Category: Miami Dolphins

The Miami-Dade county commission is set to vote today on a pair of new subsidies to the Miami Dolphins — one for about $7.5 million in property-tax breaks for a new training facility, the other for bonus payments to the team’s owners for hosting major sporting events at their stadium that could be worth as much as $11 million, but probably won’t be.

The training facility subsidy first: Dolphins owner Stephen Ross is talking about building a $50 million training camp in Miami Gardens to replace their old one in Davie, and since that’s a move across county lines, he’s asking to be paid $500,000 in property-tax breaks by their prospective new county for doing so. Paying to steal a handful of seasonal jobs from your neighbor is just nifty, says Miami-Dade’s county mayor:

Mayor Carlos Gimenez said the Dolphins incentives won’t boost South Florida’s economy, but will give a lift to Miami-Dade.

“I think it’s a good plan,” he said. “It won’t be any new jobs in the area, but it will be new jobs in Miami.”

That’s honest! Disturbing, but honest!

As for the other subsidy being voted on today, it’s an expansion of the deal signed by Miami in 2014 in which the county pays Ross a bonus for every “major” sporting event held at the Dolphins’ stadium: a Super Bowl earns the team $4 million, for example, while international soccer friendlies earn $750,000. The total amount per year is currently capped at $5 million, and county commissioner Barbara Jordan wants to raise that by $750,000, which in present value over 30 years would be worth a little over $11 million.

Except that the Dolphins have been nowhere near reaching the cap yet, since major events in Miami have been few and far between:

So far, according to the county’s budget office, the Dolphins have requested $750,000 bonus payments for only two events: the 2016 Orange Bowl college football game and the 2017 El Clasico international soccer match between FC Barcelona and Real Madrid.

So the only time this new cap will come into play, really, is if there’s a year where Miami hosts a Super Bowl and a couple of major soccer games, and how often is that going to happen?

Still, if you want to take away from this that Miami elected officials are totally chill about handing over cash to an NFL team to build a training facility but keep giving the side-eye to anything David Beckham proposes for an MLS stadium, you wouldn’t be wrong. Reasonable people may disagree about which side of that equation needs fixing, but it’s a clear sign that where football remains an 800-pound gorilla, soccer is at best maybe 100, 150 pounds.

Another weird article, from today’s Miami Herald:

Revenues at the stadium now known as Hard Rock were up 11 percent in the 2015 fiscal year, a sign that [Miami Dolphins owner Stephen] Ross’ half-billion dollar investment is already paying dividends.

That’s according to Fitch Ratings, a Big Three credit rating agency that recently announced that it has affirmed South Florida Stadium LLC’s BBB (“investment grade”) credit rating.

That’s potentially really interesting, since one of the big questions in stadium finance debates is how much new revenue a team can actually collect from a new or renovated stadium. Much of the Dolphins’ stadium renovations — new seating, upgraded suites, and new concessions facilities — were completed in time for the 2015 season, even if the new roof canopy wasn’t ready until this season, so let’s project out an 11% revenue increase and see what that means in actual dollars. Yo, Forbes, what do you have for annual Dolphins revenues?Team revenues had been going up $5-10 million a year in prior years, but that’s still a sizable jump of $78 million in a two-year span, which would be more than enough to make the payments on Ross’s $350 million stadium renovation cost, especially when more than half of that is really being paid by the NFL. Why, if Ross hadn’t rebuilt his stadium, he’d be muddling along like — who’s next on the Forbes list, the Green Bay Packers? Let’s check them out:

Huh. What about a team toward the bottom of the revenue barrel, like the Oakland Raiders?

You see the problem here? Every NFL team is doing dramatically better the last couple of years, thanks largely to the league’s lucrative new TV deals. Forbes doesn’t break down stadium revenue vs. overall revenue, unfortunately, but it’s clear that even if the Dolphins are seeing an 11% jump in venue revenue, that’s a drop in the bucket compared to those annual TV checks.

None of which is to say that Ross shouldn’t have done the renovations, or that they’re not nicer for fans, or even that we should care one way or the other what Ross does with his own money, and the NFL’s. (Well, we can still care about whether the renovations are nicer for fans.) But this is another data point in favor of “new or renovated stadiums have a more modest impact on fan spending than you might think,” which is a lesson that everyone needs to remember when talk starts up of a team owner’s “need” for a new stadium.

Miami Dolphins execs say it’s categorically untrue that their renovated stadium may not be ready in time for opening day in September:

“The reports that the stadium won’t be ready for football until November are incorrect. Getting a project of this scale done in this timeframe is unprecedented and the contractor is working diligently on a 24/7 basis to complete the canopy structure.  While we will still be doing some “non-football critical” elements and final touches into the season similar to Phase 1 last year, at this point in the process we still expect to be ready to play football September 1.”

Note that this isn’t a “we’ll be 100% done” statement, more a “you’ll be able to watch football and we’ll be able to play it” statement, which leaves lots of possibility for a Wrigley Field 2015 scenario where the stadium is a partial construction site for a couple of months, though hopefully at least the Dolphins owners will make sure the first thing they finish is the restrooms. But at least nobody’s worried about having to actually move games to other venues—

Statement from @CanesAllAccess concerning the New Miami Stadium renovation: pic.twitter.com/P1DKTnSQAD

— Miami Hurricanes (@MiamiHurricanes) July 6, 2016

You know, maybe it’s best not to assume anything. Good luck, Miami!

File this under “stuff that sports media personalities say when interviewed by other sports media personalities” for now, but former Miami sports talk radio host Hank Goldberg says the Miami Dolphins‘ stadium overhaul is in a “real dicey situation,” with renovations possibly not complete in time for the team’s home opener, and “there are some who say that the stadium may not be ready until November.”

Could we be looking at a potential Hartford Yard Goats situation here, but in the NFL? Dolphins execs have repeatedly insisted that the stadium work is on schedule and will be completed in time for the regular season opener; the team’s stadium website doesn’t offer a construction cam, so we can’t even try to eyeball it ourselves. The fallback plan would presumably be playing Dolphins (and University of Miami) games in Orlando for a month or two, which would be bad since that’s three and a half hours from Miami, but we’ll cross that bridge once this problem is sourced to someone other than “there are some who say.”