stadium-financing - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Report: MLS Will Expand To St. Louis, Might Not Completely Fleece The City For A StadiumCongratulations, St. Louis! According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the city has successfully thrown enough money around and greased the right wheels to win economic promotion to MLS!...

A new analysis of the deal to build a stadium for MLS’s FC Cincinnati shows it will cost taxpayers $213 million, or more than four times what was described in the 2017 agreement between city and county leaders and the team’s ownership. Even “favorable” public-private stadium deals wind up screwing t...

Calgary Cut $60M In Social Services One Day After Endorsing $275M For A New Flames ArenaThe Flames’ new arena deal, endorsed by the mayor and city council just a week before a (rubber-stamp) vote to be held Tuesday, is a great deal for the Flames and their billionaire ownership, and thus not a good deal for the city of Calgary. It looks even worse after what the council did about 24 ho...

Calgary Really Doesn't Want To Let The Public Have A Say On New Flames Arena Deal

Calgary was—was—one of the success stories in the stadium scam. The city’s leadership had stood strong against a 2017 push to replace the Saddledome with a new arena for the Flames, and, ultimately the city residents made the decision. Amid an unprecedented attempt by the NHL and Gary Bettman to for...

Officials Respond To Public Records Request On Bengals' New Stadium Deal With 275 Pages Of Redactions

It is not exaggeration to say that the Cincinnati Bengals’ revised stadium lease with Hamilton County, agreed in November 2018, is still largely secret. Among the many figures that weren’t released at the time the agreement was announced was how much the county—and thus, taxpayers—will be spending t...

The Madman Theory Of The Montreal/Tampa Bay Rays

Any self-respecting student of insane Machiavellian gambits should be familiar with the Madman Theory, Richard Nixon’s self-invented strategy for winning the war in Vietnam. The theory, as recounted by Nixon chief of staff H.R. Haldeman after he got out of jail for his role in Watergate, went like t...

Rays Suggest Playing Half Their Home Games In Montreal: Seriously, What The Hell?

Given all of the problems with the Rays—and there are many—dire situations call for nontraditional thinking. Like hanging out with your friends and smoking a ton of weed and wondering aloud Dude. What if a team could play in two cities? That is probably not how this proposed solution to the Rays’ at...

Pay-To-Play Is The Stadium Grift That Keeps On Giving

Sometime in the next few days, Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb—aka the guy who took Mike Pence’s job when Pence ascended to the Old Executive Office Building—is expected to sign a bill extending the Indiana Pacers’ lease in Indianapolis through 2044. In exchange for agreeing to have his team play where it...