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

access_time personNeil deMause

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

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MLB has lockout and more revenue sharing on deck; what will it mean for the stadium game?

access_time personNeil deMause

For the purposes of this site, I’ve been mostly ignoring the coming end to MLB’s union contract (and expected lockout) following the 2026 season, in part because it’s a bit tangential to Field of Schemes’ coverage area and in part because it’s just too damn depressing to think about how I’m going to spend my time next spring. (Watch the MLS transition season? Shoot me now.) Money stuff is money stuff, though, and as Marc Normandin pointed out in his newsletter yesterday, team owners’ stadium revenue strategies are affecting how they’re thinking about revenue sharing with players:

I believe there are owners who genuinely want a [salary] cap. I also believe there are owners who have not fully considered what having a cap would mean for them, in terms of having to argue with the MLBPA again and again about what actually constitutes baseball revenue. To go back to the WNBA again for a second, there has been a salary cap in place there for ages, and now that the players are in a position where they have more bargaining power, the two sides are arguing about what should count as revenue toward revenue sharing. There is much more money involved in MLB’s side, and just as significant of a grift — hello, baseball stadiums that are also real estate bonanzas of “non-baseball” revenue.

That’s a bit in the weeds if you don’t regularly follow sports CBA negotiations, but rather than me try to explain it, let me get Normandin to do so, since he’s the expert. Hey, Marc, get over here a minute!

Can you explain, briefly if that’s possible, what the pros and cons of a salary cap are for baseball owners?

MN: The pros are pretty simple. Owners will say that a cap would level the playing field, even though the parity of MLB is no worse and in some cases better than that of capped leagues, but the actual reason for one is to slow or outright inhibit spending. And with it, the expectation of spending to compete. It maybe wasn’t noticed enough in the negotiating for the existing CBA, but the owners offered a salary floor of $100M and a cap of $180M attached to it before dropping the subject.

My guess as to the low floor and ceiling there is less “this is the cap the owners expect to institute” and more checking the temperature on the Players Association in general. It’s either that or the owners don’t understand how a salary cap is actually calculated, based on revenue, which is where the con lies. The books are never opened for a reason, and MLB teams insisting that real estate revenue made at a baseball stadium isn’t baseball revenue is another reason to keep them closed. Having to open the books and argue about what is or isn’t revenue would take longer than the rest of bargaining combined, and it’s not even clear if the owners would agree with each other, never mind the players, about what constitutes baseball revenue.

So do you have a sense whether team owners have been hot for “non-baseball” revenue from mixed-use districts like the Atlanta Braves‘ Battery because that revenue is easier to hide from players (and other owners)? Or do they just want them because they’re free money, but then it becomes a reason to keep the books closed? (Also, wondering if you know how this works for, say, the NFL, which both has a salary cap based on total team revenue and is equally gung-ho about turning stadiums into real estate deals.)

MN: Being able to hide it is a plus, but that there’s simply more of it is a win, too. Get a city/county/state to pay for the land and the stadium, build a mall there financed with the kind of low-interest loans a billionaire can take out, profit. It’s a great deal for everyone involved besides the taxpayers, as you know!

The NFL breaks things into three sections (league media, postseason/NFL ventures, local) with the percentages going into sharing varying for each. Concerts held at NFL stadiums don’t count towards local revenue, though, so I imagine the league has successfully argued itself out of counting real estate around stadiums as football revenue.

Of course, the NFLPA hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory over the years, so “well the NFL does it this way” might not be a convincing argument in the MLBPA’s eyes.

Do any of these revenue-sharing machinations have anything to do with teams like the Pirates and A’s signing actual players to actual contracts all of a sudden? I know they have a reason to try to avoid grievances for cashing their revenue-sharing checks and never spending them, but this seems like more than the token efforts of the past where they’d sign a guy or two with plans to trade them come July.

MN: My read on this uptick in activity — from two organizations that literally could not be threatened into spending by the PA for years — is that they know it’s likely revenue-sharing is going to see an increase in the near future, via the next CBA. Which is not a move that requires a cap, either, as the existence of revenue-sharing in the present reminds.

But like in the late-90s and early aughts, the newer (or just more successful) streams of revenue some teams have access to and others do not in the same quantities means a rebalancing is in order. Bud Selig had to convince George Steinbrenner to agree to a system The Boss felt was socialist, but he got there. Rob Manfred probably has it a lot easier since the system is already in place and just needs redefining by nationalizing, as it were, local revenue streams to the same degree that the NFL has to eliminate some portion of the advantage that the Dodgers et al have. While (at least in theory) inspiring teams like the Pirates and A’s to spend their newfound funds, too. The Dodgers and Yankees and so on aren’t agreeing to a new system where they cut checks to teams that won’t use them, so this is teams showing they can be trusted with very large bags of money they otherwise won’t have access to.

So this gets us back to the central contradiction of revenue sharing of any kind: It makes it easier for small market teams to compete with big market teams if they want — but any leveling of the playing field also means that teams can be a lot more footloose, because it doesn’t matter if they play in Green Bay if they still get a cut of those national checks. Obviously we don’t know how revenue sharing will look exactly under a new CBA, but do you see a real possibility of a kind of NFLization of MLB, where market size doesn’t matter as much either for competitiveness or for relocations?

Or to put it way more simply: Does any of this make it more likely that the A’s will move to Las Vegas?

MN: Someone would still have to foot the Vegas stadium bill, and it sure doesn’t seem like it will be John Fisher. But hey, MLB already waived the relocation fee for the A’s, maybe they will let him off the hook with the stadium costs, too.

You bring up a good point related to that, which is that this opens up the possibility for some new markets that previously had limitations, which in turn would mean expansion is finally on the table again and the expansion fees that come with it, never mind the larger shared revenue pools that can come with additional broadcasting deals, gates, merch sales, etc. Revenue-sharing getting a huge revision would impact so much on its own, which is another reason the cap talk just doesn’t seem realistic to me. Not when there is a solution that wouldn’t endanger 2027, or the broadcasting negotiations of 2028, and requires full player buy-in, too.

Thanks! Still more reasons to dread next spring, just what I needed!

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Chiefs practice field in Olathe would break new ground in siphoning off city tax money

access_time personNeil deMause

Two local Kansas governments will be holding public hearings tomorrow on possible subsidies for a new Kansas City Chiefs stadium to defray the state’s possibly insurmountable costs. Wyandotte County holds its first public hearing at 5:30 pm, and the city of Olathe in neighboring Johnson County, where a Chiefs practice field would be built, will follow at 6 pm. Olathe apparently plans to vote on stadium funding at its meeting, and accordingly has published its plan, which is a doozy:

  • The legislation would create a 165-acre tax district around the new facility for diverting city taxes.
  • Within that area, all city sales tax revenues, the city’s share of county sales tax revenues, and 7% of the 9% city hotel tax — except for any money already pledged to paying off other projects — would be redirected to the Chiefs to cover the team’s development costs.

Economist J.C. Bradbury weighed in over the weekend to call this “bonkers,” and it indeed would break new ground in siphoning off tax money for a stadium: Olathe wouldn’t be just giving up increased tax revenues like in a TIF, but all sales and hotel tax revenues within the tax district, for the next 30 years. (At least the tax district is smaller than the state’s incredible 293 square miles, but that’s a low bar for comparison.) The likely practice field site is currently undeveloped, at least, so Olathe wouldn’t be losing much in existing taxes; unless, of course, a Chiefs development lures away businesses that would otherwise locate elsewhere in Olathe and moves them to the tax-subsidy district, which is pretty likely.

Meanwhile, economist Geoffrey Propheter chimes in to note that rezoning the practice field site as exempt from property taxes would cost the city about $37 million in present value of lost future tax revenue. No one has yet attempted to calculate how much Olathe would give up in future sales and hotel tax money.

At this point, the best-case scenario for Olathe might be that it turns out no one wants to open a ton of hotels and restaurants and other businesses around a practice field that’s only open to the public a handful of days a year, and there’s not so much local tax revenue to lose. Or the city council could just say, “We get all the hassle of hosting a Chiefs practice field but the Chiefs keep all the tax money? No thanks.” We’ll find out tomorrow night.

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Could FIFA really move the 2026 World Cup out of the U.S.?

access_time personNeil deMause

Ever since the Donald Trump administration started ordering immigration officers to abduct people who don’t look like Donald Trump and the Supreme Court said “cool, cool,” questions have been raised about how it was going to work for the U.S. to co-host the men’s soccer World Cup this summer. With U.S. travel bans in place against several nations that made the tournament, on top of the risk fans from other countries would face of being grabbed by death squads and thrown into a waiting van, there was talk that maybe even FIFA would have second thoughts about the propriety of holding a major international sporting event in the U.S. — though also, you know, FIFA.

Now that the death squads are getting more deathy, though, the talk has suddenly grown louder:

A few caveats here: The “German soccer official” is the president of the German soccer club St. Pauli, which is famously activist and may not represent the rest of the nation’s soccer hierarchy. Blatter, formerly the face of FIFA, was ousted in disgrace in 2015 and has been vocal in criticizing the organization he once headed ever since. The UK bill to demand that the World Cup be moved out of the U.S. only has 26 sponsors out of 650 members of parliament, and in any case wouldn’t be binding on FIFA.

And yet! Headlines like “Calls for a Boycott of the World Cup Grow” were not what either the U.S. or FIFA anticipated when the 2026 World Cup was assigned to a combined bid from the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, and the possibility of tons of fans being either prevented from attending, too frightened to go to the U.S., or pissed off enough at Trump to stay home in protest has to have FIFA officials at least having second thoughts. And there’s a relatively easy fallback option: U.S. World Cup matches could be shifted to the other two host countries, though Canada and Mexico would have trouble selling tickets for quite as exorbitant prices as the U.S. would. Shifting games out of the U.S. has to still be considered unlikely, but it’s also the kind of thing where support for a boycott could snowball quickly, once enough Sepp Blatters start saying it out loud.

And why are we talking about this here at Field of Schemes? Only because getting to host major events like the World Cup is often held out as a carrot for public funding of new or renovated stadiums, and even if that’s wildly overblown to start with — how many World Cups or Olympics or even Super Bowls is one stadium likely to host in its expected 30-years-or-less lifetime? — the promised benefits start deflating if your prize event turns into an international embarrassment. Defenders of Olympics in particular counter reports showing that host cities almost always lose money hand over fist by arguing that you can’t put a price on the value of your city appearing on the world stage, but for every Barcelona Olympics that shows the world how awesome Catalonia is (albeit at the risk of then being besieged by too many tourists), there’s a Rio de Janeiro where most of the world ends up concluding “LOLBrazil.” The U.S. may yet escape being clowned internationally this summer — Fox Sports can be counted on not to mention it on air, certainly — but it’s yet another cautionary tale about the risks of putting too many eggs in the “this will bring tourism!” basket.

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Friday roundup: Lightning win $250m in tax money for 6-year lease extension, Missouri holds secret talks on Royals stadium

access_time personNeil deMause

We have a bunch of new followers here thanks largely to all the tumult over the Kansas City Chiefs stadium deal, so it’s worth another mention that Field of Schemes continues to exist after almost 28 years thanks to the kindness of its readers. If you have any money left after donating to help the families of government-kidnapped five-year-olds [UPDATE: Or all the other less adorable Minnesotans who can use help], you can chip in to support this site here — you’ll even get some amusing refrigerator magnets in appreciation, if we can still even be amused in 2026.

And speaking of trying to wring amusement from horror, here is your weekly dose of stadium and arena bullet points:

  • Hillsborough County approved $250 million in arena renovations for the Tampa Bay Lightning in exchange for a six-year lease extension, which at $41.7 million per year would be one of the priciest per-year lease extensions in sports history.  Lightning owner Jeffrey Vinik could still request state sales tax money on top of this as well — if he does in exchange for no more years of lease extension, that would be a per-year cost of infinity, which would be an unbreakable record.
  • Officials from Kansas City, Missouri and Jackson County traveled to meet with Gov. Mike Kehoe on Wednesday about the Royals stadium situation, and no you can’t know what they talked about, that’s for Royals owner John Sherman to find out and you not to find out until it’s all been hashed out. Both Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas and Interim Jackson County Executive Phil LeVota said they hope to strike a stadium deal with Sherman by the end of spring training; while we’re hoping things, let’s hope that this threesome focuses on getting a good deal, and not just a deal that is resolved quickly.
  • An Indiana senate committee cast a vote on Wednesday that “establishes the necessary funding to pay for the construction of a new Chicago Bears stadium,” according to WGN, but actually just creates a stadium authority, as we discussed last week. Also the full Indiana state senate still has to vote on it, and then the state house has to, before even this can become law, but don’t let that stop reporters from calling this a “bidding war.”
  • Dallas Mavericks execs have narrowed their arena site search to two locations, one an undisclosed one downtown and one at an abandoned mall site that, uh, is already getting redeveloped? Only having two prospective sites, both in the same city, wouldn’t bode super well for Mavs owners Patrick and Sivan Dumont’s leverage in demanding taxpayer money to build the thing, but they still have land in Irving they could consider using as a threat, as one does.
  • The Buffalo Sabres owners have hired a lobbyist to seek state funding of a $400 million renovation of their arena, good thing New York state has plenty of money for that.
  • The Sphere people want to build another Sphere, this time smaller and in the D.C. suburbs, using a tax increment financing district to siphon off property taxes to pay to build it. That’s okay, though, because Prince George’s County Executive Aisha Braveboy and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore say a Sphere would generate $1 billion in economic impact [citation needed], so everything should be fine [citation needed].
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Cleveland still has no money for Cavs, Guardians upgrades, is resorting to stalling

access_time personNeil deMause

The controversy continues over the city of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County having to cover more than $400 million in upcoming repair costs for the Guardians stadium and Cavaliers arena despite having no money to do it with. And according to Cleveland.com, there’s nothing the local governments can do about it:

Under its lease agreements with the Cleveland Cavaliers and Cleveland Guardians, Gateway Economic Development Corporation of Greater Cleveland is responsible for paying for capital repairs over $500,000 at Rocket Arena and all repairs — big or small — at Progressive Field.

Worse yet, it’s not just genuine repairs that taxpayers are on the hook for; the Guardians leases also contains one of those dreaded state-of-the-art clauses that requires publicly funded upgrades if the Cleveland stadium has fallen behind three-quarters of other MLB ballparks, “as well as any changes required by television networks, the league, insurers or government regulations.” Most recently, this required the city and county to spend $1.3 million to install padded seats behind home place in 2023, on the grounds that all the other kids had them.

Gateway officials have responded by trying to stall on approving the payments, with one board member telling a Guardians official, “We are required to fund it. We are not required to fund it on the schedule that you’re asking.” But ultimately, according to the lease extensions approved by lawmakers in 2004 and extended in 2021, the leases require the city and county to cover these costs in exchange for the Cavs and Guardians staying put through 2034 and 2036, respectively.

The city and county do have a doomsday option, though. As I wrote last December:

The leases say the teams can sue Gateway for damages if they don’t get their repair money on time. However, if Gateway runs out of money — which it would if the city and county stopped giving it more cash — it doesn’t appear that the Guardians and Cavs owners can sue the city and county, so it’s within the governments’ power to shut off the money spigot and dare the teams to break their leases and try to find better ones elsewhere, if they wanted.

That doesn’t seem to be the plan so far: Gateway officials are griping to the city and county that they need a bailout — another bailout, following one for $20 million last year that raided funds for a minority business program and other projects — and Mayor Justin Bibb is muttering about creating tax surcharges in the stadium district to help cover costs. This all seems destined to end with the team owners negotiating another round of lease extensions in exchange for a lot more public cash, like how it’s been done one state to the west; you’d like to think that Ohio legislators could be better negotiators than Indiana ones, but if city and county officials had shown any ability before this to write leases that would protect taxpayers, they wouldn’t need the talcum powder.

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Friday roundup: Chiefs to ramp up Kansas saber-rattling, Bears’ Indiana move threat gets cool reception in Illinois

access_time personNeil deMause

Are people still flipping out about Chicago Bears management acknowledging that Indiana is next door to Illinois and they could try to build a stadium there if they wanted? Yep. Does that mostly come down to “fans in Indiana would be happy with a shorter drive and those in Chicago would be unhappy with a longer one”? Yep.

We’ll get back to the Bears in a sec, but first the latest in a more advanced cross-state NFL team location battle:

  • A Kansas legislator says the state’s Legislative Coordinating Council, a joint committee of leaders of the state house and senate, is set to meet on Monday to discuss a proposed agreement between the state and the Chiefs on a new stadium, though the state commerce department cautions that “no final agreement has been reached.” The Missouri Independent says the committee could start the process of approving state-backed STAR bonds at its Monday meeting, though the state already approved those in concept last year, and it doesn’t seem possible to actually sell specific bonds without a specific agreement in place, so not clear on what could actually get decided on Monday. Mostly, this seems to be a way for the legislature to declare that Chiefs owner Clark Hunt has met the required end-of-2025 deadline to be eligible for the bonds — as has Royals owner John Sherman, apparently, despite no concrete stadium plans at all, given that committee chair Ty Masterson’s office said he believes the Royals have met the deadline by being “fully committed” to Kansas. Some sort of announcement of a Chiefs deal on Monday seems likely, but it’s also likely that a lot of details will still need to be worked out, so let’s hold off on the “Chiefs are moving to Kansas” headlines for the — never mind, too late.
  • Back in Illinois, state officials are taking talk of a Bears stadium in Indiana in stride, with State Rep. Kam Buckner (district includes Soldier Field, is opposed to stadium subsidies) calling the team’s move threat “very predictable” and saying “in negotiations, what you do is you create leverage by saying you have more options,” while State Rep. Mary Beth Canty (has sponsored a bill to allow for stadium subsidies in Arlington Heights) asked that the Bears “engage with the General Assembly in good faith, without threats.” State Sen. Bill Cunningham, meanwhile, called giving the Bears a property tax break (but not necessarily all the infrastructure money team execs are asking for) “a good starting point” because it would only be local, not state, tax money, but said “we have more important things to tackle first.” It certainly sounds like the Bears owners can get something out of Illinois, even it not everything they’re demanding; dropping an Indiana move threat may help them get on the legislative agenda, which may be all they want, but there’s still a whole lot of haggling to go.
  • Cleveland’s Gateway sports authority is facing an estimated $150 million in imminent repair costs for the Guardians stadium and Cavaliers arena, plus another $261 million over the next decade, and has no money on hand to pay for these costs and no plans for how to raise it. Not great! The city and county cover capital repairs while the teams cover maintenance, so there’s still the possibility of haggling over which is which. The government taking on all capital repairs during the teams’ 2004 lease renegotiations still seems like a terrible idea, and Gateway just defaulting on this and daring the teams to break their leases (which expire in 2034 and 2036 anyway) early seems like a reasonable consideration compared to throwing $400 million in good money after bad, but nobody’s talking about that just yet.
  • The Dodger Stadium gondola project refuses to die, year after year after year. “NBC Los Angeles reports that during the meeting, project supporters waved signs reading ‘Build the gondola’ while opponents held signs saying ‘Stop the gondola’,” can’t we come to some sort of compromise?
  • Inter Miami‘s new stadium is finally set to open next spring, but the promised accompanying public park space won’t be ready yet, seen that one before.
  • And then there’s Germany, where when a pro women’s soccer team needs a bigger stadium, the team owners buy the one that a recently relegated men’s team is no longer using plays in. It was built way back in 1992, can you imagine how outdated the Getränkehalters must be?
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Bears exec finally threatens to move team to Indiana in fight for $1B in Illinois public money

access_time personNeil deMause

Chicago Bears execs have been asking Illinois for a pile of dough for a new stadium for years now, and have been consistently told by state leaders to go pound sand. And as a famous Chicagoan once almost said, “When the going gets tough, the tough seek leverage.” So it came to pass yesterday that Bears CEO Kevin Warren yesterday delivered what was clearly intended as a shot across Illinois’s bow, saying that he was now ready to consider moving across state lines:

We have been told directly by State leadership, our project will not be a priority in 2026, despite the benefits it will bring to Illinois.

Consequently, in addition to Arlington Park, we need to expand our search and critically evaluate opportunities throughout the wider Chicagoland region, including Northwest Indiana.

“This is not about leverage,” added Warren, but when you issue a public letter announcing that the only reason you’re considering leaving your state is because the state won’t lavish spending and tax breaks on you — sorry, provide “a commitment to essential local infrastructure” and “reasonable property tax certainty” that it only so happens would cost taxpayers more than $1 billion — it’s hard to read it any other way. (Warren also called Soldier Field “the oldest and smallest stadium in the NFL,” the first part of which is only true if you consider this to be the same stadium as this.)

Gov. JB Pritzker’s office certainly took it as saber-rattling, calling the statement “a startling slap in the face to all the beloved and loyal fans who have been rallying around the team during this strong season.” Indiana officials, meanwhile, appeared happy to play along with whatever Warren has in mind, with Gov. Mike Braun saying, “This move would deliver a major economic boost, create jobs, and bring another premier NFL franchise to the Hoosier State. Let’s get it done.”

Braun did not say whether he was ready to offer a billion dollars to get it done; Indiana’s legislature voted to create a sports development commission in April, but, notably, didn’t give it any actual money. Regardless, the magic of leverage — sorry, of “critically evaluating opportunities” — is that it’s not about how much anyone is offering, it’s about the mere prospect of a bidding war shaking loose public purse strings.

To some degree, the surprise is that Warren waited this long to drop the I-word: Indiana, after all, has a long history of shoveling good stadium money after bad, and the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals have already shown what you can get by threatening to hop across state lines. Though the Royals’ game of footsie with Kansas also shows the downside of actually going ahead and making threats concrete: The list of entities opposing a baseball stadium in Overland Park now includes the local telecom company, the national Jewish Community Center Association, the mayor of the city next door, and a “neighbor, friend, mother, community volunteer and former PTO president” who questions whether it would put at risk “safety for our Jewish neighbors.” If Indiana proves to be greater fools, this could work out well for the Bears owners, whether they land a stadium across state lines or use the possibility of one to pressure their home state into coughing up stadium money; if not, they could yet end up heading back home with their tails between their legs.

 

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Stop the presses: Rays stadium site search continues to search for stadium site

access_time personNeil deMause

Baseball’s winter meetings are on this week in Orlando, which means lots of opportunities for reporters to hobnob with team execs and fill column inches with whatever comes out of their mouths. So you probably could have predicted that Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times, who has made an art form of this or at least a job description, would be on hand, in this case giving Rays co-owner Ken Babby 13 full paragraphs to explain that the ownership group’s plans for a new stadium by 2029 are making progress, even if not in any particularly definable way:

“We are exploring sites. We are meeting with architects. We are meeting with public officials,” Babby told the Tampa Bay Times at Major League Baseball’s winter meetings. “We are conducting a lot of analysis on how you go about building a development in a ballpark that meet the criteria that we talked about (including a plot of at least 100 acres). We’re visiting a lot of other parks, a lot of other stadiums, understanding what’s possible with different structures.”…

“We discussed what we thought a construct of a public-private partnership could look like. And have really enjoyed our conversations with folks both in the city and the county, both sides of the bay. We’ve been really focused on building those relationships.”…

“We believe that to build a state-of-the-art development, it’s going to require at least that kind of acreage [that the Atlanta Braves got for their Battery project] and it’s also going to require a great public-private partnership. We’re going to do our part. We’re not out there looking for anything that’s unfair or unjust. We want to build something that is truly a win for the community. And that’s building a district, building a community, driving jobs, creating billions of dollars of economic impact.”

That’s a lot of positivity — building relationships! a win for the community! — but no details at all, beyond that the Rays owners are considering sites throughout the Tampa Bay area (which we knew) and are “fully focused on opening a new ballpark in April of 2029” but know that’s “an ambitious timeline.” Even the requirement that any stadium site come with enough space for a Battery-style development came with a hedge: “While it’s not the only site and dynamic that we love, it’s certainly been a wonderful blueprint.”

All of which is fine and to be expected: When a friendly reporter sticks a microphone in front of you and presses record, it’s a team owner’s job to natter on about how much momentum their proposed stadium project has, even if it doesn’t have a site or any money identified to pay for it. It’s a bigger question whether Topkin is doing his job by letting Babby say all this stuff unchallenged — the only other quotes in the story are from MLB commissioner Rob Manfred — but now that the Times is letting other reporters actually report the news, it’s a bit less egregious.

The bigger problem here is letting team owners set the news agenda in the first place. Yes, the Rays’ lease at Tropicana Field runs out after the 2028 season (originally 2027, but it got automatically extended after a hurricane blew the roof off and sent the Rays to a minor-league stadium in Tampa for a year), but as we’ve seen before, leases can be extended — and in fact, St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch has already expressed an interest in doing so for the Rays, saying “the bones of the Trop are super strong, so once we get the electronics and the roof done, the Rays could be there for a decade.” So there’s no real urgency here, especially when it’s not at all clear that a new stadium itself would do much for the Rays’ finances — a new stadium with a pile of public subsidies might, but then the problem you’re solving isn’t so much “Where can the Rays play?” as “How can the Rays owners increase their profits via taxpayer money?” For that, you might want to talk to some taxpayers, or at least some of their elected representatives, but none of those seemed to be hanging around the baseball Winter Meetings, so you’ll just have to guess what they think of all this, sorry!

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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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