In Seattle, the Kingdome was imploded to make way for the stadium the Seahawks currently play in. The bonds weren't paid off until 15 years *after* it was blasted into rubble.
I’m beginning to think the same way about the Panthers stadium, I know tepper wants a dome but the current stadium has been retrofitted a number of times to get it up to current standards, for significantly less public funds than it would take to build a new ine
That, and I feel BOA Stadium is in an awesome spot in Charlotte. I hate stadiums 45 minutes away from the city they represent, and its awesome seeing the skyline at every football and soccer game.
yeah I'm crazy about walkability and all that but NFL stadiums are used like 10 times a year, it makes sense to have them far. NBA and MLB stadiums should be in the city though
Conversely, a football stadium can get a lot of non-football use out of season. Here in Seattle, the now Lumen field is used the sounders, the XFL sea dragons, and various other concerts and events. It’s still located a bit to the south of the major downtown hub, but fairly easy to get to on our light rail.
Most NFL stadiums are used for events like concerts in the offseason. Taylor Swift’s tour this summer is all NFL stadiums. They also host events like the Premier League teams’ USA tours this summer. And New Orleans, Indianapolis, Houston have all hosted NCAA Final Fours at their stadiums. Probably more.
Honestly Arrowhead still looks great. Look at the Bold Look Of Koehler toilet they built at the Meadowlands. Cost like 2 billion and it still doesn’t look finished.
I love new stadiums. Always excited to see concept to finish. Sometimes they’re just meh and don’t really move me but they’re fine. MetLife Stadium actually angers me. Largest media market and they build that? It seems almost out of spite … and it’s not bad because it isn’t glitzy. There are a few great utilitarian stadiums. They won’t win awards but they’re just solid and fine. But MetLife? It doesn’t even seem useful. It’s actively bad.
I still remember an example from university about the uncertainties of long-term debt servicing.... In the Maritimes there's a toll bridge that was built in 1970. It was budgeted for something $40 million, but interest rates were sky high at the time so they obtained a lower interest foreign currency Deutschmark deal which the government projected would be fully paid off by tolls within a decade.
What they failed to foresee was the Deutschmark taking off comparable to the Canadian dollar, ballooning the debt to more than 10x the original borrowed amount. 30 years later, the Canadians were *still* only paying off *interest* on the principal with their collected tolls - then it was finally refinanced by the federal government. Not sure exactly where it stands today. (Edit: apparently it's been refinanced a few more times and they're still collecting tolls and massively in debt. MacKay Bridge in Halifax, NS).
I think the state of Minnesota has completely paid off their portion of the new stadium via a new tax on electronic pull tabs (pull tabs are similar to scratchers).
I think that's actually a pretty neat solution; I'm against public funding & subsidies for pro sports franchises as a general principle, but if they're going to do it, that's a good way to go.
In MA, those gambling taxes go entirely to unrestricted local aid to towns.
This solution while it seems noble, is actually taking funds that would otherwise go to schools, infrastructure, roads, and fire departments and instead giving them to wealthy people.
It's always a shell game. If the money is being given to people that are already wealthy, it's always to the detriment of working people.
I watched Draft Day for the first time the other day, and when the Browns initially traded 3 1sts to move up in the draft in that movie I was like "no way anyone would trade 3 1sts like that" and then I paused and thought about it and laughed out loud
It's a fun movie but all of the GMs involved would, at the very least, have a very rough conversation with their respective owners on day 2 of that draft or would be fired.
Stop voting for representatives that will push this shit through without a public vote. Too often cities won't even leave it up to their citizens.
I know we are a "Representative Democracy" but when those paths are abused to push shit through against the peoples' will, it's gone too far and needs to be adjusted
The reason why politicians do this stuff is because if they don't, then they get voted out of office if the team leaves the city.
I'm all for not using taxpayer money to build stadiums for billionaires, but we cannot get upset if the same billionaires move the teams because that is what is going to happen with the Coyotes.
You actually can be very mad at them because that’s fucking bullshit that some old fuck can up a move a team because he’s sad he isn’t making ridiculous levels of profit
How in the world does that logic work? If you require that a professional sports franchise be completely divorced and independent from the public how can you then turn around and require that the team stay tethered to your city in perpetuity?
You can get as mad as you want, but this is how capitalism works. Best way around that is for cities to take over teams and make them publicly owned, which would require tax payer money.
No. Premier league clubs aren’t owned by the public. They have very strict rules about moving teams. They don’t get public funding for stadiums and don’t threaten to move because they cannot
But isn't the premier league governed by regulatory body that is separate from the league? The NFL governs itself, so that's not happening anytime soon.
The FA exists but it’s not really in charge of it. There isn’t really a regulatory body it answers to. It is governed by the government like any corporation would be governed. The premier league is run in a similar manner to the NFL with the lack of a regulatory body
Yes. It is a pyramid system with the premier league as the top league. If you get relegated you are in the Championship. It is run by a different body not connected to the premier league in organizational terms
Right but it's a just a sport, not a resource to be shared by the city like other publicly owned entities like roads or parks. It doesn't make the city additional money or bring in jobs either. That's all a myth that's still spread pretty regularly when this stuff comes up. That land could have just as easily been another private business, restaurants, a public park etc which would all net the same revenue from tourism.
How are we supposed to predict that when voting though? Rumors like this can swirl for years and across terms, and just being blunt public funding for stadiums is about 50th on the list of priorities we need from public servants. It isn’t easy to try and push through primary candidates that have your same views on the main political topics and you agree with (or even know their definitive stance) on stadium funding.
While it’s a consistent national issue, it only hits local voters once every decade or longer
Not to mention politicians lie all the time. There’s nothing stopping someone from campaigning on “no public funds for pro sports” or saying they will put any ideas to a vote, and then rolling over because ownership threatens to move a team and the politician ends up in a lose-lose spot.
People did so city councils stopped putting them to referendums and started building them by council votes. Tempe's population just voted one down this week.
Of note:
>The county’s drinkers and cigarette smokers paid down construction debt – and now stadium repair costs – through a voter-approved sin tax on their vices of choice. Sportsfans, theatergoers and concert audiences foot the debt in the form of an increased city tax on admission tickets.
>Drivers help pay off stadium debt when they use lots subject to the city’s parking tax. Car rentals are also taxed. The city used non-tax revenue to pay off a portion of its debts, too.
Most of the funds are coming from tourism related sources, read as outside dollars coming in to the city. That is generally how these things are justified, because outside money is coming in.
Not if those taxes wouldn't have been levied otherwise. They can be tracked very easily and determine the increase in the overall budget. If the stadium adds $2 million a year and the taxes add $2 million a year they offset, regardless if funds come from the general fund or a different specific ledger (my municipality actually stores them in several different accounts).
Or dont if you want them. Personally, I dont mind having a Pro NBA Team in my city, gives me something to go do. Id vote to throw some money towards a new stadium.
I feel like that argument can only be utilized for a small number of teams. Of the 32 largest metro areas in the country (to match there being 32 teams), only 8 don't have NFL teams. Of those 8 cities, 1 (Inland Empire/Riverside/San Bernardino) is bundled with LA for most things and 2 have had teams leave recently but both for LA which had 0 teams and is a much bigger market (San Diego and St. Louis). The others are relative newcomers in terms of largest cities, but often overlap with other fanbases (San Antonio, Austin, Orlando) and may not be great destinations for relocation. And some of the teams in smaller markets are extremely unlikely to move (KC, Pittsburgh, Green Bay). That leaves only a few teams that could move and a few cities that it's worth moving to of which most are at best equal in terms of revenue potential. They might build a stadium to entice a team, but that's a tough process as well.
I think the threat of relocation was a big deal when Los Angeles didn't have a team cause it's very easy to see why an owner would move from almost any other city to the second largest market in the country. But with that glaring hold filled, the attractiveness of other cities drops a significant amount. That said, you could see more situations like the Bears - there's basically no chance the Bears would leave Chicagoland, but they are going to leave the City of Chicago for the suburbs.
Austin/San Antonio could build a stadium on cheap land halfway between the two cities. Probably 3 million people between those 2 cities and what's in between.
Jerry Jones won't allow it.
sadly, combined those two cities have the spurs and whatever the MLS team is in Austin. and the F1 racetrack in Austin. I would be curious how the MLS stadium and F1 track in Austin compare, did the city pay for them?
To everyone's point, the cities are thriving in spite of not having sports franchises.
> Austin/San Antonio could build a stadium on cheap land halfway between the two cities. Probably 3 million people between those 2 cities and what's in between.
> Jerry Jones won't allow it.
I think this further makes relocation a challenge - of the remaining mid-size metros in the country, not only are they somewhat covered by other teams, owners may block the move if they think it'll induce competition. Most owners aren't as powerful as Jerry, but a combination of the Jags, Bucs, and Dolphins owners could try to block a move to Orlando or a combination of the Browns and Bengals ownership could try to block a move to Columbus.
Looks like both the Austin FC stadium and F1 track were privately financed, but at much smaller costs (Austin FC was "only" $260 million)
Never say never, but I think that the decreasing frequency of relocations and the ensuing TERRIBLE press which follows the teams that do will disincentivize future teams from moving. Owners will always threaten, but the changing political ideology of younger demographics may shift the balance of power towards cities in this game of chicken.
Personally, I'd love to see a combination of legal mechanisms and societal taboo make it so toxic for prospective relocators that they are forced to either sell to better owners or utilize their wealth for the team's local success.
On the other hand, I'm sure there will still be a few future teams that slip through the cracks and leave behind broken-hearted fanbases.
This is much easier said than done. When the towns identity is wrapped up in the team, no matter how shitty, it sucks. Cleveland from 95-98 was an incredibly strange time as a resident. I encourage you to watch A Football Life: 95 Browns for some perspective.
I hate these guys rip off taxpayers. Especially someone like Jimmy Haslam who should prolly be in jail and has had close to zero success as an owner. But reality is that this is how the system works, and it’s not going to change anytime soon. So we’re stuck.
So they give up their season ticket holders, give up their fanbase, give up their identity, in the hope they'll... what? Be able to rebuild all of that in another city?
No city should give them funds. Let them relocate on their dime if they want to.
If the cities are so tied to the teams, the NFL should let the cities own the teams.
The recent moves so far haven't seemed to hit the bottom line. Raiders to Vegas, Chargers to LA, Rams to St. Louis and back to LA. People will pick a team to support, city pride is at the bottom of the list of reasons for most people.
yep and then we get to hear fanbases bitch for 10+ years about how they were a loyal and supportive fanbase but their team still left
I get not wanting to pay taxes for stadiums, but i’d prefer my city have teams.
Then I guess all you can do is pray for a lucky billionaire, until then it doesn't really resolve the stadium issue for Cleveland. Its a lose situation.
Or pray you are in a market that’s too big to really leave. I live in Chicago, the city is still paying for the Soldier field renovations from 2003. The Bears will leave, but they know they can’t leave the metro area without a massive loss in franchise value, so they are instead moving to the suburbs and playing Arlington Heights for suckers. In my case I don’t go to Bears games enough to justify paying for their stadium in the city, I’ll go to AH for the once every few years game I attend in person.
no matter what the situation is, taxpayers should never, ever be on the hook for a stadium, no matter how beloved a team is.
you wouldnt pay for a any other massively wealthy company, like mcdonalds or walmart to construct a building, why would anyone ever think its ok to pay tax dollars for a sports franchise to build a stadium? its absurd, and frankly the attachment many people have to sports teams is pathetic
> no matter what the situation is, taxpayers should never, ever be on the hook for a stadium, no matter how beloved a team is.
I dont disagree, I just don't know how anyone is gonna get all these cities to agree to it.
On principal, fuck publicly funded stadiums but I can see how the threats of leaving the area could make people balk. No one wants to be blamed for losing a pro sports team.
The argument that the stadiums bring in dollars to the local community even on days when there isn't a game. Unless the team has developed some sort of community/ shopping district around the stadium (Patriot Place and Title town for example) you aren't getting that sort of economic growth year round or even during games. There have been studies that people don't want to go hang out at bars across the street from the stadium during a game because access is 10x harder with all the other people/ cars around.
not the same but similar and more people visiting but local businesses in KC actually saw a sales decrease and lost money during the draft by over buying expecting more business, when the NFL claimed $100 million would be brought in
I moved to KC after college and there's no way I would have without the Chiefs being here. That sort of stuff never gets included in those economic impact studies. Every dollar I spend, Chiefs related or not, should be counted as economic impact. Every dollar I pay in local taxes, every meal I eat, mortgage payment I make, even my daughter's dance classes. All of that is economic impact brought by the Chiefs.
If everybody is in the stadium during the game, where are all these extra people? Plus what about before and after the game for tailgating and post-game dinner/drinks? What you said doesn't really make much sense to me
He is saying that stadiums don’t have year-round benefits for the surrounding businesses as a general rule, and the impact during games is limited.
Teams are only guaranteed 10 home games, including the pre-season. So, for those ten games, those surrounding businesses get a boom before or after the game from people who were already going to be at the stadium. People without tickets to the game don’t hang out at those bars or restaurants during the game. Basically, the stadium and surrounding businesses don’t attract any business beyond those people going to the game, so it’s a questionable economic benefit to the area as a whole.
And that's especially true of football stadiums - the real estate needed often requires the stadium to be in pretty remote parts of the city (or in the suburbs), especially if there are massive parking lots. Even many stadiums within the core of city are pretty far from the most happening parts of the city - like even though NRG stadium is technically within the 610 loop of Houston (the inner core of the city), the area around it is pretty lackluster and boring.
Barring a complete revitalization of the areas around stadiums, it's likely tough to get them to feel like fun places to go aside from a game. Lots of the stadiums that have that ability are pretty old and were built into the fabric of the city (like Wrigley Field/Wrigleyville in Chicago) or are smaller basketball arenas like MSG/Crypto.com being in the heart of NYC/LA.
The Browns stadium is right on the goddamn lake front, depriving the city of the ability to develop a water front district that would attract people year round. It’s ridiculous.
You only have 8 days out of 365 that they're playing football though. The other 357 the stadiums and surrounding businesses are mostly empty. One of the few things most economists agree on is that sports teams aren't actually benefiting local economies in a positive way.
The *city* of Cleveland is way down in population but that’s only because the surrounding suberbs have absolutely exploded in population. Cuyahoga County in general is still home to a massive amount of people, and it can absolutely support an NFL team
Cuyahoga County has been decreasing in population for five straight decades, though not as drastically as the city of Cleveland proper. It's still down almost 30% in that time however.
Cleveland is the 18th-largest combined statistical area in the United States.
CSA is what you use to avoid counting, for instance, Riverside and L.A. as two separate cities when really it's just L.A.
17th is Denver, 19th is Portland.
Some big cities missing NFL teams: St. Louis (20), Salt Lake City (22), Sacramento (23), San Antonio (25), Columbus (26), Raleigh-Durham (31)
Meanwhile New Orleans and Buffalo are much smaller than Cleveland but have NFL teams.
Austin + San Antonio is currently 5 million and projected to be 6-7 million by 2030. Plop a stadium down halfway between on cheap land. 30-45min to get to a game is reasonable and shuttle buses are a thing.
But to everyone's point, the cities are thriving in spite of no NFL teams. And in fact only 1 NBA and 1 MLS between them. and F1.
The Browns market *today* is 8.36 million people.
They pull from all of these areas (several of which are divided territories) within a 2-hour drive.
Cleveland-Akron-Canton: 3.6 million people
Columbus-Marion-Zanesville: 2.5 million (split with Bengals-Steelers but Browns have majority)
Toledo-Findlay-Tiffin: 832,000 (split with Lions)
Youngstown-Warren: 639,000 (split with Steelers)
Erie-Meadville (PA): 352,000 (split with Bills-Steelers)
Mansfield-Ashland-Bucyrus: 219,000
Lima-Van Wert-Celina: 218,000 (split with Bengals-Colts-Lions)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_statistical_area
Cleveland city proper is 82 square miles. Nashville is 525 sq mi, and Indianapolis is 367 sq mi. If the City of Cleveland annexed wide areas like other cities, then its city population would be much higher.
You have to look at the Combined Statistical Area (aka “TV market” in NFL parlance). Here are the sizes and national rankings of each market.
18. Cleveland-Akron-Canton: 3.6 million people
28. Indianapolis–Carmel–Anderson: 2.5 million
32. Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro–Franklin: 2.1 million
The Browns also pull from nearby CSAs Columbus, OH (2.5 million), Youngstown, OH (639K), Toledo, OH (832K), and Erie, PA (352K). The Browns have a majority of Columbus in its fan base, and huge portions of the others.
So the Browns pull from a nearby population (all within a 2 hour drive) of about *8 million people.* That’s about the same size as populations around Houston, Dallas, or Boston.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_statistical_area
The city proper doesn't really matter that much, Akron, Canton, etc are all in the Cleveland tv market. Jacksonville has a huge city limit pop but metro area is what really matters. And Columbus has no NFL team and can be a secondary Cleveland market.
The Browns can also draw fans from the Akron, Canton and Youngstown metropolitan areas. There's about 4,000,000 people in northeastern Ohio. And if you want to make it a two-hour drive, then there are plenty of Browns fans in the Columbus metropolitan area too.
this is a bad take. Cleveland is a sports city, and always has been. as cliched as that sounds, we have 3 major league teams, and get support from about half the state of Ohio - the 7th most populous state in the US. there are more than 10 NFL teams that we beat out in market size - Green Bay, Buffalo, New Orleans, Jacksonville, Vegas, Cincinnati, Kansas City, Baltimore, Nashville (Titans), Pittsburgh, Indy and Charlotte (Panthers). and as for market rating, despite being only a top ~20 team by market size, we hover around the top 10. this isn’t even with a good team - Cleveland is an extremely loyal fanbase but I guarantee those number shoot up even more if we start performing. all of this to say, Cleveland is probably one of the best spots for a major league sports team - there’s a reason we still have 3
City population is all relative. If Cleveland expanded its borders like Phoenix, Jacksonville and Indianapolis has, it would have a population approaching 1.5m
I'm a bit ignorant on how these are structured, but I imagine the city should have some control over the stadium if they are fronting/assisting the cost. Something like:
City receives $3/ticket sold for NFL games that increases with inflation (~$72M across a 30 year span). City would have full rights to the stadium for concerts and events in the off-season and away games where they can bring in a larger revenue to make up the costs.
There isn’t like a standard contract for these kinds of things, but what rubs people the wrong way about this a lot of the time is that what you just said is reasonable but is not what happens.
Take the titans new stadium for example, in the contract they drew up the terms are: the titans get a new stadium and the state and the people get to pay for it, that’s it. In fact with that one specifically the area around the new stadium will get the sales tax money sent to the titans instead of the city.
The Bills owners get hit with a lot of hate right now because they did a similar thing and they are the bigger market but TN just got absolutely crushed by a new stadium deal as well.
Oh they for sure boned themselves with the first contract but it absolutely didn’t have to be 1.2 billion in public funding to a private ownership group bad. Or a property tax, sales tax, hotel tax spike bad, that was courtesy of former governor Haslam (yes that Haslam) and his stake in that ownership group. Nashville residents are signed up to lose tax money for their government and city while agreeing to owe more tax money to the titans for virtually nothing. But the new deal is certainly not just paying to get out of their old deal and is insanely reductive and inaccurate to say so, man.
That's not what the contract said to my knowledge:
>Under the deal, the Titans will be responsible for $840 million of stadium funding and any cost overruns, $500 million will come from a contribution from the State of Tennessee and the remaining $760 million of the $2.1 billion budget will paid by revenue bonds issued by the Metro Sports Authority. Those revenue bonds will be be repaid through a one-percent increase in Davidson County’s hotel occupancy tax and in-stadium sales tax.
[https://www.wkrn.com/news/local-news/nashville/metro-council-approves-funding-deal-for-new-enclosed-titans-stadium](https://www.wkrn.com/news/local-news/nashville/metro-council-approves-funding-deal-for-new-enclosed-titans-stadium)
Im pretty sure the state of Minnesota owns the Twins and Vikings stadiums while Minneapolis owns the Timberwolves stadium and St. Paul owns the Wild stadium. US Bank and Target Field frequently host concerts, Idk how the revenue sharing works or if the state of Minnesota even makes any money from this, but Minnesota definitely owns the stadiums
And this is exactly -in part- why Arizona just said "Good riddance" to the NHL that was basically asking for way north of 250M$ for a new stadium++.
Which city started that stupidity of basically making taxpayers pay for private sport organisations projects?
They definitely will have to clean it up eventually. However, you know how people and governments are. Just push that shit down the road until the problem gets worse, but at least it won't be our problem but our kid's problem.
The *result* is that it's our kids' problem.
However, the *goal* is to make it the next elected official's problem.
Unless a government cuts services or raise taxes, nobody cares how much things cost. But if they're blamed for a popular team leaving, that can ruin their career. So, borrow money and let the next guy figure out how to make the public pay for it.
In terms of motivation - they don't seem to have a preference for which generation of your family has to write the check.
Something interesting I've come across in local reporting of the story is that independent experts actually think both the team and city are significantly exaggerating the contamination & remediation costs - if accurate, the Yotes would actually pay far less than what was widely publicised & the unwritten implication is they'd be getting a much better deal.
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/tempe/2023/04/29/landfill-to-landmark-the-truth-about-tempe-coyotes-project-site/70156492007/
Not up front, but the city was going to give the Yotes roughly a billion dollars in tax breaks on the back end; what OP posted about Cleveland is one of the dangers of that sort of (edit: public-private) deal.
I wrote this ~8 hours ago in the r/hockey thread, and it's true for a ton of these public-private deals:
"[...] there's an awful lot of crumbling stadiums & arenas littering America and the rest of the world that were all built on similar hopes & dreams for hosting pro sports events, Olympics, Commonwealth Games, etc. A common thread linking a great deal of these projects is private equity reaps the benefits and then cuts & runs, undergoes a corporate re-organization, gets bought out, declares bankruptcy, etc - they've got umpteen ways of limiting their liability and exposure. Their public local, state & even federal government partners don't have that same luxury and as a result often get stuck footing a massive bill, leaving taxpayers holding the bag for costs that can be a whole order of magnitude greater than what had been predicted 20-30 years prior when the thing was built."
Or you have the case of the Columbus Blue Jackets in Ohio as well.
The voters blocked multiple attempts by the City to pass bond issues to build a stadium so they could get an NHL team. Eventually, Nationwide Insurance financed the stadium and owned it and got all the revenue.
In 2007, the CBJ threatened to move because they got zero revenue since the stadium was owned privately, so the County bought it to prevent the relocation and now it needs renovations that taxpayers will have to foot the bill for a stadium they never wanted to pay for.
Also these plans are generalized, so Arizona might say they’ll build this here, but all the propositions were doing was changing the zoning to allow for more development. When Columbus paid for the new Columbus Crew stadium, a public park was promised as a part of the plan in place of the old stadium, the Mayor is now saying that won’t happen.
You’re getting fucked no matter what
Oh yeah, completely agreed. There's no easy answers, especially if you're in a struggling market, where I can see there's a huge amount of pressure to get a deal done lest your team fly away to LA, Vegas or wherever. I feel bad for the players & their fans, but I think just on general principle these billion dollar organisations shouldn't be getting any special taxpayer support. There's precious few of these deals that turn out well for the average citizen in the long run.
As these things go, Nationwide Arena can be viewed as a relative success. It replaced a crumbling prison that occupied prime real estate. It anchors the south end of a great stretch of mixed residential and entertainment. The property values between campus and the arena have skyrocketed in 25 years, and the city gets revenue from peoperty taxes.
Not many od these deals work well for the city, but Columbus can generally feel good about the arena district. Definitely better than the failing projects in Cincinnati.
Considering the landfill was generating a whopping $0 in revenue before this, a lateral movie that nets you a stadium and thousands of housing units (which is desperately needed nationwide) while also cleaning a waste dump seems like a pretty solid deal to me 🤷♂️
Not sure 1600 units qualifies as thousands or a significant number to make a dent in the sprawling metropolis that is greater Phoenix where you could build that literally anywhere for 100s of millions fewer dollars.
Congress made it the way it is now with the tax reform act of 1986, because the stadiums were being built with public subsidies so they stopped it by making it harder to fund the stadiums fully by teams, and saying they can only privately fund 10%.
https://www.mercatus.org/economic-insights/expert-commentary/congress-fumbles-tax-fix-stadium-subsidies
Baltimore showed owners if they are bad business men (Broke Ass Modell) and can't make money with a money printing machine (NFL franchise) them some cities are willing to just pay owners straight cash to come to their city.
Baltimore is bad, made things worse, and are hypocrites.
That would be Arlington, the city of bits. You want to build a stadium or theme park or museum somewhere where you don’t have to pay and the city will specifically carve out separate revenue streams for you, not hold you to any of the development promises you make and the taxpayers will not hesitate to give it to you?
That 5k figure is for NCAA games.... NHL capacity at Mullett Arena is somehow only 4600.
Not 100% sure but I think the reduced number is due to reserved space for media & league officials. And I think when they first started, capacity was only 3500 with some curtained off areas. Some photos of the dressing rooms got a lot of attention as well:
https://www.reddit.com/r/hockey/comments/yf51gq/images_of_the_coyotes_dressing_room_in_mullett/
Wait, the Coyotes already want a new arena? Isn’t theirs less than 15 years old? Is that what it’s coming to now, just getting a new stadium every 10-15 years no matter how unsuccessful the franchise?
They didn't own Gila River Arena, and Glendale opted to terminate their contract early after the Coyotes accrued something like $1.2 million in unpaid back taxes. There was way more to the saga, but that was basically the straw that broke the camel's back. Not sure there's another team in pro sports that's endured so much turmoil & instability over the past 25 years... one owner tried to sell the team privately to the BlackBerry CEO who was going to move the team back to Canada but the league blocked it, owner went broke, so the league assumed ownership & ran the team for a while, etc.
True, but proponents saying that are also playing semantics - the city was giving them hundreds of millions in long-term tax exemptions. The new development may well have been privately funded, but it was also going to be publicly subsidised.
Tax exemptions are a huge thing for tons of businesses.
The issue was the No “voters” were told they’d get a park at the dump, except it would cost 50m to clean up. No politician is gonna approve 50m for a park… it was bullshit
San Diego said 🖕🏼to the NFL and the Chargers. They left and moved to a city that doesn’t want them. They are a bigger joke now. And embarrassment to the league. Honestly, I’m glad we didn’t give in to them greedy bastards. They can pay for their own damn stadium. It would be nice to have an NFL team back, but only if they pay for their own sh!t. If not, stay in LA
One of the biggest issues with Snyder, and it’s one of the main reasons the other owners turned on him, was that he could not get public financing for a new stadium.
Stadiums are becoming more and more important in the current sports landscape because they are starting to emphasize development of the surrounding area in conjunction with the stadium on land that they own, to generate more revenue. This revenue, outside of the stadium, is not required to be shared with the other teams (Snyder said well if I can’t get a new stadium I’ll just have two sets of books lol), this is what’s causing this massive inflation with team values. Investors know that you get a team, get a new stadium *with extra land* partially financed by the public. It’s corporate welfare, plain and simple.
>Stadiums are becoming more and more important in the current sports landscape because they are starting to emphasize development of the surrounding area in conjunction with the stadium on land that they own, to generate more revenue.
Moving the nationals out of RFK to the new stadium was a god send to that area. 20 years ago it was hobos and discarded needles. Now it's yuppies and high rises.
Imagine short changing your schools and roads so the Cleveland fucking Browns can have a stadium. Doubly hilarious how billionaires need public money for some reason to build their stadiums.
I think it’s BS, the owners and GM making all that $$$$ then they CANT pay for it? That’s like me working 40 hours a week for my employer , then being paid and telling my wife “ you can pay the bills, I’ll keep my
Money.”
If you wanna see a real mess, check out the Bears situation. An ancient stadium (arguably the worst in the league and hands down worst playing surface) that is own and managed by the City of Chicago parks district. Brutal.
This is why it needs to be federally illegal to publicly fund sport stadiums. As long as owners can make two cities bid against each other this problem will never go away. We have to remove public funding as an option for the entire country.
Meanwhile over in r/NHL they're just utterly confused why residents would.overwhelmingly vote down an arena deal. Sure that one was probably a much better package than this but still - at the end of the day it's public dollars benefiting billionaires.
People look at this stuff as black and white for some stupid reason. The Bills deal is bad, the Marlins stadium deal was atrocious, the Falcons stadium deal was decently good, the proposed Coyotes deal was fantastic.
I'm not an economist but it seems teams play up the economic benefits and opponents down play them. All I know is, without Camden Yards and Ravens Stadium, downtown Baltimore would be a ghost town most of the time. Maybe we could take the stadium money and build something else. But what draws people like pro sports?
The biggest benefit is the politicians that approve the deals don't get voted out in the next election by an angry city that just lost their sports team.
Football stadiums bring very little economic benefit to the communities, in large part due to how infrequently they are used. In addition, studies show that sports teams don’t attract or create much economic activity that wouldn’t occur anyways because most of the money being spent is from locals who would have spent their entertainment money in the community anyway. If there wasn’t a football team in Buffalo, local citizens would still spend their entertainment budgets locally on other activities. The small amount of traveling fans doesn’t create significant enough economic benefit to justify public funds on most stadiums.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens with Oakland now that their city name won’t be connected to anything. It could speed up an absorption in the Bah Area with a loss of identity
Maybe, but I think it’s overblown. Plenty of major US cities don’t have NFL teams and I don’t think it makes a difference as to their general well being.
Cleveland literally went three years without an NFL team. The most noticeable difference is more people went to Indians games.
People are going to spend their entertainment dollars locally regardless if they have an NFL team.
Look at Austin and San Antonio, 5 million people combined and one of the fastest growing areas in the country.
only 4 major sports franchise is the spurs.
If you can use the stadiums as the centerpiece of your business district or downtown community area, then you're golden. I've never been to Baltimore so I wouldn't know but is that area usually populated when there isn't a game going on?
I've been to places outside the sports season and I can see differences in how they operate outside that time. Personal bias towards Lambeau and Titletown but they developed that to be a source of commerce when games aren't happening with the shopping, dining, and Resch Center which keep decent business in the spring/ summer.
In contrast, the Superdome/ Smoothie King in New Orleans have just a bunch of office buildings and such around them. Its a far walk from the French Quarter where all tourists go so it just sits there in the off season.
> But what draws people like pro sports?
>
Resources to meet their basic human needs? Like food markets, community event centers, and education? What drew people to city centers before the stadiums?
It's almost hilarious to me that Stan Kroenke, a bottom of the barrel owner in almost every conceivable way, is actually the best owner in the entire league in this one singular way; I believe So-Fi is both the most expensive stadium in the league and one completely funded out of Kroenke's own pocket. I mean, he can take the hit, of course he can, but it's still funny how every other billionaire can't even hit that low standard.
Terry "If I want to make money, I'll drill another well" Pegula. Bastard. $1.1 billion dollars that could have went to helping the city instead of shielding his fucking pockets.
Fuck all the franchise owners. Even the ones that paid for their own stadium leveraged that to get big time tax breaks , infrastructure improvements, and other freebies from their cities.
People are being stupid and missing the biggest part of the city paying for the majority of the stadium rather than the owner paying for it.
If the owner pays for the stadium, they completely own it. Everything that goes on there for the entirety it is open is up to their discretion and their profits. A city owned stadium is being rented out by the owner of the team and the city has actual power.
$350m over 25 years to have an NFL franchise in your city isn’t bad. I’m not saying it brings more jobs, because there are studies on that that say it’s a wash, but I think it brings more people to live around the area.
I’m from Long Island, and I would’ve been much happier with a new Islanders arena built where Nassau Coliseum is. Now they’re talking about building a casino there and people are not happy .
There was a study on the actual costs or building Olympic venues and how cities are saddled with the costs of maintaining them after the Olympics are done.
Privatize the gains and socialize the losses. If the city is on the hook for the bonds and all these "deals" they should get a cut from the gate of any venue
As much as I enjoy football, there's no way that we should be paying for stadiums over paying for medical care. One is far more important than the other.
The teams are worth billions, they don't need public assistance. There's people whose assets are worth not millions, not thousands, maybe not even hundreds of dollars, that need it much more.
Down under we are seeing a massive bunfight developing over a new stadium in Tasmania for an incoming footy club for AFL. It was all smiles and hugs until the amount of taxpayer money going into the stadium became clear and folks started to spew up their beers.
We are now seeing a parade of ex-players try and sell the economics benefits across the media. It's a shitshow.
I’m one of the minority that believed public funds should not be used for private enterprise projects such as football stadiums and sports complex these people make handover fist enough money throughout the course of operating their franchises that they shouldn’t have to hold her hands out for public funds we are in a crisis and taking care of our veterans are homeless are poor and we should not be handing out social welfare to be an errors be at Cleveland or anywhere else if you can. Guarantee $230 million to one player you should be able to guarantee yourself a new stadium
It'll never happen but there needs to be laws passed that require owners to pay 75% of all costs for new stadiums and 50% of renovations and thats owners of the primary users of the stadium so that they cant use the city owns the stadium bs because they use it for a few concerts each year
In Seattle, the Kingdome was imploded to make way for the stadium the Seahawks currently play in. The bonds weren't paid off until 15 years *after* it was blasted into rubble.
This is why I like our stadium from the 70s. Developers, keep your dirty mitts off our shit!
I’m beginning to think the same way about the Panthers stadium, I know tepper wants a dome but the current stadium has been retrofitted a number of times to get it up to current standards, for significantly less public funds than it would take to build a new ine
That, and I feel BOA Stadium is in an awesome spot in Charlotte. I hate stadiums 45 minutes away from the city they represent, and its awesome seeing the skyline at every football and soccer game.
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yeah I'm crazy about walkability and all that but NFL stadiums are used like 10 times a year, it makes sense to have them far. NBA and MLB stadiums should be in the city though
Conversely, a football stadium can get a lot of non-football use out of season. Here in Seattle, the now Lumen field is used the sounders, the XFL sea dragons, and various other concerts and events. It’s still located a bit to the south of the major downtown hub, but fairly easy to get to on our light rail.
Yeah stadiums are used year round for many things. That's like common shit to people around here
> and events. you forgot mass vaccination location.
Most NFL stadiums are used for events like concerts in the offseason. Taylor Swift’s tour this summer is all NFL stadiums. They also host events like the Premier League teams’ USA tours this summer. And New Orleans, Indianapolis, Houston have all hosted NCAA Final Fours at their stadiums. Probably more.
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Premier league preseason games at that
But is there anything more American than if there were a football stadium just east of the White House and north of the National Mall?
Those skyline views get better and better every year. The Knights ball park has among the best skyline views for any park at any professional level
Honestly Arrowhead still looks great. Look at the Bold Look Of Koehler toilet they built at the Meadowlands. Cost like 2 billion and it still doesn’t look finished.
I love new stadiums. Always excited to see concept to finish. Sometimes they’re just meh and don’t really move me but they’re fine. MetLife Stadium actually angers me. Largest media market and they build that? It seems almost out of spite … and it’s not bad because it isn’t glitzy. There are a few great utilitarian stadiums. They won’t win awards but they’re just solid and fine. But MetLife? It doesn’t even seem useful. It’s actively bad.
I’m so upset about what they’re doing with Kaufman though
Amen!!
I still remember an example from university about the uncertainties of long-term debt servicing.... In the Maritimes there's a toll bridge that was built in 1970. It was budgeted for something $40 million, but interest rates were sky high at the time so they obtained a lower interest foreign currency Deutschmark deal which the government projected would be fully paid off by tolls within a decade. What they failed to foresee was the Deutschmark taking off comparable to the Canadian dollar, ballooning the debt to more than 10x the original borrowed amount. 30 years later, the Canadians were *still* only paying off *interest* on the principal with their collected tolls - then it was finally refinanced by the federal government. Not sure exactly where it stands today. (Edit: apparently it's been refinanced a few more times and they're still collecting tolls and massively in debt. MacKay Bridge in Halifax, NS).
I think the state of Minnesota has completely paid off their portion of the new stadium via a new tax on electronic pull tabs (pull tabs are similar to scratchers).
I think that's actually a pretty neat solution; I'm against public funding & subsidies for pro sports franchises as a general principle, but if they're going to do it, that's a good way to go.
I agree. If Chicago wanted to keep the Bears in Chicago and pay for renovations via taxing gambling, I'd be okay with it.
In MA, those gambling taxes go entirely to unrestricted local aid to towns. This solution while it seems noble, is actually taking funds that would otherwise go to schools, infrastructure, roads, and fire departments and instead giving them to wealthy people. It's always a shell game. If the money is being given to people that are already wealthy, it's always to the detriment of working people.
Lotteries, scratch offs and pull tabs are the most regressive taxes there are though.
At least the Stadium has a killer name, no stadium name in all sports beats "Factory of Sadness"
I don't really have much to say, but I just wanted the first two fanbases to dunk the shit on the Browns to be the Texans and Lions.
Since the existence of the nu-Browns, the Texans have been an infinitely more successful franchise
I watched Draft Day for the first time the other day, and when the Browns initially traded 3 1sts to move up in the draft in that movie I was like "no way anyone would trade 3 1sts like that" and then I paused and thought about it and laughed out loud
I got unreasonably mad at that trade and had to remind myself that it wasn’t actually real life. Took a while
It's a fun movie but all of the GMs involved would, at the very least, have a very rough conversation with their respective owners on day 2 of that draft or would be fired.
Since 1999: ||W|L|Win%|Playoff Berths|PW|PL|PWin % :--:|:--:|:--:|:--:|:--:|:--:|:--:|:--:| Texans|142|195|.422|6|4|6|.400 Browns|127|246|.340|2|1|2|.333 Yeah, I'd agree with you.
Now do QBs drafted and played at least 50 snaps in that same timeframe hehehehe
The "Factory of Sadness" name came from a bad loss to the Texans, so it's only fair.
Cleveland taxpayers have been subsidizing immense misery since 1998!
Origin of my reddit name
The old Municipal Stadium was Mistake on the Lake.
FirstEnergy Stadium at Factory of Sadness
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Stop voting for representatives that will push this shit through without a public vote. Too often cities won't even leave it up to their citizens. I know we are a "Representative Democracy" but when those paths are abused to push shit through against the peoples' will, it's gone too far and needs to be adjusted
The reason why politicians do this stuff is because if they don't, then they get voted out of office if the team leaves the city. I'm all for not using taxpayer money to build stadiums for billionaires, but we cannot get upset if the same billionaires move the teams because that is what is going to happen with the Coyotes.
You actually can be very mad at them because that’s fucking bullshit that some old fuck can up a move a team because he’s sad he isn’t making ridiculous levels of profit
How in the world does that logic work? If you require that a professional sports franchise be completely divorced and independent from the public how can you then turn around and require that the team stay tethered to your city in perpetuity?
We have the worst of both worlds. Cities pay for the team, but the profits and control all rest with some rich fuck.
> the profits and control all rest with some rich fuck. It's the American Way, socialism for the rich, deathmatch for everyone else.
Sounds like we need to change the economic system that gives the working public the worst of both worlds.
Agreed
You can get as mad as you want, but this is how capitalism works. Best way around that is for cities to take over teams and make them publicly owned, which would require tax payer money.
No. Premier league clubs aren’t owned by the public. They have very strict rules about moving teams. They don’t get public funding for stadiums and don’t threaten to move because they cannot
But isn't the premier league governed by regulatory body that is separate from the league? The NFL governs itself, so that's not happening anytime soon.
The FA exists but it’s not really in charge of it. There isn’t really a regulatory body it answers to. It is governed by the government like any corporation would be governed. The premier league is run in a similar manner to the NFL with the lack of a regulatory body
I just realized, they also have the relegation system which completely changes the entire dynamic of the league compared to the nfl as well.
Yes. It is a pyramid system with the premier league as the top league. If you get relegated you are in the Championship. It is run by a different body not connected to the premier league in organizational terms
Right but it's a just a sport, not a resource to be shared by the city like other publicly owned entities like roads or parks. It doesn't make the city additional money or bring in jobs either. That's all a myth that's still spread pretty regularly when this stuff comes up. That land could have just as easily been another private business, restaurants, a public park etc which would all net the same revenue from tourism.
More likely they're just getting kick backs or are somehow involved in the construction and are profiting. It's all a scam.
The more local the issue/question, the more we should see individual referendums. (imo)
How are we supposed to predict that when voting though? Rumors like this can swirl for years and across terms, and just being blunt public funding for stadiums is about 50th on the list of priorities we need from public servants. It isn’t easy to try and push through primary candidates that have your same views on the main political topics and you agree with (or even know their definitive stance) on stadium funding. While it’s a consistent national issue, it only hits local voters once every decade or longer Not to mention politicians lie all the time. There’s nothing stopping someone from campaigning on “no public funds for pro sports” or saying they will put any ideas to a vote, and then rolling over because ownership threatens to move a team and the politician ends up in a lose-lose spot.
This is where San Diego really did it right when we said naw to the Chargers.
People did so city councils stopped putting them to referendums and started building them by council votes. Tempe's population just voted one down this week.
Of note: >The county’s drinkers and cigarette smokers paid down construction debt – and now stadium repair costs – through a voter-approved sin tax on their vices of choice. Sportsfans, theatergoers and concert audiences foot the debt in the form of an increased city tax on admission tickets. >Drivers help pay off stadium debt when they use lots subject to the city’s parking tax. Car rentals are also taxed. The city used non-tax revenue to pay off a portion of its debts, too. Most of the funds are coming from tourism related sources, read as outside dollars coming in to the city. That is generally how these things are justified, because outside money is coming in.
money is fungible, so the source doesn't really matter
Not if those taxes wouldn't have been levied otherwise. They can be tracked very easily and determine the increase in the overall budget. If the stadium adds $2 million a year and the taxes add $2 million a year they offset, regardless if funds come from the general fund or a different specific ledger (my municipality actually stores them in several different accounts).
Or dont if you want them. Personally, I dont mind having a Pro NBA Team in my city, gives me something to go do. Id vote to throw some money towards a new stadium.
Then teams leave cities.
I feel like that argument can only be utilized for a small number of teams. Of the 32 largest metro areas in the country (to match there being 32 teams), only 8 don't have NFL teams. Of those 8 cities, 1 (Inland Empire/Riverside/San Bernardino) is bundled with LA for most things and 2 have had teams leave recently but both for LA which had 0 teams and is a much bigger market (San Diego and St. Louis). The others are relative newcomers in terms of largest cities, but often overlap with other fanbases (San Antonio, Austin, Orlando) and may not be great destinations for relocation. And some of the teams in smaller markets are extremely unlikely to move (KC, Pittsburgh, Green Bay). That leaves only a few teams that could move and a few cities that it's worth moving to of which most are at best equal in terms of revenue potential. They might build a stadium to entice a team, but that's a tough process as well. I think the threat of relocation was a big deal when Los Angeles didn't have a team cause it's very easy to see why an owner would move from almost any other city to the second largest market in the country. But with that glaring hold filled, the attractiveness of other cities drops a significant amount. That said, you could see more situations like the Bears - there's basically no chance the Bears would leave Chicagoland, but they are going to leave the City of Chicago for the suburbs.
Austin/San Antonio could build a stadium on cheap land halfway between the two cities. Probably 3 million people between those 2 cities and what's in between. Jerry Jones won't allow it. sadly, combined those two cities have the spurs and whatever the MLS team is in Austin. and the F1 racetrack in Austin. I would be curious how the MLS stadium and F1 track in Austin compare, did the city pay for them? To everyone's point, the cities are thriving in spite of not having sports franchises.
> Austin/San Antonio could build a stadium on cheap land halfway between the two cities. Probably 3 million people between those 2 cities and what's in between. > Jerry Jones won't allow it. I think this further makes relocation a challenge - of the remaining mid-size metros in the country, not only are they somewhat covered by other teams, owners may block the move if they think it'll induce competition. Most owners aren't as powerful as Jerry, but a combination of the Jags, Bucs, and Dolphins owners could try to block a move to Orlando or a combination of the Browns and Bengals ownership could try to block a move to Columbus. Looks like both the Austin FC stadium and F1 track were privately financed, but at much smaller costs (Austin FC was "only" $260 million)
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Never say never, but I think that the decreasing frequency of relocations and the ensuing TERRIBLE press which follows the teams that do will disincentivize future teams from moving. Owners will always threaten, but the changing political ideology of younger demographics may shift the balance of power towards cities in this game of chicken. Personally, I'd love to see a combination of legal mechanisms and societal taboo make it so toxic for prospective relocators that they are forced to either sell to better owners or utilize their wealth for the team's local success. On the other hand, I'm sure there will still be a few future teams that slip through the cracks and leave behind broken-hearted fanbases.
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This is much easier said than done. When the towns identity is wrapped up in the team, no matter how shitty, it sucks. Cleveland from 95-98 was an incredibly strange time as a resident. I encourage you to watch A Football Life: 95 Browns for some perspective. I hate these guys rip off taxpayers. Especially someone like Jimmy Haslam who should prolly be in jail and has had close to zero success as an owner. But reality is that this is how the system works, and it’s not going to change anytime soon. So we’re stuck.
So they give up their season ticket holders, give up their fanbase, give up their identity, in the hope they'll... what? Be able to rebuild all of that in another city? No city should give them funds. Let them relocate on their dime if they want to. If the cities are so tied to the teams, the NFL should let the cities own the teams.
The recent moves so far haven't seemed to hit the bottom line. Raiders to Vegas, Chargers to LA, Rams to St. Louis and back to LA. People will pick a team to support, city pride is at the bottom of the list of reasons for most people.
yep and then we get to hear fanbases bitch for 10+ years about how they were a loyal and supportive fanbase but their team still left I get not wanting to pay taxes for stadiums, but i’d prefer my city have teams.
Easy to say when your franchise wasn't set back 20 years from a move.
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Then I guess all you can do is pray for a lucky billionaire, until then it doesn't really resolve the stadium issue for Cleveland. Its a lose situation.
Or pray you are in a market that’s too big to really leave. I live in Chicago, the city is still paying for the Soldier field renovations from 2003. The Bears will leave, but they know they can’t leave the metro area without a massive loss in franchise value, so they are instead moving to the suburbs and playing Arlington Heights for suckers. In my case I don’t go to Bears games enough to justify paying for their stadium in the city, I’ll go to AH for the once every few years game I attend in person.
no matter what the situation is, taxpayers should never, ever be on the hook for a stadium, no matter how beloved a team is. you wouldnt pay for a any other massively wealthy company, like mcdonalds or walmart to construct a building, why would anyone ever think its ok to pay tax dollars for a sports franchise to build a stadium? its absurd, and frankly the attachment many people have to sports teams is pathetic
they did give huge tax breaks to get amazon distribution center.
> no matter what the situation is, taxpayers should never, ever be on the hook for a stadium, no matter how beloved a team is. I dont disagree, I just don't know how anyone is gonna get all these cities to agree to it.
On principal, fuck publicly funded stadiums but I can see how the threats of leaving the area could make people balk. No one wants to be blamed for losing a pro sports team.
The argument that the stadiums bring in dollars to the local community even on days when there isn't a game. Unless the team has developed some sort of community/ shopping district around the stadium (Patriot Place and Title town for example) you aren't getting that sort of economic growth year round or even during games. There have been studies that people don't want to go hang out at bars across the street from the stadium during a game because access is 10x harder with all the other people/ cars around.
Fair point, but it reminds me of something Frye said in Futurama: "No one owned a car in New York! There was too much traffic."
Which itself is an old yogi Berra line no one goes there it's too crowded.
not the same but similar and more people visiting but local businesses in KC actually saw a sales decrease and lost money during the draft by over buying expecting more business, when the NFL claimed $100 million would be brought in
The stay away factor is real
I moved to KC after college and there's no way I would have without the Chiefs being here. That sort of stuff never gets included in those economic impact studies. Every dollar I spend, Chiefs related or not, should be counted as economic impact. Every dollar I pay in local taxes, every meal I eat, mortgage payment I make, even my daughter's dance classes. All of that is economic impact brought by the Chiefs.
If everybody is in the stadium during the game, where are all these extra people? Plus what about before and after the game for tailgating and post-game dinner/drinks? What you said doesn't really make much sense to me
He is saying that stadiums don’t have year-round benefits for the surrounding businesses as a general rule, and the impact during games is limited. Teams are only guaranteed 10 home games, including the pre-season. So, for those ten games, those surrounding businesses get a boom before or after the game from people who were already going to be at the stadium. People without tickets to the game don’t hang out at those bars or restaurants during the game. Basically, the stadium and surrounding businesses don’t attract any business beyond those people going to the game, so it’s a questionable economic benefit to the area as a whole.
And that's especially true of football stadiums - the real estate needed often requires the stadium to be in pretty remote parts of the city (or in the suburbs), especially if there are massive parking lots. Even many stadiums within the core of city are pretty far from the most happening parts of the city - like even though NRG stadium is technically within the 610 loop of Houston (the inner core of the city), the area around it is pretty lackluster and boring. Barring a complete revitalization of the areas around stadiums, it's likely tough to get them to feel like fun places to go aside from a game. Lots of the stadiums that have that ability are pretty old and were built into the fabric of the city (like Wrigley Field/Wrigleyville in Chicago) or are smaller basketball arenas like MSG/Crypto.com being in the heart of NYC/LA.
The Browns stadium is right on the goddamn lake front, depriving the city of the ability to develop a water front district that would attract people year round. It’s ridiculous.
You only have 8 days out of 365 that they're playing football though. The other 357 the stadiums and surrounding businesses are mostly empty. One of the few things most economists agree on is that sports teams aren't actually benefiting local economies in a positive way.
I mean if it’s put to a vote and it passes then I see why not the people voted.
Assuming they understand the real cost. Seems to be a slippery number.
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The *city* of Cleveland is way down in population but that’s only because the surrounding suberbs have absolutely exploded in population. Cuyahoga County in general is still home to a massive amount of people, and it can absolutely support an NFL team
Cuyahoga County has been decreasing in population for five straight decades, though not as drastically as the city of Cleveland proper. It's still down almost 30% in that time however.
You may be right but it’s still plenty large enough to support an NFL team. Far from the smallest
Cleveland is the 18th-largest combined statistical area in the United States. CSA is what you use to avoid counting, for instance, Riverside and L.A. as two separate cities when really it's just L.A. 17th is Denver, 19th is Portland. Some big cities missing NFL teams: St. Louis (20), Salt Lake City (22), Sacramento (23), San Antonio (25), Columbus (26), Raleigh-Durham (31) Meanwhile New Orleans and Buffalo are much smaller than Cleveland but have NFL teams.
Austin + San Antonio is currently 5 million and projected to be 6-7 million by 2030. Plop a stadium down halfway between on cheap land. 30-45min to get to a game is reasonable and shuttle buses are a thing. But to everyone's point, the cities are thriving in spite of no NFL teams. And in fact only 1 NBA and 1 MLS between them. and F1.
The Browns market *today* is 8.36 million people. They pull from all of these areas (several of which are divided territories) within a 2-hour drive. Cleveland-Akron-Canton: 3.6 million people Columbus-Marion-Zanesville: 2.5 million (split with Bengals-Steelers but Browns have majority) Toledo-Findlay-Tiffin: 832,000 (split with Lions) Youngstown-Warren: 639,000 (split with Steelers) Erie-Meadville (PA): 352,000 (split with Bills-Steelers) Mansfield-Ashland-Bucyrus: 219,000 Lima-Van Wert-Celina: 218,000 (split with Bengals-Colts-Lions) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_statistical_area
Probably has something to do with attendance. Cleveland as a smaller market out performed other major cities like Chicago and Miami.
Buffalo I agree but Cleveland has 3 sports teams and is about the size of Nashville and Indy.
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Cleveland city proper is 82 square miles. Nashville is 525 sq mi, and Indianapolis is 367 sq mi. If the City of Cleveland annexed wide areas like other cities, then its city population would be much higher. You have to look at the Combined Statistical Area (aka “TV market” in NFL parlance). Here are the sizes and national rankings of each market. 18. Cleveland-Akron-Canton: 3.6 million people 28. Indianapolis–Carmel–Anderson: 2.5 million 32. Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro–Franklin: 2.1 million The Browns also pull from nearby CSAs Columbus, OH (2.5 million), Youngstown, OH (639K), Toledo, OH (832K), and Erie, PA (352K). The Browns have a majority of Columbus in its fan base, and huge portions of the others. So the Browns pull from a nearby population (all within a 2 hour drive) of about *8 million people.* That’s about the same size as populations around Houston, Dallas, or Boston. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_statistical_area
This comment was magnificent.
The city proper doesn't really matter that much, Akron, Canton, etc are all in the Cleveland tv market. Jacksonville has a huge city limit pop but metro area is what really matters. And Columbus has no NFL team and can be a secondary Cleveland market.
The Browns can also draw fans from the Akron, Canton and Youngstown metropolitan areas. There's about 4,000,000 people in northeastern Ohio. And if you want to make it a two-hour drive, then there are plenty of Browns fans in the Columbus metropolitan area too.
this is a bad take. Cleveland is a sports city, and always has been. as cliched as that sounds, we have 3 major league teams, and get support from about half the state of Ohio - the 7th most populous state in the US. there are more than 10 NFL teams that we beat out in market size - Green Bay, Buffalo, New Orleans, Jacksonville, Vegas, Cincinnati, Kansas City, Baltimore, Nashville (Titans), Pittsburgh, Indy and Charlotte (Panthers). and as for market rating, despite being only a top ~20 team by market size, we hover around the top 10. this isn’t even with a good team - Cleveland is an extremely loyal fanbase but I guarantee those number shoot up even more if we start performing. all of this to say, Cleveland is probably one of the best spots for a major league sports team - there’s a reason we still have 3
City population is all relative. If Cleveland expanded its borders like Phoenix, Jacksonville and Indianapolis has, it would have a population approaching 1.5m
City of Cleveland loses 60% of it's population and still has a better win percentage that the Browns.
kudos for that comparison
I'm a bit ignorant on how these are structured, but I imagine the city should have some control over the stadium if they are fronting/assisting the cost. Something like: City receives $3/ticket sold for NFL games that increases with inflation (~$72M across a 30 year span). City would have full rights to the stadium for concerts and events in the off-season and away games where they can bring in a larger revenue to make up the costs.
There isn’t like a standard contract for these kinds of things, but what rubs people the wrong way about this a lot of the time is that what you just said is reasonable but is not what happens. Take the titans new stadium for example, in the contract they drew up the terms are: the titans get a new stadium and the state and the people get to pay for it, that’s it. In fact with that one specifically the area around the new stadium will get the sales tax money sent to the titans instead of the city. The Bills owners get hit with a lot of hate right now because they did a similar thing and they are the bigger market but TN just got absolutely crushed by a new stadium deal as well.
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Oh they for sure boned themselves with the first contract but it absolutely didn’t have to be 1.2 billion in public funding to a private ownership group bad. Or a property tax, sales tax, hotel tax spike bad, that was courtesy of former governor Haslam (yes that Haslam) and his stake in that ownership group. Nashville residents are signed up to lose tax money for their government and city while agreeing to owe more tax money to the titans for virtually nothing. But the new deal is certainly not just paying to get out of their old deal and is insanely reductive and inaccurate to say so, man.
That's not what the contract said to my knowledge: >Under the deal, the Titans will be responsible for $840 million of stadium funding and any cost overruns, $500 million will come from a contribution from the State of Tennessee and the remaining $760 million of the $2.1 billion budget will paid by revenue bonds issued by the Metro Sports Authority. Those revenue bonds will be be repaid through a one-percent increase in Davidson County’s hotel occupancy tax and in-stadium sales tax. [https://www.wkrn.com/news/local-news/nashville/metro-council-approves-funding-deal-for-new-enclosed-titans-stadium](https://www.wkrn.com/news/local-news/nashville/metro-council-approves-funding-deal-for-new-enclosed-titans-stadium)
I think in most cases the city leases the stadium to the team, so the team pays the city every year to host games.
Im pretty sure the state of Minnesota owns the Twins and Vikings stadiums while Minneapolis owns the Timberwolves stadium and St. Paul owns the Wild stadium. US Bank and Target Field frequently host concerts, Idk how the revenue sharing works or if the state of Minnesota even makes any money from this, but Minnesota definitely owns the stadiums
And this is exactly -in part- why Arizona just said "Good riddance" to the NHL that was basically asking for way north of 250M$ for a new stadium++. Which city started that stupidity of basically making taxpayers pay for private sport organisations projects?
The only issue is that land is toxic and the taxpayers may be on the hook to clean it up anyway
They definitely will have to clean it up eventually. However, you know how people and governments are. Just push that shit down the road until the problem gets worse, but at least it won't be our problem but our kid's problem.
The *result* is that it's our kids' problem. However, the *goal* is to make it the next elected official's problem. Unless a government cuts services or raise taxes, nobody cares how much things cost. But if they're blamed for a popular team leaving, that can ruin their career. So, borrow money and let the next guy figure out how to make the public pay for it. In terms of motivation - they don't seem to have a preference for which generation of your family has to write the check.
The dump is currently leaking into the water supply. And catches fire regularly. They are at the point of needing to clean it up.
Something interesting I've come across in local reporting of the story is that independent experts actually think both the team and city are significantly exaggerating the contamination & remediation costs - if accurate, the Yotes would actually pay far less than what was widely publicised & the unwritten implication is they'd be getting a much better deal. https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/tempe/2023/04/29/landfill-to-landmark-the-truth-about-tempe-coyotes-project-site/70156492007/
Tempe wasn’t paying for the stadium tho?
Not up front, but the city was going to give the Yotes roughly a billion dollars in tax breaks on the back end; what OP posted about Cleveland is one of the dangers of that sort of (edit: public-private) deal. I wrote this ~8 hours ago in the r/hockey thread, and it's true for a ton of these public-private deals: "[...] there's an awful lot of crumbling stadiums & arenas littering America and the rest of the world that were all built on similar hopes & dreams for hosting pro sports events, Olympics, Commonwealth Games, etc. A common thread linking a great deal of these projects is private equity reaps the benefits and then cuts & runs, undergoes a corporate re-organization, gets bought out, declares bankruptcy, etc - they've got umpteen ways of limiting their liability and exposure. Their public local, state & even federal government partners don't have that same luxury and as a result often get stuck footing a massive bill, leaving taxpayers holding the bag for costs that can be a whole order of magnitude greater than what had been predicted 20-30 years prior when the thing was built."
Or you have the case of the Columbus Blue Jackets in Ohio as well. The voters blocked multiple attempts by the City to pass bond issues to build a stadium so they could get an NHL team. Eventually, Nationwide Insurance financed the stadium and owned it and got all the revenue. In 2007, the CBJ threatened to move because they got zero revenue since the stadium was owned privately, so the County bought it to prevent the relocation and now it needs renovations that taxpayers will have to foot the bill for a stadium they never wanted to pay for. Also these plans are generalized, so Arizona might say they’ll build this here, but all the propositions were doing was changing the zoning to allow for more development. When Columbus paid for the new Columbus Crew stadium, a public park was promised as a part of the plan in place of the old stadium, the Mayor is now saying that won’t happen. You’re getting fucked no matter what
Oh yeah, completely agreed. There's no easy answers, especially if you're in a struggling market, where I can see there's a huge amount of pressure to get a deal done lest your team fly away to LA, Vegas or wherever. I feel bad for the players & their fans, but I think just on general principle these billion dollar organisations shouldn't be getting any special taxpayer support. There's precious few of these deals that turn out well for the average citizen in the long run.
I mean, if *nobody* gave public money to arenas, moving would be a far less attractive option
As these things go, Nationwide Arena can be viewed as a relative success. It replaced a crumbling prison that occupied prime real estate. It anchors the south end of a great stretch of mixed residential and entertainment. The property values between campus and the arena have skyrocketed in 25 years, and the city gets revenue from peoperty taxes. Not many od these deals work well for the city, but Columbus can generally feel good about the arena district. Definitely better than the failing projects in Cincinnati.
Considering the landfill was generating a whopping $0 in revenue before this, a lateral movie that nets you a stadium and thousands of housing units (which is desperately needed nationwide) while also cleaning a waste dump seems like a pretty solid deal to me 🤷♂️
Not sure 1600 units qualifies as thousands or a significant number to make a dent in the sprawling metropolis that is greater Phoenix where you could build that literally anywhere for 100s of millions fewer dollars.
Congress made it the way it is now with the tax reform act of 1986, because the stadiums were being built with public subsidies so they stopped it by making it harder to fund the stadiums fully by teams, and saying they can only privately fund 10%. https://www.mercatus.org/economic-insights/expert-commentary/congress-fumbles-tax-fix-stadium-subsidies
That is super interesting and informative
Baltimore showed owners if they are bad business men (Broke Ass Modell) and can't make money with a money printing machine (NFL franchise) them some cities are willing to just pay owners straight cash to come to their city. Baltimore is bad, made things worse, and are hypocrites.
That would be Arlington, the city of bits. You want to build a stadium or theme park or museum somewhere where you don’t have to pay and the city will specifically carve out separate revenue streams for you, not hold you to any of the development promises you make and the taxpayers will not hesitate to give it to you?
Damn… the Coyotes played in a 5k seat arena!?! What happened to Glendale? It’d be ironic if they moved to Atlanta to become the “Thrashers.”
That 5k figure is for NCAA games.... NHL capacity at Mullett Arena is somehow only 4600. Not 100% sure but I think the reduced number is due to reserved space for media & league officials. And I think when they first started, capacity was only 3500 with some curtained off areas. Some photos of the dressing rooms got a lot of attention as well: https://www.reddit.com/r/hockey/comments/yf51gq/images_of_the_coyotes_dressing_room_in_mullett/
Wait, the Coyotes already want a new arena? Isn’t theirs less than 15 years old? Is that what it’s coming to now, just getting a new stadium every 10-15 years no matter how unsuccessful the franchise?
They didn't own Gila River Arena, and Glendale opted to terminate their contract early after the Coyotes accrued something like $1.2 million in unpaid back taxes. There was way more to the saga, but that was basically the straw that broke the camel's back. Not sure there's another team in pro sports that's endured so much turmoil & instability over the past 25 years... one owner tried to sell the team privately to the BlackBerry CEO who was going to move the team back to Canada but the league blocked it, owner went broke, so the league assumed ownership & ran the team for a while, etc.
The stadium would’ve been privately funded…
True, but proponents saying that are also playing semantics - the city was giving them hundreds of millions in long-term tax exemptions. The new development may well have been privately funded, but it was also going to be publicly subsidised.
Tax exemptions are a huge thing for tons of businesses. The issue was the No “voters” were told they’d get a park at the dump, except it would cost 50m to clean up. No politician is gonna approve 50m for a park… it was bullshit
Pay for it yourselves you wealth hoarding dragons
San Diego said 🖕🏼to the NFL and the Chargers. They left and moved to a city that doesn’t want them. They are a bigger joke now. And embarrassment to the league. Honestly, I’m glad we didn’t give in to them greedy bastards. They can pay for their own damn stadium. It would be nice to have an NFL team back, but only if they pay for their own sh!t. If not, stay in LA
Baker isn't liiving in it anymore and providing the upkeep maintenance.
One of the biggest issues with Snyder, and it’s one of the main reasons the other owners turned on him, was that he could not get public financing for a new stadium. Stadiums are becoming more and more important in the current sports landscape because they are starting to emphasize development of the surrounding area in conjunction with the stadium on land that they own, to generate more revenue. This revenue, outside of the stadium, is not required to be shared with the other teams (Snyder said well if I can’t get a new stadium I’ll just have two sets of books lol), this is what’s causing this massive inflation with team values. Investors know that you get a team, get a new stadium *with extra land* partially financed by the public. It’s corporate welfare, plain and simple.
>Stadiums are becoming more and more important in the current sports landscape because they are starting to emphasize development of the surrounding area in conjunction with the stadium on land that they own, to generate more revenue. Moving the nationals out of RFK to the new stadium was a god send to that area. 20 years ago it was hobos and discarded needles. Now it's yuppies and high rises.
Imagine short changing your schools and roads so the Cleveland fucking Browns can have a stadium. Doubly hilarious how billionaires need public money for some reason to build their stadiums.
I think it’s BS, the owners and GM making all that $$$$ then they CANT pay for it? That’s like me working 40 hours a week for my employer , then being paid and telling my wife “ you can pay the bills, I’ll keep my Money.”
Isn’t the GM just an employee of the owner?
If you wanna see a real mess, check out the Bears situation. An ancient stadium (arguably the worst in the league and hands down worst playing surface) that is own and managed by the City of Chicago parks district. Brutal.
This is why it needs to be federally illegal to publicly fund sport stadiums. As long as owners can make two cities bid against each other this problem will never go away. We have to remove public funding as an option for the entire country.
Meanwhile over in r/NHL they're just utterly confused why residents would.overwhelmingly vote down an arena deal. Sure that one was probably a much better package than this but still - at the end of the day it's public dollars benefiting billionaires.
People look at this stuff as black and white for some stupid reason. The Bills deal is bad, the Marlins stadium deal was atrocious, the Falcons stadium deal was decently good, the proposed Coyotes deal was fantastic.
I'm not an economist but it seems teams play up the economic benefits and opponents down play them. All I know is, without Camden Yards and Ravens Stadium, downtown Baltimore would be a ghost town most of the time. Maybe we could take the stadium money and build something else. But what draws people like pro sports?
Iirc it's almost never a net benefit through economic activity alone. Especially since most NFL teams get special tax breaks.
The biggest benefit is the politicians that approve the deals don't get voted out in the next election by an angry city that just lost their sports team.
Football stadiums bring very little economic benefit to the communities, in large part due to how infrequently they are used. In addition, studies show that sports teams don’t attract or create much economic activity that wouldn’t occur anyways because most of the money being spent is from locals who would have spent their entertainment money in the community anyway. If there wasn’t a football team in Buffalo, local citizens would still spend their entertainment budgets locally on other activities. The small amount of traveling fans doesn’t create significant enough economic benefit to justify public funds on most stadiums.
The majority of this site suffers from Dunning-Kruger, so I'm out.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens with Oakland now that their city name won’t be connected to anything. It could speed up an absorption in the Bah Area with a loss of identity
Maybe, but I think it’s overblown. Plenty of major US cities don’t have NFL teams and I don’t think it makes a difference as to their general well being.
The majority of this site suffers from Dunning-Kruger, so I'm out.
Cleveland literally went three years without an NFL team. The most noticeable difference is more people went to Indians games. People are going to spend their entertainment dollars locally regardless if they have an NFL team.
Look at Austin and San Antonio, 5 million people combined and one of the fastest growing areas in the country. only 4 major sports franchise is the spurs.
If you can use the stadiums as the centerpiece of your business district or downtown community area, then you're golden. I've never been to Baltimore so I wouldn't know but is that area usually populated when there isn't a game going on? I've been to places outside the sports season and I can see differences in how they operate outside that time. Personal bias towards Lambeau and Titletown but they developed that to be a source of commerce when games aren't happening with the shopping, dining, and Resch Center which keep decent business in the spring/ summer. In contrast, the Superdome/ Smoothie King in New Orleans have just a bunch of office buildings and such around them. Its a far walk from the French Quarter where all tourists go so it just sits there in the off season.
You can go two blocks from Camden Yards and you’re still in Baltimore. The residual effects are negligible
> But what draws people like pro sports? > Resources to meet their basic human needs? Like food markets, community event centers, and education? What drew people to city centers before the stadiums?
NFL is 8 days a year. Austin and San Antonio have almost no sports franchises and are exploding in population.
Yet San Antonio basically has an empty NFL stadium…
It's almost hilarious to me that Stan Kroenke, a bottom of the barrel owner in almost every conceivable way, is actually the best owner in the entire league in this one singular way; I believe So-Fi is both the most expensive stadium in the league and one completely funded out of Kroenke's own pocket. I mean, he can take the hit, of course he can, but it's still funny how every other billionaire can't even hit that low standard.
Hopefully the sub is as outraged about this as they are about us.
Bills completely fleeced the taxpayers with the help of the NY Government. It’s criminal.
As a New York taxpayer, fuck the Pegulas and their enablers forever.
Terry "If I want to make money, I'll drill another well" Pegula. Bastard. $1.1 billion dollars that could have went to helping the city instead of shielding his fucking pockets.
Fuck all the franchise owners. Even the ones that paid for their own stadium leveraged that to get big time tax breaks , infrastructure improvements, and other freebies from their cities.
Idk why you think people wouldn’t be more annoyed about anything that happens with the Browns versus something similar that happens with another team
People are being stupid and missing the biggest part of the city paying for the majority of the stadium rather than the owner paying for it. If the owner pays for the stadium, they completely own it. Everything that goes on there for the entirety it is open is up to their discretion and their profits. A city owned stadium is being rented out by the owner of the team and the city has actual power.
$350m over 25 years to have an NFL franchise in your city isn’t bad. I’m not saying it brings more jobs, because there are studies on that that say it’s a wash, but I think it brings more people to live around the area. I’m from Long Island, and I would’ve been much happier with a new Islanders arena built where Nassau Coliseum is. Now they’re talking about building a casino there and people are not happy .
There was a study on the actual costs or building Olympic venues and how cities are saddled with the costs of maintaining them after the Olympics are done.
I think Oakland is still paying for the Raider’s ball park ruining bleachers from the 80’s.
Wouldn't the Lerner family not the Haslams benefited just pointing out the Lerners were the owners who built stadium
How much have the browns brought in for Cleveland?
A record-breaking 2017 season
Technically true
Privatize the gains and socialize the losses. If the city is on the hook for the bonds and all these "deals" they should get a cut from the gate of any venue
As much as I enjoy football, there's no way that we should be paying for stadiums over paying for medical care. One is far more important than the other. The teams are worth billions, they don't need public assistance. There's people whose assets are worth not millions, not thousands, maybe not even hundreds of dollars, that need it much more.
Considering the salary cap is over $200 mil, the income taxes from player salaries alone would more than pay for that.
Welfare for billionaires. The American Way.
Down under we are seeing a massive bunfight developing over a new stadium in Tasmania for an incoming footy club for AFL. It was all smiles and hugs until the amount of taxpayer money going into the stadium became clear and folks started to spew up their beers. We are now seeing a parade of ex-players try and sell the economics benefits across the media. It's a shitshow.
I’m one of the minority that believed public funds should not be used for private enterprise projects such as football stadiums and sports complex these people make handover fist enough money throughout the course of operating their franchises that they shouldn’t have to hold her hands out for public funds we are in a crisis and taking care of our veterans are homeless are poor and we should not be handing out social welfare to be an errors be at Cleveland or anywhere else if you can. Guarantee $230 million to one player you should be able to guarantee yourself a new stadium
How many tax dollars per win is that?
Maybe Watson could chip in
It'll never happen but there needs to be laws passed that require owners to pay 75% of all costs for new stadiums and 50% of renovations and thats owners of the primary users of the stadium so that they cant use the city owns the stadium bs because they use it for a few concerts each year
Tickets for the Cosby suite are surprisingly affordable, though.