Category: Ottawa Senators

Friday roundup: Spurs owner wants arena subsidies so he can be “scrappy,” A’s owner gets closer to unlocking county stadium cash

access_time personNeil deMause

Some weeks, when all the work of this website feels like an endless repetition of the same stories over and over and over again, I try to remind myself that while the general shape of the stadium swindle has remained the same over the last 30 years — boy meets stadium dream, boy uses standard playbook to demand that someone else to pay for stadium dream, elected officials cough up the dough to boy — there have been some discoveries and innovations along the way: The Casino Night Fallacy. The grift that keeps on giving. The kitchen sink gambit. Reusable entourage. Sure, it would be nice for whatever showrunner is in charge of this accursed timeline to quit reusing the same plotlines — helicopter registration fraud was a surprise season-ending twist, but that was three years ago already — but if nothing else we’re getting a deeper understanding of the intricacies of how sports billionaires funnel taxpayer money into their own pockets, and who can put a price on that? Other than the literal price of “billions of dollars of tax money a year,” obviously, but enlightenment doesn’t come cheap.

Also, no one has taken away our god-given right to point and laugh (yet), so may as well enjoy it. And on that note, here’s some fresh meat for your inner Nelson Muntz:

  • San Antonio’s KSAT-TV asked Spurs owner Peter Holt why he can’t just pay for his own arena his damn self, and Holt said “it’s a great question” and San Antonio’s small market size has “pushed us to be scrappy” and “the underdog” and “we want to continue [our] partnership with the county and the city” and the arena project will use “visitor taxes that have no impact on our local citizens” and “there’s no extra fees.” That’s neither really an answer nor exactly true, but Holt is already off and not-answering whether the team would potentially move without a new arena: “You know, we’re not focused on this election not passing. I mean, I think our belief has always been, whether it’s on the court or off the court, we have excellence and we have winning in our DNA. And so we’re confident and optimistic that this will pass, and that’s our plan.” It’s easy to be confident when you’re spending $2 million on ad campaigns to convince voters to go your way, but just in case, may as well employ the “You don’t want to find out what’ll happen if you make Dad mad” strategy as well.
  • The Clark County Commission officially approved the Athletics‘ ballpark development agreement for Las Vegas(ish), which is mostly notable because it allows A’s owner John Fisher to finally tap into $380 million in public funds that was approved way back in June 2023. Or at least Fisher can get the money once he sets a guaranteed maximum price for the stadium and spend $100 million out of his own pocket first, maybe that’s what all the concrete pillars are about? Would Fisher really shell out $100 million of his own money in order to get $380 million in public money in hopes all that will somehow unlock another $1 billion or so of somebody else’s money? He’s done dumber things before, don’t put it past him!
  • Interim Jackson County Executive Kay Barnes says she doesn’t see herself as “taking on any kind of strong initiative” on major issues during her short time back in office, but that’s not stopping her from saying she wants to see stadium projects for the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals move forward, she’s not made of stone, people.
  • The St. Petersburg city council is looking at ending the city’s Community Redevelopment Area (i.e., a TIF that kicks back property taxes to developers) for the Historic Gas Plant District now that the Tampa Bay Rays aren’t using it for a stadium development, probably. “I was very hesitant to do this,” said council chair Copley Gerdes. “More and more, I’m becoming open to it.” What’s next, hugging?
  • A couple of big-market MLB teams might be showing openness to increased revenue sharing to make MLB TV deals more like the NFL’s, which would reduce budget disparities between rich and even-richer teams but also make it easier for teams to threaten to move from big markets to smaller ones like in the NFL. Color me skeptical — big-market team owners have never willingly given up revenue before, and this could all just be openness to new kinds of TV deals while still trying to preserve the biggest slice for themselves, but we’ll see where things go once negotiations for the next collective bargaining agreement begin in earnest after next season.
  • Yes, the latest owner of the Ottawa Senators is still hoping to build a new arena at LeBreton Flats and still hoping for a taxpayer “investment” to help him along, let’s all check back in another decade or so and see if anything has changed.
  • Camden Yards’ public owners won’t get any money from the Los Angeles Rams renting out the stadium for practice before their game in London, just like they didn’t get any money when Paul McCartney played there, who needs money when you have a pro baseball team whose owner wants money more than you do?
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Friday roundup: Reading the fine print on stadium and arena deals is a lost art

access_time personNeil deMause

A note to all of you Field of Schemes supporters who signed up to receive the daily posts in email — I’ve been made aware of a glitch that may have been keeping some new members from getting the emails. This should now be fixed, but if you think you should be receiving emails but still aren’t, please contact me; if you think you shouldn’t be receiving emails but are, then really contact me. (And if you’re not receiving emails because you haven’t become a monthly patron but would like to, just sign up!)

And with that business out of the way, let’s move on to the real excitement: the week’s leftover stadium and arena news!

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Friday roundup: A’s dunno where 2025 playoff games (LOL) would be played, NY ethics panel probing pols’ use of Bills suite

access_time personNeil deMause

Thanks to travel plans, much of this week’s roundup was written on Wednesday and Thursday, so if there’s anything that needs updating, please just note it politely in the comments and we’ll take it from there.

  • If the no-city-designation Athletics make the postseason next year — stop snickering, it’s mathematically possible, at least until the 2025 season actually gets underway — they haven’t decided yet if playoff games would be played in Sacramento’s 10,600-seat stadium or somewhere else, though the team did issue a statement that “A’s season ticket holders will have priority purchase access for tickets.” The right to buy playoff tickets for a city to be determined, that should boost season ticket sales even more than “watch Aaron Judge hit homers off our pitchers,” John Fisher’s remaining staff are truly marketing geniuses.
  • In other A’s news, a Las Vegas stadium groundbreaking has been set for the second quarter of 2025, which means nothing since breaking ground doesn’t necessarily mean building anything. And the son of ex-A’s owner Walter Haas says it’s “unforgivable” that Fisher is choosing to move the team instead of selling it to someone else who would keep it in Oakland.
  • The Buffalo Bills gave New York state officials a luxury suite as part of a 2012 lease deal to get $130 million in stadium upgrades, and New York state officials sure do love sitting in it: One game last December saw Gov. Kathy Hochul, assembly speaker Carl Heastie, and assembly majority leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes all hanging out in the I Love NY suite — along with Heastie’s girlfriend and college roommate, who the Buffalo News notes in passing are “both registered lobbyists,” which may be the most telling part of this whole story. (State officials who use the suite have to make a contribution to charity equal to the value of the tickets.) Anyway, the suite is only supposed to be used for “encouraging and fostering economic development, tourism and public awareness for the City of Buffalo, Erie County and the State of New York,” so the state ethics commission is investigating whether state officials just hanging out and watching Bills games might be illegal; though presumably the suite helped cement the new stadium deal rammed through by Hochul that made New York the poster child for handing over $1 billion in tax money with no legislative debate, and that’s a kind of public awareness, right?
  • Chicago Bears CEO Kevin Warren said he’d be willing to share a stadium with the White Sox, or maybe just share a strategy for shaking loose public dollars, who can be bothered to ask the difference.
  • Ottawa Senators owner Michael Andlauer and the federal National Capital Commission have a September 20 deadline to work out a deal for a new hockey arena at LeBreton Flats, something that’s been in the works for … good grief, ten years now, how time flies. When last heard from, Andlauer was talking about the government funding half of a $900 million arena; neither he nor the NCC gave many details this week other than “still talking,” and that deadline appears to be a self-imposed one, so this is less actual news than a placeholder for real news to come soonish, maybe, because a sports billionaire said it is. Why yes, journalism is broken, thanks for asking!
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New Senators owner wants $900m arena paid for like Edmonton’s that used 50% public money

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s been more than a year since the owner of the Ottawa Senators won the rights to build an arena — but, crucially, not the money to build an arena — at LeBreton Flats, and there hasn’t been a ton of noise about the project since then. That’s in large part because said owner, Eugene Melnyk, has been dead for all that time, but his heirs finally sold the team last week to drug-shipping magnate (legal drugs, calm your jets) Michael Andlauer, who has plenty to say on the matter:

“I think a new arena may cost $900 million. It’s just not one of those things that you kinda go in your pocket and say, ‘Oh, jeez, I got some spare change here, I’ll be able to do it.’ It has to make economic sense,” he said. “I don’t know what it’s going to take.”

He cited Edmonton as an example of a public-private partnership (P3) model that he believes worked well for all groups.

Yeah, not so much: The city of Edmonton ended up putting in more than $300 million, plus whatever extra it needed to cover a shortfall in parking revenues, while Oilers owner Daryl Katz put in only $143 million. Katz’s team tripled in value, so he’s probably happy, but it’s hard to say what Edmonton got out of the deal, other than not having to listen to Katz threaten to move every five minutes.

Anyway, if the Edmonton deal is a model and the total price tag is $900 million, Ottawa would be looking at around $391 million in city funds, $166 million from ticket taxes, $190 million from Andlauer, and $152 million from the province of Ontario or whoever else can be found to stick with the bill. That’s a pile of money, and Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe, when asked last March whether city money would be on the table, said only, “there isn’t a table yet“; Ontario premier Doug Ford, meanwhile, hates spending money on anything and says he won’t have an opinion until Sutcliffe asks for something. This is very likely to be a long, bitter fight, though that’s nothing new for the Senators, so presumably Andlauer knew what he was getting into before buying a team and immediately announcing an unpopular subsidy demand.

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Friday roundup: More Coyotes follies, plus the race for Worst Stadium Article Ever

access_time personNeil deMause

If you missed my debut appearance on Twitter Spaces last night, you missed a whole lot of host Justin Hayes saying “we’ll just make one more try at getting Neil on the chat” while I figured out that I needed to update my iPhone app. You can relive the excitement, and the eventual conversation on the subject of “Why Isn’t There More Opposition to Taxpayer Handouts to Sports Teams?” that resulted between Justin, economist J.C. Bradbury, development subsidy researcher Michael Farren, Center Square reporter Jon Styf, and myself, by clicking here.

And now, on with the leftover news of the week:

  • The $20 million in renovations Arizona Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo is paying to add to Arizona State University’s arena in time for the 2022-23 NHL season … will not be ready in time for the 2022-23 NHL season. They should be ready by December, which means the team will either have to ask league permission to play in a substandard arena for a couple of months or will have to start the year on one hell of a road trip, either of which is hilarious if you’re not a Coyotes fan, which is to say for most everyone reading this.
  • Worst Stadium Article Ever is a tough title to compete for, but this Tennessean piece on the Titans‘ proposed $1.2 billion stadium subsidy has a strong case, thanks to sentences like “Cooper’s spearheading a financing strategy that doesn’t require any taxpayer investment, with generous contributions from state leaders and the National Football League.” Does … does Tennessean reporter Sandy Mazza think that “state leaders” have money to spend that doesn’t come from taxpayers? Has she just given up under the strain of writing for a Gannett paper, and that’s why she got that master’s in film studies to prepare for a career change? I’m right there with her if so, the journalism industry is a death ride to nowhere, good thing it’s not the only thing standing between us and the collapse of what remains of democracy!
  • Then again, “Olympics Could Provide Billion-Dollar Boost to LA’s Infrastructure” when a more accurate headline would be “Olympics Will Require Spending Billion Dollars to Upgrade LA’s Infrastructure” is pretty bad too, yes I’m talking to you, Front Office Sports. Are we doomed? We’re probably doomed.
  • A CBC article that quotes a “communications and media management” professor as saying that even if companies that buy stadium naming rights don’t see their finances improve at all, it’s worth it for “brand awareness”? Most weeks a strong contender, maybe, but not nearly stupid enough in the new normal.
  • Indy Eleven‘s three-years-dormant stadium plans may finally be moving forward, now that team owner Ersal Ozdemir has bought a plot of land for $7.6 million. (Ozdemir actually bought it last October, but just announced it now.) The USL team owner already has $112 million in state money signed off on, so now all he needs is the other $38 million for stadium costs, plus up to $1 billion to build a mixed-use district around the stadium, which could come from tax increment financing, aka, kicking back city property taxes on the development. Indianapolis really is dead-set on retaining its crown as king of the sports subsidy cities, no matter how many checks it has to write.
  • Speaking of long-running sagas, the Ottawa Senators owners have finally won approval to build an arena at LeBreton Flats, which would be paid for by, uh, “Thursday’s announcement did not included details of the financing of the arena project or a timeline for when it would be completed,” okay, will check back once somebody has actual money to spend.
  • And speaking of even more long-running sagas, NYC F.C. may now be looking at a temporary home in a soccer/track stadium in a public park on an island that is virtually impossible to get to without a car in a city where most people don’t drive, this is going to go just great!
  • Four New York state residents are suing the state over its $1 billion Buffalo Bills subsidy on the grounds that the state constitution doesn’t allow public spending for the benefit of private corporations, which, nice try, but that ship has long sailed, that’s pretty much all the state does now.
  • Anaheim is going to have to repay Los Angeles Angels owner Arte Moreno $5 million in prep costs he spent on stadium planning before his deal fell apart because the city’s mayor was caught soliciting bribes in exchange for approving it, probably. Because of course it is, what did you expect, a happy ending?
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Friday roundup: Bills owners get their $1B in public stadium cash, triggering other NFL owners’ salivary glands

access_time personNeil deMause

Before we get to the news roundup, the big story today: The New York state legislature and Gov. Kathy Hochul came to a “conceptual agreement” on a state budget last night, and it will include $1 billion in state and county money for a new Buffalo Bills stadium.

There aren’t a whole lot of details yet on whether anything was tweaked from Hochul’s original proposal, who was involved in hashing out the agreement, or who will or won’t vote for it. The New York Times — which somehow managed to describe the Bills stadium as one of the budget items with “populist overtones,” despite it providing a record subsidy to billionaires for a project that state residents overwhelmingly oppose — printed state Sen. Julia Salazar’s tweet calling the budget “unacceptable”; Bloomberg News reported that senate finance committee chair Liz Krueger called the Bills money the latest example of “New York state using its economic development money very badly.” Now that leadership has okayed it, though, it presumably doesn’t matter much how anyone in particular actually votes: They can either vote for the overall budget while grousing about some of the items in it, or cast protest votes that they know won’t affect the budget’s passage, but as the deal was struck by the traditional “three men in a room,” there won’t be any messy debating or having to take positions or any of the other things that normally go along with democracy or accountability.

This is very good news for Bills owners Terry and Kim Pegula, obviously, who just scored a brand-new stadium at virtually no cost to themselves (their share should be mostly covered by NFL grants, naming-rights fees, and seat license sales) by doing little more than mumbling vaguely about how they might move the team somewhere and then waiting for the governor to show up with a $1 billion check. It’s arguably good news for Hochul, too, assuming she doesn’t face voter backlash in this June’s primary for giving away public cash to wealthy NFL owners; and also arguably good news for Bills fans afraid the team would leave otherwise, though less good news if they’re Bills fans who are also New York state and Erie County taxpayers. And it’s very bad news for residents of NFL cities nationwide, as the bar has now been raised for expectations of what states will do to keep their football team owners happy, something that the owners of the Tennessee Titans and Washington Commanders and Chicago Bears and Baltimore Ravens and Jacksonville Jaguars and eventually every other team in the league will no doubt be pressing in their own state legislatures in months and years to come.

More on this Monday, no doubt, once the final details of the budget vote become clear. Meanwhile, there’s other news that’s been piling up amid all this Bills stuff, so let’s get to it:

  • Kansas City Royals owner John Sherman, asked about prospects for a new stadium in downtown Kansas City, said it “would really round out our central business district” and cited as an example the Atlanta Braves‘ new stadium, which is nowhere near Atlanta’s central business district and has been shown to be a massive money-loser for the county that paid for it. Remember, kids: It’s not important to make sense when you’re a sports team owner or other major public figure, as the media will just print whatever you say regardless! Grow up to use your family’s wealth to found a fossil-fuels company and get rich off it, it’s great!
  • Would-be Nashville MLB team owner John Loar says he’s still looking at building a stadium there — not next door to the Titans’ stadium anymore, that didn’t work out, but somewhere else — by creating “a sports and entertainment district” with “a ballpark that would be limited or would require no public financing,” which sure sounds like he’s talking tax increment financing or some other kind of tax kickback scheme, but no time for questions about that, just make a “Loar is confident Nashville will hit a home run” play on words and end the article already.
  • The Tempe city council held a closed-doors session yesterday on the Arizona Coyotes owners’ plans for a new arena aided by $200 million in city infrastructure spending plus possibly additional land and tax breaks, and don’t expect there to be any word of how it went, what don’t you understand about “closed-doors session”?
  • Despite not landing an MLS expansion franchise, the owners of the USL’s Sacramento Republic FC are still moving ahead with plans for a $100-150 million stadium on the city’s downtown railyards. The team owners already got a pile of city money approved for the stadium (reported as $27 million at the time, $33 million now), so may as well use it so as not to lose it.
  • Business promotion leaders in Saskatoon say that Saskatoon needs a new arena to be “competitive in the Canadian landscape”; no more details on how much a new Blades junior-hockey venue would cost or how it would be paid for, but there’s a three-minute video that includes a chartered professional accountant saying there’s “lots of creative ways” that an arena could be financed, including “sales ticket surcharges, bonds, government grants, even rental-car sales taxes” — okay, “bonds” isn’t actually a way of paying for something, just a way of borrowing money to be paid back later, just what are they teaching at Canadian CPA schools these days?
  • Ottawa Senators owner Eugene Melnyk’s dream of a new arena is “very much alive,” according to SportsNet, despite Melnyk being very much not alive. That’s because “Melnyk’s death last week only enhances the probability of a new arena downtown because of the new range of possibilities regarding ownership and future business partnerships.” No, no explanation of what that means, but SportsNet also cites Ottawa Citizen columnist Kelly Egan as saying it’s appropriate that a new Ottawa arena is being discussed just before Easter, “when thoughts turn to resurrecting the dead,” so uh, guys, I think the NHL may be dabbling in the dark arts, or at least some really suspect theology.
  • Tampa Bay Rays president Brian Auld says the team is no longer considering building a stadium on waterfront sites that will soon be underwater thanks to sea-level rise. Noted.
  • Oh, right, I promised in my post about the new Cab-Hailing Purse Woman art prints available to FoS subscribers (click here to get dibs on yours!) that I would report back on lawsuits against the Oakland A’s stadium environmental impact report: There are, uh, a bunch of lawsuits against the Oakland A’s stadium environmental impact report, read about one of them here, but seriously there are always EIR lawsuits in California and they almost never go anywhere, can this post be over already? I think it should be, have a good weekend of coming to terms with living in a world where a billion dollars in public spending on a private sports stadium can be approved in ten days with no public debate, and see you back here on Monday.
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Friday roundup: Bills $1B subsidy not finalized yet, amid ridicule from pretty much every economist everywhere

access_time personNeil deMause

This was quite a week, bringing with it New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposal of $1 billion (at least) in public money for a Buffalo Bills stadium and Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee’s proposal of $500 million (at least) in public money for a Tennessee Titans stadium and Kansas City Chiefs president Mark Donovan’s floating of a possible bidding war between Missouri and Kansas to give umpteen gazlllion dollars (at least) to his team for a new stadium. For readers who are visiting this site for the first time as a result, first of all, welcome, and second, this is our weekly rundown of all the other news that happened while we were goggling at the even bigger news. Please breathe deeply, and we shall begin:

  • Speaking of that Bills stadium, it probably isn’t getting passed by today’s budget deadline, as legislators are still debating both that proposed expenditure and scaling back bail reform. State Assembly Republican Leader Will Barclay decried the “Democrats’ dysfunction [that] has resulted in little more than needless gridlock,” which, good work, criticizing members of the opposing party for actually wanting to discuss things before voting on them is definitely a way to reduce dysfunction.
  • Also speaking of that Bills stadium, USA Today checked in with a couple more sports economists who weren’t part of Tuesday’s press conference, and got some choice quotes: Kennesaw State’s J.C. Bradbury said, “I think it just goes to show that policy decisions don’t seem to be tied to actual knowledge,” while University of San Francisco’s Nola Agha said, “It’s like saying the bakery down the street receives $100,000 a year from the city government, just so they can bake croissants every morning.” Add in Smith College’s Andy Zimbalist’s New York Daily News op-ed saying, “If the people of Erie County and New York State … believe that retaining the Bills will provide hefty economic benefits, then buyer beware,” and West Virginia University’s Brad Humphreys’ retweets, and it’s pretty much a clean sweep of every single economist who’s studied these things.
  • And also also speaking of the Bills stadium, Hochul’s proposed memorandum of understanding is out, and it includes an item that the announced “ironclad” deal to keep the team in Buffalo for 30 years would actually allow the team owners to skip town for lower and lower penalties starting in year 15. They really don’t make iron cladding like they used to.
  • Okay, moving on from the Bills: Arena developer Oak View Group says it wants to build a new $1 billion arena in Las Vegas that could host an NBA expansion team, because none of Vegas’ six other arenas could possibly be used for that. No public funding has been mentioned so far, so it’s possible this is just part of a land rush to grab prominence in the Vegas arena market; though given that another Vegas arena project announced its groundbreaking in 2014 and still hasn’t actually been built, it’s also possible this is just hot air.
  • Despite the New Orleans Pelicans‘ lease on their 23-year-old arena expiring in 2024, definitely aren’t looking for a new arena until “the future,” says owner Gayle Benson, adding, “I don’t want anyone to think we’re using that as any type of leverage over the state of Louisiana.” She definitely doesn’t want state legislators thinking that, who would do a thing like that?
  • Cincinnati USA Convention and Visitors Bureau chair Jeff Berding says, “It’s time we have a modern arena in Cincinnati.” Berding is also co-CEO of F.C. Cincinnati, who already got a giant pile of public money for their own new stadium, maybe it’s not such a big mystery why these things keep happening.
  • Wait, Ottawa Senators owner Eugene Melnyk died? Ottawa Senators owner Eugene Melnyk died! Now it will be up to his college-age daughters, Anna and Olivia Melnyk, our sympathies to them, to decide whether to carry forward with his never-ending arena subsidy demands, our sympathies to them on that as well.
  • A Virginia state senator told WUSA-TV anonymously that legislation to spend as much as a billion dollars on a Washington Commanders stadium is moving slowly because “public reaction to this project has been underwhelming” and “the team lacks gravity,” and mostly it makes me wonder what about the Virginia legislature requires members to demand anonymity so they can “speak freely.” Anyway, team owner/accused toxic workplace enabler Dan Snyder has turned over direct control of the team to his wife, Tanya Snyder, that should take care of everything.
  • The Toronto Blue Jays are moving ahead with a “significant renovation” of the SkyDome or whatever it’s called these days, promising to “modernize the fan experience.” No public money request was attached to the announcement, or price tag on the renovations at all, but team president Mark Shapiro did say that the renovations are “probably for the next 10 or 15 years but we’ll probably still have a stadium issue,” so this ain’t over by any means.
  • A Nebraska bill would increase the amount on sales tax kickbacks to the state’s arenas and convention centers because, and I swear this is not an April Fools joke, they have hosted such important economic and cultural events as “a recent concert by the legendary Elton John, the U.S. Olympic Swim Trials and the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meetings.” No economists were consulted by the Omaha World-Herald for this story, though it’s always possible they were laughing too hard to comment coherently.
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Monday roundup: Vegas ballpark subsidy talk, NBA expansion rumors, and one weird Cleveland Browns editorial note

access_time personNeil deMause

The site was under the weather on Friday (all better now), so instead you get the Friday Roundup, Monday Edition:

  • “Sources” tell the Las Vegas Review-Journal that the Oakland A’s owners “are interested in a public-private collaboration” for any new stadium in Las Vegas (or any new stadium anywhere? the Review-Journal isn’t clear, or the sources weren’t), pointing to the two most recent MLB stadiums, the Atlanta Braves‘ and Texas Rangers‘, as examples. As a reminder, the public price tag on those two projects ended up at $392 million and $500 million, respectively.
  • The NBA could soon expand to 32 teams, according to “league chatter,” with NBC Sports noting that Sportsnet Central reported that Toronto Raptors president Masai Ujiri was first hired by now-Oak View Group CEO Tim Leiweke, whose brother Tod is the owner of the NHL’s expansion Seattle Kraken, and also “it’s widely believed the NBA will expand for the first time since rounding out to 30 teams in 2004 partly to recoup for losses from the pandemic,” so connect the dots, people! I mean, maybe it’ll happen, but it really does go to show how much wild speculation and outright wish fulfillment news reporters can get away with under the cover of “some people say.”
  • In one of the most bizarre editor’s notes of all time, after a Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter revealed that the Cleveland City Planning Commission had not notified the public in advance that it would be discussing a Cleveland Browns plan for a publicly funded $200 million waterfront park/ramp near their stadium, the paper’s editor wrote that the planning commission did so in order to protect the Plain Dealer’s own scoop about the team’s plans. “I have a bit of quandary,” wrote editor Chris Quinn. “On the one hand, I have two reporters who worked out exclusive access for our audience on a huge story — the most realistic bid ever for revamping the Cleveland lakefront — and on the other I have a reporter questioning why the city bent its public notice rules.” Quinn ends up concluding that it was wrong for the city to have kept the meeting a secret from other reporters, even if it benefited his paper, but maybe the bigger problems is news outlets seeking scoops by partnering with developers and city officials to run an article that includes no comment from the public or from other architects, city planners, or economists, because that would have tipped people off about the news? Just an idea.
  • Also, here is what the Browns’ “plinth” is envisioned to look like, if you had been wondering. I am a particular fan of the artfully shaped giant holes in it that would allow parkgoers to fall to their deaths on the train tracks below!
  • Washington Football Team owner Daniel Snyder is touring new NFL stadiums to drive up interest in a bidding war among D.C., Maryland, and Virginia for his team — wait, sorry, did I type that out loud? I meant doing due diligence for a stadium that Snyder expects to be open by 2027, or as soon as he finds someone to build it for him — damn, sorry, I keep typing the quiet stuff loud, don’t I? Sorry, this whole Monday business is throwing me off.
  • Ottawa Senators owner Eugene Melnyk says he might build a new arena across the Ottawa River in Gatineau, Quebec, though also he’d rather stay in suburban Kanata, but did you know the city gave a Porsche dealer a $2.6 million tax break as economic development? “He’s selling goddamn Porsches,” said Melnyk, who blew up his last plans for a new arena by suing his business partners. “Give me a break. Give me the tax break! I’m dying out here, I’ve got no fans and I’m still trying to put on a show for everyone.” Note to Melnyk: Maybe advertising that no one cares about your team is not the absolute best way to demand a tax break?
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Friday roundup: Congress gets riled up over minor-league contraction, Calgary official proposes redirecting Flames cash, plus what’s the deal with that Star Trek redevelopment bomb anyway?

access_time personNeil deMause

Happy Thanksgiving to our U.S. readers, who if they haven’t yet may want to read the New Yorker’s thoughtful takedown of the myths that the holiday was built on. Or there’s always the movie version, which has fewer historical details but is shorter and features a singing turkey.

And speaking of turkeys, how are our favorite stadium and arena deals faring this holiday week?

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Friday roundup: More Raiders temporary home rumors, more MLB expansion rumors, and pro cricket (?!?) in Texas

access_time personNeil deMause

Was this week longer than usual, or did it just feel that way? The number of browser tabs I have open indicates the former — personally, I blame the moon.

  • Or maybe the Oakland Raiders will play in Arizona next year? When you have a lame-duck team whose new stadium in its new city isn’t ready yet, no idea is dumber than any other, really.
  • The University of Texas is reportedly building a new $300 million basketball arena at no cost to the state or the university, though if you read the fine print it’s actually getting Oak View Group (the same people behind Seattle’s arena rebuild) to build the arena in exchange for letting OVG keep a large chunk of future arena revenues. So really this is no different from UT building the arena themselves and using future revenues to pay off the construction costs, except I guess that OVG takes on the risk of cost overruns. Anyway, this is a good reminder that it’s not just about the costs, it’s about the revenues, stupid.
  • Las Vegas wants an MLB expansion team. It shouldn’t hold its breath.
  • There are lots of ideas for what to do with D.C.’s RFK Stadium site, and not all of them involve a stadium for Washington’s NFL team.
  • Queens community groups are protesting possible plans to build a soccer stadium for a would-be USL team called Queensboro F.C. on the Willets Point site cleared of businesses for redevelopment (including affordable housing) several years ago. This is a super-weird story that I’m still trying to get to the bottom of, so stay tuned for a more in-depth update soon.
  • Ottawa Senators owner Eugene Melnyk now says he’d consider letting someone else own his team’s proposed downtown arena if they’d pay to build it, contradicting what he said two years ago. Here’s a fun list of other times Melnyk contradicted himself!
  • Lots of public meetings coming up in Phoenix on the much-derided $230 million Suns arena renovation plan. The city has also posted the actual arena proposal, which among other things notes that the Suns’ rent is projected to go up from $1.5 million to $4 million a year in a renovated arena, which would help offset some of the public’s $168 million in costs, though it doesn’t say whether the rent (which is based on revenues) would go up in an unrenovated arena as well, so really this wouldn’t offset it all that much.
  • Speaking of the Suns, NBA commissioner Adam Silver said this week that “it’d be a failure on my part if a team ended up moving out of a market.” Now that’s how you play the army protection racket non-threat threat game! Rob Manfred, take notes. (Actually, please don’t.)
  • And speaking of Manfred, MLB is reportedly considering letting teams take control of their streaming broadcast rights instead of running them all centrally through MLB.tv, which would be a huge deal in that it would allow teams in large markets to monopolize streaming revenue like they currently do TV revenue, forestalling an NFL-like future where TV money is a more level playing field. They could offset this through increased revenue-sharing, sure, but … you know what, let’s table this discussion until there’s more than an unsourced New York Post item to go on.
  • Allen, Texas, is talking about building a pro cricket stadium via a “public-private partnership,” leaving me with two big questions: 1) how much is the public kicking in, and 2) maybe would it be a good idea to wait until a pro cricket league actually exists before building a stadium for it to play in?
  • The Athletic has a strangely formatted article about how finished MLS stadiums seldom look like their renderings that’s a fun read if you’re an Athletic subscriber, which you probably aren’t. (I got the $1-for-90-days trial deal, so I can keep tantalizing you with paywalled stuff for another few weeks yet.)
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