Category: NWSL

Let’s analyze that Colorado Sun article on Denver’s reluctance to copy KC’s women’s soccer “development boom”

access_time personNeil deMause

Probably the most important role that the media have to play in society is framing. Human beings are predisposed to understand the world in terms of stories, and storytelling is what news reports do: boil down a giant pile of facts and events and quotes and opinions into a coherent narrative, so that readers gain an understanding from it. Even things that might seem like they’re not stories — charts, listicles — really are, because they select which facts to bring to the fore and how to present them. One of the biggest challenges of journalism is deciding how to tell a story that’s both engaging and accurate.

Which brings us to today’s Colorado Sun headline and subhead:

Kansas City’s women’s sports stadium hit big. Can Denver’s National Women’s Soccer League home go bigger?
CPKC Stadium, America’s first women’s sports venue, has broken ticket records and launched a development boom in KC. Denver’s City Council isn’t sold on helping to fund a sequel.

That is very much a story right there, well summed up: Kansas City’s women’s soccer stadium has been a success; will Denver follow suit or decline to fund one? Our job not just as readers but as media critics is to determine: Does this article provide evidence to support this framing, or is it trying to sell a story that somebody else wants it to tell?

Some selected snippets:

Even with the team on the West Coast late on a Saturday night in April, 60 fans gathered at Friction Beer Co. to watch the women from KC take on the San Diego Waves.

“It’s 11 p.m. here in KC and there’s still a full bar watching the game,” said Monica Bradley, who was rocking the Current’s signature teal kit. She attended the stadium’s inaugural game last year.

That’s all well and good, but 60 fans going to a sports bar to watch a road game does not in itself a development boom make — if the Current didn’t exist, those same fans might be (and according to virtually all economic studies trying to measure spending impact of sports teams, would be) at the bar watching some other sport, or spending their money elsewhere. And in any event, even if “here’s a full sports bar, you can see it with your own eyes!” is a dramatic image, 60 people is a tiny drop in the bucket in an economy the size of Kansas City’s.

NWSL Denver is breaking records as it prepares for its 2026 debut. The owners paid a $110 million franchise fee, the highest in NWSL in history.

On April 7, the team surpassed 10,000 season ticket deposits, the most in NWSL history.

The narrative takes kind of a weird turn here, as NWSL Denver‘s owners paying a league-record franchise fee and having a ton of season ticket deposits is seemingly presented as reasons Denver should spend $70 million on land and infrastructure for a new stadium. As opposed to, say, reasons why owners Rob Cohen (not a billionaire) and Mellody Hobson (not a billionaire, but her husband George Lucas is) could afford to build a stadium without government aid.

Many paragraphs later, the Kansas City Current stadium is revealed to be “privately financed” (it actually got $6 million in state tax credits), but only because that team’s owners “did not need to invest in the amount of new infrastructure that [Denver’s] Santa Fe Yards will require.” (Only $20 million of the public’s $70 million is slated for cleanup; the rest is for buying the land, something the Current owners did out of their own pocket.)

The public-funding request pales in comparison to the public portion of the $168 million used to build Coors Field, which opened in 1995, and the $400 million spent on Empower Field at Mile High, which opened in 2001.

True, though also the soccer stadium would only have 14,500 seats while those other two are each over 50,000, so you’d expect it to be cheaper.

Cohen said Denver was awarded a team over other cities because of its promise of a stadium, and that the franchise is dependent on it….

No matter the economic situation or the cost, Cohen says, Denver NWSL players will get their own pitch.

“I can unequivocally tell you we won’t abandon this project because it’s important to our core values of what we’re trying to do, it’s important to what we believe and we made a commitment,” Cohen said.

So the arrival of the team is dependent on public funding for a new stadium, or isn’t? Or is this just “We will get this $70 million in taxpayer money by hook or by crook?” Narrative is getting muddy here.

Every major men’s sports franchise in Colorado has its own stadium.

Dear readers, I present to you the Denver Nuggets and Colorado Avalanche.

Two of the Current’s owners, Chris and Angie Long, purchased 19.3 acres of the 78.6 acre riverfront from PortKC to create an entertainment district and build 1,000 apartments over 10 years. A $1 billion bond was issued by PortKC for the riverfront redevelopment which began in March 2024, and the city’s RideKC streetcar is being extended to the riverfront. No bond money went to the stadium project.

[Port KC Director of Communications] Meredith Hoenes credits the stadium and Current’s popularity for the growth spurt on the riverfront. “We love it. It’s a gem for Kansas City.”

Okay, hold up: The development “launched” by the Kansas City stadium was actually partly stuff built by the team’s owners and partly stuff built by the public port district? If you build a new streetcar line and find a developer to build apartments along it, it’s hard to credit a soccer stadium with only a 13-game home schedule as the catalyst that made it all happen. I mean, it’s easy for the communications director of the port district to credit it that way, but that’s literally her entire job to say things like that, she shouldn’t count as a development expert.

Denver City Council’s Platte River Committee votes on Wednesday.

The article does quote two of the council’s 13 members, Sarah Parady and Amanda Sandoval, as making skeptical statements about the money involved (“We are facing the collapse of global financial markets, and I don’t believe this stadium will ever be built” and “We’re being asked to invest $70 million in a time of economic hardship … and we’re the last person to get repaid from the TIF,” respectively). But that all jibes with the story being told: Kansas City has had a big success with its stadium, yet Denver’s city council is hesitant to follow in its footsteps. The facts that Denver is being asked to spend $70 million where K.C. did not, that the Denver team owners seemingly could afford to pay the costs themselves and may even have hinted that they will if necessary, and that K.C.’s “success” probably had little to do with the stadium — all that gets left on the cutting-room floor, because it doesn’t fit the narrative.

The last, and maybe most important, question to ask here is who’s determining the way this story was framed: Colorado Sun reporter — er, journalism student — Lincoln Roch? His editors? The sources, including Denver team president Jen Millet, who Roch relied on to explain the story to him? Those parts we can’t know, but we can guess, given what we know about who tends to get called for these articles — speaking of which, there’s a sports stadium expert right there in Denver who here plays the role of Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Story, guess he’ll have to wait for the director’s cut.

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Friday roundup: Bengals want $350m in stadium money from Ohio, A’s still insist Vegas stadium is happening for real

access_time personNeil deMause

The spring legislative season is always exhausting, but at least we’re already up to … April 11, is that all that it is? At least we can hope that all the team owners lining up for stadium and arena money have already gotten their bills submitted, though plenty of subsidy demands have emerged this late or later: Today is in fact the second anniversary of the Maryland legislature approving $1.2 billion in public money for renovations for the Baltimore Orioles and Ravens (a number that would eventually grow to an unlimited number depending on how much in taxes comes in) essentially without warning, so it wouldn’t be that much of a shock to see a surprise demand emerge from out of nowhere.

And speak of the devil:

  • Hamilton County and Cincinnati Bengals owners the Brown family have declared that if the state of Ohio is set on giving $600 million in tax money to the Cleveland Browns for a new stadium, it should also give $350 million to the Bengals for renovations. The entire renovation plan would cost $830 million and would include a new scoreboard, suite upgrades, new roof canopy, new seating, and improved walkways, escalators, and elevators — which sounds like a lot for that work, honestly, unless the suite bathrooms would be getting diamond-encrusted faucets — and would presumably include county money as well, though officials didn’t specify how much. “Our lease ends before theirs,” griped Hamilton County commissioner Stephanie Summerow Dumas. “Just wondering why is there so much focus on the Browns.” (Hmm, can’t possibly imagine why.) No word on whether the Bengals owners would tear up that insane state-of-the-art clause in their lease as part of the deal, you would think that would be important to ask, I’m looking at you, Cincinnati Enquirer.
  • Newly appointed West Sacramento Athletics president Marc Badain has declared that the team is still on track for a June groundbreaking for its Las Vegas stadium, blaming “skeptics” and “negativity” for the idea that John Fisher may not be able to find $1.15 billion in construction costs on top of the $600 million he’s set to get from the state of Nevada. “There’s a lot of people that make a living out of questioning the success of sports venues and what they actually do for a community,” said Badain, and while on the one hand I feel seen, I do question his description of this as “making a living,” as well as questioning whether a groundbreaking actually means you’re going to build a stadium given that just about anyone with a few shovels can hold one — whoops, there I go with the skepticism again, Badain sure has me pegged!
  • The Denver city council has some skeptics about spending $70 million for land and infrastructure for a NWSL stadium, with councilmember Sarah Parady saying, “We are facing the collapse of global financial markets. … I think we’re gonna be sitting here in a year [and] we will have paid in our amount of money from our incredibly scarce dollars that we are going to need for so many fundamental needs in the city.” Also concerning is the estimated additional $80 million in property taxes the city would be giving up by agreeing to buy and own the land under the stadium, according to  University of Colorado-Denver economist Geoffrey Propheter, who is not only a local but also the expert in calculating such things.
  • Just a few months after $900 million in tax money was approved for upgrades to the Utah Jazz and Utah Hockey Club‘s Delta Center and the Salt Palace convention center, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox’s office abruptly expanded the project’s TIF district last Friday to also redirect taxes from two luxury hotels, an apartment tower, and parking facilities on an adjacent block, providing an additional $59 million in tax money kicked back to the developer, according to Propheter. (That developer would be Jazz and Hockey Club owner Ryan Smith — quelle coincidence!) Then on Tuesday the Salt Lake City council unanimously approved creating the embiggened tax district, with councilmember Victoria Petro bemoaning that “we had no options” but adding that “there is no decimal point here that has been taken with anything less than the gravest consideration,” assuming the gravest consideration can be applied in just two work days.
  • “Salt Lake Bees’ new stadium in Daybreak expected to bring economic impacts, growth to local businesses” was the headline on Utah’s ABC4 website on Tuesday, and if you’re wondering “expected by whom?” and your guess was the owner of a single local coffee shop, you’re a winner!
  • Bridgeport, Connecticut now has an idea for how to pay for a $75 million minor-league soccer stadium, and it’s a TIF district, surprise, surprise. Also the full cost would now be $100 million, and would involve additional state money as well, but who can put a price on being one of the umpteen million cities to have a team in one of the nation’s two warring sets of soccer leagues?
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Friday roundup: Bucs want “major renovation,” won’t say yet who’d pay for it

access_time personNeil deMause

Today’s main event will be the liveblog of day two of the sports economics conference at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, which tons of presentations on stadiums and stadium-adjacent topics, but first here’s the regular Friday weekly news r0undup, written entirely on Thursday! If anyone’s roof blew off this morning, it’ll just have to wait till Monday.

  • Tampa Bay Buccaneers owner Joel Glazer wants a “major renovation” of his stadium once the Bucs’ lease expires in 2028, funded by, uh: “We’re going through a phase right now where we’re assessing the stadium and what might be needed. And I know [Hillsborough County and the Tampa Sports Authority are] assessing the stadium and what might be needed, and once both of us are done with our assessments, then we come together and go talk about it, work through things.” Asked last summer about Bucs stadium funding, Tampa city spokesperson Adam Smith said team execs “haven’t approached the city about anything like that” and “we don’t expect them to”; either that was code for “paying for this is the county’s problem” or Smith really believes in the power of positive thinking.
  • Unlike the [Sacramento] Athletics, the Tampa Bay Rays have managed to sell out their 10,000-seat minor-league stadium in their opening series, even at prices running more than $100 for every seat that comes with an actual seat. Tampa Bay Times columnist John Romano blames this on the Rays needing to make up for “a potential loss of revenue from ticket sales, concessions, luxury boxes and the associated costs of relocating for a year,” not the desire to capitalize on artificial ticket scarcity. It’ll be interesting to see if those high prices hold up once the Florida summer heat hits — for what it’s worth, there are still plenty of seats available for next week’s series against the Angels.
  • Speaking of the Rays, the clock officially ran out on their St. Petersburg stadium deal on Tuesday, and now owner Stu Sternberg is free to shop around for another city that wants to give him a billion dollars. Anyone? You in the back? You were just stretching your arms? I see.
  • Cincinnati Bengals VP Katie Blackburn was asked what’s up with the team’s lease that’s set to expire in 2026, and replied, “We could, I guess, go wherever we wanted after this year if we didn’t pick the up option up. So, you know, we’ll see.” NFL move-threat stan Mike Florio of NBC Sports called this “a powerful, loaded comment“; one might also argue that it’s exactly the kind of vague non-threat threat that you issue when you don’t actually want anyone noting that no cities have newer stadiums ready to offer. Potato, potahto!
  • The Jacksonville Jaguars need a place to play for two years while the city of Jacksonville is paying for stadium upgrades, so they’re asking Orlando to play them to play there, cool, cool.
  • A Massachusetts judge ruled that the demolition and reconstruction of White Stadium for the Boston Legacy F.C. can move forward, though opponents say they’ll continue to fight against it. (Boston Legacy, btw, is the new name for the much-derided BOS Nation F.C. women’s soccer team, presumably meant to honor the easiest way to get into Northeastern.)
  • Chicago Bears president Kevin Warren says the team is now focused on building a stadium in Arlington Heights, except for the portion of its focus that is on the Chicago lakefront. More news as actual news comes in, not just attempts at leverage plays.
  • Los Angeles elected officials are finally starting to get steamed about how the 2028 Olympics are being planned in a city that is recovering from disastrous fires, though so far it seems to be mostly about where the sailing competition will be held. If history is any guide, the real outrage won’t come until the Games actually begin.
  • Wondering how the affordable housing promises attached to the Brooklyn Nets arena are going? Does “Empire State Development (ESD), the gubernatorially controlled authority that oversees/shepherds the project, says it might enforce the $2,000 a month penalties for each unbuilt apartment, though that process may be fraught” answer that question? If you’re wondering why ESD only “might” enforce the penalty clause that was designed to make sure developers actually build what they promised, ESD VP Arden Sokolow says that if the state fined them, “you wouldn’t be getting any housing there,” whereas this way … oh, would you look at the time, we’ll have to cut off questions there!
  • Former Anaheim mayor and illegal helicopter registrant Harry Sidhu was sentenced to jail time for deleting emails to hide them from an FBI investigation into soliciting bribes related to a proposed Los Angeles Angels stadium deal — if you had “two months in federal prison plus a $55,000 fine” in the betting pool, you’re a winner!
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Friday roundup: Oregon considers upping MLB expansion stadium ante to $800m, baseball owners twirl mustaches in glee

access_time personNeil deMause

This week’s vibes.

  • An Oregon state senator has introduced a bill to increase the state’s spending on a possible Portland MLB stadium from $150 million to $800 million, provided Portland gets an expansion team whenever MLB next expands. The source would still be funneling player income taxes to pay off stadium bonds, yet another Casino Night–style funding scheme that is both risky and not really free money, for reasons we’ve covered here before. (The increased figure would rely on rising player payrolls since the initial $150 million plan was approved more than 20 years ago.) The $800 million figure is apparently meant to compete with Utah’s proposed $900 million in property tax kickbacks for an MLB stadium in Salt Lake City; expansion city bidding war, activated!
  • Denver’s NWSL franchise is planning to build a 14,500-seat stadium, and “the ownership group is paying for the stadium in its entirety,” according to the Denver Post. Also according to the Denver Post, four paragraphs later, a tax increment financing district is already in place on the team’s proposed stadium site, meaning the team would recoup property taxes worth some number that the Denver Post didn’t deign to mention. The city would also be on the hook for buying $24 million worth of land for the stadium project, but Denver Mayor Mike Johnston says “the city would always own that public space and that could come back to us for repurposing in 50 years from now if the stadium were to move,” so really it’s an investment, see?
  • Will the Tampa Bay Rays draw more fans this season, despite playing in an 11,000-seat minor-league stadium, thanks to now being on the side of the bay where more people with more money live? Doesn’t look like it, based on the fact that opening day is one week away and hasn’t sold out yet. It doesn’t help that Rays management raised average ticket prices by 30% in response to the smaller capacity, which could complicate efforts to use the 2025 season to answer the age-old question, “Is it St. Petersburg, or is it just Florida?“
  • Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne says the financing plan for a new Cleveland Browns stadium would require average ticket prices to rise to $800 over 30 years in order for the math to work, while a Browns spokesperson says this isn’t true, and nobody’s showing their math, that’s no fun! (Yes, this website is predicated on the notion that math is fun. I’m sorry if you’re learning about this late.)
  • A Massachusetts judge heard arguments this week in a lawsuit charging that a new stadium for BOS Nation F.C. (soon to be renamed, finally) violates a state law requiring a two-thirds supermajority of the state legislature to approve any new uses of land taken for conservation purposes. The Boston mayor’s office insists that tearing down a public school stadium and rebuilding it as a pro women’s soccer stadium that public school students would still get to play in is really the same use — cue the Ship of Theseus debates!
  • The Eugene Emeralds are absolutely, positively moving out of Eugene after 70 years, uh, just as soon as they find somewhere else offering to build them a new stadium. Until then, they’ll still be playing in Eugene. But they’re gonna leave, just you watch! Don’t call their bluff, voters who rejected giving them $15 million last May!
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Friday roundup: Rays, Coyotes, A’s fiascos keep on fiascoing

access_time personNeil deMause

All kinds of news of the week to cover this morning, and I already lost a couple of hours getting up early to yell at my senator’s window about this fiasco. Let’s start with the Tampa Bay Rays‘ own fiasco, and then work backwards:

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Friday roundup: Hamilton County hires guy who negotiated Rays deal for St. Pete to help with Bengals talks, this should go just great

access_time personNeil deMause

This has been a week, but it seems they all are these days. One glint of hope on the horizon: The second annual Sports Economics Conference has been scheduled for the University of Maryland, Baltimore County for April, which means I get to hang out with some of the smartest (and funniest) minds studying stadiums and other aspects of the sports business world, and you get more liveblogs like this.

Until then, the regular weekly news will have to suffice. Let’s open up the ol’ news bag and see what — oh dear oh dear, best to get started right away:

  • I have advocated before for local government to hire professional help in their negotiations with sports team owners over stadium construction and leases, so it’s potentially welcome news that Hamilton County, Ohio has hired David Abrams of Inner Circle Sports to help with its talks with Cincinnati Bengals execs — “potentially” because until now I had never heard of Abrams, or Inner Circle Sports, so it’s hard to say whether he’ll be bringing inside knowledge of how the opposite side of the table operates or just feed them the league line that pouring lots of public money into private projects is good, actually. I do see that Inner Circle was paid $1.25 million to work for St. Petersburg and Pinellas County on their stadium deal with the Tampa Bay Rays, and that couldn’t have turned out worse for the public despite the Rays owner having zero leverage, so maybe let’s hold our applause until we see the results here.
  • A Boston city council vote to block the demolition of White Stadium so it can undergo a $200 million rebuild, $100 million of which would be paid for by the city, mostly for the benefit of BOS Nation F.C., fell one vote short Wednesday when councilor Liz Breadon didn’t show up to the meeting, leaving the council deadlocked at 6-6. One of the “roughly three dozen” people who showed up to protest the stadium plan yesterday called the tie vote a “huge win,” which isn’t really how huge wins work; there’s still a lawsuit in progress that could block the plan, but it’s unclear if it will be heard in time to halt the demolition, which if it progresses would take off the table a cheaper rehab of the existing structure just for high school sports, as opponents are hoping for.
  • Speaking of the NWSL, Denver is getting a franchise! And a new stadium, maybe, the expansion team’s owners say they’re planning one, more details about things like cost and public cost later, don’t worry your pretty heads.
  • The first phase of renovation work on the Milwaukee Brewers‘ stadium that’s costing taxpayers close to $500 million has been approved, and it will include such things as a $10 million “public gathering space,” because there just aren’t enough places to publicly gather at a baseball game. There’s also plans for a future vote to spend $25 million on winterizing the stadium so concerts can be held there in the winter — something that would work a lot better if not for the fact that, as Holy Cross economist Victor Matheson points out, big stadium concert tours take place pretty much exclusively in the summer. See why I’m looking forward to this Baltimore conference? (Side note to newbies: Once you’ve read this site for long enough, you’ll recognize that for the sick burn that it is.)
  • New York Gov. Kathy Hochul watched the start of the Buffalo Bills‘ playoff loss at a Bills sports bar in Albany, because of course she did, and the Times is on it! “I am just going to bury my head in my hands for eight hours straight,” one fan said afterwards, presumably at the game result, but there are lots of other good ways to intepret that.
  • Season tickets to Salt Lake Bees games will jump from $9-18 to $17-47 when the team moves into its new stadium this year, thanks in large part to the team’s stadium capacity going from 15,400 to 8,000, and much of that being made up of luxury sections that can only be purchased on a season basis:
    (Salt Lake Bees) Daybreak Field suite layout.
    Truly, we are not far from that glorious future where sporting events will only have one seat, and it will be sold to the highest bidder.
  • I recently recorded an episode of the great Conversations With Sports Fans podcast, and if you want to hear me talk in great detail about being a New York Mets fan, as well as a sports fan in general in this current era, click that link back earlier in this sentence, you know the one.
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St. Pete to Rays: Actually, there’s no deadline for us to fix your stadium roof, read your damn lease

access_time personNeil deMause

If you’re wondering what’s going on with repairs to the Tropicana Field roof, Tampa Bay Rays execs are waiting on the city of St. Petersburg to tell them when work will begin. Team co-president Matt Silverman wrote to city officials on December 30 declaring that a “partial 2026 season in Tropicana Field would present massive logistical and revenue challenge” and “it is therefore critical that the rebuild start in earnest as soon as possible.” City manager Rob Gerdes has now responded, and it looks like Rays management didn’t read their fine print too clearly:

We look forward to cooperating to attempt to achieve the mutual goal of making Tropicana Field suitable for Major League Baseball games by opening day of the 2026 season. However … the Use Agreement requires the City of St. Petersburg to diligently pursue repairs to Tropicana Field, but it does not establish a deadline for completing those repairs.

It’s true! According to the “force majeure” clause in the Rays’ use agreement, the city only needs to begin repairs within three months of damage that has made the building unplayable, which it has done. There’s no set date for it to finish, though — and the only consequence is that for any amount of time the Rays are homeless, their lease gets extended by an equal amount of time, which is surely no skin off the nose of St. Petersburg.

It’s kind of hilarious that Rays owner Stu Sternberg is falling victim to sloppy wording of a stadium agreement, which is usually city lawyers’ signature move. (To be fair, Sternberg didn’t hire the lawyers who wrote up this use agreement, former Rays owner Vince Naimoli did; still, you’d think he and his execs would have at least read it.) With Sternberg and the city still at loggerheads over whether the Rays owner will accept the offer of $1 billion in public money for a new stadium or demand even more, we’ll likely see more of this brinksmanship in the coming weeks and months and … years? There’s nothing stopping the city from dragging its heels for years, honestly. It’ll almost certainly be resolved before then by either negotiations or lawsuit, but it’s still fun to watch in the meantime.

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Bostonians call spending $100m to convert public park for pro soccer “appalling and criminal”

access_time personNeil deMause

The projected public cost of tearing down a public high school soccer stadium and turning it into a home for the women’s soccer team BOS Nation F.C. (which public high school students will get to use when the NWSL team is on the road) has now reached $100 million, out of a total cost of at least $200 million. And lots of Boston residents are hopping mad, as exhibited at 9-hour city council hearing yesterday:

“Boston students deserve a renovated White Stadium – they deserve a public White Stadium, not a private sports and entertainment complex built to enable private profits,” said Jean McGuire, resident of Roxbury and longtime civil rights advocate. “It’s clear that this entire process is being driven by the needs of private investments, not the needs of Boston students. The process has been launched, the state reviews having been conducted, and community members’ concerns about public access and transportation impacts are being ignored, all in a mad rush to next March for White Stadium in order to be a soccer team’s desired opening day.”…

Stevan Kirschbaum, a former BPS bus driver, described the White Stadium plan as “appalling and criminal.”

“We should be chaining ourselves to those trees – this is a criminal rush to judgment.”

And at least one elected official is none too pleased by the soaring price tag:

“We have now said we can come up with $100 million,” [city councillor Erin] Murphy said. “Just like any responsible person, anyone who runs their home budget, at some point you have to say, that’s great but I can’t afford it, so I’m going to have to say no.”

As reported previously, the team owners will “keep the bulk of revenue from matches” aside from 10% of in-stadium ad revenues and 3% of concessions revenues, as well as $400,000 a year in rent and a $1-per-ticket surcharge — the math on which suggests that it would require the average ticket buyer to spend around $1,000 per game on concessions for the city to break even. Boston public school students will get the benefit of a nicer stadium — when they’re allowed to use it — though it’s not clear what benefit they’ll get from such upgrades as a new beer garden.

The parks group the Emerald Necklace Conservancy, which has filed a lawsuit to block the stadium plan, has estimated that a scaled-down high school facility would cost the city just $29 million. Council Ben Weber said of the lawsuit at yesterday’s hearing, “I hear a lot of rhetoric, I don’t hear much about solutions” — maybe proposing a scaled-down stadium isn’t a solution to BOS Nation F.C.’s owner, venture capital CEO and daughter of a Celtics co-owner Jennifer Epstein, but that all depends on how you define the problem.

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Was the Carolina Panthers’ $650m renovation deal really the worst of 2024? An investimagation

access_time personNeil deMause

The Center for Economic Accountability, a friend of this site, announced its annual “Worst Economic Development Deal of the Year” award for 2024 this week, and the winner was the city of Charlotte, for giving $650 million to Carolina Panthers owner David Tepper for renovations of his team’s stadium. CEA said in a press release that “Charlotte’s Bank of America Stadium deal stood out from the rest of the competition for a combination of factors that included its high cost, lack of transparency, poor returns, questionable economic justifications and the Panthers ownership’s checkered history with subsidized projects.”

There’s certainly a lot to be said for the Panthers deal as a terrible one: The city of Charlotte put up $650 million out of $800 million for renovations to a 28-year-old stadium it didn’t build and doesn’t own, in exchange for Tepper extending his lease for just 15 years and getting to open “good faith” negotiations for a new stadium as early as 2037. Still, it’s worth looking at some of the other contenders from 2024:

All worthy candidates, even if there can be only one winner. The lesson here isn’t that Charlotte is singularly bone-headed when it comes to handing out public money to local billionaires; it’s that siphoning off public money for private profit is a pandemic with no end in sight, and even the less-bad deals would be scandalous in a saner world.

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Friday roundup: 2024 was the year cities said “no” to stadium subsidies, and team owners said “actually, yes”

access_time personNeil deMause

Welcome to the last weekly roundup of 2024! It was a bit of a slow week thanks to the holiday, when even team execs and elected officials (though not always journalists) tend to take a break from stadium and arena shenanigans and focus on eating overpriced peppermint bark or whatever.

It was a weird year in the sports subsidy world: Kansas City voters rejected a sales tax hike to fund stadiums for the Royals and Chiefs, only to have the team owners get the state of Kansas to approve $1.4 billion or more in public bonds for new stadiums there, though they haven’t yet committed to taking the offer; the Virginia legislature rejected a $1 billion–plus subsidy for a new Washington Capitals and Wizards arena, only to have Washington, D.C. provide more than half a billion in renovation money; Illinois state officials said repeatedly that they weren’t interested in funding a new Chicago Bears stadium, only to have team execs keep coming back with even more proposals for new stadiums; Florida elected officials rejected an already-approved Tampa Bay Rays stadium before later unrejecting it. Or maybe it’s not such a weird year, given that the two constants since the whole great stadium swindle started back in the 1980s have been the populace being steamed about huge piles of their tax money going to wealthy sports owners and the wealthy sports owners coming back with “we’re sorry to hear that, but we would still like the huge piles of money.” They will fight eternally.

But let’s look forwards, not backwards! Time to clear away the remaining news items and get ready for 2025:

  • The city of Boston signed a lease with the NWSL club BOS Nation FC to play at the city-owned White Stadium, which will be rebuilt at a cost of around $200 million, of which taxpayers will cover $91 million or more. According to Boston Business Journal, the team will “keep the bulk of revenue from matches” aside from 10% of in-stadium advertising revenues and 3% of concessions revenue, while paying $400,000 a year in rent (rising by 3% each year) and a $1-per-ticket surcharge. (The renovated stadium will also be available for use by Boston public school teams on days when BOS Nation FC doesn’t need it, though presumably they won’t need things like the restaurant and beer garden being planned for the pro team.) There is no possible way taxpayers won’t take a bath on this unless every single soccer ticket buyer spends around $1,000 on concessions, which seems a bit ambitious.
  • WJLA-TV interviewed businesses near the current Washington Commanders stadium — well, a cashier at one brunch restaurant — to find out what they think of the team maybe moving to a new stadium in D.C., and she replied: “We’re busy on Sundays. I think the Commanders fans, they bleed into our Sundays. They’re in the areas. These are popular shopping areas. Definitely probably going to see an increase post- or before the games.” Definitely probably! No need to interview anyone else, slot that in for the 6 pm news.
  • George Petak died. You know, this guy. Out of respect for his family and friends, I will not make any jokes about potential efforts to recall him from heaven.

That’s all she wrote! See you back here on Monday.

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