Determining things like whether replacing a flooded Rays luxury suite with a nicer interior should be a city-funded repair or a team-funded upgrade could get dicey, hopefully someone in city government or the local media is keeping an eye on that, please?

Since ginning up a move threat looks just like planning a move, and team owners don't have to decide which they're doing at the outset, Chiefs owner Clark Hunt is still on the "play off neighboring states against each other" square of the game board.

NEW: 36 states lavish tax breaks on data centers. But just 11 of those states reveal the names of the companies getting the tax breaks, fewer disclose the value of the tax breaks, and NO state provides both estimated and actual jobs created. 1- goodjobsfirst.org/cloudy-data-...

That Trump wants his name on a stadium is no surprise, as he wants his name on pretty much everything. Commanders owner Josh Harris actually calling it "Trump Stadium" is another story, for a bunch of reasons.

While surely Royals owner John Sherman will use the actual poll responses in some way, you know his main concern in picking a stadium site is extricating public money — and by naming three possible locations, he creates leverage to up everybody's antes.

Cover just dropped. Coming in 2026 from Oxford University Press.

Spurs owner Peter Holt is set to get a $1.3B arena by putting down just ~$500m of his own money, and can recoup more through naming rights sales and jacking up ticket prices — while taxpayers put up the bulk of the cost and get no arena revenues in return.

"Take my tax money or I won't give you more tax money" is novel, I'll grant that. Bibb says using stadium district taxes would "shift the cost of stadium repairs away from residents," but residents are who tend to go to Cavs and Guardians games, so wha?

Phil Rogers writes the Bears owners are still trying to "find the necessary funding for needed infrastructure upgrades." Inserting both "necessary" and "needed" is piling on the owner view a bit, but on brand for a guy who once wrote a book with Bud Selig.

The response from Illinois elected officials to Bears execs' offer of $25m instead of the full $350-500m in remaining Soldier Field debt has been mostly LOLBears: State Rep. Kam Buckner called the offer "inadequate" and "disrespe

With polls showing voters opposed to the Spurs arena measures, owner Peter Holt will need all of that $6.5m for last-minute campaign ads. His arena was built in 2002 and renovated in 2015, you'd think he'd be in no rush, but billionaires gonna billionaire.

The Mavs and Stars each have several cities they can play off for arena subsidies, but both also need to outmaneuver each other, something the cities could use as leverage. Hoping city officials play things smart is usually a bad bet, but fingers crossed!

Clark Hunt probably isn't undecided but is weighing how to extract the most tax money — like if he puts a county funding measure on the ballot in 2026, how can he still threaten a move to Kansas if it fails, given Kansas wants an answer by the end of 2025?

Even if Cleveland getting $80 million in exchange for dropping its legal challenges turns out to be maybe an okay tradeoff, the Browns owners get to keep haggling for more subsidies from the state and county as long as they want.

Stitch it on a pillow.

IL's gov said he's OK to pay for roads and infrastructure but not a stadium, kind of a slippery slope when Bears execs want $855m in traffic and transit upgrades, and when the biggest stadium subsidy ever was just approved involving mostly indirect subsidies.

Worcester should serve as a warning to cities hoping to repay sports project costs with tax revenue from new development (*cough San Antonio*) that there's no guarantee the new housing will get built, plus taxes on new residents aren't a free windfall.

Stories like these support owner Peter Holt's attempts to make this into a vote on whether to keep the Spurs, while downplaying the $750m+ public cost and that San Antonio just built a new arena 23 years ago amid promises of redevelopment that never came.

Why is MO sec'y of state Denny Hoskins editorializing in ballot language about how the Chiefs need subsidies or will move to Kansas, when 1) it's not clear they would and 2) he didn't also warn of how stadium subsidies would affect other state budgets?

Oh come on, ChatGPT, you link to fresh arena vaportecture and don't clown on the woman in the short-shorts who is about to jog right into a stair railing? Also, how is it a half-billion-dollar bribe when the public is spending $850 million? Zero stars!

Bexar County voters oppose spending $150m in tax money on a Spurs arena by 46-40%. San Antonio would also put in $549m toward the arena, but city officials say the whole deal falls apart if the county's arena ballot measure doesn't pass on November 4.

Even if Illinois Rep. Kam Buckner's transparency bill is just the opening of negotiations on the Bears stadium, it's a start — especially given how often sports projects get rushed through the approval process without much public oversight.

The Browns deal still needs signoff from the Cleveland city council, whose members have many feels about it, one telling Bibb, "You have lied with the dogs, and now you have fleas."

It's easy for Spurs owner Peter Holt to be confident of winning tax money for an arena when he's spending $2m to get voters to go his way, but just in case may as well employ the "You don't want to find out what'll happen if you make Dad mad" strategy too.

Just a friendly reminder that any researchers with working papers in the public finance and sports space should reach out to me. I've got a standing offer for a special issue and would love to take the editor up on it. Papers don't have to be US-centric but lessons for policy in US is needed.

Browns officials said because the stadium site was formerly an auto plant that employed 16,000 workers, the $70m for traffic and transit upgrades is “relatively modest”; nice attempt at anchoring, need to remember to use that next time I'm asking for $70m.

The new Rays owners want a lot of land, and a lot of money for building stuff on it, and are looking for a government entity willing to hand it over to them — and in time to open a stadium by spring 2029. "Audacious" seems like a good word for that, yes.

Clark Hunt has offers of $750m in hand from KS and MO, but continues to say he needs county subsidies as well, which does make one wonder whether the Chiefs really need a new stadium if it'd only be profitable if taxpayers cover more than $1B of the cost.

The Stars are moving to Plano, unless they're moving to Arlington or The Colony or Fort Worth or building an arena in Dallas or staying in their old Dallas arena. Clearly owner Tom Gaglardi is entering the kicking-tires-to-gin-up-a-bidding-war phase.

Bears execs intend to ask for well over $1B in publicly provided stuff, for a project that the team's own extremely rosy projections expect to bring in $69m/year in new tax revenues, a best-case scenario that would still leave the public losing money.

A Metro expansion could cost "hundreds of millions of dollars" on top of the $7B in city cash and free rent Commanders owner Josh Harris is already getting, says councilmember Charles Allen, but "we cannot afford not to do it."

KSHB reports White’s successor "faces a tight deadline" on stadiums, but at last word the Chiefs and Royals owners were still seeking a county to offer cash on top of the $700m+ being offered by MO and KS, maybe they're the ones facing a tight deadline?

Economist J.C. Bradbury called the Bears impact reports "an incomprehensible mess of motivated nonsense." If it's nonsense that could land them $1B+ in infrastructure and tax breaks, though, team owners will no doubt consider it consulting fees well spent.

Sorry, Bexar County voters, looks like you're on your own for understanding the consequences of the upcoming Spurs arena tax subsidy vote better than your elected officials do — the good news is, that's a pretty low bar.

Expiring leases, it turns out, are only a ticking clock for public officials; for team owners, they can be moved at will. (The Sabres lease, like many sports leases, gave the Pegulas an option to extend under the existing terms, which include free rent.)

Bally's chair Soo Kim insists his casino will be mostly other places to spend money, as if people go to Vegas to shop; the resort is to be built in stages, so as with the A's stadium it's anyone's guess when the pictures will become reality, if ever.

"Being a season ticket holder for the Athletics is embarrassing to the point that I regret telling my friends or coworkers," a Sacramento season ticket holder wrote to the A's in May. By way of apology, they gave him a bag of old giveaways he already had.

A San Antonio journalist told me today that the mayor has started receiving police protection because of threats against her and her family for her attempts to slow the project and allow for more policy evaluation. Anyone know if the Spurs or NBA have issued a statement on this?

Even as Los Angeles commits to $193m a year in debt service for a convention center expansion, other cities' experience shows that the likelihood of any significant increase in LA’s convention business is effectively nil.

Zalupski is in the same boat as Sternberg was: He has a stadium to play in, though no one loves it, and a new stadium would come with most of the same problems as the old one unless someone can figure out how to build one in the exact middle of the bay.

The total public cost of the Commanders stadium will likely be $7B-$25B, setting a new sports subsidy standard that will doubtless be used as a benchmark by other team owners, meaning it'll cost lots of other cities more billions of dollars in the future.

A consultant okayed the Browns stadium's proximity to flight paths, leaving it facing only: suits over the Modell Law and use of unclaimed property funds and whether move talks violated the team's lease, plus $600m in unfinalized city and county spending.

The headline in Jeff Bezos's Washington Post called the Commanders stadium deal transformative — a word lifted from team owner Josh Harris's statement on the vote and not even dignified with quote marks in the paper's headline.

Are you a reporter covering one of the many recent public stadium deals? Read this: it's the least you could do. Your government and team sources are lying to you. Be a journalist, not a parrot.

The MLB commissioner's goal is to get the Rays settled in a new stadium so he can finally pursue his long-awaited plans for MLB expansion, and he knows the only way to shake loose public stadium money is to gin up a bidding war. www.fieldofschemes.com/2025/09/17/2...

If you're going to hand out $6.6B in stadium subsidies, yes, it's better if residents get good jobs and a say in how it affects their neighborhoods. But focusing just on side benefits can become an invitation for sports billionaires to buy off opposition. www.fieldofschemes.com/2025/09/16/2...

By describing a stadium as facing bureaucratic "hurdles," the story is framed as a collision between a promised good and the steps needed to get the sausages made, as if the Broncos owners are just regular Joes struggling to renew their driver's licenses.

What the f is going on in public finance related journalism? I refuse to believe any “journalist” is this stupid. Econ dev official says tax incentives don’t take money from the govt. Literally that’s what any tax break is.

Even if remaining stadium debt is really just bookkeeping, if Bears execs are going to demand a pile of future tax breaks, sure, come right back at them with a demand for cash to the state up front. Two can play at the hardball negotiations game.

By announcing a site and a "no new taxes" promise now, the Broncos owners can hope to anchor people's expectations for a new stadium by 2031, leaving only mere details about what tax breaks and public infrastructure spending will be needed to get it done.