Field of Schemes
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D.C. to spend $410m on Nats stadium upgrades because “teams rely on happy players”
The Washington Nationals‘ stadium won’t even turn 19 years old until next spring, but the D.C. city council already approved spending tax money two years ago for renovations, including such important upgrades as “wrapping the exterior of the parking in a more visually appealing material.” And we’re now finding out how much it will cost Washingtonians […]
New clown document claims Royals stadium will generate $1.4B in vapordollars
Kansas City released a consulting report it commissioned on a new Royals stadium yesterday, with the intent of showing how it will pay off about $1.4 billion in taxpayer costs while team owner John Sherman is on the hook for less than $600 million. Let’s see how it compares to the typical clown documents: Questionable […]
New Seahawks owner says “never say never” on moving team, blames media for accurately reporting what he said
Vinod Khosla, who bought the Seattle Seahawks for $9.6 billion last month, was asked by Axios last week if he would “formally commit” to “keeping the team in Seattle long-term,” and while there were lots of fan brownie points to be earned by saying “yes” or at least “that’s our plan,” the venture capitalist billionaire decided […]
Bears reportedly seeking $1.5B+ in tax money from Illinois
Crain’s Chicago Business has some (rumored) details of what NFL and Bears execs talked with Illinois officials about last week, and it’s a new way to give the team a heaping helping of tax breaks: The Chicago Bears’ potential path to building a new stadium in Arlington Heights is veering toward a model that would leave […]
Friday roundup: Goodell meets with IL leaders on Bears, KC okays public vote it says won’t apply to Royals
Slow news week, busy Friday roundup, as the saying goes. (I didn’t say it was an old saying.) Roger Goodell and a Chicago Bears minority owner met this week with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and state legislative officials, and if you want to take that as a sign that the league and team want a better […]
Blazers exec declares Dundon “committed to Portland” but won’t commit to accepting arena deal
There are, when it comes down to it, really only two ways to conduct a campaign for public money for a sports facility: good cop, and bad cop. You can work to field a winning team, and then argue that it deserves a stadium to match; or you can field a terrible one, and warn […]
Royals mega-TIF district to divert taxes from much of downtown KC to pay for stadium
Kansas City has revealed the dimensions of the mega-TIF district where all increases in sales and income tax receipts, and half of all increases in hotel tax receipts, would be siphoned off and given to Royals owner John Sherman to pay off a new stadium, and it looks like this: The city didn’t provide an […]
Friday roundup: Rays stadium sticks Tampa students in trailers, Wyden wants Blazers owner to accept arena money or else
After a summer where the owners of the Kansas City Royals and Tampa Bay Rays each landed, in quick succession, about $2 billion apiece in public stadium funding despite widespread public opposition, I’ve been thinking even more than usual about what this site is hoping to accomplish. To report on and analyze sports subsidy shenanigans, […]
T-Wolves exec, Minneapolis mayor float using public money to replace one downtown arena with another
Minnesota Timberwolves and Lynx owners Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez have been muttering since buying the teams in 2021 about wanting a new arena, and team officials just started muttering louder and indicating whether they’ll be seeking public money, three guesses what the answer is: CEO Matt Caldwell did not promise to keep the venue […]
BREAKING: $700m Stars arena subsidy is endorsed by advocates, opposed by critics
Is there any journalism trope more tiresome than bothsidesing? Ducking the hard task of investigating the facts by just throwing up your hands and saying “different people disagree” is so plainly egregious that even the dictionary calls it out as reprehensible, and yet it’s still a staple of our daily news coverage. Here it is […]
Tax district to fund Browns upgrades could push public stadium cost to $2B
I mentioned briefly here the week before last that Brook Park had designated the land around a planned new Cleveland Browns stadium to be “blighted,” which Mayor Edward Orcutt said “gives us the opportunity to be able to maintain this site in the future.” It’s now becoming clearer where that maintenance money would come from, and […]
Friday roundup: Cleveland, Nashville keep throwing good stadium money after bad
Running late today, let’s do a speed round: Upkeep costs for the Cleveland Guardians stadium and Cavaliers arena continue to climb, with one estimate placing them at $261 million, and the county-run Gateway Economic Development Corp. still doesn’t have money identified to pay for them. “We need to figure this out,” said Gateway board chair Virginia “GiGi” […]
KCUR gets Royals stadium math all wrong (again)
Kansas City NPR station KCUR, which has a pretty bad record of trying to explain stadium financing, set out to do an explainer today on the city’s plan to spend $600 million toward a new Royals stadium, and how’d that go? The plan to pay the $600 million Kansas City plans to borrow for or […]
No, the 2028 Olympics won’t be a $20B boon to the SoCal economy
Speaking of bad math, an economic analysis of the impact of the 2028 Olympics on Los Angeles, conducted by the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. on behalf of the city’s Olympic organizing committee, concludes that the 2028 Summer Games could result in between $20.5 billion and $40.6 billion of “increased output” in Southern California: […]
Hochul says $1B Bills stadium spend was to meet fan demands, make “better deal for taxpayers,” other things that aren’t true
For some inexplicable reason, the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle got an interview with New York state governor Kathy Hochul that ran this morning, and decided to spend it asking her all about how much she loves the Buffalo Bills. After a whole lot of reminiscing about how no one in her house growing up was […]
Ishbia to ask for taxpayer “infrastructure” spending for White Sox stadium
The Chicago Sun-Times has a long explainer up about Justin Ishbia’s proposed White Sox stadium, and while it gets off to a shaky start — “Why do the White Sox want a new stadium?” “The team is under lease at the state-owned Rate Field only through 2029” nonresponsive, move to strike — it eventually gets around to […]
DC officials battle over giving United owners $300m to upgrade 8-year-old stadium
Washington, D.C. council chair Phil Mendelson’s proposal to give D.C. United‘s owners $300 million for upgrades to their eight-year-old stadium is facing opposition from Mayor Muriel Bowser, who has argued that she already gave a pile of public money to one 20,000-seat venue in the district — the Wizards and Capitals arena, which is in the midst […]
Friday roundup: Nobody in media or politics can math or word right edition
It’s been a while since I’ve thanked everyone who makes this site possible through their generous donations, so: Thanks, everyone, who makes this site possible through your generous donations! I hope you are all still enjoying this journey through the world of sports venue shenanigans, if “enjoy” is the right word for it. Sometimes it […]
MLB expansion talk focuses on Salt Lake, other cities with major question marks
With the Athletics seemingly settled on setting the Fisher family fortune on fire in Las Vegas, and Tampa Bay Rays owner Patrick Zalupski about to receive the spendiest gift stadium in history, the thoughts of bored baseball writers are turning toward expansion. Sure, there’s the little matter of a new union contract first, which could […]
White Sox owner-in-waiting reveals pictures of what proposed “Railyards” stadium probably won’t look like
What’s worse than a Friday news dump? A Saturday news dump on a three-day weekend: Canal Edge LLC – a Chicago-based development and investment firm owned by White Sox minority owner Justin Ishbia – revealed renderings of a potential stadium and mixed-use development along the Chicago River that would also include residential, commercial, retail and […]
Friday roundup: Vegas stadium board approves Raiders cash after “fastest meeting in the history of $75m giveaways”
Welcome to the end of another programming week, one that was way busier than you’d expect for the dregs of summer. Let’s get through the rest of the week’s news and get you out of here for the long weekend: Also eager to get out of town for the long weekend, apparently: The Las Vegas […]
New Angels owner plans $2.5B Anaheim stadium, according to nobody at all, apparently
Following Tuesday’s announcement of the sale of controlling interest in the Los Angeles Angels to multi-sport team owner Stan Kroenke, Forbes baseball writer Barry Bloom wrote this: Kroenke intends to build a new $2.5 billion ballpark to replace aging and decaying Angel Stadium, which opened in 1966 and has been refurbished at least twice. Bloom gave […]
D-backs exec calls lease talks “non-productive,” “draconian,” would like his $600m check already
Arizona Diamondbacks stadium renovation talks appear to be at a standstill again, with team CEO Derrick Hall telling Axios that lease talks with Maricopa County have been “non-productive to date” and that “we need language that is not draconian in nature and reflects the spirit of that legislation without renegotiating it.” The legislation in question […]
What does $4B Angels sale mean for team’s stadium future, MLB expansion plans? Some investimagations
Los Angeles Angels owner Arte Moreno announced yesterday that he is selling the team to Los Angeles Rams/Denver Nuggets/Colorado Avalanche owner Stan Kroenke, and most of the news coverage has — rightly — focused on Moreno not letting the door hit him in the butt on the way out. Moreno, a billionaire billboard baron, bought the […]
County officials cite AI, “The Giving Tree” as reasons for approving Rays’ $2B stadium subsidy
The Hillsborough County Commission voted 5-2 on Friday to approve a new Tampa Bay Rays stadium development on the current campus of Hillsborough College, making the team’s long-running saga all over but the postmortems. (If you want those, you can choose from among Forbes, the Tampa Bay Times, and Florida Politics, only one of which name-checks […]
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