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December 01, 2010
Bengals, Reds, agree to trade $10m in rent for naming rights and ticket taxes
Stop the presses! Hamilton County has actually gotten the Cincinnati Bengals and Reds to agree to kick in some money to help fill the county stadium fund's $130 million gap:
The Bengals agree to pay additional rent of $8.1 million and to pay for a new field if needed within five years. In return, the team gets a $750,000 credit from the county, and the county gives up long-term naming rights.
The Reds will pay additional rent of $2.2 million and, in return, will get more from the county surtax of 25 cents per ticket once 2 million tickets are sold.
Okay, so it's not exactly a lot of money. And if the Reds do well and sell more tickets, or the value of the Bengals stadium naming rights soars, then the county could actually be worse off under the new deal. And the county will still need to eliminate three-quarters of the countywide property-tax reduction that it handed out in 1996, in exchange for voters approving the sales tax hike that funded the teams' new stadiums. Still, it's a concession by the teams. Kinda. Sorta. Yay?
