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Rays stump for $2B stadium subsidy by releasing pictures of fans all raising fists in air at once

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s been a while since Tampa Bay Rays officials released any stadium renderings, and with talks on getting almost $2 billion in cash and tax breaks from the city and county seemingly on hold, no time like the present to drum up any excitement possible from some images of what a new building may or may not look like one day, so fire up the vaportecture cannons:

As is by now cliche in the genre, fans here show their appreciation for a Rays two-out rally in a blowout of the Cubs by standing, thrusting their fists in the air, and waving the team flags that baseball fans everywhere bring to games on the regular. Though it’s possible they’re actually cheering the passing lightning storm visible through the part-see-through roof, or just high on the thrill of watching a game with no backstop or netting, so that any of them may be killed by a foul ball at any time. There’s nothing more exhilarating than being reminded of the preciousness of life while watching (squints at the scoreboard, recognizes Jonny DeLuca and Chandler Simpson for starters) the same lineup your team fielded three years earlier.

A view of the same game (see the scoreboard and accompanying video screenshot) hours earlier during the daytime, though still in the bottom of the 5th inning with the same batter up, time will clearly work differently in the 2030s! The fans in the upper deck in their vintage Evan Longoria and Carl Crawford jerseys are just as excited to throw their fists in the air, though, even the ones at the bar who are only following the game by looking over their shoulders at the sky.

Fans stream into the park via center-field escalators, and back out of the park at the same time via escalators on the opposite side of the entry plaza. All the better to see the partly shaded, partly transparent roof, which lets fans view the airplanes pulling “GO RAYS!” banners that fly by whenever there isn’t a lightning storm.

But is there anywhere fans can go to drink any entirely ignore the game, you ask? Is there ever! They can also ignore the overhead plantings supported by nothing at all and the video boards with advanced stats on them, though one guy nearby is still raising his fist in the air, just to let everyone know they’re at a baseball game.

This is all very silly, as these kinds of renderings always are, but the release of the pretty pictures did manage to get Marc Topkin to write a whole article in the Tampa Bay Times about it, so mission accomplished, probably. One hopes that the Tampa city councimembers and Hillsborough County commissioners set to debate that $2 billion subsidy won’t be too swayed by levitating planters, but sports funding bills have passed for dumber reasons.

 

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Two months after Royals stadium deal proposed, KC mayor still hasn’t asked for state funds

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s been two months since Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas announced plans for a new Kansas City Royals stadium development in the downtown Crown Center, using $600 million in city property tax kickbacks, $350 million or more in state money, and $400 million or more in additional tax exemptions, and we still don’t know much about how that all would work. In fact, it turns out Lucas hasn’t even formally asked the state for money from its Show-Me Sports Investment Act tax slush fund established last year.

It’s okay, though, says Mayor Lucas, because he has his reasons:

“This is not an absence of engagement,” said Lucas, who said stadium construction would need to begin this year. “I think it’s instead — how does everybody make sure that they’re in a real cohesive approach to how the deal is delivered?”

Okay, so city and state (and team?) officials are engaged, they just aren’t cohesive — that’s another way of saying they haven’t been able to come to an agreement, right? “We look forward to the continued partnership with the State and the Kansas City Royals,” added spokesperson Lane Johnson in a statement to the Kansas City Star, which is very much the sort of thing one says when one is still at the negotiating table with no idea if talks will end up going anywhere.

According to the Star, qualifying for the Show-Me money shouldn’t be hard: The Royals deal is a sports project that will seat at least 30,000 people and will cost at least $500 million, the state is being asked for less than 50% of the total cost, and the city will be putting in money. How much the city can ask for could be an issue, though — the state will have to estimate exactly how much in sales, income, and other taxes Royals employees paid last year, and that’s likely only around $15-17 million, which would only be enough to cover about $250 million, less than Lucas is asking Missouri to kick in.

Once all the financial details are worked out, the whole deal still needs to go back to the city council for final signoff. And it could require a vote of the public as well, if the labor activist group the Missouri Workers Center has its way: An affiliate of the group submitted more than 4,500 petition signatures on Friday to force a public ballot on the Royals plan. Lucas pooh-poohed any notion of resorting to democracy, saying, “the deal is likely to be done before you would actually have a public vote on the deal itself,” which would either be in November or April of next year. Lucas says he hopes to have all the stadium paperwork signed off by the end of the summer — he may have to, if he wants to avoid giving voters a say in how their tax money is spent.

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What the hell is up with the Bears stadium bill? (updating, maybe)

access_time personNeil deMause

With four days left before the end of the Illinois legislative session, Crain’s Chicago Business reports (citing no specific sources) that state senators are “considering dramatically scaling back a sweeping megaproject incentive bill” to cut out everything except tax breaks for a Bears stadium in Arlington Heights. The idea here is to avoid debate on allowing property tax cuts for any development project over $100 million, something that could cost the state billions of dollars — plus expanded sales tax kickbacks and funneling some of the remaining payments in lieu of property taxes to broad property tax relief — and instead just carve out a single-use subsidy that would still cost the state billions of dollars, but fewer billions.

One problem is that a bunch of that stuff was added to the bill by the state house because legislators there didn’t want to be seen as just opening the state’s wallet for the Bears — though adding more goodies for other developers and handing out a few dollars apiece in tax rebates for all property owners would only make the bill more costly and could ultimately force more tax hikes elsewhere. (Interestingly, Crain’s notes that the Bears owners themselves opposed the tax relief provision, because it “would incentivize local taxing authorities to push for a higher annual payment” by the team in order to have something to dole out to homeowners.) A Bears-only bill “is more viable in the Senate than the House,” says Crain’s (citing “sources familiar with the talks”), leaving the possibility that the senate could revise the bill to gain passage there, but couldn’t win the support of the house in reconciliation talks.

Meanwhile, the bill’s chief house sponsor, Kam Buckner, lashed out at Cook County treasurer Maria Pappas’s office for its analysis of the megaprojects bill, calling it “field-of-dreams budgeting” and “fantasy accounting” because “you can’t count full tax revenue from a project that doesn’t exist. … The real choice is not ‘full taxes versus reduced taxes.’ The real choice is a negotiated payment on a real project, or full taxes on an empty lot. Nothing from nothing leaves nothing.”

This is a common argument for development subsidies — there’s nothing there now, so getting any taxes at all from the site is better than nothing — but it overlooks two massive issues. The first is that developments come not only with benefits but with costs — roads for its occupants to drive on, police and fire services to protect it, schools for its residents’ kids to go to — and that’s precisely what property taxes are meant to cover. If you allow a developer to erect a bunch of buildings and not pay for the associated costs, somebody else has to cover those, which means either increased taxes for other residents (bye-bye, tax relief) or cuts to other services.

The second issue is opportunity cost: One advantage of a vacant lot is you can still build something on it, whereas a developed site is as developed as it’s ever going to get. As the treasurer’s report noted, there are plenty of non-subsidized projects like shopping malls that generate economic activity while still paying their taxes, and every time you use up another lot on a tax-limited project, that’s one you can’t use on one that’ll pay its full weight. Buckner should know this: He represents a district in Chicago, which in the first decade of this century became the poster child for carving up its tax base into Swiss cheese to promote development, leaving gaping budget holes as a result.

And that’s where things stand right now, on Thursday morning. Though Capitol News Illinois editor Jerry Nowicki just chimed in with a video interview where he said his reporters talked to Gov. JB Pritzker and he “seemed optimistic” about passage of a bill, for whatever that’s worth. There’s also still the question of whether the Illinois legislature will provide $855 million in infrastructure funding, mostly for transit upgrades, before team execs have provided a traffic plan explaining why they need $855 million, something senate bill sponsor Bill Cunningham has said is unacceptable. I’ll update this post later today on the off chance we get any more clarity on what’s going on in Springfield; stay tuned, but don’t get your hopes up.

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Bucs want $667m in renovation money from Tampa, could set up battle with Rays for tax dollars

access_time personNeil deMause

Into the simmering Tampa Bay Rays stadium controversy, the Buccaneers owners the Glazer family have flung a significant bomb, telling the Tampa Sports Authority they want a $1 billion renovation of their stadium (original cost: $168.5 million in 1998), with the public covering two-thirds of the price. And sports authority members are already questioning whether Tampa should be dedicating a couple billion dollars to a Rays development when the Bucs are next in line:

“I think most of us have talked to the Buccaneers at this point, and we’re going to be writing a very large check in the very near future for Raymond James Stadium,” board member Tony Muniz said at a meeting Tuesday. “And that’s our priority. We have to always remember that. I think that we need to take care of Raymond James before we go out and try to convince the Rays to stay in Tampa Bay.” …

“When you calculate what we’re talking about for the Rays, what’s left after that for the Bucs? That’s the big question,” said board member Luciano Prida.

While Bucs execs aren’t commenting, two sports authority officials — the Tampa Bay Times didn’t name them — said that the team owners are targeting a $1 billion renovation, with half that money used to pay for a sun canopy over the open grandstand. (Yes, half a billion dollars for a sun shield that doesn’t even move or cover the entire field seems like a lot. At bulk pricing, the Bucs could afford to include a sombrero with every ticket for 190 years for that amount.) The sports authority officials didn’t provide details on how the public’s two-thirds share would be funded, only that Bucs officials want a decision before agreeing to extend their lease by five years, a decision they contractually need to make by January. (Yes, $667 million for a five-year lease extension seems like a lot. At $133 million a year, it would obliterate the Carolina Panthers‘ $43 million per year record for priciest per-year lease extension in sports history.)

Sports authority president Eric Hart — who said yesterday of the Bucs lease talks, “I think our goal would be to not have them relocate,” which maybe is not the best negotiating strategy for saving yourself money [EDIT: It’s since been pointed out that Hart may have been referring to a temporary location during renovations, which is a more reasonable point] — had already hinted in April that the Glazers would be looking to get stadium renovation money in the hundreds of millions of dollars, but this is the first time a number has been put on the request. The sports authority is funded by both the city and county, so authority members are right to wonder if a ginormous Rays subsidy would leave anything left over for the Bucs; though given that one of the revenue sources they’re looking at is the Community Investment Tax that voters were told wouldn’t be used for stadiums, maybe they’re getting a little ahead of themselves regardless.

The next shoe to drop could come this Friday, when the Florida legislature is set to vote on a state budget that currently includes $50 million for prep work for the Rays project, but which state senate appropriations chair Ed Hooper has vowed to block if the city and county don’t provide first more certainty about their commitment to fund the stadium district. This staring contest may go down to the wire, don’t miss a minute of the edge-of-your-seat excitement!

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Rays CEO to unhappy legislators: Like our stadium deal the way it is, or lump it

access_time personNeil deMause

Negotiating is a funny business: You simultaneously want to hold the line in hopes of getting the best deal for your side, while also offering concessions as an enticement to get a deal done. It’s a tricky dance, and requires knowing when to bluster and when to accede, in the hopes of vanquishing your enemy while also making them feel like they’ve won a reasonable victory.

Or, you can do like Tampa Bay Rays CEO Ken Babby, and just tell the people you’re negotiating with that your offer is final:

“Collectively we are not reopening a discussion on the economics in the MOU approved by the county commission and city council,” Babby told the Tampa Bay Times at Yankee Stadium. “We do recognize that there are many unresolved issues, and we will begin focusing on that this coming week.”…

The numbers in the stadium deal, Babby said, “are what they are,” with the team unlikely to make further concessions or additional contributions.

This is a bit of a bold move, given that Babby and company appear to have some work cut out for them winning over elected officials in the wake of last week’s narrow approvals by the city and county of a nonbinding MOU. Tampa city councilmember Bill Carlson, who cast that body’s swing vote to approve the MOU, subsequently told the Tampa Bay Times he only did it to keep talks alive, and that he “will definitely vote no” on any final proposal. That leaves Rays execs having to flip one of three other no votes: Charlie Miranda, who called the Rays plan “a terrible one for the taxpayers”; Lynn Hurtak, who warned that the Rays’ plan could force the city to sell bonds at high interest rates; and Guido Maniscalco, who asked Babby if the Rays would consider reimbursing the city for Community Investment Tax money that voters had been promised wouldn’t be used for stadiums, and got told nope, the Rays don’t plan to pay for anything more than the $1.3 billion (less $1.1 billion or so in free land and tax breaks) they’ve already committed.

This wouldn’t matter so much if the Rays could go ahead and use the nonbinding MOU to get state funding approved now and come back to the city and county later, as seemed to be the initial plan. But while the Florida legislature has put $50 million into the state budget for “campus improvements” to Hillsborough College — read: rebuilding its classrooms in one corner of its Dale Mabry campus to make way for a Rays stadium — state senate appropriations chair Ed Hooper still says he’s opposed to final approval of the $50 million until the city and county have signed off for real on their parts, and adds that Gov. Ron DeSantis is too: “He will get the budget eventually, and I believe the local governments are in a position where they’re not going to take forever to make these decisions.”

It seems unlikely that DeSantis is really trying to sandbag the stadium dreams of his pal and donor Rays owner Patrick Zalupski, so maybe this is just a move to pressure the city and county to commit to something binding before the end of their sessions this week? And maybe Babby is attempting the same? It’s so hard to tell 4D chess from hubris, even with Hanlon’s razor in hand.

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Friday roundup: Rays stadium gets a yes vote that’s actually a no, Bears tax break talks get weird

access_time personNeil deMause

If any of you were wondering what happened to this year’s sports economics conference at University of Maryland Baltimore County, it moved from April to June, so it hasn’t happened yet. I just booked my trip, so FoS readers can expect a liveblog on the day of stadium-related papers, at least. And if you’ll be at the conference on Tuesday, June 9, please find me and say hi.

Before June we still need to get through May, which remains jam-packed with the exciting denouement to several team owners’ push for stadium and arena deals this legislative session, while (some) legislators resist demands for ever-higher public subsidies. How that’s currently going:

  • The Tampa city council followed in the steps of the Hillsborough County commission, voting 4-3 yesterday to approve the Tampa Bay Rays‘ nonbinding MOU for a Tampa stadium project. All eyes, though, are on the swing vote that secured passage, Bill Carlson, who said he’s only for it before being against it: Carlson said he voted yes on the MOU to “help the Rays get the state money” but would “definitely vote no” on a binding MOU because “I don’t believe in private sector subsidies.” Given that state legislators have said they’ll only approve state money for the Rays if the city and county are committed to their share of spending, Carlson may yet regret saying the quiet part loud here — it’ll be very interesting to see what happens when the legislature next takes up the state funding bill, which needs to happen in the next week as Florida wraps up its special budget session.
  • The Chicago Bears stadium tussle took a weird turn this week, as Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson pitched a plan to keep the team in the city by giving Chicago more control over the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority, which Gov. JB Pritzker (pretty reasonably) declared to be “no plan at all.” Johnson then declared that city lawyers had met with Bears officials about a possible new lakefront stadium, which led the Bears to issue a statement that while team lawyers met with city lawyers, the Bears “have exhausted every opportunity to stay in Chicago.” All this would be a mere media sideshow, if not for the fact that some Chicago-area state legislators are reportedly holding off on approving tax breaks for an Arlington Heights stadium in hopes that the team can be kept in Chicago — though that’s according to state Sen, Bill Cunningham, the main sponsor of the tax break bill, so for all we know he has his own motivations for blaming the bill stalling on people with unwarranted dreams of the team staying put. On the third hand, Cunningham also said some legislators have expressed distaste for the size of the tax breaks themselves, as well as impatience that the Bears are demanding infrastructure money as well but haven’t put forward a traffic study for what would actually be needed. At this point there’s going to be no way for Bears officials to know just what they’ll be in line to get from Illinois by the end of this legislative session, which is going to make it very interesting to see what they decide about Indiana’s stadium subsidy offer, or if they’ll somehow try to put off Indiana for a few more months until they see just what Illinois is putting on the table.
  • Not to be left out of all the media shouting, Arlington Heights Mayor Jim Tinaglia says that an Indiana stadium is no good because it would be near a toxic waste site, while Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr. says not to worry because “the Bears know far more about environmental concerns in that area than any of us, because they’re spending millions of dollars on it.” Is that how that works? Pretty sure that’s not how that works.
  • Athletics vice chair Sandy Dean says the team has a contingency plan for still building a Las Vegas stadium even if Bally’s doesn’t move ahead with its proposed surrounding development, which could be tricky given that the Bally’s section was supposed to provide some of the entrance plazas to the A’s stadium. Dean says the team might try to replicate something similar to its Championship Plaza in Oakland, with food trucks and outdoor games, which sounds really hot for Vegas, but maybe. A’s owner John Fisher has still only spent about the first $400 million on the $2 billion project, meaning we still don’t know what will happen once he has burned through public funds and needs to come up with the rest from his family money.
  • Cuyahoga County will not be quadrupling its “sin tax” on alcohol and cigarettes to raise an estimated $56 million a year for additional upgrades for the Cleveland Guardians stadium and Cavaliers arena, after state legislators said they wouldn’t approve such a hike. The county could increase ticket taxes instead or add a 0.25% sales tax surcharge; it could also just stop funneling money to the teams and dare them to break their sweetheart leases, but nobody is putting that on the table for now.
  • Wondering how on earth the Philadelphia Phillies are finding $205 million worth of upgrades to their spring training facility, funded with the help of $115 million in city and county money, in addition to the previously mentioned addition of “batting cages with floor scales that track a player’s weight distribution through an entire swing”? This interview with Phillies Florida operations director John Timberlake won’t explain it, but you will learn that yes, he is Justin’s uncle.
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Goodell says Bears stadium “process is going on,” offers no details where it’ll end up

access_time personNeil deMause

Chicago Bears execs presented the NFL with a stadium update yesterday, and what did they say, commissioner Roger Goodell?

“There was a specific update on the Bears on the two sites that are viable in the Bears’ mind,” he said. “That process is going on.”…

“I’ve spoken to the governor [of Illinois] recently and there’s a focus on getting something done, and there will be two viable options for the Bears to choose from,” he said.

That is definitely a specific update on … something. The two sites Bears owner George McCaskey is considering, in Arlington Heights, Illinois and Hammond, Indiana, will continue to be two sites that are options! Options the Bears can choose from!

Back in the world of actual news reporting, there’s still no indication of what if anything the state senate and house will pass in terms of the megaprojects tax break bill that Bears officials want before agreeing to an Arlington Heights stadium. The Illinois legislative session wraps up next week, and it seems likely that something will pass, but there’s no telling whether it’ll be the same something that McCaskey wants — let alone the additional subsidies the Bears owner wants as well.

With that in mind, Goodell’s statement seems like an attempt at momentum building, or at least momentum not destroying: The stadium talks are going according to plan, all will work out, there’s definitely nothing that’s a crisis or anything. It’s very possible that no one really knows what the Illinois legislature will do, and that also no one knows what Bears ownership will do if they don’t get everything they’ve demanded — up and move to Indiana, or take what they can get in Illinois? Past stadium games of chicken have gone both ways, it’s tough to predict unless you live in George McCaskey’s brain, assuming even he’s decided at this point. Leverage is hard!

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Friday roundup: Rays may have bot-lobbied for stadium funds, OR gov says not rubber-stamping Blazers cash is “playing politics”

access_time personNeil deMause

We’ve run off the end of April, and — spoiler alert — neither the Chicago Bears nor Tampa Bay Rays stadium situations have yet been resolved as team owners had hoped. Sportswriters often like to portray a slow approval process as dysfunction, but it can equally well be the opposite: Taking your time and driving a hard bargain are good negotiating tools, and when billions of dollars in tax money are at stake, rushing to get something approved just because the local billionaire is impatient is a great way to end up with unexpected costs. It’s still very much unknown whether residents of Illinois and Florida will end up with better stadium deals as a result of legislators taking their time, but it’s hard to imagine it’ll end up being any worse than if they’d just signed off on whatever they were presented with without reading it.

Anyway, lots of news did happen this week, even in Tampa Bay and Chicago, so let’s get to it:

  • Hillsborough County Commissioner Joshua Wostal claims that somebody sent more than 2,000 bot-written emails from a single IP address in Los Angeles urging county commissioners to hurry up and approve the Rays’ stadium deal. Wostal says he doesn’t want to move forward with any stadium plan until the Rays owners provide documentation of where they’ll get the money to finance their part of the deal, which would include more than $1 billion for the stadium plus possibly billions more for surrounding development (some of which would be recouped by tax and land breaks), though the team hasn’t actually committed to what exactly it will build; a Rays statement said only that it would provide financing details “at the appropriate time as is standard with similar public-private partnerships,” which must be ownerese for “maybe after we’ve cashed your check.”
  • Bears executives held a meeting with NFL officials this week, in which everyone agreed that the best stadium options are either in Arlington Heights or Indiana. The assembled dignitaries then warned Illinois legislators that if a stadium bill to the Bears owners’ liking isn’t approved ASAP, the team and league could meet again.
  • Count Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek among the hurry-up-and-rubber-stampers: After signing a bill to provide $365 million in state money for Portland Trail Blazers renovations, she chided city and county officials for not swiftly approving their own $235 million, saying, “This is not a time to play politics. This is a time to get it done.” (“Playing politics,” in this case, includes things like not wanting to sign a nondisclosure agreement before entering into arena funding talks.)
  • The Cleveland Browns held a groundbreaking for their new Brook Park stadium, even as legal questions remain about the state unclaimed funds money that is supposed to pay $600 million toward the project. Everyone involved is still moving full steam ahead, though: Browns owner Jimmy Haslam said that “we’re not attorneys, OK?” but after talking to actual attorneys “we do think it’ll be resolved,” while Gov. Mike DeWine reassured everyone that if this public funding plan fails, the state could always go back to his plan to raise sports gambling taxes and give the proceeds to sports teams that everyone hated. No one is saying exactly what will happen if the state — and the city of Brook Park, which is still negotiating its own $245 million in stadium spending — can’t come up with the money after stadium construction is already underway, probably because nobody wants to admit that “let the Haslams figure out how to find the rest of the money” is still an option for fear of risking the benefits of moving the Browns from Ohio to Ohio.
  • But if (greater) Cleveland doesn’t get a new stadium, how will it host a Super Bowl? Don’t worry, it probably won’t get one anyway unless it builds more hotels, says NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, who pointedly did not mention this during the runup to the stadium funding vote.
  • MLS has a prospective Las Vegas bidder for the Vancouver Whitecaps: a group led by Grant Gustavson, the 30-year-old son of Kentucky’s wealthiest billionaire. This doesn’t necessarily mean the Whitecaps will move if they don’t get a new arena deal in Vancouver — Vegas doesn’t have a soccer arena at all (though Gustavson said he’s ready to “privately finance” one, without providing details) and is getting dangerously close to a market glut of sports teams — but it’ll likely light a fire under officials in British Columbia, who already started scrambling the jets once the league announced its Vegas move threat earlier this week.
  • Team owner insists he needs state money for a new stadium, state says no you can’t have any, team owner finds an existing stadium to play in. Happy endings all around in the CT United F.C. story, unless you’re team owner Andre Swanston, who now has to settle for just selling tickets to watch soccer matches instead of getting $127 million in state aid to help boost his team’s bottom line.
  • Would this Comiskey Park–inspired stadium design be a better place for Chicago White Sox fans to watch a game? Undoubtedly, since it would bring back that ballpark’s close-to-the-action upper deck. Would it make more money for the White Sox owners? Probably not, because it would be missing the wall of luxury suites that are to blame for the current stadium’s unloved distant upper deck: Extra-nosebleedy cheap seats in modern stadiums are a feature, not a bug. Maybe work on reducing soaring income inequality that has created such a soaring market for high-priced tickets, and then we can get back to stadium design that actually works for everyone.
  • How did the economic impact go from the NFL Draft that Pittsburgh canceled school for? Not so hot, according to one restaurant worker who fought through draft-related bus rerouting only to have her hours cut because fewer customers than usual showed up. (Economists are shocked, shocked!) The city tourism agency responded with a statement that really the NFL Draft was less about bringing in new spending than “positioning Pittsburgh as a modern, globally relevant city well beyond the weekend.”
  • In related news, New Jersey transit officials are recommending that state residents work from home during World Cup matches to avoid the transit nightmare caused by rerouting trains to take fans to matches since they won’t be allowed to drive there. This could be good news for New Jersey restaurants, maybe, unless everyone just makes their own lunches those days, see why economic impact of sporting events is harder to calculate than just adding up all the fans and declaring “> ? > profit”?
  • No, the Athletics aren’t going to change their name to the “Las Vegas Black Fire” just because they listed that as a location in a job listing, it’s just the name of a co-working space in Vegas. Thanks to SF Gate for clearing this up, maybe everyone should have done a little more research before firing up the AI jersey designs.
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Garber to Vancouver: Sell stadium land to Whitecaps for cheap or we’ll shoot this team, really this time

access_time personNeil deMause

Back in December, amid threats by MLS to move the Vancouver Whitecaps if they didn’t get a new stadium, the city of Vancouver agreed to a memorandum of understanding to open talks on the team owners building one in exchange for getting a cut-rate price on public land. Those talks must not be going well, because MLS owners have now gone and held a committee meeting on moving the Whitecaps, then leaked word about it to The Athletic:

A special committee of Major League Soccer owners met earlier this month to discuss and evaluate the future of the Vancouver Whitecaps, including the possibility of relocation, sources briefed on the conversations told The Athletic.

A move to Las Vegas was the chief option discussed at the meeting, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly. MLS has had discussions with a group looking to bring a team to the market, the sources said.

This is slightly off-brand for MLS, which in recent years has largely focused on handing out expansion teams like candy: six new teams in the last six years, 12 in the last 12. (MLS commissioner Don Garber said in 2024 that the latest new team, San Diego F.C., would be “the end of expansion for a period of time until we’re ready to expand again” but then also said “we would strongly consider expanding beyond the 30 teams that we have now” if “there’s a good market for us to expand in and that market makes sense with the right owner and the right stadium plan,” so who the hell knows what if anything he really meant there.) And this, the Athletic reports, could represent a stumbling block to moving the Whitecaps, as MLS owners would want to get a cut of any sale price in lieu of an expansion fee — likely meaning a relocation fee on top of whatever the current Whitecaps owners would get, which would cut into how much cash they would take home from a sale.

Whether a move threat is realistic, though, is almost beside the point if you just want to use it to shake down an existing host city for stadium dollars, which appears to be goal #1 here. Whether it’ll work is unclear: Some panicked Whitecaps fans are already blaming NIMBYs and local government for the team’s presumed imminent demise, while others counter, “that’s not true at all, it’s mainly down to greed.” It’s still unclear how Vancouver elected officials will respond to the Las Vegas threat, not to mention whether MLS owners would actually pull the trigger on a move to an increasingly crowded small sports market if they don’t get what they want; stay tuned.

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

access_time personNeil deMause

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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