Category: Arizona Diamondbacks

Friday roundup: NYCFC unveils images of Naming Rights Sponsor Stadium, A’s reveal plans to blow a/c at fans’ feet

access_time personNeil deMause

And so we have reached the end of another programming week, one mercifully without Jerry Reinsdorf’s stadium subsidy demands going up yet again. That’s just about the only thing that didn’t happen this week, though, so let’s hit the news recap:

  • NYC F.C.‘s $780 million soccer stadium plan cleared another hurdle this week, getting the okay of the City Planning Commission, the last stop before a final city council vote. It also got some fresh renderings depicting how fans would enter the stadium through a giant cube-shaped entryway (dubbed The Cube, this team has a way with words) that would be covered in a giant video board that display the names of all five New York boroughs, in case you forget where you live. (The stadium is depicted bearing the name Naming Rights Sponsor Stadium, while the entryway in one image says “New York City FC” while in another it’s “Cube Entrance Sponsor,” pick a lane, guys.) Still up in the air: how the affordable housing component would work, where fans will park if Mets owner Steve Cohen refuses to let the soccer team use his parking lots across the street unless he gets a state casino license, and, oh yeah, how the whole thing would be paid for, someone should really look into that.
  • The Oakland A’s “spherical armadillo” stadium in Las Vegas would have “the highest number of suites, clubs and other high-end seating products” relative to size of any MLB stadium, according to Venues Now, which spoke to A’s president Dave Kaval on the subject. In addition to hardly any affordable tickets, Kaval promised that the air-conditioning would blow out from under people’s seats, something that’s used at the Sacramento Kings arena and in some Middle East soccer stadiums, and which the site reported Kaval said he’s “working with Henderson Engineers to find a way to make it work in MLB.” Also a work in progress: The A’s are playing an exhibition game in Las Vegas tonight, and plenty of good seats are still available.
  • The Virginia legislature has officially passed a budget without money for an Alexandria arena for the Washington Wizards and Capitals, though Gov. Glenn Youngkin could still try for an amendment or a special session. State senate finance chair Louise Lucas, who has the power to kill budget bills by denying them hearings in her committee, doesn’t seem real amenable to that, though. One Alexandria restaurant owner tells D.C. News Now that he’s upset not because he wants arena traffic for his businesses, but because spending over $1 billion in public money on an arena would “alleviate some of the tax burden from the residents,” somebody’s been reading too many clown documents!
  • Two members of the Jackson County legislature will be holding a public hearing this Monday at 3 pm on the Kansas City Royals‘ $2 billion stadium plan and $1 billion public subsidy plan. While attendance at these things is never representative of the public as a whole — it’s almost guaranteed there will be a throng of construction workers bussed in to cheer the project on, for example — it will at least give us some hint of the public mood as we approach the April 2 deadline for voting on the 0.375% sales-tax surcharge extension that would fund the first chunk of the project. (The Kansas City Star editorial board is a no, at least until Royals owner John Sherman explains more about how the money, lease, and provisions for relocating businesses would work.)
  • The Chicago Bears owners are reportedly “close to” announcing a lakefront stadium in Chicago and are also still haggling with suburban cities over property tax breaks for a stadium there, never take seriously rumors that are spread by team execs themselves, just don’t.
  • Maricopa County and the city of Phoenix are considering a “partnership” to address the Arizona Diamondbacks owners’ stadium demands, which would … do something? Also this was just a letter that the county sent to the city council last August, and the council never replied, guess the Arizona Republic was having a real slow news day.
  • Would a new Tampa Bay Rays stadium increase the team’s attendance? Yes at first, then no after the honeymoon wears off in a few years. This report is not remotely new news, but it comes with lots of stats and charts! Guess the Tampa Bay Times opinion section was having a slow news day.
  • Sure, New York taxpayers are spending over $1 billion on a new Buffalo Bills stadium, but who can put a price on 16-foot-tall bison statues? ESPN reports that “there was some disappointment on social media among fans” that the statues aren’t bigger, since the “World’s Largest Buffalo Monument” in North Dakota is 26 feet tall, that does it, time to tear down the new stadium and build one with state-of-the-art bison.
  • New Mexico United‘s new stadium “costs the city nothing,” according to team president Ron Patel; KOAT-TV checked, and it’s actually nearly $29 million in public money, about half the total cost. Never take seriously cost estimates that are put forward by team execs, just don’t.
  • The Hawaii legislature is set to consider a bill to scrap a $350 million plan to rebuild Aloha Stadium so that the money can be used for wildfire recovery and housing instead. Rep. Gene Ward said he opposes the bill because “it’s not going to get anybody to come to the football games, regardless of how bad you are as a football player,” no, I don’t know what he meant by that either.
  • Finally, back on the A’s front, I was on this week’s Rickeyblog podcast, where we talked about all aspects of the team’s stadium situation, not least why fans in the Vegas stadium renderings are waving the flag of Gaddafi’s Libya and what that could mean for tourism. Give it a listen, you’ve got all weekend!
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Friday roundup: Opposition builds (somewhat) to sports subsidy plans in Virginia, Kansas City, elsewhere

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s been a rough week, what with new stadium demands dropping every couple of hours, half of them from Jerry Reinsdorf. But there have also been signs of new organized opposition from all corners, some of them involving heavy hitters:

  • The Northern Virginia AFL-CIO came out against the proposed Washington Capitals and Wizards arena in Alexandria after being unable to reach an agreement with the teams and the state on whether a hotel that would be part of the $2 billion project would employ union workers. “If they’re against it, then the arena deal is probably going to have a very difficult time,” remarked Virginia House Speaker Don L. Scott Jr. afterwards, as the arena bill heads for reconciliation talks between the house, which passed it, and the senate, which didn’t even give it a hearing. “If it dies, it dies.”
  • Virginia state Sen. Louise Lucas, meanwhile, upped the ante on her opposition to Alexandria arena plans, challenging D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on Twitter to “compete by both offering $0 in taxpayer dollars to these teams and let them decide where they want to pay to build their own arena.” (Bowser’s account did not respond, unless this counts.) Former Alexandria mayor Allison Silberberg, who is part of the Coalition to Stop the Potomac Yard Arena campaign, was so pleased that she brought Lucas a cake.
  • After the Kansas City renters’ group KC Tenants came out against the upcoming April 2 referendum to renew Jackson County’s 0.375% sales tax surcharge and give the money to Royals owner John Sherman as part of a potential $1 billion in public money for a new downtown stadium, calling it “$167 per household, per year, all to pay for a playground for the wealthy and for tourists,” a group of city residents have formed the Committee Against New Royals Stadium Taxes to likewise oppose the tax hike. The group has “little to no money in its bank account,” according to the Kansas City Star’s account of campaign manager Tim Smith’s characterization, but it does have a parked domain name and its organizers are members of the extremely active Save Kauffman (Royals) Stadium at Truman Sports Complex Facebook group, which is a recommended follow if you want to see how extremely angry many Kansas City residents, and Royals fans, are about this whole state of affairs.
  • Arthur Acolin, a real estate economics professor at the University of Washington, released a three-page report on the proposed downtown Philadelphia 76ers arena that found that disruptions to existing businesses during construction and operation could cost the city and state between $260 million and $1 billion in lost tax revenues. The math is a little rough — it looks like Acolin just added up all the economic activity in the area of the proposed arena and calculated what would happen if it fell by sample round numbers — but as he writes, “the 76ers have provided nowhere near this level of details nor any of the analysis behind their figures.” It was enough to get the 76ers to respond by calling the report “fatally flawed” and “another attempt by those who oppose the project to obfuscate the truth by pumping out misinformation and half-baked theories instead of engaging in productive dialogue,” in a CBS News article that repeatedly refers to Acolin as “Albert Alcoin,” which should get all their copy editors immediately fired, if they had copy editors, which they probably don’t.
  • Arizona Republic sportswriter Greg Moore wrote a column about Diamondbacks owner Ken Kendrick’s threat to leave town if he doesn’t get public stadium money that includes the subhead “I don’t like bullies,” and really the rest of the column is just icing on that four-word cake.
  • I brought my mighty rhetorical weight to the airwaves, or at least the internetwaves, by going on the Sox Machine podcast to talk about why giving Reinsdorf $1.7 billion in tax money for a new Chicago White Sox stadium development (since upped to $2 billion) would be crazytown.

So that’s it, then, the tide is finally turning, and maybe soon we can all stop pushing this damn rock back up this damn hill day after day? Hahaha of course not, the forces of vacuuming up money and giving it to rich people so they can have more money (because that’s what makes them rich people) continue unabated:

  • The Utah legislature advanced a bill to hike sales taxes in Salt Lake City by 0.5% to generate $1 billion for an arena for a nonexistent NHL team, with the backing of Mayor Erin Mendenhall. This would be on top of $600 million or more in proposed hotel tax hikes to help pay for a stadium for a nonexistent MLB team. Hockey bill sponsor state Sen. Dan McCay denied that this was giving in to threats by the Jazz ownership that they could move out of the city limits without a new subsidized arena, then added, “you’d hate to see downtown lose the sporting opportunities they have now,” so, yeah.
  • Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson delivered up a fresh bowl of word salad about whether he’ll endorse city money being used for a new White Sox stadium: “As far as public dollars, we haven’t gotten into any of those specifics just yet. But I will say that we’re gonna explore all options. … Everything is on the table here. But again, I want to make sure that there’s a real commitment to public use and public benefit. … There’s no guarantee that they’ll get it from the city. What I’ve said repeatedly is that we need to make sure that our investments have real public benefit and that there has to be a commitment to public use. Those conversations are being had, and there are some promising developments that eventually we’ll be able to talk about out loud.” He has it right here on this list…
  • The new $27 million Rhode Island F.C. soccer stadium in Pawtucket will now cost state taxpayers $132 million over 30 years, because the Pawtucket Redevelopment Agency got a terrible bond rate. State commerce secretary Liz Tanner defended the pricey borrowing by pointing out that even though the state legislature could have just appropriated the money and saved taxpayers a ton of interest payments, “there would’ve been a level of uncertainty without knowing whether the legislature was going to pass those dollars or not,” and we can’t have that, now can we?
  • The Dodger Stadium gondola project — surely you remember the Dodger Stadium gondola project — lurched forward again on Thursday when the Metro Board of Directors signed off on its environmental impact report. The gondola still needs approval from the city of Los Angeles and parks and transit officials, plus to figure out who exactly will pay for its potential $500 million price tag, but if nothing else it lives to gondola another day.
  • Oakland A’s owner John Fisher is reportedly focused on staying in Oakland until a new Las Vegas stadium is open in 2028, and also Sacramento is the frontrunner to be the temporary home of the A’s, this is way too blind-men-and-the-elephant for me, maybe let’s all calm down about the latest rumors you heard, guys.
  • And in non-sports news, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry defended signing a bill to remove the requirement that recipients of state development subsidies report how many jobs they’ll be creating, because “this program is about capital investment. It is not about job creating.” Just gonna sit here and let that roll around in my brain for a while, have a great weekend and see you back here Monday!

 

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D-Backs owner: There’s lots of cities I could move my team to, if I believed in threats, which I do not

access_time personNeil deMause

Oh, is somebody upset that they didn’t get in on the Friday news dump stadium subsidy action? Fine, you in the back there, Arizona Diamondbacks owner Ken Kendrick:

Diamondbacks Managing General Partner Ken Kendrick expressed disappointment over his organization’s inability to secure public funding to renovate Chase Field, suggesting that despite a desire to remain in Arizona the club could eventually look to move elsewhere if an agreement cannot be reached.

“We may run out of time in Phoenix,” Kendrick said. “We hope that won’t happen.”

So where is Kendrick threatening to move to exactly? To a neighboring city, or outside of the Phoenix region entirely?

Kendrick said he was not trying to issue a threat to the state about moving, saying multiple times the Diamondbacks were not currently engaged in discussions with other markets about leaving town…

Kendrick added: “I don’t think, in the world that we live in, threats are the right way to do business.”

Oh, okay, not a threat, got it—

“Cities are letting MLB know their interest; their interest in getting a team is specific. They would be happy with a brand new franchise, but they would certainly be very happy, you know, with, frankly, a successful, existing franchise.”

It’d be a terrible thing if someone was to set fire to the Diamondbacks, wouldn’t it, Colonel?

While talk of the Diamondbacks relocating to one of the cities seeking an MLB expansion team is a new twist, talk of shopping the team around isn’t particularly: D-Backs CEO Derrick Hall said last spring training that team execs were “looking at what other options might be in Maricopa County … and there’s been some interested parties.” (But not actually engaging in discussions with the interested parties, presumably, just looking at them longingly across the room.) It’s still not clear whether Kendrick and Hall are looking to get a new stadium or renovations to their existing one, or how much money it would cost or how much they want the public to kick in, or really anything beyond “give us what we want, or else.” No, wait, not “or else,” that sounds threat-y. “Give us what we want, and nobody gets hurt”? Note to self: Keep workshopping this.

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Friday roundup: No public ballot for Rays stadium, more questions about A’s Vegas move

access_time personNeil deMause

Before we get to the week’s stadium and arena news, let’s pause to appreciate that New York’s nutso mayor Eric Adams‘ campaign staff have been revealed to be under investigation for illegally accepting donations from the government of Turkey. Which I guess sort of qualifies as stadium news given Adams’ boosterism of that NYC F.C. stadium that could cost city taxpayers $800 million in infrastructure spending and tax breaks, but mostly: Yes, Turkey. Also his chief fundraiser and campaign consultant who is at the heart of the investigation is apparently 25 years old? This is going to make a great Netflix documentary in a couple of years.

But enough about my city, how’s yours doing?

  • The St. Petersburg city council voted 5-3 yesterday to hold a public referendum on spending about $600 million on a new Tampa Bay Rays stadium — which means the referendum won’t happen, because the motion required a two-thirds supermajority. Also it would have been only advisory, anyway. Council chair Brandi Gabbard, who opposed the public ballot measure, said she was afraid it wouldn’t be possible to explain the stadium deal in the 75 words available, which is certainly a novel line of reasoning.
  • Former Miami Marlins president David Samson says there is still “a deal to be done to keep the A’s in Oakland” because Las Vegas has “several issues that are not worked out yet” like whether A’s owner John Fisher actually has the money for his share of the project. Meanwhile, former Oakland A’s VP Andy Dolich says it would be a mistake for MLB to approve the relocation of the team from a large market to what would be baseball’s smallest. Not that either of them holds clout with the current crop of MLB owners, or they would still have jobs with them, but it’s keeping hope alive in Oakland, anyway, in advance of a likely vote by owners on relocation sometime this month.
  • Here’s an article about how a special tax district for Indy Eleven‘s new $1 billion stadium wouldn’t really cost taxpayers anything because it would just be a “special tax” that will be levied on soccer fans. And here’s an article explaining that the district would actually divert existing sales and income tax revenues from a large swath of downtown toward the USL team. The city-county council is set to vote on the tax district later this month; let’s hope they’re reading all the news coverage first and not just WRTV’s.
  • The Arizona Diamondbacks just got blown out in the World Series, and former team owner Jerry Colangelo thinks this makes it an excellent time to build them a new or renovated stadium, because “there’s a good vibe.” Gotta capitalize on vibes like this!
  • The Oklahoma City Thunder arena has been “the centerpiece of OKC’s innovative self-help effort, producing energy and economic impact that academic studies cannot predict, but 30 years of OKC success prove,” according to some downtown business development dude who was given a “guest column” in the Oklahoman to make this case. He adds that tearing it down and building a newer one would “create new and currently unimaginable opportunities,” which, that’s certainly an interesting choice of adjectives there.
  • Kansas City Chiefs CEO Clark Hunt says he’s waiting to see what the Royals decide about a new stadium before deciding what to ask for in terms of a new or renovated stadium for his team. “If the Royals do decide to stay in Jackson County, that’s going to be an issue that we’ve got to resolve,” Hunt said, which is maybe a hint that he’s hoping they’ll move to the county next door so he can get all of the future sales tax proceeds? That would have been a good followup question, if the reporters covering this had asked any, oh well.
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Friday roundup: Leaked analysis says Royals stadium could cost taxpayers $6B wut

access_time personNeil deMause

Gonna be a bit of a weird roundup today, gang, because the Kansas City Star dropped this bombshell last night:

A new Royals ballpark in downtown Kansas City would cost Jackson County taxpayers far more than its $1 billion sticker price.

It’ll be more like $4.4 billion to $6.4 billion, if the stadium sales tax and other payments required by the current lease agreement extended 40 years beyond its expiration date in 2031, as the Royals have suggested.

6.4 what now? Is this one of those stress dreams where I’m going to laugh about how I could ever have found it believable once I finally wake up?

If you don’t feel like reading the whole Star article, or just can’t see it through all the pop-up ads, here are some of the main points:

  • The 0.375% sales tax surcharge that funded the most recent Royals and Chiefs renovations currently generates about $53.4 million a year. [CORRECTION: The $53.4 million includes the parks tax and other payments listed below. I’ve adjusted the rest of the calculations that follow — the overall math doesn’t change much.] If that is extended by 40 years like Royals owner John Sherman wants, and sales tax receipts rise as expected, that would generate between $1.3 billion and $2 billion for the Royals alone according to a financial analysis that County Administrator Troy Schulte conducted last week and which someone “associated with the Legislature” leaked to the Star.
  • The Royals would get another $170 million, again over 40 years, from its half of a county parks tax and other payments from the city and state.
  • “What shocked Schulte,” writes the Star, was that Jackson County would face a projected $2.9 billion in increased insurance payments over the next 40 years if a new Royals stadium were built. The Royals’ current stadium comes with an annual insurance bill of $800,000; for a new stadium that would start at an estimated $4.5 million, then rise by a staggering 10% a year.

Some immediate caveats: None of the numbers above are in present value, meaning spending in the year 2070 is counted the same as spending now, which is not really kosher at all. And that 10% a year insurance hike sounds crazy on the face of it, plus also wouldn’t that imply that insurance on the Royals’ current stadium would rise as well, making the incremental cost less?

Still, even if it’s not $6.4 billion, we’re talking about a shit-ton of taxpayer money here. Using my best back-of-the-envelope scribbling and this present value calculator, it looks like the future tax surcharge diversion would be worth something in the range of $500-700 million in present value. The insurance bill, depending on your assumptions, could be up to $500 million. So it’s very likely well over $1 billion worth of taxpayer costs here, and that’s without any public infrastructure spending or property tax breaks or anything else that might eventually get rolled in as well.

If nothing else, this certainly explains why County Administrator Frank White sees $300 million paid out over 20 years as a preferable counteroffer: It very much is. It’s still maybe not a great counteroffer, since that’s almost $200 million in present value, but it beats $1-billion-plus all to hell.

So, yeah, that happened. And other things happened this week too, so let’s get to them as well:

  • Tampa Bay Rays execs presented their $600 million-ish stadium subsidy demand to the St. Petersburg city council yesterday, with city consultant David Abrams beaming that “You only have to look to the Battery in Atlanta to see how there was nothing there, the amount of economic impact that has happened in Cobb County for the Atlanta Braves has been nothing short of astounding.” Sorry, that is incorrect, but we have some lovely parting gifts. Rays exec Brian Auld also told the council that it has to approve a stadium deal by next spring in order for the stadium to be open in 2028 because “if we miss that opening date, this entire endeavor becomes impossible,” an assertion he backed up with I’m sorry, my time has expired.
  • Meanwhile, the Tampa Bay Times editorial board wrote an editorial this week that praised the city of St. Petersburg for its “transparency” by getting the Rays to share economic projections for their new stadium project with the city council by promising not to let the public see them, which is a new twist on the meaning of that word. “This marks a good start in what could be a beneficial new era for area residents and the Rays alike,” wrote the board; it will be left as an exercise for readers to determine what innovative definition the Times is using for “beneficial.”
  • The African-American Sports and Entertainment Group, which was announced with great fanfare a couple of years back as the city of Oakland’s choice to redevelop the Oakland Coliseum site, isn’t doing too well, with two of its eight owners suing the others for something about unfairly diluting their shares by creating multiple LLCs in Delaware. The group has already seen its plans for a WNBA team in Oakland get derailed by the league granting an expansion franchise to San Francisco instead, and getting a new NFL team for Oakland has always seemed kind of pipe-dreamy, so yeah, definitely not doing too well.
  • It’s been a couple of years since we’ve heard about the Minnesota Timberwolves owners — yes, A-Rod and that other guy — and their desire for a new arena to replace their renovated-in-2017 old one, but somebody asked Minnesota city council candidates what they think of paying for one, and they’re not crazy about the idea. “Subsidizing billionaires’ hobby investments is not a responsible use of taxpayer dollars — especially when there is no evidence that these tax outlays provide a return on investment,” said councilmember Elliott Payne.
  • Add Country Club Hills to the list of Chicago suburbs interested in being home to a new Bears stadium if the team’s owners want to pay to build one themselves, which they don’t.
  • The Arizona Diamondbacks are in the World Series, which means it’s time for more articles about why their owners think they need a new stadium. Also pitcher Merrill Kelly cast aspersions on Chase Field’s air-conditioning, saying, “I’m definitely sweating more here than I am other places”; there might just be other reasons for that, Merrill.
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Friday roundup: Tempe faces probe for spying on arena opponents, WI trims Brewers subsidy ask to mere $557m, plus new adventures in logical fallacies

access_time personNeil deMause

 

 

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Friday roundup: D-Backs owners sad no one is throwing money at them like in Milwaukee

access_time personNeil deMause

The tchotchkes are in the mail! Repeat: The tchotchkes are in the mail! If you don’t get yours by the end of next week, please drop me a line and I’ll look into it.

And speaking of next week, I’m going to be traveling then, so expect to get your news updates somewhat irregularly and possibly at odd hours. In the meantime, here’s a pile of rounded-up news to slake your thirst for stadium and arena knowledge:

  • The Arizona Republic reports that the Diamondbacks owners still want to renovate Chase Field, but that “the organization thus far has been unable to find the sort of public/private partnership to make that happen,” which is a very creative way of saying “we keep waiting for somebody to leave a suitcase full of unmarked twenties on our doorstep, but it hasn’t happened.” Team CEO Derrick Hall told the paper: “We don’t have our hand out, but if you look at some of the other situations very similar to ours — like Milwaukee, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Baltimore — in each case they are getting strong investments from the public, from a mixture of city/county/state, and we just aren’t.” Hall added: “I’m starting to get concerned with the timing. I don’t think the city officials in particular understand the urgency of our lease, which expires in 2027.” That’s urgent for someone, clearly, but it’s not the city of Phoenix that would face having to go play in the street. Hall did say that the team would put in “more than” 75% of a potential $500 million price tag, though he also said he’d be interested in getting “land we can develop,” so be sure to read the fine print of any eventual proposal.
  • The state of Wisconsin and city of Milwaukee are now looking at spending $600 million in public money over 20 years to upgrade the Brewers stadium that a 2018 study found needed a maximum of $84.5 million in improvements, reports Urban Milwaukee’s Bruce Murphy. Milwaukee residents overwhelmingly oppose the plan, but the Republican leadership in the legislature is currently looking at just taking tax money away from the city and giving it to Brewers owner Mark Attanasio, which is exactly how democracy is supposed to work, A+ work there guys.
  • The House Oversight Committee approved a bill to let Washington, D.C. keep control over the RFK Stadium site, while defeating an amendment that would have prevented D.C. from using public funds to build a new Commanders stadium there. The politics is a little complex here, though, with some Congressmembers arguing against using public money while defending D.C.’s right to use public money, so there’s a lot more haggling to go where this came from.
  • The development team behind the Philadelphia 76ers arena plans released a report it commissioned on the economic impact of the project; please pick a random three-digit number and add six zeroes to it and you’ll be as close to accurate as the report. In related news, the 76ers’ developer partner is apparently kind of a dick.
  • Missed this one last week: The New York city council has approved a new operating permit for Madison Square Garden, but only for another five years. This can will apparently be kicked down the road until Penn Station gets renovated, or the sun burns out, whichever comes first.
  • The temporary cricket stadium in a Bronx public park is dead, with the 2024 men’s T-20 Cricket World Cup matches now to be held in a temporary cricket stadium in a Long Island public park instead.
  • The Associated Press declares the four front-runners for eventual MLB expansion to be Charlotte, Nashville, Portland, and Montreal, though then also mentions Salt Lake City and Austin, so it looks like they’re mostly going by Googling “baseball expansion cities” and taking whatever’s on the first page of hits.
  • “Local tourism agency releases PowerPoint on how cool a new sports arena would be” is exactly the kind of journalism I expect from 2023, deep sigh.
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Friday roundup: Every Illinois mayor wants the Bears, Rob Manfred says the quiet parts loud

access_time personNeil deMause

Spend the entire week watching the Nevada legislature debate a Las Vegas stadium bill for the Oakland A’s and man, does the other news pile up. Plus, there’s some additional A’s news/fallout, because of course there is. Onward:

  • Not only is the mayor of Naperville offering up his suburb as the new home of the Chicago Bears, so too is the mayor of Waukegan, who sent a letter to the team on Monday saying she has lakefront sites available. Neither Naperville nor Waukegan is offering up any construction money or tax breaks so far like the Bears owners want, but sure, that’s a good way to get mentioned on telly. Also to create leverage for Bears execs to turn up the pressure on Arlington Heights and Chicago to provide more subsidies, but that’s a small price to pay for getting your town its 15 minutes of fame. Mundelein and Downers Grove, what are you waiting for?
  • MLB commissioner Rob Manfred opened his mouth about the just-approved Las Vegas A’s stadium bill, and a lot of words fell out, including “What is it that Oakland was prepared to do? There is no Oakland offer, OK?” and “Academics can say whatever they want. I think the reality tells you something else” and (of Oakland fans packing their stadium on Tuesday to chant “Sell the team!”) “It’s great to see what is, this year, almost an average Major League Baseball crowd in the facility for one night.” This made him instantly trend on Twitter, and earned snippy replies from Oakland mayor Sheng Thao (“If they had proposed a similar project in Oakland, we feel confident a new ballpark would already be under construction”) and economist J.C. Bradbury (“Seriously?”), and every A’s fan who noted that the new Vegas stadium will barely be large enough to hold an average MLB crowd (“You absolute ghoul Manfred”). Meanwhile, MLB’s relocation committee to evaluate the A’s move will be headed by the Milwaukee Brewers owner who is trying to extract public money from his own city for stadium upgrades, surely he will give it a full and fair evaluation.
  • A Kansas City Royals spokesperson says the team is down to two sites for a potential new stadium, one in K.C.’s East Village and one in North Kansas City. Meanwhile, team owner John Sherman doesn’t have a firm plan for how to pay for a stadium, and hasn’t even made concrete demands from Kansas City or North Kansas City. with one unnamed city official complaining that the stadium talks are like “fighting with Jell-O.” Give it time, man, Sherman hasn’t even threatened to move his team to Waukegan yet.
  • The Charlotte city council voted unanimously to spend $65 million on a new tennis complex to lure the Western & Southern Open to town from Cincinnati, something that Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles called “creating jobs in this community that need those jobs.” The Western & Southern Open happens once a year and only lasts nine days, so it’ll be tough to wring many full-time-equivalent jobs out of that, but maybe Lyles figures there’ll be a ton of hiring for the “world-class pickleball facility” to be built next door.
  • And finally, back to Manfred, who also took a dig at Arizona voters who turned down spending $500 million in tax breaks on an Arizona Coyotes arena: “I’m hopeful that whatever went on with the Coyotes is not an indication of a lack of public support to fulfill the public part of that partnership to keep the Arizona [Diamondbacks] facility a first-class major league facility.” Hey, Marc, are you sure he’s not a robot?
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Friday roundup: D-Backs threaten to move (somewhere nearby), and why MSG probably won’t be evicted

access_time personNeil deMause

Happy Friday, everybody! Or happy for everyone except Arizona Diamondbacks fans, who are going to be stuck buying souvenir jerseys with an extremely ugly shoulder patch for the foreseeable future after MLB decided to start selling ad space on players’ shoulders for the upcoming season. (Some other teams’ are not so bad, though the Houston Astros‘ might be even worse.) Or maybe, given the design of a stark black square, this is actually a memorial patch for an electronics company that tragically passed away during the offseason? R.I.P., Avnet.

And now for some other ways sports team owners are making life demonstrably worse for all concerned:

  • Speaking of the Diamondbacks, team CEO Derrick Hall spoke to the media this week about plans for a new or renovated stadium, which he didn’t actually say anything concrete about, though he did say “we’re still looking at what other options might be in Maricopa County, not outside of Maricopa County, and there’s been some interested parties.” Oh, do tell, some other cities in the Phoenix area want to build the D-Backs a new stadium? This isn’t going to be a Canadian girlfriend thing, is it? Hall also said “we’re prepared to spend hundreds of millions of dollars, we’re not looking for a handout,” which is amusing coming after the team lobbied the state to let it use a sales-tax surcharge for stadium improvements.
  • Madison Square Garden’s special operating permit expires on July 24, but even if that happens without a renewal by then, the New York Knicks and Rangers probably won’t be evicted, since the city would likely let the arena keep operating during a review process, reports The City. (Sorry to those of you who were getting your hopes up for the city parking a zamboni on center ice.) There was a public community board hearing on Wednesday on the operating permit, which according to AMNY’s report was dominated by sports fans shouting that they love their teams and rail station fans shouting that they’d love to see MSG gone so they could have a new Penn Station. There are probably better and even more democratic ways of solving policy debates than having people shout into microphones while power brokers largely ignore them and do what they want regardless, but that doesn’t seem the direction we’re headed.
  • St. Petersburg is spending $250,000 to hire an outside law firm to negotiate a term sheet for a new Tampa Bay Rays stadium, and know what, this probably isn’t a bad use of tax dollars: City lawyers are so historically awful at writing sports contract language that hired guns who know what they’re doing might actually earn back their pay and more. Unless city officials tell them to just get a deal done and not worry about the fine print, that could always happen, but as a glass-half-full kind of person I prefer not to think about what could go wrong — okay, my motto is actually “prepare for the worst, adjust if your expectations are exceeded” and it’s never steered me wrong, but sometimes things have to work out better than expected, it’s just the law of averages, right? Anyway, St. Petersburg is talking about building a billion-dollar stadium, at least it’s not cheaping out on lawyers to determine who pays for it, that’s better than nothing.
  • No, WIBC-FM, “Indy Eleven Owner, Ersal Ozdemir, Speaks on the New Indy Eleven Stadium” is not actually a news story, especially not when Ozdemir’s entire quote is “We do not need to go to the MLS to build a stadium the project should self-generate enough, we’re making a transformational impact to this area (downtown).” (“Transformational”! Everybody drink!) And no, Indianapolis Business Journal, it’s not any better when you give space to Ozdemir to say he would love to own an MLS franchise if someone gave him one, jeez, journalism people, are we going to start reporting on rich guys’ drink orders next? (Answer: You don’t want to know.)
  • The fight against the Philadelphia 76ers owners’ plan to build a new arena bordering the city’s Chinatown has reached the Miley Cyrus parody lyrics phase.
  • Sick of me always harping on about what a bad deal stadium and arena subsidies are without talking about all the other dumb things elected officials spend money on? Then you will enjoy my recent article for Hell Gate investigating what kind of bang for the buck New York state is getting for its film tax credits that Gov. Kathy Hochul wants to see increased. (Answer: Not a very good one!) Unless you are one of the commenters who works in the film industry and wonders why I didn’t focus on tax breaks for jet fuel for the airline industry instead — sigh, wait here, I guess I’ll be back in a couple thousand words’ time…
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D-Backs execs still mulling whether to tax fans to upgrade stadium, or demand a whole new one

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s been almost a year since the state of Arizona passed a law allowing the Arizona Diamondbacks owners to impose a 9% sales tax surcharge at their stadium, and use the surcharge to pay for stadium upgrades. (Or anything else they want, really.) At the time, despite having lobbied hard for the tax option, D-Backs president Derrick Hall wasn’t entirely sure he were going to use it, which makes sense once you realize that tax surcharges on stadium sales largely end up coming out of the team’s pocket. Now, Hall has elaborated on those thoughts from last May, and apparently he’s still thinking about them:

“The theme park district can be activated and can be in place. That’s an option to keep us at Chase Field. Like the roof, it’s not that it can’t be overcome, but what was once $220 million-$280 million in needs is $400 million or so now. We just need to know — pretty soon — what we’re doing. Whether it’s going to be Chase Field, which would be retro and reno and fix everything under the hood first, and hopefully develop around Chase Field. Or if it’s going to be a new site…

“There have been some options. But we’ve put it on hold. I’m back to the point where I need to get in high gear. We need to accelerate to get to a place where we know what we’re going to do. We have through 2027 on the lease. Sure, there can be an extension, but in order to extend, I need to know that that’s where we’re going to stay. It’s time to get that going again, as far as whether we’re going to be here at Chase or somewhere else in the Valley…

“My biggest concern with that is, it allows you the ability to increase taxes and helps service the debt, but I’m not thrilled about taxing our best fans. We’ve got to figure out a balance. If there’s other ways we can raise money or borrow money to have less impact on fans, that’s what I’m looking at now with other consultants, to see what would have less of a burden on our fans pocketbook, because that’s most important to me.”

There’s a lot going on there, but it mostly comes down to: The Diamondbacks still haven’t decided whether they want to renovate their current stadium or build a new one; they aren’t thrilled about using the stadium sales-tax surcharge option because that would “tax their best fans,” and those are the people they want to just charge higher ticket prices to and keep the money, so that wouldn’t help the team’s bottom line; and “somewhere else in the Valley” is still an option, assuming they can find “other ways we can raise money.” That’s still a couple of steps short of launching a bidding war, but in a metropolitan area made up of multiple municipal jurisdictions, you know it has to at least be on Hall’s mind. The D-Backs already used a rumor that the team might consider moving to Las Vegas to get the tax surcharge bill passed; dropping hints that the team might move to Tempe or Scottsdale is a lot less work, and requires less of a drive in a time of high gas prices.

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