Field of Schemes
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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 […]
Friday roundup: Tampa council approves plan to give $2B in public money to Rays stadium, says it’s not really public money
The Tampa city council spent all day meeting yesterday about the Tampa Bay Rays stadium deal, but honestly they could have saved time and just voted first thing in the morning. Public speakers were split in their opinions — public speakers are always split — and as for councilmembers themselves, there was little actual discussion […]
Fact-checking Tampa councilmember’s “busting myths” video about the Rays stadium proposal
With the Tampa city council set to vote today on its share of $2 billion–plus in subsidies for a $2.36 billion Tampa Bay Rays stadium, councilmember Lynn Hurtak has posted a video “busting myths about the Rays stadium proposal.” Let’s see what she came up with: “I’m a huge baseball fan.” When she and her husband […]
KC to spend extra $7m a year on paying off Royals bonds just to avoid public vote
The Beacon ran a long article late last week about the Kansas City Royals stadium proposal that includes a bunch of worthwhile analysis of the deal, including why using taxes from in and around the stadium isn’t really the project “paying for itself.” (“Some ballgame attendees might be going to a Crown Center restaurant instead of […]
Royals mega-TIF could see Missouri taxpayers covering John Sherman’s entire $1.9B stadium tab
Also on Friday, the Kansas City TIF Commission issued its Downtown Stadium TIF Plan, spelling out in a bit more detail — though still far from complete detail — what public money will be going to a new Royals stadium if and when it gets final approval following the city council’s yes vote on Thursday. Having […]
Latest Rays stadium plan includes “waterfall” fund that could drive public cost past $2B
The revised Tampa Bay Rays stadium plan paperwork was released on Friday afternoon, in a classic Friday news dump. The idea behind these is to dominate the discourse just as everyone goes home for the weekend, so that by the time Monday rolls around — in this case, with a city council vote looming on Thursday […]
Friday roundup: KC approves $1B+ in Royals stadium subsidies over calls for public vote, independent analysis
First things first: The Kansas City council voted on a proposed city funding package for a new Royals stadium yesterday, and as expected, it sailed through, with councilmembers voting 11-2 to approve a series of agreements promising $600 million in cash plus at least $500 million in tax breaks toward a new $1.9 billion stadium at […]
KC committee approves city $1B+ Royals stadium subsidy after security arrests opposition speaker
The $1.5 billion–plus Kansas City Royals stadium subsidy plan sailed through its first city council committee hearing yesterday, with the Finance, Governance and Public Safety Committee voting unanimously to approve $600 million in city funding plus hundreds of millions more in tax breaks. The vote sent Mayor Quinton Lucas into paroxysms of metaphor, declaring that […]
KC council set to vote on city giving Royals owner $600m plus a crapton of tax breaks, getting almost nothing in return
A Kansas City council committee is set to vote today on approving city money toward a new Royals stadium, so naturally the actual legislation didn’t get released until yesterday, providing everyone involved approximately no time to read and understand it. While everyone scrambles to play catchup, here’s an attempt to at least figure out the main […]
San Antonio council votes not to let city residents vote on $489m in Spurs arena funding
The San Antonio city council has completed its hearing on Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones’ proposal to put a measure on the November ballot on whether to devote $489 million in city money to a new Spurs arena, and their verdict is nope: The San Antonio City Council batted down Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones’ attempt to […]
Friday roundup: Plano residents to vote on $700m Stars arena subsidy, Bears still playing hard to get with IL and IN
In case you missed it, sports economist/meme master J.C. Bradbury has a new book on sports subsidy deals due out soon: This One Will Be Different details the latest in stadium and arena deals and why they never pay off for the public, with a particular focus on the Atlanta Braves‘ extraction of money from Cobb […]
Free Money [subscribers-only]
The standard stadium playbook was laid out by Joanna Cagan and myself back in Chapter 4 of Field of Schemes, “The Art of the Steal,” and hasn’t changed much since. The move threats, promises of illusory fiscal windfalls, warnings of obsolescence (whether physical or economic) and so on have… To keep reading this Field of […]
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