Pretty sure taking from the masses and giving to the rich is the definition of the opposite of socialism, but yeah.

House speaker says Missouri could give Royals owner $900m for stadium, citing very bad math One of the many, many remaining questions about the plan to build a new Kansas City Royals stadium atop a downtown public park and adjacent properties is how much exactly the state government would be...

At a 4% interest rate, Missouri's $900m in stadium bonds would cost ~$50m a year to pay off, while bringing in only whatever slice of $28m/year in state, county, and city taxes attributed to the Royals actually goes to the state, and is actually new money.

Latest Illinois funding proposal for Bears stadium: Everybody gets a tax break, never mind the costs! With Chicago Bears ownership's demand for what could be $2 billion in property tax breaks for a new stadium development in Arlington Heights stalling because Illinois legislators don't really see how ...

Adding property tax "relief" to a $2B Bears tax break would just blow an even bigger hole in the state budget, so Illinois would either have to raise other taxes to compensate or cut spending on other services.

The city's share is from a ticket surcharge, so that part isn't too bad. The team is asking for another $25m from the county tomorrow, though.

The Vaportecture art prints are as of yesterday all gone, but still plenty of fridge magnets left! www.fieldofschemes.com/supporters/

To show you what a generous guy I am, if anyone ever gives me $1 billion, I will cover all cost overruns.

Friday roundup: Rays execs threaten to “evaluate alternatives” if Tampa won’t hand over $1B; could LA revise its Olympics deal? There's an absolute ton of news to get to today, but first the biggest news of all: The Field of Schemes gift vault is down to only one remaining numbered Vaportecture art print out of the 100 created...

Rays CEO Ken Babby warned the Hillsborough County Commission that "time and action are of the essence" for a $1B stadium subsidy or else "we would have no choice but to evaluate alternatives," in a tour de force of don't-make-me-come-in-there-ism.

County commissioner on Rays owner’s $1B tax ask: “May God have mercy on the soul of anyone that supports this” Tampa Bay Rays execs and Hillsborough County leaders have finally released details of how they would come up with the public's share of a proposed $2.3 billion stadium, with a breakdown by tax source....

Sources of public money for a Rays stadium may include sales tax money that voters were told wouldn't be used for stadiums, catastrophic/disaster response funds, property taxes from the area around the proposed stadium, and reply hazy, ask again later.

Bucs, Cowboys go back to public trough for upgrade money for taxpayer-built stadiums One of the standards of the sports subsidy playbook has been the grift that keeps on giving: Once a team owner gets a new stadium or arena at public expense, their next step is to go back and ask for ...

Spending tax money to upgrade Tampa's football stadium so it can compete with a new Tampa baseball stadium built with tax money may seem like an odd way to run a railroad, but this is where we are.

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If you check the linked KC Biz Journal article, when asked about selling Crown Center, a Hall family spokesperson ducked the question, saying only "We support [the Royals'] efforts to bring their ballpark Downtown."

What exactly is KC approving for a Royals stadium deal? Some questions and answers The Kansas City city council's finance committee and city Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners both yesterday approved Mayor Quinton Lucas's plan to open talks with the Royals on a new downtown...

Mayor Quinton Lucas has floated a $600m TIF district for the entire Crown Center — which would siphon off not just taxes from spending on baseball, but on Kansas Citians going out to eat or even visiting the aquarium in the general vicinity of a stadium.

AECOM’s economic impact slideshow on Rays stadium is the clowniest of clown documents Only two weeks late, AECOM's economic impact report on the proposed Tampa Bay Rays stadium complex is now public — or at least a kind reader sent it to me so I could post it here, thank you, kind read...

Maybe it's best to say AECOM "hallucinated" the economic impact of a Rays stadium, since much like AI, its report produces definitive answers while giving no reason to believe they're more accurate than what you'd get from asking the nearest 3-year-old.

Sometimes a 140-foot cigar is just a cigar.

KC’s $600m in Royals stadium funding could make end run around public vote In the wake of Thursday's passage of an ordinance by Mayor Quinton Lucas to give Royals owner John Sherman $600 million in city money toward a new downtown stadium, Kansas City councilmember Johnathan...

Direct democracy is historically a stumbling block for sports subsidies: Royals owner John Sherman could certainly pour money into fighting a stadium ballot measure, but it's been proven way easier to win over a handful of local elected officials.

We're at a minimum of $2.1B in public costs for the entire Rays stadium project, and a maximum of who the hell knows, but numbers like $4B or even higher are certainly not out of the realm of possibility. www.fieldofschemes.com/2026/04/10/2...

So ... $600m in cash? Would the Royals pay anything for the public land they'd be using? Would they pay property taxes? Rent? A cut of stadium revenues? The known unknowns are stacking up fast.

Rays stadium votes pushed back to May, as questions grow about sales tax surcharge While it's way too early to say that Tampa Bay Rays owner Patrick Zalupski's plans for a new stadium on the current cite of Hillsborough College's Dale Mabry Campus are in trouble, the approval proces...

Hillsborough County previously identified $2.6B worth of roads, sewers, etc. to use Community Reinvestment Tax funds on — meaning diverting $437m to a Rays stadium could require cutting back on building actual public infrastructure.

And the winner for dumbest stadium-related op-ed of 2026 is… I really didn't want to dignify this op-ed by Hillsborough County Commissioner Chris Boles arguing that it's too soon to "declare this [Tampa Bay Rays] deal a home run or a strikeout" with a response,...

Even Chris Boles seems to recognize that writing an entire Rays stadium op-ed around "What is money, really?" wasn't going to go far, because he's padded it out with an absolute fusillade of baseball metaphors, each one making less sense than the next.

Bears to Illinois (via ESPN): Give us $2B so we don’t have to move to Indiana ESPN football writer Adam Schefter, who loves his unnamed NFL sources, was back at it yesterday with this tweet about the Chicago Bears and their stadium situation: None of this really needed to be ci...

All this "Illinois is on the clock or we'll move to Indiana" talk should make clear: Bears owner George McCaskey would rather not leave the state, or he'd have already accepted Indiana's $4B stadium offer because there's no way Illinois will ever match it.

Commanders try to hide ginormous stadium parking garages by drawing them as shorter and translucent What to do when your stadium plan includes two ginormous ugly parking garages, and you don't want anyone to notice this fact before approving $6.6 billion in subsidies for it? If you're Washington Com...

Vaportecture is designed to show a project in the best possible light, and a translucent garage indeed makes the Commanders stadium look better but also raises questions like "Will the garage be limited to translucent fans driving translucent cars?"

Friday roundup: Has Cleveland’s mayor actually found a way to make Guardians and Cavs owners help pay for own repair costs? No time for a lengthy roundup intro today, I'm too busy catching up with the latest problems resulting from sending Microsoft Outlook into space. Plenty of juicy bullet points, though, you can dig int...

Tax surcharges on tickets and concessions largely fall on team owners, as these reduce their ability to hike prices as much as they would otherwise — it remains to be seen if Cleveland can impose them to pay for Guardians and Cavs costs, but worth a shot.

Oh agreed 100%. Which is why it makes way more sense for Lurie to make vague statements like “I don’t see geography” and let the media do the rest.

While that would be hilarious, I suspect this is more of a leverage move by Lurie, if anything.

I should be clear I don't think Lurie is actually likely to move the Eagles to Jersey — but putting that possibility in people's heads to get money out of Philly is another story.

Buccaneers owners say if Rays are set to get public stadium money, it’s time they should too The Hillsborough County Commission voted yesterday to ask the county attorney whether paying almost half a billion dollars toward a Tampa Bay Rays stadium with a county sales tax that voters were prom...

The Bucs owners must decide by next January whether to extend their lease, though that's really more pressure on the Glazers than on Tampa, since they'll have nowhere to play in 2028 if they don't.

Can you elaborate on what you mean here? Clearly lots of team owners at least float move threats, serious or not, to give politicians cover for approving the stadium subsidies that they're demanding. (The Chicago Bears' dalliance with Indiana is only the most recent.)

Yeah, it doesn't have to convince the people of Philadelphia, though, just Philadelphia elected officials. Cf. Josh Harris playing footsie with Jersey to get his Philly arena approved, before using that as leverage to get the Flyers to go in on a different Philly arena.

Eagles owner says decision on where team plays won’t be made on “a geographical basis” When the Philadelphia Eagles broke ground on their new publicly funded stadium 25 years ago, team owner Jeffrey Lurie exulted, "For the first time in the 68-year history of the Philadelphia Eagles fra...

It should be no surprise Eagles owner Jeff Lurie is floating the possibility of a possible move outside Philly — especially after the Chiefs and Bears owners suddenly got multibillion-dollar stadium subsidy offers after creating interstate bidding wars.

Hillsborough official says Rays stadium will fail unless it uses tax money Hillsborough officials said wouldn’t be used for stadium The Hillsborough County Commission has a hearing today on the proposed Tampa Bay Rays stadium, and while this won't be the final vote on the project — those are a couple of weeks away at least — it co...

Rays owner Patrick Zalupski still has hurdles before he can tap $2.25B in public money for a $2.3B stadium. "Elected officials think for a minute before approving billions of dollars for billionaire" is news these days, sorry for the universe we live in.