Field of Schemes

15/12/2025

Rent and taxes will be haggled over in talks, which, if the goal is a "better and financial sustainable situation" (sic) for the Whitecaps, tracks: You don't make windfall profits by leasing city land at market rate, you do it by getting a sweetheart deal.

One week after MLS commissioner Don Garber said the Vancouver Whitecaps needed a "better lease" or else it'd be a shame about those paratroopers, the Vancouver city council and team owners have signed a memorandum of understanding to "explore" a new stadium and an entertainment district around it at...

12/12/2025

Cleveland's mayor's office says it wants to find money for Guardians and Cavaliers stadium upkeep but that "the general revenue fund cannot be held accountable." How good is your brownie recipe, Mr. Mayor?

Yes, that story about nobody knowing how much the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics cost because the Olympic committee literally set fire to its financial records is incredible, and yes, I really need to make a fridge magnet about it. This is more a note to myself than to you all, feel free to skip ahead....

11/12/2025

FIFA, in the most FIFA-y way possible, told cities that bearing all the World Cup costs while getting no direct revenue (not even sales taxes!) would be fine, because they could sell their own sponsorships — then made it nearly impossible to find sponsors.

I was on a stadium panel at Baruch College yesterday — video evidence to be available shortly, I hope — and one of the points I tried to make was that both elected officials and voters need to closely examine stadium deals, because the total costs almost always involve something hidden in the fi...

10/12/2025

At this point, any particular Royals stadium site has to be viewed as part leverage play — not just how much money owner John Sherman could get from it, but how much he could get from other local governments by waving it in their faces as a threat.

T-Mobile announced yesterday that it will move its 3,500 workers from its Aspiria Campus office in Overland Park if the Kansas City Royals are allowed to build a stadium next door, saying the site "cannot accommodate both our workforce and a stadium." While the phone company said it hopes to stay "p...

09/12/2025

It's not clear a new stadium would do much for the Rays' finances — a new stadium plus public subsidies might, but then the problem you're solving is less "Where can the Rays play?" than "How can the Rays owners increase their profits via taxpayer money?"

Baseball's winter meetings are on this week in Orlando, which means lots of opportunities for reporters to hobnob with team execs and fill column inches with whatever comes out of their mouths. So you probably could have predicted that Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times, who has made an art form of....

08/12/2025

Blue Jackets execs want to create "new spaces for fans to gather and enjoy their company" and "wide-ranging improvements that ultimately focus on improving the experience" and "improving and securing the future of the building." So, wine bars, probably.

Not sure if this is a sign of how few readers here care about the Columbus Blue Jackets, but when I wrote on Friday that the team owners are "receiving $200 million in state money plus $25 million each from the city and county," nobody pointed out that this is still just proposed by the Franklin...

05/12/2025

Your city is nothing without a genuine, bona-fide, electrified, 10,000-seat soccer stadium, which is why Oklahoma City is spending $121m on one so fans can raise their fists to support of not nearly enough players spread out over way too much of the pitch.

Soccer! All the kids today are digging it! It's the future! And also the past! Your city is nothing without a genuine, bona-fide, electrified, 10,000-seat soccer stadium, which is why Mesa is creating a "theme park district" to kick tax money back to a soccer stadium district that nobody wanted to g...

03/12/2025

Luxury seats are a response to there being a ton more Americans for whom ticket prices are no object, thanks mostly to Ronald Reagan. The ideal stadium, to an owner, is probably one incredibly opulent seat that you could then sell to Martin Shkreli.

This week's New Yorker has an article by John Seabrook on the question of whether modern stadium design is ruining the sports-watching experience by catering to rich folks, which because this is the New Yorker is so long that it took me two days to get around to finishing reading it. Also because it...

02/12/2025

One of the two council no votes declared, "My gut tells me this is not a good deal for the city of Cleveland." From the looks of it, everybody thinks it's not a good deal for the city of Cleveland — it's just some think this is the least bad deal possible. https://www.fieldofschemes.com/2025/12/02/23392/cleveland-city-council-approves-deal-to-get-at-least-something-for-dropping-lawsuits-over-browns-move-still-isnt-happy-about-it/

01/12/2025

Detroit City FC owners will be able to use a large chunk of $45m worth of tax kickbacks on amenities for their stadium, in exchange for contributing just $6m in new taxes — and that's the *best*-case scenario, according to the team's own rosy projections.

After I reported here Friday about Detroit's WXYZ-TV reporting without comment that the new Detroit City F.C. soccer stadium getting $88 million in tax breaks "is expected to generate $25 million in annual economic impact," Kennesaw State economist J.C. Bradbury dug up the actual report making that....

28/11/2025

The Detroit city council approved $88m in tax breaks for a Detroit City FC soccer stadium; WXYZ reported that the project "is expected to generate $25m in annual economic impact," no source given or needed, nobody would make up a number like that, right?

For U.S. Thanksgiving week, let's take a moment to give thanks for the continuing gift of having lots of stupid to laugh and point at. We are truly in the golden age of laughing and pointing, which is … good? Better than nothing? All that separates us from spiraling into despair? Whichever, this w...

26/11/2025

Overall takeaways: 1) The Steinbrenners are saving $700m+ by not having to pay property taxes on their stadium; 2) Hal griping about still having to spend $84m/year on construction costs of his family's own stadium is close to the definition of chutzpah.

New York Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner was on a call with reporters on Monday when he started talking about how his team didn't win a championship again last year despite the majors' 4th-highest payroll, and how he'd prefer to have not won the championship with a lower payroll, but "we want to fiel...