Category: Columbus Blue Jackets

Columbus council approves first $100m in public money for Blue Jackets, $150m still to go

access_time personNeil deMause

The Columbus city council on Monday unanimously approved raising ticket taxes at the Blue Jackets‘ arena from 5% to 7%, while also increasing the share of the city’s casino tax that goes towards arena upgrades from 32% to 50%. As discussed last week, this is the first installment of a proposed $250 million in public subsidies for the once-privately-owned-before-a-govenment-bailout arena, with the rest to come from the state of Ohio’s unclaimed private accounts slush fund plus $50 million in ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

The ticket tax hike, as we’ve also discussed here before, is arguably the most defensible use of tax money for a private sports venue, because most of it ultimately comes out of the hide of whoever’s selling the tickets, which is largely here the Blue Jackets. (The short explanation: Teams are going to charge whatever the market will bear for tickets, and fans make that decision regardless of how much of the price is for a ticket tax, so team owners end up eating a significant chunk of the tax.) Diverting casino revenues, on the other hand, is just a straight-up handout: This is money that currently goes into the city’s operating fund, to the tune of about $2.34 million a year for the 18% slice that’s being given up. Over the course of a 30-year bond, which is how long the diversion is expected to last, that comes to about $35 million worth of future payments that will be going into the Blue Jackets owners’ pocket instead of used on public services.

Columbus Convention Authority executive director Ken Paul praised the council vote, saying “this doesn’t pit this decision against other funding priorities or other needs in our community” (it absolutely does) and “ultimately, those who benefit the most from Nationwide Arena will be paying for these improvements” (Casino Night Fallacy, everybody drink!). Councilmember Melissa Green was less enthused, noting that homeless services are being cut in a tight budget year and this is maybe not the best time to be instead siphoning off tax money for a hockey arena. (She voted for it anyway, but enthused she was not.)

The bigger subsidy, meanwhile, is still to come from that additional $150 million that the Blue Jackets’ billionaire owner John McConnell is seeking, most of it from the state’s unclaimed private funds pool that the Cleveland Browns owners have already tapped. With Ohioans racing to file claims for their uncashed checks and the like at quadruple the previous rate now that the Browns deal tipped them off that the state was sitting on their money, will there still be enough money to fund all the sports venues that teams want? Will the state of Ohio bother to check before signing the money over? Will the lawsuits against the state using this money prevail, even after a judge declined to issue an initial injunction? Lots to still be determined, but McConnell has his first taxpayer check, anyway, step by step the longest march.

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Who would pay for Blue Jackets’ billionaire owner’s $250m arena subsidy: a FAQ

access_time personNeil deMause

Not sure if this is a sign of how few readers here care about the Columbus Blue Jackets, but when I wrote on Friday that the team owners are “receiving $200 million in state money plus $25 million each from the city and county,” nobody pointed out that this is still just proposed by the Franklin County Convention Facilities Authority, not yet approved by city, county, and state legislators. Apologies for the misconstrual, but now that we’re here, let’s take a closer look at what exactly Ohio taxpayers are being asked to spend on the Blue Jackets. Want to do it in FAQ format? Sure, that could be fun:

What are the Columbus Blue Jackets?

Wow, really starting with the basics, huh? Okay: The Columbus Blue Jackets are an NHL team that plays in an arena in Columbus, Ohio. It was built with private money in 2000 — not team money directly, mind you, but money from Nationwide Insurance and the Columbus Dispatch, repaid by the team in rent — and widely seen as a successful example of a sports venue that didn’t require public funding. Until, that is, the team owners negotiated a bailout in 2011 where public money was used to exempt the team from the whole “having to pay rent” thing, so now it’s just another publicly owned facility where the team owners keep all the revenues.

Who is the team owner?

John P. McConnell, a billionaire who worked his way up from a laborer at a steel plant to chairman of the company, with nothing to help him except his dad owning the place.

Why are they asking for arena money now?

Nationwide Arena is 25 years old, and its locker rooms aren’t glamorous enough anymore. Also team execs want to create “new spaces for fans to gather and enjoy their company” and “wide-ranging improvements that ultimately focus on improving the experience” and “improving and securing the future of the building.” In other words, wine bars, probably.

How much tax money are we talking about, and where would it come from?

“Where would it come from?” is always a dangerous question with tax money, because ultimately it always comes from taxpayers: Even if it’s only a tax on fellows behind the tree, that’s still money that could have been used for services to benefit everyone, or even just to cut other taxes on other residents. But here’s what we know so far:

  • $100 million from that state slush fund of money from unclaimed funds like uncashed checks and inactive bank accounts that the state was just sitting on for private individuals, and decided to dedicate to local sports team owners instead. Yes, there is a lawsuit pending against this, but that isn’t stopping the state from handing out the money anyway; if the lawsuit is successful, presumably the state will have to find another source for this spending, but why worry about things that may never happen, right?
  • $100 million in “public bonds” issued by the stadium authority and paid off by increasing the amount of city and county casino tax revenue siphoned off to the authority, from 32% to 50%, as well as increasing the arena admission tax from 5% to 7%. A spokesperson for the Columbus Department of Development called this “dedicated revenue streams that have long supported the arena and do not impact the city’s General Fund,” which is funny way of describing casino taxes that are currently going to the city and county general funds.
  • $25 million each from the city of Columbus and Franklin County, which would raise the funds by, uh, hmm. Any decision about the city’s direct funding, Bankston said, won’t be determined until 2026. Columbus councilmember Nick Bankston said he thinks the city can pay its share through an existing tax increment financing district for the arena, but he also called redirecting casino taxes “user-based fees” because they’re paid by casino patrons, so maybe we shouldn’t be taking his word for anything involving how money works.

Who has to approve this $250 million subsidy?

Everybody! The Columbus city council will discuss the proposed casino tax diversion and admissions tax increase at its next meeting today, though it may run out of time for a vote before it adjourns for the holidays next Monday. The county is expected to first take up the casino tax at its January 13 meeting. The state legislature hasn’t put its $100 million on the agenda yet, and may not have to, since it already allocated $1 billion to its sports stadium slush fund and has only used $600 million of it on the Cleveland Browns so far.

So this is going to take much of 2026 to decide?

Yeah, probably. Early reports don’t show a ton of opposition, with elected officials largely arguing that the public money isn’t really public money, though Franklin County Administrator Kenneth Wilson did hedge a bit by saying that “there are many large funding requests on the table” and the county has to consider them all. Wilson also touted all the economic benefits that come from the arena, however, benefits that if the Blue Jackets played in an arena with more glamorous locker rooms would increase by, uh, hmm. There are maybe still some questions to be answered about this proposal, maybe it’ll be good if lawmakers take much of 2026 to answer them.

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Friday roundup: Everybody needs a soccer stadium for a pillow

access_time personNeil deMause

Soccer! All the kids today are digging it! It’s the future! And also the past! Your city is nothing without a genuine, bona-fide, electrified, 10,000-seat soccer stadium, which is why Mesa is creating a “theme park district” to kick tax money back to a soccer stadium district that nobody wanted to give to the Arizona Coyotes but this is soccer, and Oklahoma City is spending $121 million on one so that Oklahomans can raise their fists to support of not nearly enough players spread out over way too much of the pitch, and MLS commissioner Don Garber says Vancouver had better give the Whitecaps a “better lease” or it’ll be “untenable” if you know what he means, and the co-chair of the Congressional Soccer Caucus — of course there’s a Congressional Soccer Caucus, get with the times, bruh — wants to allocate $50 million in federal tax money for cities to use for transit programs during big events like the (soccer) World Cup and the Olympics (one event: soccer)! Soccer!

There are only a limited number of soccer teams, though (a number that is thought to exceed the number of Planck volumes in the observable universe), so some cities still must, sadly, spend public money on pro teams in other sports instead. Not that elected officials are sad, they seem downright psyched:

  • The Columbus Blue Jackets have gone from thinking about maybe asking for public arena renovation money from the state now that the Browns and Bengals are getting it to receiving $200 million in state money plus $25 million each from the city and county, all in the course of less than five months. “I think this is an incredibly important community asset, and we have an opportunity to advance this …. and ensure the future of the facility for the next 30 years,” arena authority director Ken Paul said; if you think the Blue Jackets owners are going to wait 30 years for their next grab at the brass subsidy ring, you can place your prop bet at the arena’s gambling kiosks.
  • Cleveland Browns fans are not psyched about having to pay personal seat license fees for tickets at the new Browns stadium. Many say they’ll give up their season tickets before paying for PSLs, and yeah, that’s what Bills fans said too, and now the Bills PSLs have almost sold out, though to be fair things may be different once Browns fans realize that buying Browns tickets obligates them to actually watch Browns games.
  • YouTube channel entrepreneur (?) Ashkan Karbasfrooshan says he has a plan for bringing the Expos back to Montreal, and “money is not the constraint.” Rather, doing so “requires capital, political alignment, real estate vision, a winning outlook, patience, and a lot of humility.” Note to Karbasfrooshan: “Capital” is another word for “money.” (You can look up “humility” while you have your dictionary open.) Rob Manfred did say recently that he might like a second Canadian team, but reportedly he meant Vancouver and not Montreal, if baseball is even going to expand at all, maybe Karbasfrooshan meant that money is not the only constraint, that tracks.
  • The Philadelphia 76ers and Flyers owners are still planning on building a new arena … maybe? They’re not saying anything publicly about any moves to get legislative approval, what on earth could they be waiting fo — “[Governor’s office spokesperson Kayla Anderson] didn’t address questions regarding the state’s role in the project and whether incentives or tax breaks will be involved,” oh I see, never mind then.
  • The Tampa Bay Rays‘ Tropicana Field is starting to look more like itself again, which is, to be clear, to be taken as a good thing. The brown and white alternating roof panels are expected to be all bleached white by the sun by opening day, at least, so it will still look like the dome that Rays fans have come to know and, I’m going to go with “love.”
  • No disrespect to sports barons, but they still can’t hold a candle to Amazon when it comes to wielding monopoly power to get rich at someone else’s expense. This week: Forcing school systems to use dynamic pricing solely so Amazon can charge the public more for supplies, presumably only because the infinity gauntlet is no longer available.
  • The Athletics of Nowhere In Particular have opened a new Las Vegas “interactive space” (read: room) where fans can view a scale model of their planned stadium, plus also enter an “Immersive Cube” (read: room with lots of video screens on the walls) where they can view what it will look like from the inside, if it’s ever finished, and it will be, team execs swear. Early reviews on social media from fans who probably didn’t get personally immersed are that the design is “garbage” and an “abomination” and “the f*** is this ugly thing?” Me, I’m wondering how the A’s architects managed such a distant upper deck at a stadium with only 33,000 seats, plus whether at the real stadium everyone who enters will have to remove their shoes like in the simulation.
  • Sad, soft caves for indoor sportsmen, check.
  • Ex-AEG/Oak View Group stadium developer Tim Leiweke won’t be going to jail for bid rigging after all — no, not because he’s necessarily not guilty, the other reason this happens these days.
  • New York Mets owner Steve Cohen is getting his stadium-side casino, saw that coming.
  • The 2026 Winter Olympics hockey arena in Milan is running behind schedule and has the wrong rink dimensions for international standards. Defector doesn’t report whether this will lead to it going over budget, but c’mon, you know how this movie ends.
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Ohio really does plan to fund Browns and other stadiums by seizing billions in money it owes to private individuals

access_time personNeil deMause

Remember how the Ohio legislature proposed borrowing $600 million from the state’s unclaimed property fund to use on a new Cleveland Browns stadium and repaying it with money from an omni-TIF collecting all kinds of tax money from in and around the stadium, and then the bill passed and it was described as providing “$600 million for the proposed Cleveland Browns domed stadium in Brook Park using unclaimed funds,” and I said it wasn’t really because that was just where Ohio would be borrowing the money from temporarily? Well, about that:

The $600 million for a new Cleveland Browns stadium that the state is raiding from the state’s unclaimed property fund won’t be repaid to the fund, and the state will eventually seize any unclaimed funds held longer than 10 years….

Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer initially reported that under the plan, first proposed by Senate Republicans, such tax revenue would be used to return the $600 million to the state’s unclaimed funds account, which includes private property from things like inactive bank accounts, old safe deposit box holdings, and uncashed checks and insurance policies.

But, in fact, money seized for the new Sports and Cultural Facility Fund will never be returned to the pot of unclaimed funds.

And beginning in 2036, any unclaimed funds that have been held by the state for 10 years will automatically be diverted to the new development fund for construction work on other sports stadiums and cultural facilities around Ohio.

That’s, uh, real different, Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer! Under the final budget bill, the news sites report, stadium-related taxes will continue to flow into the state’s general fund as usual, meaning Ohio actually will be funding a new stadium for the Browns — and possibly new or upgraded buildings for the Cincinnati Bengals and Columbus Blue Jackets and who knows who else — by seizing money it’s been holding on behalf of people who left it in inactive bank accounts, old safe deposit box holdings, uncashed checks, or the like, and handing it over to sports team owners.

If you think that sounds of dubious legality, you’re not alone: Attorneys including former Ohio attorney general Marc Dann (never mind for the moment how he became former) have filed a class action suit on behalf of the owners of the unclaimed funds, saying “that’s private property that the state has decided to take for itself.” Previous to the new law, anyone with money in the accounts could claim it in perpetuity — instead, Ohio will now be able to seize anything left in the fund for ten years, and use it to pay off the sports stadiums.

States laying claim to unclaimed property after a set period of time is actually pretty common in other states, where it’s known as “escheatment,” (The word comes from an Old French term for inheritance, not from the word “cheat,” though I’m sure plenty of people will still make that connection.) Northern Kentucky University law professor Ken Katkin told WLWT that “there’s a lot of smoke here, but I think there’s no fire,” and said he expected the class action suit would face an uphill battle.

Even so, there’s another question here, which is what happens if enough people start filing claims for their unclaimed money that Ohio doesn’t have enough left to pay for its unending series of stadium projects? That’s pretty unlikely for just the Browns — the fund currently sits at a staggering $4.8 billion, and Browns owner Jimmy Haslam is only asking for $600 million of it — but if enough team owners eventually demand a cut, and publicity about the unclaimed property fund leads enough people to start reclaiming their money before the ten-year clock runs out, it could eventually be an issue.

For now, though, Ohio legislators look to have found a way to funnel billions of dollars of public money to private sports team owners without breaking the state budget, by taking the money from an escrow account where it was holding it on behalf of private individuals. Even if courts end up ruling that’s just legal escheatment, it’s money the state could have used for literally anything else — but sports team owners were shouting the loudest, so they’re the ones who end up getting the benefit of all those uncashed checks.

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Friday roundup: Commanders warn DC council “Don’t make Trump come in there,” plus Blue Jackets could join the line for Ohio subsidies

access_time personNeil deMause

Okay, that’s done, Friday roundup, let’s get to it:

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Friday roundup: Titans get their $500m in state money after all, who’s next? (Answer: everybody, probably)

access_time personNeil deMause

Normally here I would say something about a long week finally coming to an end, but now that I know that time doesn’t exist (much like Wyoming, and birds), that just seems silly. So happy eternal present, and let’s get to the news from what we might once have called “the recent past,” if “once” had any meaning to begin with:

  • Well, that was fast: One day after the Tennessee state senate stripped a provision from the state budget bill to spend $500 million in state money on a new Titans stadium, the combined legislature put the money right back in, approving it 71-19 in the house and 18-13 in the senate. Arguments for the subsidy: “When you decide to do a dome type of facility, all of a sudden we go from a football dominated venue to an entertainment dominated venue”; “You cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good”; “If you’re not going to give half a billion dollars to the local NFL billionaire, who will you give it to?” (Ed. Note: One of these quotes is not real.)
  • The Denver Channel asked Broncos president Joe Ellis if a new owner will likely want to build a new stadium once the team is sold, and Ellis said, “It’ll be the No. 1 decision the new owner will have to make,” and then they went and asked a bunch of other people if that was a good idea, and then that became an article somehow headlined “Will they build it? Broncos president floats idea of new stadium with new ownership.” If this sounds familiar, it’s because the Denver Post ran pretty much the same article two months ago. The Broncos’ stadium is all of 21 years old, so it’s not clear if the Denver sports press is just bored, or somebody in the Broncos front office or the Denver business community is feeding them these storylines, or things have just gotten to the point where everyone assumes a 21-year-old stadium is of course obsolete by now, but here we are.
  • The Santa Cruz Warriors G League basketball team might leave town without a new stadium, because the old one is 10 years old and has “long-outlived its tenure and usefulness for the team,” writes Lookout Santa Cruz. (To be fair, the old arena only cost $3.5 million and was meant to be fairly no-frills; also to be fair, it’s only 10 years old.) “If it becomes evident that there is no viable solution aside from the current arena, we don’t really have much of a choice but to not play in Santa Cruz,” said team president Chris Murphy; the article doesn’t say if he stared meaningfully at listeners’ wallets as he said “viable solution,” but we can read between the lines.
  • The Carolina Panthers owners officially bailed on their plan for a new practice facility and surrounding development now that cost overruns have raised the price tag, despite $225 million in public funding that would have come with the $800 million project. “We are prepared to sit down with the City and other interested parties to discuss the significant challenges ahead,” said a statement from team owner David Tepper’s GT Real Estate Holdings, which … actually, that sounds less like abandoning the plan than saying he wants a new plan, only one with less of his money, doesn’t it? Old stadium deals never really die, they just re-emerge with more zeroes at the end.
  • Your friend and mine Victor Matheson had a fun op-ed this week about how the $1 billion Buffalo Bills stadium subsidy is “one of the worst stadium deals in recent memory,” which really anybody could tell from that $1 billion figure, but it’s nice to have a professional economist confirm it. A sample: “The Bills have earned over $300 million in operating income since the Pegulas purchased the team for $1.4 billion just seven years ago. And since then, the value of the Bills has risen by another $900 million. The Pegulas have earned enough on their investment in just seven years to pay for the entirety of a new stadium on their own.” But of course, if you spend your own money, then you don’t have it anymore.
  • This article would have been 1000% better if the headline writers had dropped the word “Arizona.”
  • “Roger Goodell gets booed at NFL draft party in Downtown Detroit, then projects $200 million windfall for city,” on the other hand, is an awesome headline, made only the more awesome by the fact that most of the article is behind a paywall, leaving me to assume that Goodell actually produced a study showing the tremendous economic activity generated by booing him, Roger Goodell, which seems totally in character.
  • Elsewhere in headlines, the Voice of OC asks: “Should OC Taxpayers Be Paying the LA Angels $6 Million for Suicide Prevention Ads?” No? I’m going with “no.”
  • The Columbus Blue Jackets just got $13 million public money for, I dunno, stuff, because reasons, does it even matter anymore? The world is just an endless flow of money from working people to people too rich to work, who, vampire-like, live only by sucking living labour, and live the more, the more labour they suck. It’s a little late to be getting all upset by every instance of this — sure it’s fun for a while, but eventually either you have to accept it as the natural, if horrible, state of things, or rise up and seize control of the means of production, don’t you think? Just a thought, anyway; have a good weekend, if weekends exist, which scientists say they don’t!
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Blue Jackets bailout could go from bad to worse as team seeks more “glamorous” locker rooms

access_time personNeil deMause

When I’m asked what I think is the worst sports subsidy deal in history, and I’m asked that a lot, my go-to response is that every unhappy stadium deal is unhappy in its own way. But when pressed to pick a few for the all-time Hall of Shame, I’ll occasionally find room for the Columbus Blue Jackets arena bailout, if only because it turned a model of private arena financing into a massive public subsidy just because the team owners whined that they weren’t making enough money. And then the city of Columbus agreed to give Nationwide Insurance, which put up the money for the original private arena construction, $62 million in added tax money when it turned out casino tax revenues weren’t going to cover the original deal.

If you see this headed toward “more good money thrown after bad,” you’re way ahead of me. Take it away, Columbus Dispatch:

Okay, so maybe the Dispatch got so excited it couldn’t remember how verbs work. The point is, as the paper discussed in an accompanying story with a more grammatical headline, the 20-year-old arena needs not just a new roof, but “$94.4 million in capital-improvement expenses over the next five years.”

The good news is that arena authority director Don Brown says the general public won’t pay for the upgrade costs, because it has a repair fund already set aside, funded by “casino tax and admissions tax proceeds.” The less good news is that these taxes would otherwise go into the general fund if they weren’t being siphoned off for the arena fund; the even less good news is that thanks to casino and admissions tax shortfalls in recent years, the repair fund currently just has $454,000 left in it, plus a $2.4 million reserve fund, which is a lot less than $94.4 million.

The Dispatch article goes on to say that the Blue Jackets and their partners in operating the arena — Nationwide and Ohio State University — will be on the hook for arena upgrade costs, but also that the team’s lease requires that the building be kept in “first class” condition, which seems likely to be a point of contention in any disputes over where to come up with $90 million. Among the items that the arena authority cited the hockey team as wanting to have improved:

The locker room for Blue Jackets players is “reasonably well-appointed but is not as glamorous as NHL home locker rooms in newer facilities,” and could use a “thorough” upgrade. The player lounge and training areas are well-maintained “but not impressive,” and the players’ family lounge “does not present an NHL-level image.”

Well, we certainly can’t have that! What will the neighbors say?

There’s a lot of confusing language in the arena operating arrangement — the public arena authority is part of the management group, but isn’t responsible for upgrade cash unless OSU backs out — but given that we’ve already seen Columbus bail out the private parties for no good reason other than that they asked for it, it’s hard to rule out anything. The main takeaway here is that the Blue Jackets are publicly seeking $94 million to replace their roof and bling up their locker rooms, which is always a sign that taxpayers should hold onto their wallets.

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Columbus throws another $62.3m in tax money on Blue Jackets arena fire

access_time personNeil deMause

Once upon a time, the Columbus Blue Jackets‘ Nationwide Arena was a privately funded success story, with locally based insurance company Nationwide helping to underwrite construction costs in exchange for a cut of arena revenues (and their name on the thing). Then came the county bailing out the Blue Jackets owners by taking over ownership of the arena, and a new ticket tax to help pay for arena renovations. And now it’s been revealed that the city and county are working on “restructuring” Nationwide’s $44.2 million loan to funnel new tax money into it:

Nationwide, which built the arena through a limited liability company and loaned the authority $44.2 million to buy it, has never received any payments in return because casino-tax revenue backing the loan never generated what was estimated…

Though Columbus officials had repeatedly stressed that the risk on the loan was solely Nationwide’s should casino-tax revenue come up short, the city has now also contributed to the deal, restructuring tax-increment-financing agreements on Nationwide properties to, in effect, let Nationwide repay itself from its future property taxes…

The memorandum indicates that city TIF funds could generate up to $10.8 million toward repaying the loan.

The city’s contribution would be on top of a one-time, lump-sum payment in December 2029 of $51.5 million from the authority, according to the memorandum. Brown said the authority will make the payment by issuing new bonds backed by casino taxes and hotel revenue from its lease with Hilton Columbus Downtown.

On the one hand, Nationwide was already set to get public money to repay its loan, via those casino tax revenues. On the other, it agreed to take payment from the casino tax funds, and now that those aren’t turning up as expected (apparently Columbus residents just don’t love to gamble like they should, or else are too busy going to Blue Jackets games), this is $62.3 million in new money being allocated to Nationwide. Either way it’s not good news for Columbus residents, and has to be especially galling since the city’s then-auditor said in 2011 that the city’s commitment if the casino revenue fell short was “none.” No word yet on when the city and county will be voting to approve the deal, but one can expect they’ll be getting an earful at that time.

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Friday roundup: Beckham proposes stadium lease, FC Cincinnati pays off evicted tenants, Florida city admits its spring training economic projections were bunk

access_time personNeil deMause

Is anyone else hugely enjoying John Cameron Mitchell’s new semiautobiographical musical podcast “Anthem: Homunculus” but having a hard time listening because the Luminary podcast platform keeps freezing up mid-episode? Is there enough overlap in the Field of Schemes and John Cameron Mitchell fan bases that anyone here even understands this question? (If not, here’s a good primer by my old Village Voice colleague Alan Scherstuhl.) Is Luminary still offering podcasts on its pay tier without the creators’ permissions? How should one handle it when great art is only available on platforms that have some major ethical issues? Are we ever going to get to this week’s stadium news?

Let’s get to this week’s stadium news:

  • David Beckham’s Inter Miami has offered to pay $3.5 million a year in rent on Melreese Park land for 39 years, plus $25 million for other Miami park projects, as part of a stadium lease agreement. That still doesn’t sound like too bad a deal for the public to me, but as nobody seems to be linking to the lease proposal in its entirety, there could still always be some time bombs hidden in there that weren’t reported on. More news when the Miami city commission actually gets ready to vote on this proposed lease, hopefully!
  • The owners of F.C. Cincinnati have agreed to pay off the tenants they’re evicting to make way for an entrance to their new stadium, but one of the conditions of the payout is that no one can discuss how much it’s for. We do know, however, that “at one point pizza was ordered in during the eight hours of negotiations” — thank god for intrepid journalism!
  • Clearwater, Florida just cut its estimate of the economic impact of the Philadelphia Phillies‘ presence during spring training from $70 million a year to $44 million a year after realizing that it didn’t make sense to include spending by locals who would be spending their money in town anyway. Now let’s see them adjust their estimates to account for tourists who are visiting Florida already because it’s March and Florida is warm and happen to take in a ballgame while they’re there and maybe we’ll be getting somewhere.
  • Good news for Columbus: After a good year for concerts, the public-private owned Nationwide Arena turned a $1.87 million operating profit last year. The less good news: None of that was used to repay the $4.76 million in tax subsidies the arena received, because the profits were instead poured into improvements like “roof and concrete repairs, natural-gas line replacement, new spotlights, metal detectors, and renovations to corporate suites.” The maybe-good news: If this means that the arena managers won’t ask for new subsidies for renovations for a while because they’re getting enough from operations, yeah, no, I don’t really expect this will forestall that either, but here’s hoping.
  • MLB commissioner Rob Manfred again said a bunch of things about the Oakland A’s and Tampa Bay Rays stadium situations, but as usual nobody read them to the end because it’s impossible to do so without falling asleep. I am not complaining when I note that Manfred is an incompetent grifter compared to some of his colleagues in other sports, really I’m not. (Well, a little.)
  • Speaking of the Rays, Minnesota Twins broadcaster Bert Blyleven would like to blow up Tropicana Field because a fly ball hit a speaker, but the game broadcast cut to commercial before he could spell out his financing plan to build a replacement stadium.
  • A street in Inglewood near the Los Angeles Rams‘ new stadium is seeing stores close as a result of luxury blight, but Mayor James Butts says it’s just because of gentrification unrelated to the stadium. Which either way makes it hard to see how the stadium (or the arena that Clippers owner Steve Ballmer and Butts want) is needed to help the Inglewood economy, but mayors aren’t paid to think very hard about this stuff.
  • Washington, D.C., is spending $30 million to install three public turf ballfields near RFK Stadium, which sounds like a lot of money for just three turf fields, but still a better investment than some other things D.C. has spent money on, so go … kickball players? Kickball needs to be played on turf? The things you learn in this business!
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Columbus splits ticket tax plan in half to keeps arts money from paying for Blue Jackets arena costs

access_time personNeil deMause

The Columbus city council has revamped its ticket tax proposal, lowering the rate from 7% to 5% on all tickets over $10, and permitting only taxes on events at the Blue Jackets‘ Nationwide Arena to go toward arena renovations, with the rest going to arts organizations.

This is getting pretty close to an arguably fair deal, if the goal is to have entertainment venues pay for their own upgrade costs. As I’ve discussed here before, ticket tax money mostly ends up coming out of the pockets of the people selling the tickets, for the simple reason that venues are already selling tickets for as high as the market will bear; if the Blue Jackets decide that they can get away with charging $50 for a certain seat, they’re not suddenly going to be able to get away with $52.50 just because there’s a new 5% tax surcharge, so they’ll have to lower ticket face values (or at least refrain from raising them) to keep the new total price the same. (It’s a little more complicated than that since all entertainment venues in town will pay the same tax — it’s possible ticket buyers may end up having to pay a bit more on the economic principle of “nyah nyah, suck up higher ticket prices or stay home and watch TV,” while that $10 limit creates a rather large incentive for venues to charge $9.99 for tickets instead of $10.50 — but the basic principle still holds.)

This should help placate opponents who were upset that non-arena tickets were going to be taxed to pay for arena renovations; whether it placates the Blue Jackets owners, who previously came out against the earlier version of the tax, is another story. Though there’s nothing saying the Columbus city council has to come up with a tax that the team owners agree to, and the Blue Jackets’ lease that bailed the team owners out at public expense runs through 2039, so maybe they’ll just have to suck it up and accept a tax that will benefit their own arena, which isn’t actually all that onerous when you put it like that.

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