The St. Louis Cardinals owners yet again want significant taxpayer funds while giving almost nothing
Let's move up to today. Guess what DeWitt II wants? Busch Stadium needs a “significant capital infusion” in the upcoming years at the latest. My guess is that he will get something substantial around the $500 million mark. I don't think they should but I am just stating that I don't think local leaders would stop them from taking this amount of taxpayer money. The spin would probably just be that the Cardinals are taking just $500M instead of $2B for a new ballpark.
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When will city and state leaders learn that their new sports venue will not magically increase tax revenues?
This week, the Kansas City Chiefs announced they were relocating to the state of Kansas for a brand-new $3B stadium. The term sheet agreed upon by the team and state is outlandish. Joe Pompliano (who is one of the best at sports business news) has gone over the term sheet and claims it is the “Most Lopsided Stadium Deal In NFL History” thanks to $1.8 billion in taxpayer money being included. But the details of many important parts of the deal are still unknown. For example, we still don't know…
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“Business groups” in Kansas City push local officials to build the Royals a new ballpark…without disclosing the Royals connections to the groups
When the Kansas City Royals tried to garner some support for the sales tax vote last year, they paid a company, Jones Lang LaSalle, a Chicago-based real estate company, to write and release an economic impact report on a potential ballpark. But, it didn't take long for problems to come out of this idea. The Royals paid Jones Lang LaSalle to write this report without caring or realizing that Jones Lang LaSalle had no experience with economic impact reports for ballparks or even sports venues.…
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Negotiations continue to happen in secret across the country, all without the public seeing or hearing about it
This is not going to shock anyone. Sports owners hate when their plans are released and looked at intensively. Have you ever read a sports venue agreement? Try reading the Potomac Yard Economic and Fiscal Impact Study from the failed Capitals/Wizards to Alexandria, Virginia proposal. The agreements are almost impossible to read and understand unless you read these types of documents daily. This is why billionaire owners aren’t always forthcoming with initial sports venue details. A professor of…
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When Utah Leaders say that taxpayers “will not” pay for a ballpark, they mean that $900 million taxpayer dollars will be used
Over the last few months, more and more stories have been popping up online that discuss whether Salt Lake City or the state of Utah should build a ballpark for some future MLB expansion team. Utah residents have therefore been asking local leaders who exactly would be paying for such a project. Rep. Ryan Wilcox, R-Ogden, has an answer. He wants residents to know that local taxpayers will not be left on base holding the bill. Many other city and state political leaders agree, and expressed to a…
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