Category: Indiana Pacers

Pacers owner demands “a lot of money” for renovations, because he has everything else already

access_time personNeil deMause

So what do you get for the sports team owner who already got a free $183 million arena, $33 million in operating subsidies, another $160 million in operating subsidies when those ran out, a free $3.5 million roof repair, free land for a a free $50 million practice facility, and a free $2 million tunnel to connect the free practice facility with the new arena? How about a “major” renovation of your now 18-year-old arena:

“For me to sign a long-term lease, which is what I really want to do for the city, we’re going to have to plan it for the 21st century,” [Indiana Pacers owner Herb Simon] said. “Things have changed. People’s viewing habits are different with more social environments. It takes a major redo because the bones are great and we want to keep it here. We love the feel that people get, but we want to enhance the fan experience and keep us current. That’s going to take a lot of money.”

That’s not quite a move threat, you’ll notice, but it is at least a glancing non-threat threat, since Simon is saying he won’t sign a long-term lease once his current one expires in 2024 unless he gets these “major” arena renovations. (If you’re wondering why the Pacers will be on their third lease renewal just 25 years after moving into a new arena, blame Stephen Goldsmith.) He also cleverly didn’t say how much money the renovations would cost beyond “a lot,” or how much of that he’d be requesting Indiana to pay for, though “a lot” seems like a fair bet there as well.

Given that the Pacers are already up around $430 million $380 million in subsidies for an arena that cost less than $200 million to build, getting even more public money for upgrades would easily push them into “sweetheartest arena deal in history” territory. I would say that the local government’s appetite for subsidies has to wear thin someday, but this is Indiana, so apparently not. At least the city of Indianapolis didn’t have to cut funding for arts programs and close public pools to pay for all this — oh wait, never mind.

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Indianapolis sports-medicine developer says he’ll build 20,000-seat something for somebody

access_time personNeil deMause

File this under “probably just trying to get publicity, but”: A developer who wants to build a $500 million (!) sports medical complex (!!) on the site of Indianapolis’s old airport terminal says he’s looking to build a 20,000-seat arena or stadium (!!!) as part of the plan. And Athletes Business Network Holdings co-founder Craig Sanders says he’s “having very active discussions with sports organizations outside of Indiana, professional and amateur,” though he wouldn’t say which ones.

Which ones is a huge question, since the Pacers and minor-league baseball Indians already have their own venues, and Sanders says he hasn’t had any talks with the owners of Indy Eleven, who want a new stadium but prefer it to be downtown. That leaves the NHL, maybe, but there’s been no talk of interest in Indianapolis by that league. The WNBA Fever are owned by the Pacers, so now we’re down to things like arena football and futsal, neither of which is going to be enough to anchor an arena. Nor are concerts, frankly, considering the venue would be competing with the Pacers’ Bankers Life Fieldhouse for events.

Still, as someone always on the lookout for outside-the-box ways to finance sports facilities that don’t involve massive public subsidies, “build it as a loss leader for a for-profit medical center” isn’t the craziest idea, quite. The airport board is expected to approve ABN tomorrow as the winning bidder to develop the site, so ball (or puck) is in their court now. They already have renderings!

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Pacers to get $3.5m arena roof on top of $350m in prior subsidies, because Indiana

access_time personNeil deMause

And now it’s time for the incredulous tweet of the day:

Answer: Yes, the $16 million a year that Indianapolis agreed to give the Pacers owners in 2014 only covers operating costs, and specific upgrades to seating, locker rooms, and scoreboards. So $3.5 million for a new roof will be on the public tab on top of that, bringing the total subsidy for the Pacers to … let’s see, $187 million to build the arena in the first place, plus $33 million in operating subsidies for 2010-13, plus $160 million for 2014-2023, and really we should present-value all of this but I don’t have the exact spending dates — should we say $350 million, maybe? For an arena that only cost half that to build? I still say the Pacers may have the sweetest subsidy deal in all of sports, though obviously there are lots of other contenders.

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Pacers to get $59m a year extra from TV deal, will still keep $16m a year in city subsidies, thanks much

access_time personNeil deMause

So now that every team in the NBA is set to get a $58 million a year windfall from the league’s new TV contract, does that mean that teams will stop complaining that they’re losing money and need operating subsidies from their home cities? Yeah, right:

City officials said the TV contract doesn’t change their view of a deal made six months ago to lock the team into Indy for 10 years. The Capital Improvement Board agreed to use $160 million in tax money to cover operating costs and upgrades at Bankers Life Fieldhouse. The team keeps revenue from all fieldhouse events — basketball and non-basketball alike.

“We still believe that our current agreement … is in the best interest of the city and CIB,” Ann Lathrop, president of the CIB, wrote in an email response to questions.

The city agreed to pay the Pacers $16 million a year to play in their rent-free arena in order to keep the team from threatening to leave, so I guess it’s true that the TV deal doesn’t make that logic any dumber: The Pacers would still get their cut of the TV boodle in another city, so the move threat is just as viable (or nonviable) now as it was when the new lease was agreed to.

Still, given that the Pacers management insisted that the subsidies were needed because the team was losing money, and that even after kicking in for heftier player salaries that will result from the TV windfall and the money that the Pacers and other former ABA teams have to tithe to the old Spirits of St. Louis owners, the Pacers should clear about $25 million a year in added revenues, this does make Indianapolis’s subsidy agreement look even worse. Which is pretty bad, given that it already looked like the worst deal ever.

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Indianapolis throws yet another $160m at Pacers, because that’s what Indianapolis does

access_time personNeil deMause

I don’t usually post this late at night, but I just got home from coaching a perfectly enjoyable youth baseball game when BLAMMO!

The Pacers will continue to play basketball in Indianapolis for at least another decade under a $160 million deal the team and the city plan to announce Monday morning…

The Capital Improvement Board will subsidize fieldhouse operating costs to the tune of $3.7 million a year. That will cover things such as liability insurance, security and utilities. The CIB also will pay the fieldhouse’s manager $7.1 million a year, with that amount rising 3 percent each year.

In addition, the CIB will provide $26.5 million to the Pacers for upgrades to seating, new paint, and improvements to locker rooms and concessions. The CIB also will pay for $7 million in improvements directly to replace the floor, upgrade the cooling tower, and improve the facility’s steam pressure control system.

Finally, the CIB will pay $8 million over 10 years for the scoreboard and sound system and will take title of the equipment at the end of the deal…

Subsidies under the new deal amount to an average of $16 million a year. That’s higher than the $11.2 million average annual subsidy under the current three-year deal.

I really shouldn’t be surprised by this, since Indianapolis, as noted, has been paying the Pacers $33 million over the past three years just to keep playing in their taxpayer-provided arena. Stretching out the annual operating subsidy over another ten years, though — and upping the ante in the process — solidifies the city as a rare winner of the sad trifecta of supplying 100% of arena construction costs, collecting no rent or other revenues, and then paying the team to play in its free arena. Indianapolis doesn’t so much host an NBA team as lease one.

For all the stupidity on display here, there’s one person who needs to be singled out: Whoever it was in Mayor Stephen Goldsmith’s administration who, after agreeing to gift the Pacers with a new arena, looked at the team execs’ demand for a clause letting them opt out if they weren’t happy with how things were going and thought, “Yeah, sure, that’s fair!” Behaving like sports teams are hostage takers who need to be placated by any means necessary is a common sight among city officials across the U.S.; this, though, was like paying off the hostage takers and then handing them a gun. And a new hostage. A baby puppy hostage.

Stephen Goldsmith, incidentally, after having to resign as New York City deputy mayor following his arrest for spousal abuse (he was later acquitted), is now back at his previous job as a professor of government at Harvard. It’s gotta be awkward when he runs into Judith Grant Long at the cafeteria, and she just shakes her head sadly at him.

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The “operating subsidies” epidemic: How sports teams get cities to throw good money after bad

access_time personNeil deMause

I’m on the road the next couple of days, so posting will be lighter than usual. First, though, I’ll leave you with some reading material: My debut article for Al Jazeera America’s relaunched website, examining how teams like the Phoenix Coyotes, Indiana Pacers, and Atlanta Falcons have extracted sweetheart leases that pay them millions of dollars a year in public “operating subsidies” even as their host cities slash services and raise taxes. Here’s a sample:

To pay off the initial Pacers arena cost — plus the $650 million that it sank into a new stadium for the Colts football team — Indianapolis’ Capital Improvement Board had already cut off all of its arts and tourism grants the year before. To help fill the new gap, Mayor Greg Ballard funneled city property-tax revenues to the board, even as he asked city agencies to reduce library hours and close public pools because of budget shortfalls.

“Indianapolis might be a great place to visit, but it should be a better place to live,” says Pat Andrews, a longtime Indianapolis community activist and blogger who has closely followed the Pacers deal. In addition to cuts to parks, transit and other services, she notes, the city police force has stopped recruiting new officers because of budget cuts, and murders have risen dramatically this year. “The basic services of the city are suffering at the same time the Simons and [Colts owner Jim] Irsay are making out like bandits.”

Read, and discuss.

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Sports teams can’t save a city, but if you squint hard enough you can pretend they can

access_time personNeil deMause

You probably didn’t even know that Gary, Indiana spent $50 million in 2002 to build a sports stadium for an independent-league baseball team, theGary South Shore RailCats— I didn’t know, so I’d be stunned if you did. But now that you do, I bet you’re wondering, “Wait, are people really flocking to downtown Gary, Indiana just because there’s a minor-league baseball team in town?

Fortunately for you, the Times of Northwest Indiana has the answer, and it’s no, not so much:

Walking down Fifth Avenue, where the U.S. Steel Yard is located, it’s not hard to see how much remains to be done. The Steel City Buffet owned by the Gary Empowerment Zone across from the stadium is again in search of an operator. The barbecue joint in the same building is empty. A Bennigan’s restaurant was kicked out of the Steel Yard itself after shootings outside, rowdy nights inside and failure to pay rent…

And it’s hard not to notice the largest projects counted by the mayor as successes have all been heavily, and in some cases completely, subsidized by government. Stand-alone private investment is almost nil.

And:

“There is a lot of traffic out there,” said Christopher Maxfield, 42, owner of a small building with apartments and shop space just across from the stadium. “I just wish it would slow down a little and that some of them would stop here.”…

“The impact the stadium has had for me?” Key muses as business winds down for the day at Fresh Coast Coffee Co. “I’d say it’s more a psychological benefit.”

“It serves to mitigate a lot of the negative publicity the city of Gary has received,” Key goes on to say. “Now thousands of people have come into Gary on a summer evening and had good family fun.”

That’s all pretty typical of what one tends to hear from businesses around sports facilities — it’s nice to give people something to say about your downtown other than that it doesn’t have any doctors or dentists or Walgreens-style general stores, as is the case in Gary, but it’s really hard to catch the firehose of people swarming into games and back out three hours later to build, say, a restaurant clientele. But it’s nice to see a local newspaper interviewing actual business owners to see the impact or lack thereof of a sports facility, unlike … oh, say, Indianapolis Star columnist David Masciotra, who chimed in today with this Atlantic Cities piece about how stadium subsidies are working out at the other end of the state, in Indianapolis:

In the 1960s, visitors and all but the most loyal residents gave it the nickname “Nap Town.” The joke being that the only thing to do in Indianapolis is take a nap… Now, Indianapolis is still the host of the Indy 500, but it is also home to an NBA team, an NFL franchise, a minor baseball team, 200 restaurants, 300 retail shops, 28 museums and galleries, and 12 performing arts theaters. All of these entertainment venues and service businesses attract a growing market of Indiana visitors and out-of-state tourists…

The New York Times praised Indianapolis’ “thriving culture scene,” while the Los Angeles Times called the success of its revitalization project, “breathtaking.”

The unemployment rates in Indiana and Indianapolis are lower than the national average, and both the state and city have sizable budget surpluses.

The essay, which features zero quotes from anyone actually in Indianapolis, is already getting shredded by Atlantic Cities commenters, who have noted errors both small — the Colts moved to Indianapolis in 1984, not “the 1970s,” and the city hosted the Super Bowl in 2012, not 2006 — and large — that “sizable” city budget surplus is actually a $55 million deficit, and comes on the heels of years of painful budget cuts to close past budget gaps. Which weren’t entirely created by the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on new buildings for the Colts and Pacers, or by the tens of millions more that the city gave to the Pacers to keep playing in their brand-new arena, but it sure didn’t help.

To be fair, by the end of the article Masciotra does credit Indianapolis’s alleged renaissance — which, as one flabbergasted Indiana correspondent wrote to me, is sourced partly to an L.A. Times article from “19-friggen-86” — to not putting all its eggs in the basket of sports, but rather to “cross-sector partnership” that helped spur new shops and “the second largest collection of urban monuments in the country.” (And also to lowering property and business taxes and privatizing services, which also haven’t actually worked out all that swimmingly.) But that just raises the question: If you still have to build public fountains and give tax breaks to downtown businesses in order to create development, can you really claim that it was sports that provided your magic beans?

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Naming-rights musical chairs!

access_time personNeil deMause

Maybe it’s just end-of-year contract cancellation time, but this week has seen a relative whirlwind of naming-rights reversals: A national pizza chain announced it was taking its name off of FC Dallas‘ soccer stadium, while the Indiana Pacers‘ arena got a new name thanks to a corporate renaming, the Miami Dolphins‘ stadium is getting one thanks to its namesake company closing up shop in the U.S., and the Sacramento Kings‘ arena could get one depending on how its sponsor’s bankruptcy proceedings go.

All of which is pretty much old hat in the sports world by now — this will be the eighth name for the Miami stadium in 25 years — but it does make you wonder how much brand value a stadium name when nobody can remember what it’s called. (Quick, anyone: Where do the Oakland Raiders play?) So far, companies still seem willing to throw their name onto any building that might get it on the lips of national sportscasters — just look at the San Diego Chargers‘ stadium, which got a new name that will last only from last Sunday through next Wednesday in order to promote its usual sponsor’s new cellphone chip at three major football games. But how long will it last, especially if announcers stop making as many references to stadium names-of-the-week.

It’s possible to imagine, even, a world where entire articles could be written about stadiums without ever bothering to mention who has paid to advertise on their sides. But no, that could never happen.

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Indianapolis businesses say sales fine during NBA lockout

access_time personNeil deMause

Finally, somebody who reads Slate! From last night’s WRTV in Indianapolis:

Although the National Basketball Association’s players and owners have failed to hammer out a contract, downtown businesses that normally depend on traffic from Indiana Pacers games said there’s a silver lining to the lockout’s dark economic cloud…

Chris Ratay, general manager at St. Elmo’s Steak House, said the lockout hasn’t really put a dent in his pockets, RTV6’s Rick Hightower reported.

“All I can say is I’m so happy we’re up even without the Pacers. I do look forward to them getting back to playing so we can start a promotion again with the pregame dinners, and maybe even increase our sales a little more,” Ratay said.

Also reporting strong attendance during the NBA lockout: The Indianapolis Children’s Museum and the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra.

Now, this is just as limited anecdotal evidence as some of the news stories claiming that local businesses would be devastated by the lockout — though at least this is based on actual businesses reporting their actual sales, not projections based on a team consultant’s report. More concerted studies would be great, but in the meantime, it’s nice to see the media at least acknowledging the possibility that, as the WRTV report puts it, “the lockout won’t likely affect downtown business revenues because consumers with disposable income will redirect their entertainment dollars to other venues.”

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Indy to pay Pacers $33m over three years for no damn reason

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s a couple of weeks late, but the Indiana Pacers have obtained their boodle: The city of Indianapolis has agreed to pay the Pacers $10 million a year for the next three years (plus $3.5 million for a new ribbon ad board, among other things) to play at Conseco Fieldhouse, the taxpayer-funded arena that the team plays at rent-free and keeps all revenues from. That’s less than the full $15 million in annual operating costs — the Pacers’ only arena-related expense — that the team owners said they wanted the city to cover, but not a whole heck of a lot less, especially considering that the Pacers’ lease isn’t actually up yet.

In exchange, the city gets a commitment by the Pacers to stay in town … for three years. After that, the team could break its lease and leave town with a smaller penalty, which would dwindle to zero by 2019, the year that their lease is actually set to expire. I don’t think the Indianapolis Star used my quote, but what I told their reporter was something along the lines of “This is a pretty crappy payoff for $30 million in government subsidies.”

For its part, Deadspin, with its classic understatement, called the deal “the worst of all taxpayer-funded bailouts,” “a ransom, plain and simple,” and “a blatant cash grab by the Pacers, taking millions of dollars just to agree to live up to the terms of the deal they happily signed.”

None of which I’d argue with, though I would take issue with Deadspin’s contention that “Indianapolis needs the Pacers more than the Pacers need Indianapolis,” given that there aren’t a heck of a lot of cities with NBA-ready arenas, and certainly not with Indianapolis’ fan base. It seems like the city’s Capital Improvement Board caved to a major local business player — which may be partly explained by the fact that the CIB’s president is a former aide to this guy.

The CIB still needs to vote to cough up the dough, which it plans to pull out of its operating budget. Yes, that’s the same operating budget that ran out of money last year and had to be propped up with a $27 million state loan; with this in mind, at least one state representative says he wants to block the Pacers deal. Best of luck with that: The Pacers may not be able to beat anyone in the NBA Central, but they’re unstoppable when going one-on-one with Indianapolis elected officials.

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