This has been a long, busy week for a lot of reasons, so let me just thank those of you who re-upped your FoS memberships (your swag will be in the mail shortly!) and get straight to the news, of which there is a ton, because the stadium game doesn’t stop just because it’s summer or there’s other stuff vying for our attention:
- The Paris Olympics start tonight, and how’s that going? You say France is spending $3-5 billion on the Games in exchange for “uncertain” benefits, tourists are staying away because they don’t want to deal with all the Olympic disruptions and local museums and such are set to lose a ton of money, and Paris is forcibly relocating homeless people to make the city seem more attractive? Good, good, that’s what the Olympics are traditionally all about.
- The Tampa Bay Buccaneers owners aren’t asking for a new stadium, but that won’t stop the Tampa Bay Times from noting that the stadium is “aging” (aren’t we all, every day) and wondering if the Glazer family will want renovations or a whole new one. “Even after repeated requests from the [Tampa] Sports Authority for information, the Buccaneers have still not provided us with any renovation plans,” Hillsborough County Commissioner Ken Hagan told the paper, while Tampa spokesperson Adam Smith said the Bucs “haven’t approached the city about anything like that” and “we don’t expect them to.” But the Bucs’ lease runs out in 2028, and all the other kids are getting new and renovated stadiums, so Times sports reporter Rick Stroud still spends 2700 words speculating on what a new or renovated stadium could look like and how it would be paid for, it’s always a time saver when your marks take the initiative to extort themselves.
- Also in Tampa Bay, two Pinellas County commissioners are asking questions about the Rays stadium deal in advance of a Tuesday final vote, questions like “How much will this actually cost taxpayers?” (more than $1 billion, by best estimates) and “Will the public have to put in even more money to make sure affordable housing is built?” Unfortunately, it only takes four of seven commissioners to pass the deal, so there’s no guarantee the dissenters will get answers to their questions before Tuesday, though county officials said they’d ask.
- Chicago Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf and the owners of the Blackhawks are planning a $7 billion mixed-use project around the United Center, no details provided on whether this would involve public money or tax breaks or anything, they didn’t mention it in their press release so it probably isn’t important.
- The Pennsylvania Independent Fiscal Office did a study of the economic impact of the Philadelphia Phillies and Pittsburgh Pirates stadiums, both of which were built with public money, but unfortunately even though it spelled out that it was calculating spending by both “fans whose main reason for travel is a Phillies game and casual fans who attend games because they happen to be visiting the region,” the final numbers just added up all spending in and around the stadiums and assumed it wouldn’t happen without them, very disappointing.
- Not telling the Nevada Independent how to do its job, but if you’re going to roll with the headline “How Bally’s buyout might affect resort plans for A’s Vegas stadium site,” you might maybe want to include something about how it will affect that, you know?
- Oakland A’s owner John Fisher is laying off half the team’s non-baseball staff so he can make Sacramento River Cats employees do two jobs at once, this has been your weekly John Fisher Sucks post.