Tag: San Francisco

Stadium

San Francisco 49ers owner, Jed York, continues spending millions to sway local politicians. When will it be called out nationally?

Recently, San Francisco 49ers owner, Jed York, created “two new political action committees” so that he could sway the public into electing a 49ers-friendly mayor and city councilmen. The team handed over $645,000 and $335,000 to the committees supporting the 49ers' preferred candidates. Nobody should be surprised by this. York has spent millions on every election since 2014, the year that the 49ers' stadium was built in Santa Clara. But it still surprises me how…

William Neilson Jr.
Stadium

FIFA made $15B from this World Cup. Actual businesses near the matches? Not so much…

Now that the World Cup is over, I went looking to see how businesses did in host cities. FIFA made $15B in revenue from the current World Cup. That is a considerable amount of money to be taking in from this event. Surely the host cities will see some of that money, right? No, host cities get none of this money. Before I could even look into how local businesses did during the matches, I found…

William Neilson Jr.
Stadium

Santa Clara is not spending taxpayer money on the World Cup. Wait, yes they are

For those who don't know, Levi Stadium in Santa Clara was selected to be one of 16 cities hosting World Cup games in 2026. The six games at Levi Stadium will be played between June 13 and July 1 of next year. Considering how contentious the history has been between the San Francisco 49ers and the city of Santa Clara, I figured something would blow up with this event. Then I recently saw this headline in the…

William Neilson Jr.
Stadium

The San Francisco 49ers promise to pay for all World Cup expenses…somewhat…kind of…maybe?

Last week, the San Francisco 49ers publicly vowed to cover Santa Clara’s expenses for the World Cup games. The 49ers will use money that they received from their NFL operations to cover the costs. One estimate claims that it will cost Santa Clara about $50M to stage the games. Except, as the mayor reminded everyone, the 49ers promised to only cover all “approved costs”. That can be interpreted many ways, considering the terrible history between the…

William Neilson Jr.
Stadium

San Francisco 49ers continue to find new ways of screwing over Santa Clara

Santa Clara continues to claim that the 49ers are hiding financial information from the city. A civil grand report from last year claims that the city of Santa Clara hadn't seen any revenue from…events in six years nor have they seen any money from…events from the stadium's most recent fiscal year. When it was announced last year that a report was being done by a civil grand jury, the 49ers responded with an unusual act…

William Neilson Jr.
Stadium

The Super Bowl continues to suck cities in with false promises of economic glory

Why are cities not making more money off this big event? Because they are paying millions upon millions in expenses mandated by the NFL. In 2016, local taxpayers in San Francisco paid the bill for hosting the Super Bowl and its many off-field festivities. The NFL, a multi-billion dollar company, pays nothing, let me repeat that, nothing during Super Bowl weeks because of a deal between the city and the NFL Host Committee. If you…

William Neilson Jr.
Arena Stadium

Teams continue to make millions yet want their property taxes slashed

The city assessed the property value where the arena was built along with surrounding developments at $1.7 billion for tax purposes. The Warriors are asking the city to lower that assessment by just a little.....a billion dollars, that is. The Warriors believe the property value is at $706 million for 2022, which is $1 billion less than the city's value and would save the team over $11 million in property taxes for 2022.

William Neilson Jr.