Liveblogging stadium news from today’s sports economics conference (UPDATING)

We interrupt your regularly scheduled news to bring you live updates from today’s session of the Sports Economics Conference 2024 at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, hosted by UMBC economics professor Dennis Coates! I’m going to be on a journalists’ panel at 3 pm, but there are a ton of stadium economics superstars presenting until then, so I’ll be liveblogging as best I can. Refresh to see the latest!

9:02 am: Any day that starts with overhearing “What’s there to argue about? It’s the broken window fallacy!” is off to a promising start.

9:42 am: Nick Watanabe of the University of South Carolina presents on a joint paper on how the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics effected that small community, particularly in terms of housing prices. The authors’ conclusion: There was no overall impact on monthly rent prices during the Games, but the area did build a ton of hotels and resorts, which increased capacity. Besides, Watanabe says, “In the winter it’s freezing cold — so people are not like ‘Hey. we’re going to go up to Pyeongchang and watch some games!'” But rental prices for low-income residents did increase in the run-up to the Games, with landlords in particular charging significantly higher in deposits — 6-10%, or “hundreds if not thousands of dollars.” Watanabe concludes: “Is this gentrification? I can’t fully say.” (Though he does imply he thinks it’s better to be a landowner in an area with new sports activity than a renter — he told a friend in Arlington Heights that he should hold onto his house to see if land values go up after a potential Chicago Bears stadium, but he’s more concerned for residents near the proposed Kansas City Royals stadium who are likely to be displaced.)

10:25 am: Michael Friedman from the University of Maryland-College Park speaks on his book Mallparks, especially as it relates to the now-stone-dead Alexandria, Virginia arena deal for the Washington Capitals and Wizards. With so much evidence that subsidies for new venues are throwing money down a hole, he says, team owners and “no longer trying to sell us on half-billion-dollar stadiums and arenas, but rather “transformative” multi-billion-dollar “integrated stadium developments” or ISDs — or as Friedman also calls them, “Mallpark villages.” He notes, “Team owners are becoming real estate developers, regardless of their experience or expertise.”

In the 1990s, says Friedman, Wizards owner Abe Pollin “took on a tremendous risk” by putting up his own money to cover the construction debt for his new D.C. arena — but also got $70 million in public cash, a team-friendly land lease, and decades of tax breaks. Still, that debt was something other team owners didn’t have to deal with, so once Ted Leonsis took over the Wizards and the Capitals, he went to D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, who at first could only offer $432 million, then approached Virginia to see what he could get there.

Asked which stadium started the wave of mallparks, Friedman points to the San Diego Padres‘ East Village development, and then the St. Louis Cardinals‘ ballpark village as early adopters. “What I think shifted the paradigm is Battery Atlanta,” which is now the model for almost every new stadium — “I don’t want 15 acres for a stadium, I want 50 acres for a development.”

11:03 am: Victor Matheson from the College of the Holy Cross is up next, on sports facilities’ overall visitor impact. Noting the more than $35 billion in public money spent on North American stadiums and arenas since 1990 (not counting things like tax breaks and maintenance subsidies), he says, “If you’re going to be asking the public to build your factory for you,” you need to come up with a good economic argument.” Stadiums are increasingly being sold as “entertainment districts” that can also host concerts, community events, or even polling places, he notes — the Alexandria project’s economic claims assumed 511 events a year, which would have been required something like two-thirds of all ticketed sports events in the D.C. area to be held there.

To check on whether this is really happening, Matheson and his coauthors went to Pollstar and other public data sources to find out how many concerts and other non-sports events were being held at sports venues. “How often are these things used?” he said. “Not much.”

But even for those limited number of events, how many of the people attending are actually a net positive, and how many are already in town and are just substituting spending at one venue for spending at another? Matheson et al. looked at hotel usage (“with lots and lots of dummy variables,” for the stats geeks in the audience, which is almost everyone here) and found that “no one travels to go see the NBA [or NHL],” but “people will go to Minneapolis to see Madonna or Bruno Mars” (or for postseason games, sometimes):

The numbers are better for MLB and NFL games (Matheson is speeding through his slides, so no screenshots of those, sorry), but they’re still relatively low — and in terms of new tax revenue, at best only amount to a few millions of dollars a year. So sure, go ahead and spend money on new sports facilities, he says — but spend “in the low tens of millions, not the billions.”

11:30 am: Next on the docket is Jeff Carr from the University of Michigan, where he works with sports economist Mark Rosentraub, who famously published a book on why stadiums are terrible deals and then followed that up a decade of consulting contracts later with a book on why actually they don’t have to be. “I have Mark on speed dial if any of you want to debate him,” quips Carr, correctly reading the room.

His presentation is focused on three disparate sports venues — the San Diego Padres‘, Edmonton Oilers‘, and Las Vegas Raiders‘— but came down to: San Diego’s stadium district didn’t show big property value growth after Padres stadium opened, but new property taxes were enough to pay off the stadium debt (accounting for substitution?). In Edmonton, the city’s CRLs (their version of tax increment financing districts) had varying rates of development per dollar spent, with the overall upshot: “Did development occur downtown? Yes. Do we know why? No. Get back to me in two years.” For the Raiders stadium, he estimated a total of about $109 million in tax revenues over two years, counting hotel and sales taxes — amounting to a total of about $1.5 billion over 30 years.

The obvious question for me, if not everyone in the room: Are these really new tax revenues, or is some of it being redirected from other spending that would be happening if not for the new sports venue. The second Carr is finished presenting, Kennesaw State University economist J.C. Bradbury’s hand shoots up: “The real question is the counterfactual: What would have happened otherwise? I love going to San Diego and the Gaslight District, but the worst part is right around the ballpark.” Vegas has numerous other venues aside from the Raiders’ stadium, he notes — and as Matheson then points out, while Taylor Swift might not have played Vegas without a new football stadium, the Red Hot Chili Peppers might well have.

Friedman then pointed out that any study of visitors needs to account for “time switchers” who might visit a city regardless, and just choose to go to a stadium concert instead of doing something else while in town. Carr’s reply: He hopes to work on that, so TBD.

Time for lunch! More in a bit.

1:34 pm: And we’re back, all sugared up from the Oreo cake at lunch. Frank Stephenson from Berry College is picking things up with another look at visitor impacts from sporting events: The importance of hotel data, he says, is that you can use it to calculate incremental visits — in other words, subtract out normal amounts of hotel stays to find the net effect. You can also use it to estimate how long people stay, and whether there’s a “hangover effect” after a major event where spending is lower than normal, partly because it can take time to break down stages, etc., and prepare for other events.

Are there slides? You bet there are!

Stephenson, summing up: “Each running of the Preakness generates about $2 million in net hotel revenue.” That’s not nothing, but it’s also about .001% of the $200 billion annual local economy. “Sports gets tons of publicity, but in terms of economic impact it’s just not all that huge.”

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With VA arena plan dead, Caps/Wizards owner Leonsis grabs first half-billion-dollar check he can find, in DC

I know this breaks protocol with an end-of-day post, but I’m going to be busy in the morning and it’s breaking news, so let’s roll with it:

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser and Ted Leonsis, owner of the Wizards and Capitals, said Wednesday they were finalizing a deal that — if approved by the D.C. Council — would keep the teams in downtown D.C. until 2050, ending the owner’s planned move to Virginia.

That’s right: Whether it was the threat of an enforceable lease through 2047 or what, Leonsis has decided to take Bowser’s $500 million offer and run with it. Or rather $515 million, according to the Washington Post, in exchange for a 25-year lease extension, which is really a five-year lease extension if the teams are really already prohibited from moving until 2o47. (More details are supposed to be announced later today.) [See update below.]

This is either a sign of how billionaire sports team owners will give in if you tell them “no” to their initial ask — it was becoming increasingly clear that Virginia state Sen. Louise Lucas was never going to give Leonsis a dime — or a sign that billionaire sports team owners can get half a billion dollars in public money easy-peasy just by threatening to move to a state that doesn’t actually want them. Or then there’s Leonsis’s explanation:

Leonsis said a number of moves made by Bowser and the council, including the formation of a plan to revive downtown and the council’s passage of a new crime bill, gave him greater confidence that he could comfortably grow and expand his business in the District.

Ah yes, the crime bill, that’s what did the trick surely.

Anyway, the Alexandria arena appears to be officially dead, and it’s now up to the D.C. council to decide whether Bowser’s Half-Billion is really a good expense. I’ll try to update this post later tonight or in the morning if any more juicy details drop, or you can do the same in the comments.

UPDATE: At Leonsis’s press conference, he said the new lease would actually run through 2050, which isn’t a 25-year extension no matter how you slice it, and would only be a three-year extension if the teams are already locked in through 2047, as district officials insist. He would also get additional goodies like the right to build a new Wizards practice facility at the neighboring Gallery Place mall or elsewhere if there isn’t enough room there, plus a possible expansion of the six-year-old Entertainment and Sports Arena that is home to the Mystics WNBA team. Clearly there’s going to be a lot of fine print to dig through once the lease language actually lands at the D.C. council.

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Royals and Chiefs owners are outspending community groups 20-to-1 as sales tax hike vote nears

Jackson County’s referendum on a 0.375% sales tax surcharge extension to raise $500-700 million towards Kansas City Royals and Chiefs stadium projects — the former of which would still need another $650-750 million from the city and/or state — wraps up voting next Tuesday, and local media outlets are starting to give it their full attention. Just in the last couple of days we’ve learned:

  • Royals execs released a list of promises to the Crossroads neighborhood over the weekend, including assisting with “rent support, relocation assistance, tenant improvements, and payroll coverage to help with employee retention.” Chartreuse Saloon owner Jill Cockson immediately dismissed it as “a bullet list, nothing about that is binding whatsoever.” Community benefits agreement expert Julian Gross said the same of the teams’ broader benefits proposal, calling it “more like a press release than anything approaching a CBA.”
  • The group KC Tenants says to vote no, because a downtown stadium would drive up rent in the surrounding Crossroads district and the sales tax hike would cost the average county taxpayer $115 a year for the next 40 years.
  • County legislator Manny Abarca says to vote yes, because “opportunity rarely knocks twice.”
  • The Royals and Chiefs owners say they’ve provided proposed stadium lease agreements to the county, but county officials haven’t made them public yet.
  • The “no” campaign is being outspent more than 20-to-1 by the teams’ pro-tax committee, which has so far spent $3.2 million.

The whole thing still looks way too close to call. This is almost certainly reading way too much into a single quote, but one person who attended Abarca’s pro-tax town hall last night told Fox4KC, “As of right now I’m still undecided. I thought I had it down pat voting for the stadium but there are other issues involved — housing, economy, people’s jobs and parking of course.” That anyone is still shifting from “yes” to “undecided” at this late date is, if nothing else, a sign that the dueling campaigns are still having an impact, so a lot can still happen between now and next Tuesday.

And what happens on Tuesday could have a big impact on sports subsidies nationwide: There’s a strong “I’ll have what he’s having” theme to sports stadium and arena campaigns, and being able to point to the Royals in particular getting $1 billion in public money for a stadium would make it easier for other teams to demand the same. Not that that $1 billion would be guaranteed if next week’s ballot measure passes — the city council and/or state legislature would still need to vote on additional funds. But this is likely to be the only time the public will get a chance to vote on whether to put their money into building new playthings for Royals owner John Sherman and Chiefs owners the Hunt family, so it’s going to do a lot to set the tone for what comes after.

ADDENDUM: Just realized I left out economists saying the Royals’ claims of job creation from their new stadium are “completely made-up, concocted numbers” and a “bunch of hot air,” but you probably knew that, even if you might be surprised who one of the economists is. (The other economist was.)

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Browns owners want either $500m for a $1B renovation or $1B for a $2B suburban dome, they’ll get back to us

After Cleveland Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam first denied they wanted to build a new lakefront stadium, then were rumored to be looking at land in suburban Brook Park for a new stadium, then it was revealed they’d asked for $500-600 million in city money toward a $1-1.2 billion renovation, last night the Haslams officially said they either want to renovate their current stadium or build a new one in Brook Park, depending:

“We looked at can we solve all the issues on the waterfront for our fans?” Dee said during an interview with a small group of reporters who cover the Browns.

“It’s hard to get into, hard to get out of, we have no parking. I think that was really something important for us, as how to solve those issues. And when you start thinking about what Cleveland can be and what the vision for this city is, I think we underestimate what a great place it is. And I think there’s an opportunity here to perhaps build a domed stadium that can transform our area.

“That’s something exciting to think about. We’re looking at both options. Not one option is above the other. But I do think that Cleveland deserves to be thought of as this evolving, forward-thinking, creative city as opposed to not thinking big.”

Soooo, neither option is above the other, but Cleveland deserves to be thought of as a place that “thinks big,” we see what you’re doing there. Jimmy Haslam said a new domed stadium would cost at least $2 billion; asked how it would be paid for, he replied, “I’ll just say this: We’re in negotiation with various government entities and we’ll see how things work out.”

There are a few things that could be going on here:

  1. The Haslams could be, as Dee seemed to be hinting with her “thinking big” talk, hoping to get a new dome out of this deal, and are hoping to fiscal-responsibility-shame local government officials into paying for maybe a billion dollars worth of it.
  2. They could be trying to make Cleveland officials more comfortable with giving them money toward renovations, and are hoping either the threat of moving to Brook Park or the anchoring effect of mentioning a more expensive option will make half a billion dollars in public money seem cheap by comparison.
  3. They could be throwing both ideas at the wall and figuring they’ll take whichever one sticks.

There’s been no reply from city or county officials yet, so we’ll have to wait and see how this goes over. Either plan would be a hefty public expense to upgrade or replace a privately used stadium that’s just 25 years old, especially when both stadium plans would remain within Cuyahoga County — “one thing we’ve made very clear is we’re going to be in Northeastern Ohio forever as far as we’re concerned,” said Jimmy Haslam last night. Getting a bidding war going between a county and itself would seem to be a heavy lift, but we’ve seen that stadium subsidy logic doesn’t always have to make sense, so, ball’s in your court, Cleveland area elected officials.

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DC AG says Caps and Wizards lease binds teams to city through 2047, so quit all this Virginia arena talk already

On Friday just before noon, D.C. journalist Tom Sherwood broke the news that the city’s attorney general, Brian Schwalb, had sent a letter earlier in the week to Washington Capitals and Wizards owner Ted Leonsis telling him his lease prohibits him from moving the teams out of the city before 2047:

The fine print here gets a little complicated, but here’s what it looks like Schwalb is claiming:

  • In 1995, then-team owner Abe Pollin signed a ground lease with D.C. for his then-new arena, which he built on his own dime but built on district-owned land, which he was allowed to lease for $100 million less than its market value. (D.C. also seized some of the land by eminent domain and put up $60 million for infrastructure improvements to the site.) The lease ran through 2027.
  • In 2007, the D.C. council approved another $50 million in bonds for upgrades to the arena, in exchange for which Pollin agreed to extend his ground lease through 2047.
  • Pollin later that same year signed a side agreement with the district to be able to opt out of his lease early if he paid off the $50 million in advance — but that, according to Schwalb, “illegally exceeded” what the 2007 law provided for, and so is “ultra vires” (beyond the district’s legal authority),”void ab initio” (invalid from the start) and “unenforceable.”
  • Ditto a 2019 lease amendment, which likewise was signed by D.C. officials but wasn’t a law that could override the 2007 bond agreement.

There are a couple of big questions here. First, which most of the subsequent back-and-forth between Leonsis (who bought the Capitals from Pollin in 1999 and the Wizards in 2010) and Schwalb has focused on, is whether the 2007 bond law trumps any of the later side agreements. But there’s also the question of what the original lease actually binds Leonsis to doing — presumably there’s some kind of clause promising that the teams will play home games in D.C. throughout the course of the lease, but what’s the penalty if they don’t? Without seeing the original lease we don’t know, and that document has so far eluded my web searches; if anyone knows where to find a copy, please drop me a line.

As for why Schwalb is only raising this now, after a months-long campaign by Leonsis to build a new arena in Alexandria, Virginia with $1 billion or so in public money, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser did hint at trying to force the teams to stay last month, though she didn’t provide legal details at the time. In that light, Schwalb’s letter is the other shoe dropping, with the clear intent of trying to get Leonsis to drop his mostly dead Alexandria plan and instead take Bowser’s offer for $500 million in upgrades to the existing arena — in exchange for which Leonsis would extend his lease through 2052, which is a long way off but also only five years longer than the Bowser and Schwalb claim he’s bound by the current lease, so not really much of an extension if so.

The legal niceties aside, this is very much an indication that we’re entering the throwing-shit-at-the-wall stage of the Wizards and Capitals arena talks: We already heard last that Leonsis has talked to Maryland state officials about building an arena there, and over the weekend Virginia state senate majority leader Scott Surovell and two local business leaders proposed combining the arena with a stalled casino plan for Tysons, Virginia, to the west of D.C. The easiest route would clearly be for Leonsis to take Bowser’s $500 million and run, but he may still want to extract more concessions — you have to think he would love an actual enforceable opt-out before 2052, for one, so he has leverage for future upgrade demands — so he has no incentive to agree to anything just yet, certainly not before the lawyers hash out what he can and can’t do under existing law. Find a comfortable seat, we’re likely to be here for a while.

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Friday roundup: $2.5B Philly stadium development could demand public money, KC sales-tax vote too close to call

It’s Friday again, and you know what that means: Time for the cavalcade of bullet points on news we didn’t have time for the rest of the week (or which just broke since Thursday morning, that happens too).

  • The Philadelphia Phillies and Flyers owners say they’re going to partner on a $2.5 billion mixed-use development in the teams’ shared parking lots, with restaurants, shops, hotels, apartments, and a 5,500-seat performance stage. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports: “Asked if the project would require public tax dollars, the company said that it was still working on an estimated cost, and that there were many ways to finance the development,” which is decidedly not “no”; stay tuned on this one.
  • Apparently it is allowed to conduct polls in Missouri during the early voting period, and one conducted in Jackson County on the April 2 referendum on a 0.375% sales tax surcharge extension to fund Kansas City Royals and Chiefs stadium projects is … tied, basically, with “yes” ahead by 47-46% but with a 4.5-point margin of error. The poll was taken last weekend before the latest news that community groups are urging a “no” vote, and by the Remington Research Group, which is connected with the “yes” campaign, so all this doesn’t look great for the team owners, though of course they still have more campaign spending to do.
  • Asked if state and city money would be required for the $2 billion Royals stadium — since team owner John Sherman is only putting in $1 billion and the county sales tax surcharge would only generate $250-350 million, sure seems like yes — team EVP Sarah Tourville told Fox4KC: “What I’ll tell you is that the Royals are committed to putting private capital into the stadium. We’re committed to a billion dollars of private capital in the stadium district.” That’s also decidedly not “no.”
  • The Arizona Coyotes briefly posted some arena renderings on their team app on Tuesday, and they’re super-tiny images that don’t have any fireworks at all, come back when you have something high-resolution, guys. Team owner Alex Meruelo still doesn’t actually have the land to build an arena on, since he first has to win an auction for state land where the bidding starts at $68.5 million, then also find the money to build the thing, but baby steps, and baby images, first, apparently. A Sportsnet reporter warned last weekend that the Coyotes could relocate if they don’t win the land auction, but 1) there might not be time to do so before the 2024-25 season and 2) we’ve been hearing this for decades now about multiple arena plans, wolf-crying caveats apply.
  • Oakland A’s management has agreed with the Las Vegas Stadium Authority on a community benefits agreement worth at least $2 million a year, which is less than they’re paying 34-year-old relief pitcher Scott Alexander. Also, community benefits agreements are supposed to be signed with community groups that can oversee and enforce them; teams can sign them with local politicians, sure, but that generally turns out very badly.
  • Speaking of going very badly, “Oakland A’s again block all replies on Twitter after realizing how much everyone hates the A’s” is an excellent headline about how very badly things are going for A’s execs right now.
  • The Chicago Bears could use personal seat license sales to fund “a significant portion” of a new lakefront stadium, reports Crain’s Chicago Business, which also notes that the team used PSLs to fund a portion of its 2002 renovation of Soldier Field — a portion of the team’s share, not the public’s share, don’t get crazy now — and that those licenses’ “value would evaporate” if the team moved to a new stadium. “Buy the right to buy tickets and keep it forever or until we tear down the stadium and build a newer one, whichever comes first” would not seem to be the best marketing strategy, but team owners do seem to rely on sports fans having short memories.
  • I was all set to see where sports subsidies would fall on Phil Mattera’s list of biggest mega-scandals, but sadly he ranks these by how much in penalties companies have paid for their misdeeds, and sports team owners have so far escaped prosecution for their crimes, unless you count the St. Louis Rams settlement.
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Some of Royals’ “community benefits” spending wouldn’t arrive until 2064, team letter reveals

Sorry to keep you hanging: Wednesday has come and gone, what are the Kansas City Royals and Chiefs owners prepared to offer as part of their community benefits agreements in exchange for $500-700 million in county sales tax money for stadium projects, as promised Tuesday? Kansas City Star, whatcha got?

The teams shared broad outlines of those agreements on Wednesday afternoon in a three-page news release less than two weeks before Election Day. They did not share the actual documents themselves and the teams did not respond immediately to The Star’s request for those agreements with the county negotiating group.

Well, that’s not great. The Royals and Chiefs press releases (there were actually two, for a total of six pages) contained laundry lists of the things they would be willing to fund (healthcare! workforce assistance! education!) without much about how the money part would work, but the Star was able to extract some details there:

What the news release did not say is that the Royals’ contribution, at least, would be in annual installments of $3.5 million. Over the 40-year term of the sales tax and lease, that adds up to $140 million. That’s according to a letter that the Royals sent to county legislators with Tuesday’s date on it that was obtained by The Star before Wednesday’s announcement.

So, $140 million dollars dollars over 40 years is not anything like $140 million now: In terms of present value — how much money you’d need to set aside today to spin off $3.5 million a year for the next four decades — it’s worth more like $60 million. And as the community groups opposed to Royals owner John Sherman’s CBA offer have pointed out, Sherman already gives $3 million a year to charity, so upping that by $500,000 dollars dollars would be chump change. (The Chiefs owners currently donate $3.5 million a year, so their offer of $2 million a year with increases starting in 2035 would actually be a reduction in charitable spending.)

And speaking of the community coalition that on Tuesday announced they would be opposing the teams’ sales-tax hike campaign, did yesterday’s press releases do anything to turn their heads?

Gathered outside the Jackson County Courthouse in downtown Kansas City, members of the Good Jobs and Affordable Housing for All Coalition chanted “Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, Vote No, Vote No, Vote No” as group leaders gave short speeches faulting the Royals for not meeting their demands.

At least Sherman and the Hunt family still have friends at KCTV5, which not only printed an article that only quoted a single team official with no additional research, it included a link to “Here are the groups endorsing the Jackson County stadium sales tax question” with no link to the groups opposing it. Thankfully somebody in Kansas City knows how to uphold the traditional principles of stenography journalism!

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VA gov says experts called his Caps/Wizards arena plan “best thing we’ve ever seen,” immediately called out for “embellishing”

It’s been a minute since we checked in on Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s attempts to win over the state legislature to his proposed Alexandria arena for the Washington Capitals and Wizards, how’s that going?

“The House did all the work,” Youngkin told a crowd at a recent event at a Richmond-area restaurant. “They hired outside advisers. They brought in experts that had seen these kinds of projects before. They got not only a clean bill of health but they actually were told, ‘This may be the best thing we’ve ever seen.’”…

But both House Speaker Don Scott and House budget committee chairman Luke Torian said Youngkin’s remarks — similar to those given in other speeches — were inaccurate and far overstated the scope of the firm’s work.

The firm had seen potential for a “great” opportunity in the structure of the deal, if the underlying assumptions were borne out by a financial review, something that never fully got underway because talks collapsed, according to Scott, who said the governor was “embellishing.”

Whether Youngkin’s economic projections for the arena make any damn sense has become a key point in the debates over the project, ever since it was revealed that fans would have to pay $731 a night for hotel rooms and $75 for parking to make the math work. A Cardinal News columnist advised Youngkin yesterday to stop talking about how “unprecedented” his arena deal would be and instead talk about other arenas that worked out for the public, like the Milwaukee Bucks and Dallas Mavericks projects, and immediately got pounced on by economist J.C. Bradbury:

In any event, nothing is moving on the Alexandria arena plan unless state Sen. Louise Lucas changes her mind about it, and she made this week that she has no plans to, telling WTOP:

The fact still remains that I’m not interested in seeing the arena in Northern Virginia. For one thing, the voters don’t want it. The residents of Alexandria, they don’t want it. And it’s not just people in Alexandria, in Northern Virginia, who are not in favor of this arena. It’s kind of like a statewide thing now. And with all of the information that I’ve had coming into me from other localities and other states, I can’t find anybody who can show me that having taxpayer dollars help construct, finance, any kind of sports arena has ever been a good deal for that locality.

That’s pretty definitive, and given that even leadership in the House, which was willing to vote for the arena plan, is clapping back at Youngkin now, it doesn’t seem like the governor is doing great with his project of winning enough friends to push this deal through in the final budget talks.

So if the Alexandria deal is dead for now, what’s team owner Ted Leonsis to do? He’s got that $500 million in renovation money offered by D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, but if he wants to maximize his take, he really needs to get some semblance of a bidding war going

A source with direct knowledge of the situation told The Baltimore Banner that Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and Leonsis discussed the idea of bringing the NBA and NHL teams to Maryland after Virginia lawmakers left out plans for a new Wizards and Capitals arena from the state budget this month.

Ahh, leak word to the scoop-hungry media that you’ve had “talks” with another state, that should do nicely. The heads of both the Maryland senate and house, who would be needed to squeeze an arena plan into the state budget in the waning days of the session, both said they’ve heard nothing about this, but an anonymous tip to the local paper is cheaper than flying to Nashville.

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Royals set to announce community benefits deal, community hates it already, urges “no” vote on stadium tax

Yesterday was the deadline set by the Good Jobs and Affordable Housing for All Coalition for Kansas City Royals owner John Sherman to agree to a community benefits agreement for his planned downtown stadium, and: A CBA agreement has been reached!

Jackson County legislator Manny Abarca says the agreement includes funding for affordable housing, workforce training inclusion, and support for minority businesses, and the Kansas City Public Schools District will not lose any revenues.

“Directly from the mouths of the Royals and I can validate the community table achieved that historic and transformational win,” Abarca said on X, formerly known as Twitter.

And: The coalition of community groups says the proposed CBA sucks, and everyone should now vote against the stadium tax! From the coalition’s press release sent out last night, which isn’t on the web yet that I can find:

“Make no mistake, this project will harm Kansas City,” said Gina Chiala, attorney and executive director of Heartland Center for Jobs and Freedom, of the Royals’ new ballpark and entertainment district development. “It will divert taxpayer funds away from sorely needed programs, drive rents up, and create poverty-wage bad jobs that will keep workers struggling instead of thriving. Let’s use public funds for the things the public actually needs, not to help billionaires boost their profits.”

So what did Sherman actually agree to? We don’t know yet, since Abarca didn’t provide much in the way of details aside from claiming “a minimum of $140 million dollars of community benefit dollars,” which would be a lot of dollars dollars of dollars, though still way less than the $250-350 million in county sales tax money the Royals would be getting, not to mention the additional $650-750 million Sherman wants, possibly from the state. The coalition has called for a guarantee of living wage jobs throughout the stadium district and a promise of affordable housing units to house three times as many people as are displaced by the project, among other things. “The failure to make this happen is entirely theirs to own, and we plan on making them feel the weight of their poor decision-making at the ballot box,” said Missouri Workers Center and Stand Up KC leader Terrence Wise in last night’s press statement. “To a team that claims to do a whole lot of listening, get ready to hear us loud and clear on April 2.”

There is going to be a lot of loudness and clarity happening on April 2, certainly: A whole lot of business groups, plus construction unions that cut their own side deal for union hiring with the Royals, are all in favor of the 0.375% sales tax surcharge extension to fund about $500 million in Royals and Chiefs stadium spending; in addition to the Good Jobs Coalition, tenant and environmental groups have come out against the plan. Members of the group KC Tenants interrupted a “Vote Yes” event on Monday by … doing something loud, presumably, the event was closed to the press and Fox4KC didn’t actually describe what happened.

The best predictor of a successful stadium subsidy push, as Kevin Delaney and Rick Eckstein made clear in their book Public Dollars, Private Stadiums, is when business and political leaders are all speaking in unison in favor of it. The business community is on board here, but with labor split, some elected officials like Jackson County executive Frank White opposed, and local media taking a surprisingly critical stance (or maybe not surprising, since the media tends to frame debates in terms of the range of what elected officials are saying), the April vote is looking up in the air, let’s just say.

There’s still a chance that the community groups will come around — Wise said yesterday before Abarca’s statement that “they have an opportunity still, until April 1st, to bring something meaningful to the table,” but then also Chiala said, “Any CBA that comes out, we should make very clear, is not actually a community benefits agreement,” because “the community is not at the table.” We’ll know more today, maybe, after Sherman actually announces how many dollars of dollars he plans to devote to how much housing of housing.

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Arizona Cardinals renovation plans break new ground in catering to rich people

The Arizona Cardinals ownership announced a bunch of stadium renovation plans yesterday, and since the only outlets reporting on it were the tattered remnants of Sports Illustrated and The Athletic and they pretty much just reprinted the press release, there’s no way of knowing how much the work will cost or who will pay for it. So for the moment, let’s just enjoy some of the more bonkers aspects of the renderings, because there are plenty.

First, though, let’s visit part of the press release, which is bonkers in its own way:

Last year, the Cardinals had the least expensive gameday experience in the NFL according to Team Marketing Report’s 2023 Fan Cost Index and affordability will remain in 2024. In addition, those fans seeking an unparalleled, upscale way to enjoy Cardinals games at State Farm Stadium will have an array of breath-taking new options starting this season.

Translation: “We’re charging our fans less than any other team! We want to keep things affordable, but we also want to charge as much as possible to people who can afford it, so here’s some stuff we think we can get away with charging through the nose for!”

Like what? Like this:

This is being dubbed a casita, or mini-house, which in this case means ripping out the seats behind the end zones and replacing them with tiny lounge areas with seating outside of and on top of it, to be enjoyed by … I’m sorry, what are these people wearing to a football game? Is there a heterosexist business executive cosplay convention in town? That would explain why there’s no one else at all in the stadium, though it’s left to the imagination what everyone here is watching if it’s not a football game.

Not to be confused with the casitas is the Casita Garden Club, which has no actual casitas, but does offer the chance to take photos of the Cardinals players while they … taunt you? I honestly can’t figure out what’s going on here, but I do wholeheartedly approve of the choice to show one of the clip-art fans facing away from the players she or her corporate employer paid so much for her to be near, the better to use them as a backdrop for her selfie.

Then there are the “field seats” built right out onto the field, or at least into the sideline area. Again, this is an extremely poorly attended game, despite the opportunity to, apparently, walk right up to the visiting team as they take the field, or even go on the field yourself, not like there’s a barrier or anything stopping you. Maybe this will be the ultimate premium experience, where if you pay enough for a ticket you can actually be a part of the game? In that case these fans are definitely dressed all wrong for it, at least one of the guys in the second image is wearing a souvenir jersey — and, it appears, possibly souvenir shoulder pads — so he might last a few seconds before going down with a traumatic brain injury.

All this, plus “an array of all-inclusive high-end menu offerings and handcrafted cocktails, beer and wine,” can be yours for only … okay, pricing isn’t available yet, but just put down a $10,000 deposit and we’ll start there. If these plutocrat pens can pay for themselves, more power to the Cardinals for identifying a market, I guess, but it’s absolutely a sign that income inequality is way out of control.

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Field of Schemes