Commanders' Josh Harris is Also the Recipient of a Billionaire Giveaway

Geoffrey Propheter, who studies stadium deals as an associate professor in the School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado Denver, thought that last year's deal between Washington DC and the Commanders would stand out for years to come “for how ludicrous it was.”  The team is primarily owned by Josh Harris, an investor with a net worth above $11 billion who also owns majority stakes in the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers and the NHL’s New Jersey Devils.

The D.C. Council  finalized a plan to dedicate more than $1 billion in public funds to move the Commanders some 7 miles from a suburb in Maryland to a new facility planned for the old RFK Stadium site.  The city will retain ownership of the stadium, with the Commanders leasing it for $1 per year-- shifting a significant amount of risk from the team to the city.

While D.C. would pay for a large chunk of the costs, it would get 0% of stadium revenues: The team would receive all “stadium operating revenues, including from naming rights, sponsorship, advertising (both interior and exterior), premium seating, ticket proceeds, merchandise, food and beverage, and parking for both NFL and non-NFL events.” 

The deal exempts the Commanders from all property taxes on the stadium and the surrounding development. The deals also exempts the Commanders from sales taxes on personal seat licenses and parking. The city gave the Commanders the exclusive right to develop housing and retail around the stadium (at the low price of $1 per year) and it gave the Commanders rent-free use of 24 acres of city-controlled land for a period of 26 years. 

The Commanders would be responsible for keeping both the stadium and the garages in state-of-the-art shape, so at least D.C. wouldn’t be on the hook for those upgrades.  But team owner Josh Harris has his ass covered on that one-- sales taxes on anything  sold at the stadium would get poured into an “RFK Campus Reinvestment Fund” which would be available to pay for “maintenance and repairs and capital expenses.”

In addition to the $2-3 billion in public subsidies, the deal requires the city to give the team free riverfront land and exclusive development rights-- which means the district could forgo between $6 billion and $25 billion in revenue over time, Propheter said.  Josh Harris gets to pay only $1 a year in rent for a huge tax-free swath of public land, while keeping all revenues from the stadium and other development he builds there, even as the district pays to build everything from parking garages to the stadium’s foundation.

By Propheter's calculations, that makes the planned Commanders stadium project the most valuable package ever awarded to a sports team. 

 

NFL's Hunt Family Takes Kansas to the Cleaners

The Kansas City Chiefs deal announced in December (which would move the Chiefs from Missouri to the state of Kansas) is poised to surpass the $1.48 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars awarded to Montreal’s Olympic Stadium (opened in 1976) marking it as the costliest outlay ever in the U.S. and Canada, said J.C. Bradbury, a Kennesaw State University economics professor who researches stadium subsidies.

Kansas officials pushed aggressively to lure the Chiefs some 20 miles from their longtime home at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri. Officials maintained the new stadium would spur billions of dollars in economic activity despite serious questions from experts and local officials about taxpayers’ ability to cover the massive new debt. “Quite frankly, I believe [it is] the biggest economic win we’ll ever have in the state of Kansas,” Republican state House Speaker Dan Hawkins said last month.

But officials also acknowledged the pursuit was about more than economics: Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly said landing the NFL team would make Kansas a tourist destination, help retain young people and defy stereotypes of Kansas as a flyover state. “And what could be cooler than being home to the Kansas City Chiefs?” she said.

The Chiefs are owned by the Hunt family of Texas, one of the nation’s wealthiest families, estimated by Forbes to be worth nearly $25 billion.  

As both the Chiefs and MLB’s Kansas City Royals — also in Missouri — openly weighed new stadiums in 2024, lawmakers in Topeka passed legislation amplifying an already lucrative tax incentive program to lure a pro sports team across State Line Road.

To fund Kansas’ expected $1.8 billion share of the new Chiefs stadium, state officials will divert sales taxes from a wide swath of the metropolitan area to pay back stadium debt. Officials say that won’t cause tax increases, but those tax diversions could cut deep into other city and state spending priorities.

Neil deMause, a journalist who has written extensively about stadium subsidies, said Kansas was effectively “negotiating against itself,” since Missouri was not prepared to offer such a lucrative deal. The same situation was true in Washington, he said, as it became clear that Maryland and Virginia, which were also vying for the new stadium, would not offer billions in free land and other benefits.

The new Chiefs stadium will be owned by the state, meaning the team won’t be subject to property taxes, a lucrative perk. The Chiefs will pay rent, but those funds will go into an account that can be used for ongoing facility maintenance and security. The state will also contribute millions to that fund every year.

The Chiefs will keep all revenue from ticket sales, parking and concessions, including for nonfootball events such as concerts and Final Four basketball games.

In Missouri, the Chiefs had previously committed $126 million in funding for education, transportation, health care and other community benefits over a 40-year period. But no such arrangement has been announced in Kansas.

In a nonbinding 33-page term sheet released by the state, the team agreed to set aside $3 million per year for a community impact fund. That fund, though, is controlled by the Chiefs, who can spend it on charitable endeavors or on profit-generating, team-branded ventures like fitness clubs. Kansas will receive some access to its stadium for events including graduation ceremonies and free concerts, but those are subject to team-determined availability, and the state must cover all costs. State officials are guaranteed one stadium suite for most events. But the term sheet notes that state officials must pay for their own food, except for free soda and water.

“They could have at least held out for free jerseys or something,” deMause said.

 

NFL Stadium Deals in the News

With the Super Bowl coming up this weekend, I thought it might be a good time to look at some recent mega-stadium deals within the NFL.  These kind of deals always stir up controversy over whether the public investment is actually beneficial to taxpayers.

When Washington, D.C., agreed to hand over billions in land and tax breaks for a new Commanders football stadium, experts thought it would long remain an outlier in sweetheart deals for sports teams.

But just months later, attention turned to Kansas, where officials in December announced plans to fund 60% of a new stadium for the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs. The state committed to spending up to $1.8 billion — the largest-ever professional sports subsidy.

The stadium deals in Washington and Kansas — both involving relocations within the same metropolitan area — have set separate records for taxpayer subsidies to sports teams. They serve as further evidence that public officials are uninterested in curbing giveaways to billionaire team owners, despite decades of research suggesting stadiums are a wasteful use of limited tax dollars. 

Adjusted to 2024 dollars, the median stadium subsidy for projects that opened in the 2010s was about $400 million. That increased to $605 million for projects slated to open in the 2020s. Already, 2030s-era projects have reached a median of $825 million, he said.

“There are many different ways we can measure these deals,” he said, “but by any metric, the recent Chiefs and Commanders deals are historically high.”

A Letter to the GOP From the Daily Kos

The Daily Kos'  Markos Moulitsas has written a letter to the GOP, imploring them to impeach the convicted felon that is running our country into the ground: 

President Donald Trump is gone. Far gone. And yes, the evidence is vast—from illegal tariffs that his own party hates; to recalcitrance on releasing the Epstein files, which his own party ran on; to blowing up the deficit, which his own party pretends to care about; to half-assed nation-building in Venezuela, which he himself ran against.

Indeed, at a time when Republicans desperately need their president to focus on affordability and the economy ahead of the midterm elections, he is instead demolishing the White House and obsessing over armrests at the Kennedy Center. You know, the issues top of mind to struggling Americans trying to make ends meet.

Am I Right?

Sienna Spiro - Die on This Hill

Pyramid Scheme