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February 11, 2011
Vikings to talk Arden Hills, lottery money
Today's news out of Minnesota, where Vikings stadium plans continue to creep forwards, or maybe sideways:
- The Ramsey County Commission is expected to vote next week to officially open talks with the Vikings about a stadium at the Arden Hills ammo plant site. Now all they need is a financing plan, a way to convince two neighboring counties to kick in, and the agreement of the Vikings that that's where they want to play. Mere details.
- Vikings stadium kingpin Lester Bagley has suggested using football-themed lottery proceeds to help pay for a stadium. Problem 1: That money is currently going to existing state projects. Problem 2: After paying for prizes and overhead, the take from the Vikings lottery would only amount to a couple of million dollars a year. So far no response from state officials that I can tell.
- Sid Hartman was right after all: The Metrodome roof will need to be replaced, at a cost of $19 million (to be covered by insurance). The trick now is getting it ready by the start of exhibition football — yeah, right — in August; to that end, the stadium commission is expected to pick a contractor by February 25.
It's Ramsey county, fyi. And the Star Tribune (long a water carrier for a new stadium) actually has an editorial (from the Washington Post) about how it's a bad idea. This site is mentioned in it too!
www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/115784609.html
Posted by Geoff on February 11, 2011 09:24 AM
Thanks, typo fixed.
Posted by Neil deMause on February 11, 2011 09:31 AM
Lester Bagley, not surprisingly, is full of it. On the Vikings website, and in the media, they keep talking about $12 million, but that is deceptive at best. This figure ia the overall sales figure for the lotto tickets, but since 75.5% of the sales in the MN lottery go to prizes and overhead, only a bit under $3 million actually was earned by the state under the game, over perhaps a 6-month period. So if you double the sales for a year-long period, it's $6 million a year, or maybe you can get up to $10 million in revenues if you heavily promote it, but even then, as I point out at www.novikingstax.com/2011/02/vikings-say-scratch-lotto-game-could-be-part-of-vikings-tax-plan.html , the Vikings lotto ticket will reduce sales of other tickets, via te substitution effect, and if the Vikings ticket revenue goes to the team, less money will go to three environmental funds, as well as the State General Fund, worsening our state budget problems. We need to stop this Vikings Tax plan.
Posted by Chris David on February 14, 2011 09:16 AM