Category: Kansas City Royals

Friday roundup: Oregon okays $800m in MLB stadium spending because “transformative”

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s been a minute since I’ve issued an appeal for new supporters for this site, so: If you aren’t already a supporter of this site, please consider becoming one! There are both monthly and one-time options, and in addition to subscriber benefits like receiving all the stadium and arena news in your email inbox and getting whatever tchotchkes I come up with next, you ensure the piece of mind that comes from knowing you’re helping to keep this site going into its 28th year, which just began this month! Shedding light on the sports subsidy game in any way that affects actual policy turns out to be harder than even a professional cynic like myself thought — for all the reasons this site covers every day — but if we can all just keep it up for another 28 years, I think we might finally start getting somewhere.

As always, thanks to everyone who is contributing now or has contributed in the past — it not only lets me pay the ever-increasing costs of hosting this site and enables me to spend time writing it without going broke, it’s heartening to know that people think this issue is important enough to devote your hard-earned dollars to. Or maybe you just like pointing and laughing at billionaire failsons, that works, too. I hope to be able to keep this site going until it’s no longer necessary, at which point you’re all invited to the victory party, if any of us are still mobile enough by then to dance.

And with that cheery thought, here’s your weekly dose of ways everything still mostly sucks now:

  • The Oregon state senate voted 24-5 to approve $800 million in public bonds toward building a Major League Baseball stadium, just as soon as Portland gets a Major League Baseball team. Senators say the project will pay for itself by using money from player income taxes (it won’t) and that it will be a “forward-thinking, transformative opportunity” and “a showcase of what is beautiful, central, core to our constituents of Portland,” which is giving money to ex-Nike execs so they can have their own private sports team, I guess? Please enjoy your requisite J.C. Bradbury Simpsons meme, it’s well earned.
  • What do Washington, D.C. councilmembers think of the news that their mayor is on the brink of agreeing to spend $850 million toward a Commanders stadium at a time when the district budget is just red ink up to its eyeballs? “Is this really going to cost us close to a billion dollars?” asked council chair Phil Mendelson, while economic development committee chair Kenyon McDuffie called it a “once in a lifetime opportunity” before being asked how the city could afford it and replying, “I haven’t seen the details.” It’s okay, all the other kids are doing it!
  • Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman says he does not support the Cincinnati Bengals owners’ request for $350 million in state money toward stadium renovations, and wants to hold out for a deal where taxpayers “can actually make money” like … the Cleveland Browns deal? I’m getting kind of tired of linking to my explanation of the Casino Night Fallacy, but seeing as this seems to be some sort of mass delusion that state legislators are signing up for, maybe it can’t be explained enough.
  • The Kansas City Chiefs and Royals owners are still kicking tires on potential stadium sites, yep, that’s excuse enough for a news story, nothing else journalists should be spending their time covering, probably. Local business leaders say it’s important, anyway, and if we didn’t have a free and independent press taking its editorial directives from the local chamber of commerce, where would this country be?
  • Modesto, California is trying to build a stadium to get a soccer franchise. Of all the 2025 things that you never expected we would be living through, that’s one of the 2025iest.
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Friday roundup: Angels owner could be skimping on stadium repairs, St. Pete may send Rays owner a bill for their wasted stadium time

access_time personNeil deMause

Hey, did you hear the one about the time that then-New York governor and now-New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo gave two of Elon Musk’s cousins $750 million in public money to open a solar-panel factory that ended up not making any solar panels but just re-sold another company’s solar panels for twice as much per watt as the national average? Me neither until recently — consider it bonus topical content.

Meanwhile, back in the now:

  • Anaheim city officials have no idea how much maintenance work is needed at city-owned Angel Stadium because the Los Angeles Angels‘ lease doesn’t require them to tell the city about repair needs, but it could be “hundreds of millions of dollars” worth, according to state auditors. They suggested either asking Angels owner Arte Moreno if the city can do occasional inspections or maybe seeking a court order. It’s important because Moreno is on the hook for certain maintenance costs, while others would fall on the city; the Angels owner recently said, “I’m not going to put $200 or $300 million into a stadium that a city owns without any of their participation. Maybe we’ll get a new mayor and council that wants us to stay,” which is not exactly a commitment to live up to his lease obligations.
  • Pinellas County is considering sending Tampa Bay Rays owner Stuart Sternberg a bill for county time and money spent on the St. Petersburg stadium deal Sternberg ultimately backed out of, and St. Pete Mayor Ken Welch said the idea “has merit” and he may do the same. “Yeah, why not?” remarked county commission chair Brian Scott, who was previously for the stadium deal. “When we find out what that is, we’ll send them an invoice.”
  • Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine still wants to raise sports gambling taxes to raise $600 million toward a Cleveland Browns stadium (and more toward other future stadiums), but the state legislature still prefers its omni-TIF idea to do the same, and DeWine hasn’t said he’ll veto the legislature’s plan. As for the idea of just not giving Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam $600 million to move from one part of the state to another, no one (besides state house Democrats, but who cares about them) seems to be interested in that, way to go, Ohio.
  • Bexar County, the city of San Antonio, and the Spurs owners have signed a nonbinding agreement not to use county property taxes to fund a new $1.5 billion basketball arena, instead relying on hotel and car rental taxes, which, uh, was the plan all along? Could this nonbinding agreement just be a way to get headlines like “Bexar County agrees not to use property taxes to fund new Spurs arena”? Surely elected officials would not be that cynical!
  • Kansas City Royals owner John Sherman says he has “multiple [stadium] opportunities on both sides of the state line,” because of course he does, he wants to be a savvy negotiator, after all.
  • The USL is expanding to compete directly with MLS and adopting promotion and relegation even, and you know what that means: lots of new stadiums! Modesto, California gets one, and Rogers, Arkansas gets one, and Albany, New York gets one, and by “gets one” I mean of course “gets to help pay for one,” that’s just the price of doing business in a world where there are now two leagues that could be forced to compete for the right to play in markets, hmm.
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KC mayor has piece of paper right here detailing how he can offer Royals $1B for stadium

access_time personNeil deMause

Kansas City, Missouri Mayor Quinton Lucas said a thing:

Kansas City, Missouri, Mayor Quinton Lucas said Tuesday the city has offered more than $1 billion to the Royals to help the team build a new downtown stadium or renovate Kauffman Stadium.

“We do have, I think, a very robust offer that combines state and local incentives,” Lucas said. “It’s my view that gets you to a $1.2 to $1.4 billion range with no tax increase. It doesn’t calculate or include the current Jackson County sales tax.”

What’s that, now? The last Royals stadium funding plan that Lucas mentioned was a state bill that would raise an amount of money Lucas didn’t disclose by means he also didn’t disclose, though apparently it’s a super-duper-STIF, funneling 50% of state sales and income taxes plus up to $100 million in state “matching grants” for “qualified entertainment facility projects.” The total state subsidy is limited to 33% of a project’s total cost, meaning Lucas must have city and county subsidies in mind as well, though — stop me if you’ve heard this one — he hasn’t disclosed what those would be.

Meanwhile, the owners of land in Overland Park, Kansas who had been reported to be negotiating the sale of their property for a possible new Royals stadium say they’re “NOT in discussions with the Royals about being a potential new site for their stadium.” Facts are passé, man, future stadium projects will be entirely based on vibes.

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Friday roundup: D-Backs tax kickback plan rushes ahead despite questions, Utah bill would let a hundred stadiums bloom

access_time personNeil deMause

Springtime is always a busy time for stadium and arena shenanigans, if only because it’s budget season for most states and cities. But still! Buncha bullet points today, is what I’m saying, and expect a lot more next week, and so on and so on until legislators break for the summer or come to their senses, whichever comes first (you know damn well which will come first):

  • An Arizona state legislative analysis says because Diamondbacks players pay $3.5 million a year in state income tax, that would over more than a quarter of the tax kickbacks team execs want for stadium renovations — asked and answered, move to strike. Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego, meanwhile, says the state analysis doesn’t look at actual economic data but rather projections like calculating every fan buys two beers (first, assume a spherical fan). No worries, though, the bill still has to go through — oh, welp, looks like it already passed the state house and just needs to clear the senate, and House Democratic Leader Rep. Oscar De Los Santos has expressed “alarm” and said “we should not be rushing through this legislative process,” guess there’s no time to worry like the present.
  • Utah state senator Scott Sandall, figuring one MLB stadium with no team to play in it and no way to pay for it isn’t enough for a growing state, introduced a bill to let Salt Lake City’s stadium district build multiple stadiums as small as 18,000 seats for any sport, “to be proactive, just for the future,” not because he has any particular sports teams in mind that could use an 18,000-seat stadium or anything.
  • Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas is supporting a new Missouri state bill to raise money for Royals and/or Chiefs stadiums by providing … okay, Lucas didn’t say exactly how much money or from where, and the bill itself isn’t posted on the Missouri senate website yet, but Lucas says it’ll help Kansas City “host FIFA World Cup games,” please nobody tell him that it’s going to be decades before the U.S. gets another World Cup after 2026, I don’t want to spoil his day.
  • The proposed Cleveland Browns stadium in Brook Park is set to lead to the creation of a new Circle K gas station, maybe, if government bureaucrats don’t get in the way with their red tape about “residents” being “concerned,” can you believe those guys?
  • Phoenix Suns co-owner Justin Ishbia has pulled out of bidding for the Minnesota Twins and is instead upping his minority stake in the Chicago White Sox, which certainly can be read as positioning himself to become majority owner once 89-year-old Jerry Reinsdorf gives up either control or this mortal coil. Whether he would go ahead with with Reinsdorf’s current stadium plans, let alone rebranding the team as the Chicacago White Sox, remains to be seen.
  • The MLB cable empire keeps on crumbling, and at least one small-market owner, the Milwaukee Brewers‘ Mark Attanasio, says he wants a TV revenue sharing model more like the NFL’s where all the money is shared equally. This is worth watching since it would have a major impact on where teams could relocate to (Green Bay would suddenly be a viable MLB market), plus all sort of other things like how long the 2027 baseball lockout is likely to last.
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KC area officials compete to bid for Chiefs/Royals stadiums, team owners sit and twirl mustaches

access_time personNeil deMause

Shit’s gettin’ real-ish in Kansas City:

  • Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe met with city and Jackson County leaders yesterday for 30 minutes to discuss plans for Chiefs and Royals stadiums. County legislator Sean Smith, who was a swing vote in approving a referendum on the last stadium-funding proposal for the teams, came away saying “it went really well” and “the governor indicated that there’s clearly some state-level tools they can bring to bear,” which is unspecific but sounds like state funding of some kind is in play.
  • State officials said they’ll work on property tax reform, which #1 stadium backer county legislator Manny Abarca said could help get county voters on board with raising taxes for stadiums.
  • KFVS-TV opined that “The Kansas City Chiefs bring more than just championships to Missouri. The Chiefs estimate Missouri receives $28.8 million in tax revenue each year from their games.” (That sound you just heard was millions of economists suddenly crying out in terror and being suddenly silenced.)
  • In neighboring Clay County, meanwhile, two state senators introduced legislation to create a county sports complex authority to spend money it would get from somewhere, somehow.
  • In neighboring Kansas, House Rep. Sean Tarwater recommended against using money from a fund to lure sports teams to spend on education instead, on the grounds that the state is currently negotiating with the Chiefs and Royals owners and if officials offered money and then had to reveal they blew it all on schools, “we’d look like jackasses.”
  • The video from the same KMBC story that reported on Tarwater opined that Missouri house speaker Jon Patterson said last spring’s stadium funding referendum “likely failed because there wasn’t a sense that Kansas City Jackson County were on the same page,” which, okay, Jon.

Nothing concrete, in other words, but the bidding war is clearly very much on. Presumably legislators are currently putting their heads together to figure out how to approve money in a way that doesn’t require going before voters, or at least going before voters with a “but we’re cutting your property taxes at the same time!” carrot. The Chiefs and Royals owners, meanwhile, have not publicly commented, which has been working pretty well so far as they’ve let competing elected officials do their work for them, bwahahaha.

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Friday roundup: Ravens get even more public cash, D.C. United wants somebody to buy them a roof

access_time personNeil deMause

Greetings from New York, where we now have two terrible mayors instead of one! That’s hardly the worst of today’s political news, so instead let us distract ourselves with some (mostly) terrible stadium and arena news:

  • The Baltimore Ravens‘ $434 million stadium renovation project is now a $489 million renovation project, and 64% of the additional cost is set to be covered by state taxpayers. Or, if you’re whatever AI is writing the headlines over at Sports Illustrated, “Ravens Spending Over $50 Million More on Stadium Upgrades,” sure, that’s probably right, no need to read your own story to check.
  • D.C. United‘s owners want to add 10,000 seats and a roof to their (checks) not yet 7-year-old stadium, and “what remains unknown is the potential price tag or whether the team will ask the city for subsidies.” Also the Axios reporter passing this along (from an original source of “two sources,” not even “familiar with the team’s thinking” or anything) calls D.C. United “American soccer royalty,” what ever happened to no more kings?
  • Missouri House Speaker Jonathan Patterson is turning up the heat on Jackson County, saying “time is running out” for “a plan and course of action” for new Kansas City Royals and Chiefs stadiums, or else … the teams will kick everything back a year and try again, again? Too many showrunners these days really do substitute overbearing string sections for viable suspense plots.
  • D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser says a Washington Commanders stadium “will be the anchor that attracts other investment–housing, amenities, jobs, and opportunities,” guess somebody doesn’t remember what the late Allen Sanderson said about NFL stadiums and cemeteries.
  • In 2023, the city of Anaheim commissioned a $325,000, two-month study of how to keep the Angels‘ stadium viable for decades to come, and now the study may not be done until 2026 and will cost over $1 million, cool, cool.
  • New Sacramento Republic F.C. vaportecture! And it looks like, uh, a soccer stadium? At least there are some smoke bombs, on both ends of the pitch for some reason, but no fireworks or people holding up scarves dramatically and we can’t even see what ridiculous formation the players are in, I give this a B-minus for entertainment value at best.
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Have Chiefs/Royals stadium talks torpedoed K.C. border war “truce”? An investimagation

access_time personNeil deMause

There was a lot going on yesterday, but Kansas City’s NPR station still had time to get out a big think piece — reprinted from local nonprofit news outlet The Beacon — on what the Chiefs and Royals stadium battles mean for the region’s eternal economic border war between Missouri and Kansas. How did KCUR and The Beacon do? Let’s drop in and see:

The two states had for years engaged in a bloodletting competition to lure businesses to their side of the Kansas City region — handing out lucrative incentives to move a corporate headquarters just a few miles across the state line.

These deals brought no new jobs to the region. They sacrificed millions in taxes that could have gone to hire more teachers, pave more roads or invest in public safety. They did nothing to improve the regional economy.

It was, as many called it, a race to the bottom.

So far, so good, though Kansas City is hardly alone in this regard.

Suddenly, that race came to a halt. In 2019, the governors in both states recognized the futility of these battles and agreed to stop the poaching. Since then, most economic development officials in the region say, the truce has worked.

Sort of? The 2019 truce only applied to payroll tax kickbacks, and even then was seen as fragile given that it was “binding” only until one state or the other chose to walk away, as reported at the time by oh hey look it’s KCUR!

A recent study conducted by Brookings Metro underscores why the states shouldn’t waste those resources. The study found that the Kansas City region’s economic output is almost evenly split on both sides of the state line, an anomaly among other multistate regions.

What’s more, the metro’s total GDP significantly boosts each state’s economy. Of Missouri’s total GDP, nearly a fourth comes from the Kansas City metro. Kansas, in turn, gets more than a third of its total from our region.

This is where the article starts to get weird: Kansas and Missouri shouldn’t be throwing public money to lure businesses back and forth across the state line because … the K.C. metro area is evenly split between the two states? Notably, that’s not even what the linked Brookings study says about the K.C. border war, which is the more lucid argument that “both states attempted to move jobs and businesses in the Kansas City metro area to their side of the state line, resulting in zero net new jobs for the region—at taxpayers’ expense.”

But if a place like Wyandotte County has a chance to use incentives to attract a business, why shouldn’t it? In fact, even with the truce, the county and its neighbors across the region still strike deals with businesses in nearby cities and counties.

Uhhhh, because it results in zero net new jobs for the region, at taxpayers’ expense? Also, what happened to “the truce has worked”? Can we get a fact-checker in here?

The difference today, said Greg Kindle, CEO of Wyandotte Economic Development Council, is those businesses are the first to broach the idea of a move. And even then, they aren’t, he said, asking for anything more than what the county typically gives to qualifying businesses.

Consider Mies Family Foods, a family-run business that will be moving from Missouri back to Kansas, where it got its start. Earlier this year, Mies was looking for a larger site and turned to Wyandotte County because that’s where the owners live.

The county offered Mies its standard 50 percent tax abatement. That, coupled with an attractive site near Interstates 70 and 635, was enough to convince Mies to make a $15.6 million investment and bring 51 employees to Kansas. When the abatement ends, the property will generate $200,000 a year in taxes.

“You look at that and say, does that qualify as a border war?” Kindle said. “Well, they had a connection to Kansas and wanted to move.”

Oh, okay, the county is handing out tax breaks to everyone, including companies owned by people who would want to move to your state regardless and are just happy to pocket the cash as a bonus. That’s … better? Kindle seems to be trying to go with “better,” I think?

If you’re wondering why The Beacon chose to ask the head of the local public-private pro-business advocacy group about whether giving public money to local businesses is a good idea, you clearly weren’t the editor of this piece, because that’s the only kind of source heard from here: People quoted include the CEO of K.C.’s regional business marketing arm, the CEO of the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce, the aforementioned Wyandotte economic development council CEO, a Kansas state official who voted to spend $28 million on the 2026 World Cup even though it’ll be held in Missouri, the CEO of K.C.’s World Cup bid group, and one of the Brookings authors. Any other experts in or critics of interstate bidding wars or the economics thereof didn’t get a call for comment, so we’re left viewing the end (?) of this truce (?) through a lens of “actually, it’s all fine, probably.”

As for the Chiefs and the Royals, though they’re the hook for the headline, they don’t make that much of an appearance in the article itself, though it does note that “on balance, the subsidies offered to major league sports franchises rarely, if ever, deliver that boost.” That’s followed, however, by a digression about how stadium employees would likely live in both states either way — true enough, but kind of beside the point if the whole issue is that paying to move businesses back and forth across state lines is a net zero for the region as a whole — and then this:

And the region, certainly, does not want to lose either the Royals or the Chiefs. [Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce Joe] Reardon said that even if one or both teams move to Kansas, the truce will remain because the region will have kept its prized teams.

You heard it here first: Without tax kickbacks, the Chiefs and Royals could move to Greensboro or someplace, according to the head of the organization dedicated to obtaining tax kickbacks for its members. Great journalism, everybody — who needs meddling billionaires when we have reporters who’ve been trained to follow their lead on who is and isn’t worth talking to?

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Friday roundup: Rays to play 2025 in Tampa, and other things to make people mad

access_time personNeil deMause

The verdict is in for where the Tampa Bay Rays will play the 2025 season while waiting for their roof to be (probably) repaired, and the answer is: Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, spring-training home of the New York Yankees and rest-of-the-time home of the Tampa Tarpons. I’m going to go ahead and call this a fine enough decision: The stadium holds 11,000 people, not too far off of the Rays’ average 2024 attendance of 16,515; as a spring training site, it has major-league amenities; and it’s still in the Tampa Bay region, so Rays fans won’t have to drive across the state or the country to get to games. Plus, there are multiple fields on the site, so there’s no worry about schedule conflicts, since the Tarpons can just play on one of the back fields while the Rays take over the main one.

Of course, it’s also not in Pinellas County, which is already ticking off Pinellas County commissioners who already held up a vote on approving bonds for a new Rays stadium last month amid concern that the team might play elsewhere for a season or three. Commissioner Chris Latvala, who voted against the stadium deal in July, called the decision “unfortunate,” saying, “there’s going to be over $1 billion public funds dedicated from Pinellas residents to the Tampa Bay Rays, and the thank you that the Rays gave them was to play the games across the bridge in Hillsborough County.” Commissioner Rene Flowers, meanwhile, who voted for the deal in July, told the Tampa Bay Times she’s now not sure if she’ll change her vote, saying, “I’m waiting to see how it looks for us financially” — spoilers, Rene, it still looks just as bad as it did then.

And then there’s this tidbit:

The Yankees will receive about $15 million in revenue for hosting the Rays, a person familiar with the arrangement told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because that detail was not announced. The money won’t come from Tampa Bay but from other sources, such as insurance.

Um, Associated Press, you drunk posting? First off, “Tampa Bay” is not a government entity, it’s a collection of disparate municipalities and counties, so who isn’t the money coming from, exactly? And “such as insurance” is both awfully vague and puzzlingly specific, as the only insurance policy that’s been discussed is that held by the city of St. Petersburg, which is already committed to paying for a chunk of the estimated $55 million cost of repairing the Tropicana Field roof.

Still many questions, in other words. Anyone else want to chime in?

“I’ll be excited to set a record for rain delays in a season,” Rays reliever and union player rep Pete Fairbanks said.

And as for the week’s other news:

  • Orlando’s stadium formerly known as the Citrus Bowl is set to get $400 million in county-funded renovations, something that Orlando mayor-for-life Buddy Dyer first proposed last year and which the county gave preliminary approval to back in January. The money would come from the “tourist development tax” — the same pool of hotel-tax money that Pinellas County is currently debating whether to hand over to the Rays — which according to the authorizing legislation can be used for building stadiums, or building auditoriums, or funding aquariums or museums or zoos or beaches or advertising tourism or a whole lot of other things, so long as the purpose is to get more tourists coming to your county. It’s actually somewhat difficult to argue that renovating a stadium that hosts a handful of college football games each year in order to make it “fully symmetrical” is what’s needed in order to encourage tourists to go to freaking Orlando, but this is what the county commission is being asked to vote on in the next couple of weeks, with a straight face.
  • A report by consultant Econsult Solutions Inc. commissioned by the city of Cleveland claims that the Browns leaving downtown would cost the city $30 million in annual economic activity and $11 million in annual tax revenue, which on the face of it doesn’t make any sense since Cleveland doesn’t have any taxes that are at 36.7%. A quick look at the report itself doesn’t reveal any more methodological details, except that Econsult apparently calculated its estimate that Cleveland would lose 29% of Browns-related spending by dividing the population of the city by the population of Cuyahoga County, LOLconsultants.
  • Personal seat license prices at the new Tennessee Titans stadium are in some cases going up from $750 per seat to $10,000 a seat, and season ticket holders are not pleased. But at least the PSL money will help pay off the public’s $1.2 billion share of the construction — oh, what’s that, the seat license money is entirely going to pay off team owner Amy Adams Strunk’s share of the costs? The Hog Mollies didn’t mention that part!
  • The city of Oakland’s sale of its half of the Oakland Coliseum site to private developers is on hold, apparently because Alameda County is dragging its feet on the transfer of its half of the site which it had previously sold to A’s owner John Fisher. No, that doesn’t make sense to me either, it looks to involve a lawsuit in progress charging that the sale violates the state’s Surplus Land Act requiring that public land first be offered up for development as affordable housing — similar objections were raised about the Los Angeles Angels deal, you may remember, but that fell apart before it was ever resolved, so who knows what’ll happen here.
  • One long-rumored stadium site the Kansas City Royals definitely won’t be moving to is the old K.C. Star building, because it’s being converted into an “AI innovation facility.” A local wine bar owner called this “not the most exciting thing for the neighborhood” but at least a plan that wouldn’t require displacing local businesses, which is probably about right.
  • Diamond Sports Group, aka Bally Sports aka FanDuel Sports, has emerged from bankruptcy reorganization, with lots of consequences for the MLB, NBA, and NHL teams it formerly provided cable broadcasts of. ESPN has a rundown, but the main takeaway is that a bunch of teams are going to getting less TV money than they expected, which will effect everything from their player budgets to the relative importance of market size in terms of team profitability, while fans will get some new options including the ability to do pay-per-view of single games for a mere (?) $7 a pop. More on this as more dominoes fall, maybe, or check Marc Normandin’s Marvin Miller’s Mustache newsletter later this morning, if I know him he’ll be weighing in on this.
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Royals execs are going to keep throwing stadium sites at the wall until one sticks

access_time personNeil deMause

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Kansas City Royals owner John Sherman is reportedly exploring new stadium sites, including some across the state line in Kansas:

“The Royals are in real and advanced discussions with the state of Kansas to potentially build their new stadium in Johnson County,” [sports radio host Bob] Fescoe said on his show Tuesday morning, citing multiple sources. “It’s going to move fast and a lot of quickly.”

A lot of quickly, eh? Fescoe went on to say a potential announcement (of a site? of how a stadium would be paid for there? he didn’t specify) could come before the MLB Winter Meetings that start on December 8. The two sites mentioned by Fescoe are a former Sprint campus in Overland Park about six miles south of downtown Kansas City and two miles from the state line, and another a couple of miles northwest of there.

This represents the first real flareup of Kansas move threats since June, when that state’s legislature gave approval for secretary of commerce David Toland and eight legislative leaders from both parties to unilaterally approve selling upwards of $700 million in bonds apiece for new stadiums for the Royals and Chiefs, with the debt to be paid off with money from state sales tax receipts and state lottery proceeds. At the time, it wasn’t clear if Sherman and Chiefs owner Clark Hunt were serious about a Kansas move or just trying to nudge officials in Missouri to up their own ante — but since the latter has mostly fizzled for now, kicking the tires on Kansas makes sense as the next move, whether the team owners are serious about a move or just seeking to poke the embers on a bidding war.

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, at least, seems game, saying “the border war that [the Kansas STAR bond plan] has reignited is unhelpful” and then in the next breath that “I think Kansas City and the state of Missouri are in an active position.” Lucas said he spoke to Sherman as recently as last week about stadium plans on his side of the border, though he didn’t divulge any details about a site or what kind of public money could be used now that voters there rejected a sales tax hike to pay for one.

If all this is reminding you of the Chicago Bears‘ eternal parade of potential stadium sites, it should, because it’s the same strategy: Keep dropping hints about different locations until one either sticks or shakes loose money from a different government body afraid of being left out when the music stops. For the Bears it’s been a matter of trying (unsuccessfully so far) to pit Chicago and its suburbs against each other; the Royals already attempted that last year with Kansas City and North Kansas City, but getting Kansas involved as well gives Sherman more options, for threats if nothing else.

Not that it’s much of a stick: If you don’t give us stadium money we’ll go across the border and let somebody else pay for it only works as a threat if the potential economic gains from hosting the Royals are greater than the public construction cost, and there’s almost no chance of that happening. But all you need is for one set of elected officials to bite, so expect Sherman — and the Bears owners, and the Cleveland Browns owners, and pretty much any other sports owners with two local jurisdictions that can be played off each other — to keep up the move threat gambit as long as is necessary to shake loose some government cash from somewhere.

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Friday roundup: Sacramento celebrates A’s move with new golf simulators, KC residents say cap public stadium funds at one-third

access_time personNeil deMause

Sports economist Victor Matheson and I were both on a radio show this week to discuss the Cleveland Browns and Kansas City Royals and Chiefs stadium situations — you can listen to it here, but first check out the rest of this week’s stadium and arena news, it’ll be quick, I promise:

  • There’s a “major economic boost” coming to Sacramento now that the Oakland A’s are relocating there temporarily, reports KCRA-TV: A new brunch-and-golf-simulators venue is opening across the street! (It was going to open there anyway, but now that the A’s are coming, the owner is trying to open it earlier.) Also, the mayor is “in discussions” with three new restaurants! Feel the excitement!
  • There is no excitement in St. Louis, where the Cardinals are still technically in the playoff hunt, but fans in the best baseball city in the world don’t want to watch .500 baseball, it turns out, or even buy hot dogs. “I love being the hot dog lady,” says hot dog lady Karen Boschert. “I’ve cut my staff down. My prices are reasonable. You can take my food into the stadium.” Maybe she could pivot her sales pitch to point out that you can buy her food and not bring it into the stadium? Just an idea.
  • Pollsters in Missouri decided to ask an unusual question of local voters: not whether taxpayers should pay toward new stadiums for the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals, but how much. The average was two-thirds team, one-sixth state, one-sixth city and county, which is kind of arbitrary and doesn’t account for whether the public would get back any share of revenues or community benefits or anything, but sure it sounds fair. Ish. Time will tell if the team owners come back with “zero-thirds team, poke in the eye with a sharp stick public.”
  • Most of the San Antonio residents who testified at a Wednesday hearing on a $160 million Missions minor-league baseball stadium “voiced concerns and skepticism,” according to Fox San Antonio. For actual quotes we have to turn to KSAT, which notes that a local arts and social justice activist said, “This project is all about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer,” while a resident of a housing complex that would be demolished to make way for the stadium said, “I would not be able to get somewhere else, and I would end up in the street yet again.”
  • Chicago’s city budget is facing a $982.4 million shortfall, and Mayor Brandon Johnson says, “There are sacrifices that will be made,” but not new Bears and White Sox stadiums, those are important even if they would cost the city upwards of $1.2 billion and $2 billion respectively, sacrifices are for little people.
  • Team-funded studies of a Philadelphia 76ers arena say it would be great, other studies show it would be a disaster; the Philadelphia Inquirer editorial board says it’s up to the mayor and city council to figure out where the truth lies in the middle!
  • Another group of developers unrelated to either the Royals or the city has come up with renderings for a new downtown baseball stadium, and guys, you should at least look up how many players are on the field for a baseball game.
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