Field of Schemes

Chiefs owner still mulling all stadium options, seeking to increase $750m public price tag Kansas City Chiefs executives have been pretty quiet about their stadium plans since June, when they asked for and got a one-year extension on Kansas's offer of sales tax subsidies that could be worth...

Clark Hunt has offers of $750m in hand from KS and MO, but continues to say he needs county subsidies as well, which does make one wonder whether the Chiefs really need a new stadium if it'd only be profitable if taxpayers cover more than $1B of the cost.

Bears Stadium Financing Plan Predictable, Hackneyed

Dallas Stars owners start shopping for new arena, that’s officially everybody now It's rare for a major pro sports team to have no entries in the Field of Schemes "posts by topic" list, given that pretty much every team owner out there has at least hinted at demanding some kind of ...

The Stars are moving to Plano, unless they're moving to Arlington or The Colony or Fort Worth or building an arena in Dallas or staying in their old Dallas arena. Clearly owner Tom Gaglardi is entering the kicking-tires-to-gin-up-a-bidding-war phase.

Bears execs now likely demanding $1B+ from Arlington Heights for stadium project, fine print reveals Snuck into one of last week's economic impact reports for a proposed Chicago Bears stadium in Arlington Heights was an eye-popping number: "To jumpstart the full redevelopment potential of the 326-acr...

Bears execs intend to ask for well over $1B in publicly provided stuff, for a project that the team's own extremely rosy projections expect to bring in $69m/year in new tax revenues, a best-case scenario that would still leave the public losing money.

I believe this logical fallacy is technically known as the Big Ball of Stupid.

Friday roundup: D.C.NFL stadium comes with nine-figure Metro cost, Mets owner likely to win casino on city parking lots I had a nice talk yesterday with Chris Francis of Straight Arrow News (owned by the union-busting Joe Ricketts, sigh) about ballooning hidden public costs of sports stadiums and arenas, and the result...

A Metro expansion could cost "hundreds of millions of dollars" on top of the $7B in city cash and free rent Commanders owner Josh Harris is already getting, says councilmember Charles Allen, but "we cannot afford not to do it."

Frank White recall leaves Royals/Chiefs stadiums even more up in air than they already were Frank White, the former Kansas City Royals second baseman who has been Jackson County executive since 2016, was overwhelmingly recalled by voters on Tuesday, largely because of <strike>his sub-.300 ca...

KSHB reports White’s successor "faces a tight deadline" on stadiums, but at last word the Chiefs and Royals owners were still seeking a county to offer cash on top of the $700m+ being offered by MO and KS, maybe they're the ones facing a tight deadline?

Bears stadium economic impact reports reveal that economic impact reports aren’t worth much Arlington Heights yesterday released not one but two economic impact reports on the village's proposed Chicago Bears stadium: One commissioned by the team and carried out by consultants HR&A, and one ...

Economist J.C. Bradbury called the Bears impact reports "an incomprehensible mess of motivated nonsense." If it's nonsense that could land them $1B+ in infrastructure and tax breaks, though, team owners will no doubt consider it consulting fees well spent.

City’s running boom is adding almost $1B to local economy The city’s running boom generated an estimated $934 million for the local economy in the fiscal year through March, according to New York Road Runners.

You'll probably want to avert your eyes from this one, too: www.crainsnewyork.com/sports-recre...

Top county official says giving Spurs owner $150m for arena would have “zero impact” on locals, needs to go back to tax school With a public referendum on around $150 million worth of county funding for a San Antonio Spurs arena up for a vote five weeks from today, KSAT-TV had Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai, the county's top ...

Sorry, Bexar County voters, looks like you're on your own for understanding the consequences of the upcoming Spurs arena tax subsidy vote better than your elected officials do — the good news is, that's a pretty low bar.

Cool.

IAVM is a fine resource, but they have a vested interest in keeping themselves funded. Academic researchers don’t typically join industry groups for what they study - did you click through to read the actual interview?

Sanders has studied convention centers for 30 years, wrote a book about them, and is retired from UT San Antonio. IAVM is for people who work for arenas/convention centers — criticizing him for not being a member is like accusing Greta Thunberg of not belonging to the American Petroleum Institute.

Shock and awe!

Sabres extend lease five years in hopes Buffalo’s wallet will re-open by then Buffalo Sabres owners Terry and Kim Pegula had an expiring arena lease and no way to use it to extract arena upgrades from Erie County, which is too busy with helping build a new stadium for the Pegul...

Expiring leases, it turns out, are only a ticking clock for public officials; for team owners, they can be moved at will. (The Sabres lease, like many sports leases, gave the Pegulas an option to extend under the existing terms, which include free rent.)

A’s Vegas armadillo gets vaporcompany as Bally’s floats not-just-a-casino images The under-at-least-preliminary-construction Las Vegas A's stadium got some vaportecture neighbors this weekend, as Bally's released images of the casino/hotel/shopping/dining/etc. complex it plans to ...

Bally's chair Soo Kim insists his casino will be mostly other places to spend money, as if people go to Vegas to shop; the resort is to be built in stages, so as with the A's stadium it's anyone's guess when the pictures will become reality, if ever.

Friday roundup: Fire stadium wins Chicago approval, A’s set MLB record for alienating all their new fans already With all the ginormous stadium and arena wrassles like the Washington Commanders stadium and the San Antonio Spurs arena project and the never-ending Tampa Bay Rays saga, it's sometimes easy to forget...

"Being a season ticket holder for the Athletics is embarrassing to the point that I regret telling my friends or coworkers," a Sacramento season ticket holder wrote to the A's in May. By way of apology, they gave him a bag of old giveaways he already had.

A San Antonio journalist told me today that the mayor has started receiving police protection because of threats against her and her family for her attempts to slow the project and allow for more policy evaluation. Anyone know if the Spurs or NBA have issued a statement on this?

L.A. approves $2.6B convention center expansion, even as convention demand shrivels There are boondoggles, there are big boondoggles, and then there are public development disasters. Los Angeles has just embarked on a disaster. Last week, the Los Angeles city council approved an expa...

Even as Los Angeles commits to $193m a year in debt service for a convention center expansion, other cities' experience shows that the likelihood of any significant increase in LA’s convention business is effectively nil.

Harris doesn't know either. D.C. is giving him 90 years of control over the RFK land — if someone offered you 90 years of free rent on a house, you wouldn't know how much that would be worth either without a time machine that can read Zillow from the 22nd century.

There's no way to know if it's $7B or $25B in cost, is the point: D.C. is giving away an asset (land) that it's impossible to know the value of for the next 90 years, which is how long Josh Harris will have control over it.

Zalupski completes Rays purchase, now has to figure out which city to shake down for stadium money The sale of the Tampa Bay Rays to Patrick Zalupski and friends for $1.7 billion is now official, and the Tampa Bay Times is on it! Here's what their three staff writers on the story are reporting: Wit...

Zalupski is in the same boat as Sternberg was: He has a stadium to play in, though no one loves it, and a new stadium would come with most of the same problems as the old one unless someone can figure out how to build one in the exact middle of the bay.

How does the Commanders stadium deal suck? Let Defector count the ways Defector ran a long piece yesterday on why the Washington Commanders stadium deal sucks, and no, I'm not only posting about it because they called me "the great Neil deMause," a title by which I expec...

The total public cost of the Commanders stadium will likely be $7B-$25B, setting a new sports subsidy standard that will doubtless be used as a benchmark by other team owners, meaning it'll cost lots of other cities more billions of dollars in the future.

Friday roundup: Browns stadium gets airport okay, San Antonio mayor seeks cut of Spurs’ arena revenues First things first: The Ohio Department of Transportation changed course yesterday and granted a building permit to the Cleveland Browns' proposed stadium in Brook Park, one month after declaring it w...

A consultant okayed the Browns stadium's proximity to flight paths, leaving it facing only: suits over the Modell Law and use of unclaimed property funds and whether move talks violated the team's lease, plus $600m in unfinalized city and county spending.

This is complete tea-leaf reading on my part, but when a word appears in a headline but not the accompanying story, I always suspect editorial interference.

DC passes final $6.6B Commanders stadium subsidy, there is much media rejoicing The Washington, D.C. city council cast its second and final vote yesterday on the Commanders stadium deal that will involve a record-shattering $6.6 billion (or more) in public subsidies, and as expec...

The headline in Jeff Bezos's Washington Post called the Commanders stadium deal transformative — a word lifted from team owner Josh Harris's statement on the vote and not even dignified with quote marks in the paper's headline.

Covering sports stadium financing? Read these 4 tips. Read these 4 tips to comprehensively inform voters and investigate claims of huge economic impacts from public financing of sports stadiums.

Are you a reporter covering one of the many recent public stadium deals? Read this: it's the least you could do. Your government and team sources are lying to you. Be a journalist, not a parrot.

I’m sorry to inform you that the Overton window has recalibrated to “batshit.”

$6 billion in tax and land breaks is indeed "more than $1 billion," very good, WaPo! Next time, try to remember that the goal of the game is to come as close as possible without going over.

Life is long, mayoral tenures are short. Besides, what else is Manfred going to do, give up show business?