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After months of public debate, the Portland city council voted 8-4 yesterday to approve spending $120 million toward renovations to the Trail Blazers arena, plus $275 million for upgrades over the next 20 years. But the term sheet it approved included several major new conditions — most prominently, that the team start paying rent, starting at $3.1 million a year and rising by up to 3% a year, as well as payments in lieu of property taxes on the tax-exempt land around the arena, starting at $3 million a year and rising by 5% a year. The team must also agree to cover any cost overruns.

None of those provisions in the final term sheet were in the original one, and they could end up being pretty significant. With the rent and PILOT payments set to increase over time, they should be worth about $110 million in present value to the city, roughly $50 million from the rent and $60 million from the PILOTs because of the different escalation percentages. And while it’s hard to exactly credit these as a windfall for city taxpayers — paying rent on the building you’re a tenant in and property taxes on the land you’re using are usually just what’s expected of everybody — they are additions to the term sheet that would mostly cover the city’s debt payments on its $120 million in arena construction costs. And as for the $275 million in upgrades, that would mostly be covered by ticket taxes, which as we’ve explained here previously largely end up coming out of team owners’ pockets because microeconomics.

This doesn’t make the Blazers plan a good deal for Portland, but it would make it a far better deal. Councilor Angelita Morillo, one of the four no votes, called the revised plan “still the worst deal in the country,” which is almost certainly wrong given some other recent examples, and added “the public is getting fleeced,” which is absolutely correct, especially given that state and county taxpayers would still be on the hook for another $480 million. And it could still get worse in upcoming talks with the team: Yes vote Steve Novick said yesterday, “I’ve already signaled that I’d be willing to accept something that’s arguably less,” which is really not the way you want to start off negotiations.

Still, the Portland council did something all too rare: Presented with a plan that would have poured tax money into the local sports billionaire’s pockets under threat of the team leaving town, they decided to use their leverage as the team’s best option to play in to demand that the billionaire cough up at least some money toward the project, no matter how much he said he wasn’t gonna. And Blazers execs didn’t immediately shoot it down, with team president of business operations Dewayne Hankins issuing a fairly conciliatory (for him) statement that said, in part, “We look forward to continuing to work with the City’s negotiating team in good faith, addressing the issues that remain and finding a resolution that allows all of us to move forward together.” That’s not an acceptance of the city’s rent and PILOT demands, but it’s not “Tom Dundon’s way or the highway” either. One thumb up to the council for at least trying to get something significant for taxpayers, rather than just rearranging deck chairs — how much they stick to their guns from here will determine if they can earn the other thumb.

Uproar continues to grow over Multnomah County hiring a negotiator in the Portland Trail Blazers arena renovation fight who has a curious resume:

Chair Jessica Vega Pederson disclosed Thursday that she had tapped former Trail Blazers executive Chris Oxley to represent the county as it worked with Portland officials on a framework aimed at keeping the NBA franchise in town for at least the next 20 years.

Okay, that’s a little weird, hiring an ex-Blazers exec. But maybe it’s not so bad to hire someone who knows the opposition’s side of things; after all, local governments way too seldom have people with actual sports business expertise on their side, and it’s not like this guy is currently working for —

Oxley also happens to be board president of nonprofit Sport Oregon, which has led a coalition that’s lobbied city and county leaders to back the proposed $600 million arena facelift requested by the team, which would be exclusively bankrolled by taxpayers.

Welp.

County commissioners were predictably gobsmacked when they heard about the hiring of Oxley, with commissioner Meghan Moyer interjecting, “I’m sorry, did I mishear? He is on the board of Sports Oregon that is currently lobbying us on how much we should contribute to this deal? We hired a negotiator that’s on the board of an organization that is lobbying us on this issue? How is that not a wild conflict of interest?” Vega Pederson replied that it’s not a conflict of interest because Oxley isn’t paid for his role as board president of the group that is behind the pro-arena-spending We Are Rip City campaign (which has most recently been paying influencers to stump for the public arena funding plan); that didn’t convince Moyer, but apparently placated the other commission members, who approved the hire by a 4-1 vote. Congratulations on your new job, Chris, and I’m sure you will have no trouble balancing the demands of your new paid gig to get the best deal for taxpayers and your unpaid gig getting the best deal for Blazers owner Tom Dundon.

One of several remaining shoes dropped in the Portland Trail Blazers arena renovation saga yesterday, as Multnomah County commissioners voted 4-1 to approve team owner Tom Dundon’s term sheet for $100 million in county funding for the project. Or maybe just half a shoe, as three of the five commissioners voted not to use $35 million in county taxes from the sale of the Blazers to Dundon to pay for the county’s costs, and the commission doesn’t have a substitute source of those funds. “How real is this commitment for money, if we can’t agree on a way to fund it?” asked commissioner Meghan Moyer, the only no vote. Next up is the Portland city council, which yesterday debated its own term sheet and failed to come to any agreement; several councilors said the term sheet needs more revenue going to the city and more costs being paid by the team, with councilor Angelita Morillo (last seen during Wednesday’s stadium economics webinar, a recording of which is now available online) arguing: “We are not in a negotiation, we are in a hostage situation. How does adding amendments to this term sheet make it worse?”

And in this week’s non-Portland news:

• San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones wants city residents to get to vote this November on whether to spend $489 million in city funds on a new Spurs arena; councilmember Marina Alderete Gavito argues that a majority of city residents already voted in favor of a Spurs arena funding referendum last year; sports economist Geoff Propheter says that’s “silly” reasoning given that that vote was on county spending on the arena, not the city’s larger share. Voters are split on whether to vote, reports KSAT, or at least whichever voters were at yesterday’s public listening session were split. Maybe there should be a city vote on whether to take a city vote? Somebody should vote on that.
• The Kansas City Planning Commission unanimously approved zoning changes for a new Royals stadium. The plan must next go to the city council, which also has to find $600 million in city funds to help pay for the public’s $1.35 billion share of a $1.9 billion stadium — details!
• The owners of the Orlando Dreamers (note: not actually owners, because the Dreamers aren’t an actual team yet) are still asking Orange County to approve using $975 million in tourist tax dollars to build their non-team a new stadium. “Investing $975 million and getting $32 million a year, we lose money in that investment as a return,” replied Michael Poole of the county’s Tourist Development Tax Citizen Advisory Task Force. “Where can you help us make up that loss?” An excellent question, but I have another one: Do the Dreamers really plan to build their lineup around a 52-year-old Johnny Damon?
• The Cleveland Guardians‘ stadium needs repairs to its elevators and hot water tanks, and its public owner doesn’t have the tax money to spend on them. If only there were someone around who’d already received at least $300 million in public money to help build and improve the stadium and could be asked to help chip in, hmm.
• FIFA management told World Cup 2026 host cities that they’d get $1 million in payments to spend on soccer infrastructure and other “legacy” projects, but has so far stiffed them. Can you really say you’re surprised?
• The latest Denver Broncos stadium renderings are all of people out and about enjoying new neighborhoods while the stadium itself is just a shapeless egg — seems like somebody’s got the message that people would rather their tax dollars go to things that they don’t have to buy PSLs to access, even if the lesson they’ve learned is “Shhh, ixnay on the uxury-boxes-lay.” Denver Gazette sports columnist Mark Kiszla is eager to lend a hand, with a long column saying it would be a “grave mistake” not to give Broncos owner Greg Penner what he wants, in which Kiszla calls the stadium’s proposed Burnham Yard site “blighted,” “dusty,” “a dump,” and “dilapidated” — everybody drink, several times!
• Vancouver is “ready to build [a] new ballpark” for an MLB expansion team, according to a talkSport article that is actually about how the city authorized a local real estate developer to try to propose a way to do so, which isn’t the same thing at all.

For anyone who holds to the belief that sports fans are mindless boosters who want their elected officials to keep their beloved team owners (or just beloved team’s owners) happy no matter what the cost, I present you with Blazer’s Edge, the SB Nation fan site for the Portland Trail Blazers. Site editor Dave Deckard yesterday did something that the rest of the local media hasn’t yet: He assigned a reader/contributor who goes by the handle BlazerTag (possibly Ryan Whitledge, who used to host a podcast by that name) to investigate whether the Blazers leaving town would really result in an economic and fiscal catastrophe for Portland, with the city left with “a skeleton building, unused and rotting.” And the answer is: If the experience of other cities is to be believed, Portland would be just fine.

The former NHL home of the Arizona Coyotes has been without its anchor tenant since 2022; they’ve moved onto the greener pastures of Salt Lake City. To see how bad the finances got in the immediate aftermath, let’s hear from Glendale City Manager Kevin Phelps.

“The venue (Desert Diamond Arena) smashed its all-time record for revenue after the (Coyotes’) departure,” Phelps said. “The next year, they beat that number by almost $10 million.”

Glendale, you may recall, had an especially horrific lease with the Coyotes, under which the city had to pay the team to play there. Portland, meanwhile, has an especially horrific lease with the Blazers, under which team owner Tom Dundon doesn’t pay any rent or share any arena revenues.

At the peak of their popularity, the Warriors left Oracle Arena in Oakland for a new facility in San Francisco: the Chase Center. So what happened to Oracle (now called Oakland Arena) when the Warriors left? It had its best fiscal year ever and reduced its operating deficit by 97% between 2019 to 2023.

The Bay Area doesn’t have a ton of arenas — it’s basically the Warriors’ new arena in San Francisco and their old one in Oakland (not counting San Jose, the South Bay is really a different market [EDIT: or maybe one market but a really sprawly one or 1.5 markets or something, see comments if this is important to you]) — so getting the Warriors out of the way has been a blessing in disguise for the Oakland arena. Nobody ever talks much about San Francisco as an NHL expansion or relocation market despite its huge population, and this is likely one of the reasons. (The last attempt going extremely poorly would be another.)

KeyArena turned a bigger profit than it ever did with the Sonics. It happened the same way it did in Glendale and Oakland when their anchor tenants left: by freeing up the stadium revenue the sports teams were hoarding for themselves.

It goes on like that, but you get the idea. This is, in fact, a common theme in arena finances: Having an anchor tenant for 40 nights a year is nice, but not so nice when they’re not paying rent and are taking away dates that could be used on concerts that would. It’s still not especially likely that Dundon moves the Blazers, but it does seem that he needs Portland more than Portland needs him.

BlazerTag then summed up with a couple of paragraphs that reflect a position I’ve heard over the years from lots of sports fans who are all too aware they’re also taxpayers:

One of the persistent themes in the ever-non-evolving Portland Trail Blazers arena saga has been the question of what new team owner Tom Dundon really wants. Oh, he’s made clear enough what he’s asking for: $600 million in taxpayer money to spend on upgrading his 31-year-old arena, in exchange for which he’ll keep paying (some) taxes. But does he really want Portland officials to give in and cut him a check? Or is his secret plan to burn enough bridges in Portland that he can pick up the team and move it elsewhere?

This has been Oregonian Bill Oram’s theory for months now, going back to a February column where he wrote of “the overleveraged incoming owner who knows his new team’s greatest value lies in his ability to move it,” all as part of a plea for Oregon legislators to open their wallets, and fast, to head off such a dire outcome. But this week Oram was joined by former Oregonian columnist John Canzano, an opponent of the $600 million arena spending plan, who wrote in his (paywalled right after this point) Substack that “well-placed sources tell me they’re increasingly skeptical about Dundon’s motivations. He continues to appear disinterested, they say, in negotiating.”

As I’ve written here previously, figuring out whether a team owner is really looking for an excuse to move or is just using one of the oldest tricks in the playbook to create leverage is no easy task: They look pretty much the same from the outside, and one of the prerogatives of being a monopolist is that you don’t have to decide if your threat is a bluff or not until you see how well it works to shake loose public money. Some sports teams do move, absolutely; the vast majority of those that threaten to don’t, though, with some setting deadline after deadline until somebody finally takes their threat seriously. And as economist J.C. Bradbury noted in his presentation to last year’s sports economics conference, there really aren’t that many open sports markets that would be upgrades on current ones. (Bradbury will likely revisit this topic in today’s 5 pm Pacific webinar with fellow economist Victor Matherson, hosted by two Portland city councilmembers.) Yet even when this is the case, and when none of the smaller cities available are offering much in the way of venue funding to boot, team owners are still quick to suggest that they have one foot out the door.

So did Tom Dundon really buy the Blazers just to move them, or does he just believe in never giving an inch in negotiations? Another way of asking the same question: Is Tom Dundon playing 4D chess, or is he just an asshole? The answer, as always with billionaires who got their starts as used car salesmen, is always: It can be both! Presumably he’ll go with whatever makes him the most money, but billionaires can do things for dumb reasons just like other people, so maybe not. Either way, it’s Portland officials’ job to get the best deal for its constituents, and sometimes that means not giving in and repeating, “I will answer you when you stop yelling.”