $20 million to build a new outbuilding with separate locker rooms for the NHL team, and will pay an undisclosed rent on the arena.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said “the bottom line on it is we have to get a new [Bills] stadium in Buffalo,” and MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said there’s a “sense of urgency” for a new Tampa Bay Rays stadium because not having one “hampers the ability of the business to operate,” and NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said “the sooner people figure out how to get a new [Calgary Flames] arena, the better it’ll be,” everybody drink!
Check out what $50 million in renovations (half paid for by public tax dollars) to the Carolina Panthers‘ stadium to accommodate the new Charlotte F.C. MLS team buys you: If you had “new locker room with a giant team logo on the ceiling and a special room just for the soccer players to store their stinky cleats in,” you’re a winner!
The Baltimore Sun editorial board is fine with spending $1.2 billion on Baltimore Ravens and Orioles stadium upgrades because spending state lottery revenue is “not a taxpayer bailout” (yup, they said that), but wants the state legislature to get more details on what exactly the renovations would look like and cost before cutting a check. Yay, bare minimum of democracy!
Lexington, Kentucky, already home to the indie-minors Atlantic League baseball team the Lexington Legends, is going to get a second team in the same league that will play in the same stadium while the Legends are on the road, and it will be called the Kentucky Wild Health Genomes after a local genomics-based medical clinic. I have lots of questions and I’m sure you do, too, but suffice to say that putting your corporate name in the actual team name and not just the stadium name (the genome people are doing that as well) will make it an awful lot harder for those of us who don’t bother using corporate-branded stadium names to not mention their company. Though I suppose we could always say “Lexington Atlantic League Baseball Team” — no, wait, that’s not specific enough, pretty sneaky, sis!
If you would like a “Pay For Your Own Damn Stadium” sticker, the Center for Economic Accountability has got you covered. If you would rather have a billion dollars in cash, please buy an NFL team and then contact your local state legislature.

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