Plague of minor-league soccer stadium subsidy demands reaches pandemic proportions

Oh hey, USL press release about the ill-fated Pawtucket soccer stadium project, which utterly fails to mention either the metastasizing public costs or the fact that Rhode Island voters now oppose funding it by a 44-35% margin. Anything else in there of actual interest?

Tidewater Landing becomes one of five current stadium projects that are under construction in the USL Championship and USL League One, including one for a future USL Championship club in Des Moines, Iowa. There are another 11 stadium projects approved or in development across USL Championship and League One, following clubs such as Colorado Springs Switchbacks FC, Louisville City FC, Monterey Bay F.C., and Chattanooga Red Wolves SC, whose new homes have opened in recent years.

So, five stadiums under construction (or at least having had a groundbreaking, which lets Pawtucket qualify even though funding hasn’t gotten final approval) and 11 others “in development” — that’s rather a lot, even for a league that currently sports 38 teams across two levels in an attempt to take over the U.S. soccer world by sheer volume. The press release doesn’t specify which cities the USL is currently getting or seeking stadiums in, so with the help of the Field of Schemes archives and Reddit, let’s attempt a rundown in rough order of approvalness:

That’s 19 potential projects, though only maybe ten of them could be considered in progress, and for some of those you’d have to squint really hard. John Mozena of the Center for Economic Accountability, the people behind those excellent stickers, has a Twitter thread about this whole kerfuffle, in which he points out that sports stadiums, thanks to being closed and empty most of the time, have less economic impact than your typical supermarket or chain food store:

If there’s a silver lining to all this, it’s that most of the USL stadium campaigns appear to be spinning their wheels to various degrees. If there’s whatever is the opposite of a silver lining, it’s that none of the potential team owners are giving up, because why stop grabbing for that brass subsidy ring if you can maybe get tens of millions of dollars if you get lucky? Not sure if the USL qualifies as a Ponzi scheme yet, but it’s certainly striving to head in that direction.

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Rhode Island reveals Pawtucket soccer TIF would leave taxpayers with ocean of unpaid stadium debt

Rhode Island’s plan to replace the departed Pawtucket Red Sox with a USL soccer team has gotten a fair bit of attention for its soaring costs, which led the state to take money intended for surrounding development and spend it on stadium construction instead. But what about the revenue side of things? How sure are state officials that projected tax revenue streams from a tax increment financing district will pay off the public’s $2.1 million in annual construction debt payments?

Welp:

Initially, Commerce also said an economic and financial report put together by a sports stadium consulting firm, CLS, wouldn’t be released without an Access to Public Records Act review. But amid growing criticism last week, state officials reversed course and released the document, which among other details showed for the first time how much state revenue the stadium is projected to generate. (Year one will net $565,000; year 30 will net $1.4 million).

I don’t have my calculator open, but I’m pretty sure $565,000 and $1.4 million are both considerably less than $2.1 million. Meaning that extra money will have to come from somewhere, which WPRI reveals would be:

The shortfall in stadium-specific revenue means officials will need to use existing tax revenue generated in the TIF district to cover the rest of the bond payment for the project. Consultants for Pawtucket officials say that shouldn’t be a problem, since the TIF district currently generates about $6 million in state revenue each year without the stadium.

That’s right: The TIF district, whose entire selling point is that it only uses the tax increment that is attributable (in theory, at least) to the new construction, would also get to use tax revenues that the state is already getting. And a whole lot of tax revenues, given that the TIF district is set to cover an area way, way, larger than just the immediate vicinity of the soccer stadium:

Former state commerce secretary and current state treasurer candidate Stefan Pryor, who promised in 2019 that  the stadium project “will pay for itself,” said in a debate on WPRI that it still might, maybe, if additional phases of development are added — though those would likely require more public subsidies.

There’s still a chance Rhode Island could pull the plug on this whole project depending on who wins the gubernatorial election this fall, which may not be current Gov. Dan McKee, given that he currently has the lowest approval rating of any U.S. governor. Though his leading challengers, Nellie Gorbea and Helena Foulkes, both say they support the project but just want to figure out a different way to pay for it, which, good luck with that. Pete Townshend did warn us.

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Friday roundup: Jays plan $¯\_(ツ)_/¯ in SkyDome renovations, figure it out yourself, journalism can’t help you

Happy Friday! I don’t know about you, but for me this was a great week: I got a new coffee mug, and also it’s now almost over! The week, I mean, not the mug. You’re smart, you probably figured that out already.

And now, how’s about some news:

  • The Toronto Blue Jays owners are planning $230 million in renovations to the stadium formerly known as SkyDome but now named for the team’s corporate owners, or maybe it’s $300 million in renovations, what is money, anyway, especially Canadian money? The CBC’s report says that the redo will include saying “goodbye to the nosebleeds,” as the top 500 level deck will be “completely removed and replaced with non-ticketed spaces,” and oh, here’s a rendering with the 500 level still very much visible, hmm. The stadium is owned by the Jays after Ontario built it and took a huge bath on it, so presumably the renovations will be funded by the team, though Jays president Mark Shapiro called this just a “medium-term solution,” so there’ll still be plenty of time to demand a new stadium later, don’t worry.
  • WPRI in Providence breaks down why Pawtucket’s new USL soccer stadium will cost taxpayers $60 milllion and not $45.5 million like its developers claim, which is helpful and all, except when you add up all the numbers it actually looks more like $80 million? ($46.2 million in state tax breaks, $10 million from the city, plus $27 million in additional money redirected from state infrastructure spending — yup, that’d be more than $80 million.) The fog of stadium wars is soupy indeed.
  • If the Philadelphia 76ers owners succeed in building their own Center City arena and no longer renting from the Flyers, “The companies that would benefit are Live Nation and AEG, because they would have two buildings in Philly to play off each other, so the rent expense would go down,” former Spectrum manager Ed Rubinstein tells Venues Now. “That’s the reason why we never wanted another arena built.” This would be the Sixers owners’ problem, on the one hand, but also Philly taxpayers’ problem if the idea of giving the Sixers arena a giant tax break would be to help the local economy when it would only end up shuffling concert spending around from one part of town to another.
  • There are new Tennessee Smokies stadium renderings, and — oh, come on, you’re not even trying! I get that the plans need to be downscaled some because the stadium is over budget, but at least you can afford some clip art fireworks or people playing random sports. Show some self-respect.
  • Somebody dug up this consulting report that everyone’s favorite economist-for-team-hire Andy Zimbalist did on mixed martial arts — okay, sure — and I must report that previous reporting that Zimbalist earns $225 an hour for his services is out of date: His “customary rate,” he wrote in the 2017 document, is actually $850 an hour. And that’s before any surcharges Zimbalist now imposes for supply-chain issues. Please draw your own conclusions as to whether that rate could be an incentive to report the findings that your client is hoping for, or at least look really hard for them.
  • Your occasional reminder that sports team owners don’t have a monopoly on getting billions of dollars in public money for no damn reason: Here’s a report on Kansas giving Panasonic $800 million in subsidies for a battery factory in exchange for a commitment of zero new jobs, and here’s Bernie Sanders talking about how a new bipartisan bill to compete with China on electronics somehow involves giving $76 billion to microchip companies. The New York Times called the latter “a remarkable and rare consensus in a polarized Congress,” which is both true and all too telling about what our elected representatives (and major newspapers) can agree on.
  • “It’s morally corrupt that new arenas for professional teams worth billions of dollars are majorly publicly funded — especially when the tax dollars could be going to other areas in the city in actual need of the money,” writes Norman Transcript sports reporter intern Clemente Almanza of devoting public dollars to a new Oklahoma City Thunder arena like the team’s owners want, “but” — you knew there was a “but” coming — “that comes with the territory of having a franchise. 18 of the 29 NBA arenas are owned by a government multiplicity” — he’s an intern, he can’t be expected to own a dictionary — and “losing the Thunder would cause catastrophic levels of damage that the state would never recover.” Um, you don’t want to recover the damage … hey, Norman Transcript, don’t you have any copy editors? No? I guess “let the intern sit down and keyboard out a column on why a new arena is necessary” is just how journalism goes these days — that coffee mug gets righter and righter every day.
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Rhode Island’s $80m subsidy for minor-league soccer stadium is okayed by governor and five pals he appointed

When we last left off with Rhode Island’s plan to bring a USL soccer team to Pawtucket, the stadium was wildly over budget, and Gov. Dan McKee and Mayor Donald Grebien were proposing to fill the gap by taking money that was budgeted for infrastructure for the surrounding development and putting it into the stadium instead. (The missing infrastructure money would be replaced by [waves hands in air, tries to distract taxpayers by promising them an ice cream cone when it’s all over].) So how’s that going?

The proposed and embattled Pawtucket minor league soccer stadium and adjacent development was approved Monday night by the Rhode Island Commerce board by the narrowest of votes — 6-5 with the chair, Governor Dan McKee, voting in the affirmative, breaking the tie and giving the project the green light.

Wow, a 6-5 vote of the … Rhode Island Commerce board? What the crap kind of weird government structure are these little New England states getting up to now?

The Rhode Island Commerce Corporation works with public, private and nonprofit partners to create the conditions for businesses in all sectors to thrive and to improve the quality of life for our citizens by promoting the state’s long-term economic health and prosperity. We offer business assistance, access to funding and red tape reduction for companies of all sizes.

It’s a quasi-public development agency, in other words, with the power to spend public funds but none of the accountability, as has become common in most states and major cities. (Rhode Island Commerce’s board is entirely appointed by the governor.) Still, it’s pretty alarming to see that a $27 million public subsidy for a pro soccer team on top of the $46.2 million in state tax kickbacks and $10 million from Pawtucket was decided by a bunch of retired politicians and Chamber of Commerce and union execs — if Karl Wadensten, CEO of VIBCO Vibrators (not that kind of vibrators, though when the ad copy reads “stop jerking your hoist” it’s hard to be 100% sure) had voted no instead of abstained, this could have gone a completely different way.

Pouring more than $80 million in public money into a $124 million minor-league soccer stadium, plus whatever it will now cost for the infrastructure for the rest of the project, doesn’t sound like a great idea, and economists quickly told the Boston Globe as much, with Holy Cross’s Victor Matheson calling it “a terrible idea” while Kennesaw State’s J.C. Bradbury noted, “Everyone knows it’s a joke.” (“For once, I am not the most negative economist in the story,” added Bradbury on Twitter.) The Globe described this as “Some economists aren’t sold” and immediately countered with USL “senior vice president of club expansion and real estate” Dan Holman, who had this to say in response:

Economists tend to look at things in a silo, Holman said, while a soccer fan would be able to see the whole pitch.

“The economic impact is huge,” Holman said, “but it’s the community impact as well.”

There are several followup questions that the Globe reporter could have asked — “What is that even supposed to mean?” and “You do know that Victor Matheson is a goddamn soccer referee in his spare time, right?” come to mind — but that would not serve journalistic balance, so the article ends there.

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Friday roundup: 76ers’ “privately funded” arena would require 30-year tax break and maybe state cash, this is why we can’t have nice things

Happy Friday! Hope you enjoyed the last 24 hours of hoping that the Philadelphia 76ers$1.3 billion all-privately-financed arena plan didn’t have any hidden catches, because sorry to tell you, but:

  • Buried in a Philadelphia Inquirer article about what Philly locals think of the 76ers arena plan — some are tentatively optimistic, councilmember Helen Gym opposes it like the last 76ers arena plan and a Phillies stadium plan 20 years ago, Chinatown leaders are worried about parking and traffic impacts as you would expect they would be — is this news: “the arena’s developer has also said that the plan involves inheriting a 30-year property tax break for the parcel that Council gave to the current property owners.” Since that tax break is tax increment financing — all property taxes above a certain level are getting kicked back to the developers of the mall that was built on that site — the value of that tax break will presumably increase beyond the $127.5 million already committed once there’s a pricey new arena on the property rather than just a mall, but the Inquirer didn’t provide details. Oh, plus: “the team has also opened the door to receiving state funding.” Again, no details, but all this stuff will have to be approved by the city council, if not the state legislature as well, so we should have more info eventually. For now, though, the Sixers owners’ claims of “no public money” need to come with a nine-figure asterisk.
  • “It almost seems like the NBA’s like, holding our city hostage, like, ‘if you don’t give us this, that the taxpayers don’t give us this arena, you know, like we’re going to move the team somewhere else,’” Oklahoma City resident Alex Coleman told KFOR-TV this week about Thunder owner Clay Bennett’s demands for a new arena. It’s not like that, Alex, it is that, though with the caveat that the gun the NBA is holding to the dog’s head may not even be loaded, but savvy negotiators and all.
  • Without a floor vote or any debate, the Massachusetts House approved fast-tracking a New England Revolution stadium last Thursday, exempting a likely MLS stadium site on the Everett-Boston border from a slew of environmental regulations. If it passes the state senate as well, Revolution owner Robert Kraft would have three years to come up with money to build the thing.
  • Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee, who last month announced his desire to bail out Pawtucket’s planned USL soccer stadium by diverting an extra $20 million in infrastructure funding into stadium construction instead, uh, still wants to do that. First he needs to convince the board of the state Commerce Corporation, and board members have been reticent to do so, noting that, as the Providence Journal puts it, “by agreeing to put all of the incentives toward the stadium, the state will then have to fork out an unknown amount of money in the future if it wants the rest of the project built.” This is surprisingly level-headed for the board of a state development agency, but: Yup, it sure would! Another meeting of the Commerce Corporation board is scheduled for Monday.
  • Regina, Saskatchewan is exploring building a minor-league baseball stadium despite not having a pro team (it has the Regina Red Sox, an amateur college summer team), and Jersey Village, Texas is exploring building a minor-league baseball stadium despite the region already being chock full of minor-league teams. Somebody needs to explain to them how increasing demand while the supply of teams is reduced is a good way to drive the price of teams up, but given that Jersey Village hired CSL to do its feasibility study, they may not be interested in hearing how money actually works.
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Pawtucket mayor wants to fill $30m USL stadium funding hole by creating $20m stadium-district funding hole

As previously noted here briefly, Pawtucket’s new USL soccer stadium is wildly over budget and Mayor Don Grebien says the only way to make it happen is to add $30 million in funding to the $46.2 million Rhode Island is already providing for the project. And now Grebien has a novel idea for how to do it: Redirect $20 million that was supposed to go for infrastructure to support the surrounding development and pour it into stadium construction instead.

Gov. Dan McKee, Pawtucket Mayor Donald Grebien and developer Fortuitous Partners want to shift most of the public financing for infrastructure, shops and housing around the stadium to the soccer ground itself.

But they need approval from the Commerce Corporation Board of Directors, and after nearly three hours of discussing the plan Tuesday, the board members, all appointed by prior governors, had reservations…

“We are kicking that can down the road,” said Commerce board member Michael McNally, referring to the non-stadium elements of the project. “I am all for this project. It needs to happen…. But we need to know how big the issue is. I am afraid we will end up with the stadium and nothing else.”

Yeah, having a stadium and nothing else would be a problem, since the whole justification for subsidizing a $40 million soccer stadium with $46.2 million in state money was to get developers to add a $360 million mixed-use development as well. (Whether this makes any sense — whether developers interested in a mixed-use development on the site really would have balked without a pricey soccer stadium for an as-yet-nonexistent minor-league team in use maybe 20-25 days a year as the centerpiece — is another story, but that was the stated rationale, anyway.) This is maybe more accurately described not as “kicking the can down the road” but as “robbing Peter to pay Paul,” but whatever the metaphor, it would leave the project with the same budget hole, just for a different part of the project.

The current plan appears to be to go back to the state legislature for more money to fill that new hole. Larry Berman, the spokesperson for House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi (but misidentified in the Providence Journal as “House speaker Larry Berman,” congrats on the promotion, Larry!), said, “After reviewing all the details, Speaker Shekarchi will consider additional resources that may be needed for Tidewater Landing next year,” which is less than a promise but still far from a hard no.

In addition to the $20 million state money shuffle, there’s also an additional $10 million that the city of Pawtucket would be putting in to cover the whole $30 million added cost. Grebien claims this isn’t really a cost because the team will pay $10 million in property taxes on the stadium, which initially was going to be tax-exempt; the Journal points out, however, that the deal with developers Fortuitous to have them pay property taxes included a $15 million tax break, so maybe that should be a cost too? Given that the latest reports are that the cost of the $40 million stadium has gone up from $84 million to $124 million, maybe the best thing is just to treat all numbers as at least partly fictitious anyway, and accept that the only thing we know is that the USL developers want moar.

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Braves hired Andy Zimbalist to fire back on stadium impact criticism, and it went about as well as you’d expect

When Kennesaw State economist J.C. Bradbury issued his comprehensive study in March showing that the new Atlanta Braves stadium was leaving Cobb County taxpayers on the hook for $15 million a year, Braves execs were not happy. And now, apparently on the principle that the best answer to a good economist with a study is a hired-in-house economist with a study, the Braves have commissioned a report from … oh, my goodness, it’s Andy Zimbalist!

For those who came in late, Zimbalist was part of the first generation of economists to turn a skeptical eye on sports stadium and arena deals, notably co-editing with Roger Noll the 1997 book Sports, Jobs, and Taxes, which remains an excellent overview of why claims of economic windfalls from sports subsidies are hoohah. Zimbalist was also one of the first to turn his expertise into a lucrative ($225 an hour) consulting business, taking on gigs from the likes of Brooklyn Nets owner Bruce Ratner, New York Yankees president Randy Levine, and the cities of Anaheim, Seattle, and Worcester to write reports and/or testify publicly on the costs and benefits of sports venues.

These reports were, ah, not always conducted with the rigor of Zimbalist’s other work. Memorably, his report for Seattle — which was arguing in court that losing the Sonics to Oklahoma City had cost the city money — turned out to be largely copied from his report for Anaheim — and since Anaheim was arguing that the presence of the Los Angeles Angels didn’t create a huge economic benefit, Zimbalist simply reversed his conclusions at the end. In the case of Worcester luring the Pawtucket Red Sox to town with a new taxpayer-funded stadium, he: cited University of San Francisco economist Nola Agha’s work to argue that minor-league subsidies are more justifiable, only to have Agha reply that that “virtually never works”; earned criticism from economist Victor Matheson, who actually works in Worcester at College of the Holy Cross, that “Andy is using his credentials and his prominence to basically give cover to the Worcester city council and [city manager] Ed Augustus to go forward with this project”; and later admitted (to me, for an article in pre-decimation Deadspin) that he hadn’t calculated all the costs of, for example, providing schooling to all the new residents he was crediting the Worcester stadium project for attracting.

As for the latest Zimbalist missive on behalf of Cobb County, let’s let the Marietta Daily Journal provide the takeaway:

Accompanying the county’s own numbers was a new, Braves-commissioned study prepared by Smith College economist Andrew Zimbalist, which is pitched as a corrective to Bradbury’s findings. The lead finding is that by 2046, the county is expected to see a return on its initial investment of between $19.6 million and $125.6 million.

Braves management touted the study as a long-awaited vindication of the deal, saying in a news release, “This should put to rest any questions on whether this project has been a win for Cobb County taxpayers, who have seen a major return on their investment.”

But have they really? The strength of Bradbury’s study was that he looked at the actual numbers for economic activity in Cobb County before and after the stadium — sales tax receipts, property values, and so on — and compared them with other neighboring counties to see if Cobb did significantly better as a result of the stadium. (Answer: It did not.) Zimbalist’s report, meanwhile, starts off with a long section on how the Braves owners put up a bigger share of construction costs than many other teams (the public share for Cobb County being 45% vs. an average for all stadiums from 1970 to 2010 of 70%, though as he doesn’t footnote the latter figure it’s possible he’s not comparing apples to apples here), charges Bradbury with providing “no foundation, either methodological or empirical,” for his sales tax figures, and accuses him of focusing solely on short-term losses for Cobb County when the real gains will be, he says, far into the future.

The MDJ didn’t bother to call Bradbury for comment for their article, but J.C. doesn’t need no legacy print newspapers when he has Twitter:

Phew! No reply yet from Andy on Twitter, but given that he tweets about 0.0001% as often as Bradbury, that’s probably no surprise. And anyway, as J.C. rightly points out, the proper forum for hashing this stuff out is in a peer-reviewed academic journal, whereas Zimbalist just typed out a Word file and sent it along to his client, which passed it along to reporters. This resulted in the MDJ’s headline “Braves tout new study on fiscal benefits, landing between ‘home run’ and ‘pop fly’,” as well as a way more skeptical article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (“Visitors paying less, businesses more for Cobb stadium bonds”).

In any case, this is yet another reminder that not all “reports” are created equal, and it’s important to look at who has paid for them, how rigorous their methodology is, etc. Or, as a far wiser observer once noted, it takes more than a clear plastic binder to make for good research.

 

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Friday roundup: Commanders stadium subsidy dies (for now), Brewers stadium subsidy enters

It’s Friday already! Lots to get to, so let’s get to it:

  • The Virginia bill to provide $300 million toward a new Washington Commanders stadium is officially dead, after its state senate sponsor pulled it following comments by team defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio calling last year’s Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol a “dust-up.” A D.C. city councilmember also claims that a majority of that council is opposed to a stadium on the RFK Stadium site, both because they don’t want to end up paying for it “no matter what promises the Commanders make” otherwise and also because of Del Rio’s remarks. This is the kind of dead that you can recover from, mind you — Commanders execs issued a statement saying they’ll continue to work on finding a stadium site, and Sen. Richard Saslaw said in throwing in the towel on his bill that “There were just so many things out there that a lot of people are saying, ‘Saslaw, this thing needs to wait’” — so expect to see this revived in a year or two when either Dan Snyder has finally given up and sold the team, when people have forgotten about Jan. 6 amid the monkeypox pandemic, or when at least Del Rio has been fired either for his loose lips or for being bad at his job.
  • A Milwaukee County supervisor wants to develop part of the Brewers parking lots into an entertainment “Beer District” — like the Bucks’ “Deer District,” get it? — with the resulting increased property taxes kicked back to the team for future stadium improvements. Brewers president of business operations Rick Schlesinger replied: “Could the real estate here be part of a solution? Sure. Do I know what that would look like? No.” That’s clear as mud, then, but it does seem like “develop a bunch of public land and give the proceeds to the Brewers” is on the table, at least, so keep an eye on this one.
  • The Sycamore Institute, a seven-year-old “nonpartisan” think tank that is not to be confused with the think tank of the same name at American University in D.C. that formed four years later but somehow grabbed the better domain name, issued a report this week totaling up $1.8 billion in sports subsidies the state has proposed for the Tennessee TitansNashville PredatorsTennessee Smokies, and Chattanooga Lookouts, and concluded that that’s a lot of money and such public spending rarely pays off. There’s not much in the report that’ll be unfamiliar to readers of this site — the report’s conclusion is “When evaluating these proposals, policymakers at all levels of government should carefully consider the potential benefits and costs,” which is about as nonpartisan as you can get — but it has a nice list of footnotes to past research and articles on the topic, including my 2011 essay for The Nation “Why Do Mayors Love Sports Stadiums?“, so it’s worth keeping handy for the next time you need to win a Twitter argument by dumping facts on your opponent. (No, this is not actually how Twitter arguments work, but it’d be nice to live in that world, wouldn’t it?)
  • Kansas City could get a new NBA team, according to … uh, the graphic designer for the Royals? Slow news day, KSHB-TV, or did you just really want the clicks from all the people old enough to miss the Kansas City-Omaha Kings?
  • Saskatoon’s nonprofit events center wants to build a soccer stadium, and is generously offering to put up $2 million, while the owner of an expansion Canadian Premier League franchise would put up another $2 million, so long as local government or (waves arms around vaguely at “the community”) puts up the other $24 million. They’ve also included a bunch of economic impact claims and a rendering of a stadium with no fireworks but weirdly synchronized glowing fountains, so you know they’re serious.
  • Pawtucket Mayor Don Grebien is asking Rhode Island for an extra $30 million for a soccer stadium on top of the $46.2 million the state is already providing, on the grounds that “We lost the PawSox because of a lack of leadership. And hopefully we don’t lose this.” Pawtucket doesn’t actually have a soccer team, so it wouldn’t technically be “losing” something it never had in the first place, but it does sound a bit better than “money’s all gone, please send more,” anyway.
  • Hosting World Cup games in Atlanta could bring $500 million in economic benefits, says a study done by a “leading global management consulting firm”; hosting World Cup games in Nashville won’t bring in anywhere close to $700 million like a city tourism agency report claims, say every economist Center Square reporter Jon Styf could find. Guess we’ll all just have to agree to disagree, too bad there’s no way to tell whose numbers are correct by looking at evidence or something!
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Friday roundup: Tempe opens arena talks with Coyotes, soccer teams everywhere want taxpayers to cover their cost overruns

Last of the semi-abbreviated news roundups! Things return to normal next week.

 

 

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Friday roundup: Reds exec says team will only demand renovation money, threatens to move if fans ask for better players

This has officially been the longest week ever. Scientists agree! And so does the news:

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