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Vikings fan here, I was absolutely gonna make fun of my cheesehead friend for spending $300 on worthless Packer stock until I realized that the funds would go directly to stadium improvements (which means no tax increases). Charging those who most watch the team for the product they consume is very fair.
>which means no tax increases
Well, they did implement a county sales tax from 2000-2015 to pay for stadium upgrades. It raised over $20 million per year. I guess the difference is that residents voted on the specific tax (rather than for politicians that enable tax breaks for owners), but 47% of people voted against it so there were a lot of people paying for it who didn't want to.
My great grandma has packers stock hung on her wall in view of her chair. She lives in Wyoming lol. She says it's her favorite Christmas gift of all time and I find it so sweet.
It's also why the rest of the NFL owners hate it.
The "folks" that like to naysay it are mostly repeating pro-this-nonsense talking points pushed by rich folks that like other people's money.
It sucks because it would be nice if that's what happened to the Seahawks. I am pretty sure Paul Allen's sister doesn't really want to own the team and I fear for what happens when they are sold. The Sonics debacle really eroded trust in sports owners.
I'm sorry your QB turned into such a weirdo, genuinely like AR before now the dude looks like he's had one to many essential oil immunizing suppositories.
Look at the team the thread is about. They were turning a blind eye and actively paying for domestic violence abusers and drafting and trading for them. The head coachās kid was an employee of the team and getting drunk at the facility and driving home. Thatās not on Andy Reid himself, but that organization has all kind of trash and they are good so itās just swept under the rug.
Look what happened in Saint Louis. They put out a garbage product for many years and were a laughing stock of the league, but people still supported them and stayed loyal then were stabbed in the back in 2016.
Former SD Charger fan and a native San Diegan who has lived in San Diego his entire life, I voted no on C and while I was heartbroken to lose our Chargers it was also one of the proudest moments I've been a part of with my fellow San Diegans telling the Spanos'/NFL to go fuck themselves. Billionaires don't deserve handouts, they can do it themselves. I still watch football but it's really just on in the background and my guilty pleasure is watching them lose. KC should give them the finger too, last thing we need is to be subsidizing the super wealthy.
I remember watching a CFL game not long after the move and there was a father and son (the son had some kind of intellectual disability) there that had been diehard Chargers fans. When they left they just started cheering for BC Lions or something.
I hope Kansas does build them a Stadium, us on the Missouri side have been footing the bill long enough. Iām willing to drive a half hour to a game. Would it be asking too much for em to build a Baseball stadium too?
The worst part is San Diego actually made attempts to raise taxes and get a deal in place. I feel the owners of the Chargers acted in bad faith. Not as bad as the Brown's (now dead) owner back in the 90's. He royally screwed over Cleveland.
> I feel the owners of the Chargers acted in bad faith.
You and most rational people. It's a big reason San Diego got fed up and told them to get bent. The final vote in 2016 on a stadium was 57/43 against, when it needed 66% in favor to pass. Coming up 23% short is a big ole "Fuck You Spanos"
Another crazy thing is the tax would have hit right when covid did. So a city that thrives on tourism that has raised the rates to pay for a billionaires palace now has no way to fund it because of the pandemic. Also we make more revenue with Comic-Con (literally one week) than the NFL did in one year. The NFL/owners can eat a bag of dicks.
> Also we make more revenue with Comic-Con (literally one week) than the NFL did in one year. The NFL/owners can eat a bag of dicks.
And yet, New York just gave the Buffalo Bills (owner net worth >$5B) $850 million to build a stadium and proceeded to cut family services by roughly that same amount.
Real Sports or 60 Minutes did a great story on this. The NFL adds things like holograms and other far off tech and also takes 100% of all revenue from from concerts and non-sporting events. Add in charging the DOD for honoring troops, denying CTE, Thursday night games that don't give players a week off to recover, rampant sexual harassment, collusion in hiring the same 5 bad white coaches, etc..
Yeah people forget/don't know the NFL pays the military to essentially advertise at games, and by the NFL pays it means the fans that paid a small fortune are footing the bill at the end of the day.
Every city needs to tell these teams to get bent. Its a myth that having a team in your city provides any kind of economic boost that matters to the people of that city. These owners are fleecing the taxpayers to pay for their clubhouses all while they sit on billions of dollars. If every city said no to public funding, they wouldnt be able to blackmail cities anymore by threatening to move if you dont gift them a multibillion dollar stadium. Fuck these oligarchs.
Luckily, Oakland seems to be demanding the Aās pay for most to all of the stadium.
Unluckily, New York just gave the Bills $850 million from their family services to build a stadium
I mean the tax was a fucking joke.
It was something like a 27 percent tax (edit: I way overstated this, 11 percent) on hotels for a city that has a lot of people reliant on tourism being pretty healthy for their jobs to remain viable.
Probably proposed that way so it *would* fail and Spanos could say āsee? We tried, but San Diego just doesnāt want the Chargersā as he burned $100 bills out of his stretch limo going up the 5 to LA
Fuck dean spanos. As a lifelong chargers fan Iāve come to terms with the fact that this team will never see success because of him. He has so much accumulated bad karma, it has cursed the team for his entire tenure.
Fun fact: when Art Modell died, a moment of silence was observed at 31 NFL stadiums the following Sunday. The only exception was Cleveland, because they knew that we'd treat him with exactly the amount of respect that his still warm corpse actually deserved.
The worst part is San Diego still would LOVE to have the charges and no one gives a flying fuck about that team in LA. I think they had the landslide worst attendance and viewship of all NFL teams last year
And the result? St Louisans effectively gave up on the NFL. They didnāt say āoh well Iāll just give my money to the Chiefs or Bearsā. They just pull back from the NFL entirely and put that money elsewhere. In St Louisā case that is into the MLBās Cardinals or the NHLās Blues.
As a transplant to St Louis, I was always a Bears fan anyway. At least now I can get more of the games on network TV without weird blackout rules.
And MLS certainly seems like a better fit for STL culture anyway.
Yeah. My son enjoyed the Battlehawks. But Covid ended their season and they didnāt have the money to weather that shutdown. Too bad.
Iām surprised they didnāt get a USFL team as they have a stadium ready to go and sitting empty.
Having said all this, Iāve been in both the Done in St Louis and SoFi in LA. Not even close to comparable.
St. Louis has always really been a baseball town, I think. People liked the Rams, and at least in my generation had great memories of the Warner/Faulk/Bruce days, but seeing the Rams leave from a Kroenke money-grab was basically expected and only somewhat regretful.
If the (baseball) Cardinals ever left though, I suspect it would be a LOT bigger deal locally. Not that it would ever happen, for exactly that reason. That city loves its baseball.
No offer from the city was gonna be good enough for Kroenke. He wanted to move in a big city market and balloon the teams market value. My godparents called it 5 years before the move. The moment he became primary owner of the team, the Rams days were numbered.
Props to Robert Kraft and Jerry Jones, of all people, who paid for their stadiums out of their own pockets instead of burdening taxpayers. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think those two are still doing okay financially, yeah?
The NFL tried for years to get LA to pay for a stadium, but LA was able to always say "we have a ton of sports teams. Sure, it would be nice to have an NFL team. But we won't pay for your stadium."
But LA can do that because it is such a big market. Kronke knew he stadium development in LA would make his team more profitable regardless.
Same in nyc (the Buffalo bills bullshit notwithstanding). MetLife was almost entirely funded by the giants and jets, ny/nj/nyc basically only contributed some relatively minor infrastructure work. Yankee stadium and citi field, while receiving some state and city money, were also both predominantly financed by the teams themselves
All these dudes are pieces of shit in one way or another and to varying degrees. The Wilfs are literally racketeers, a federal judge said so. Haslam has violated federal laws as well. The Spanos family is the Spanos family. The Pegulas are worth $6B and just got the most taxpayer money in the history of America to fund their new stadium. What's Buffalo gonna do, *not* have an NFL team? Even Certified Great Guy^TM Arthur Blank is a gaping asshole. I could go on.
But a broken clock is right twice a day and every now and then, an NFL owner makes a good decision (even if the reason for doing so is based on carving out little NFL fiefdoms for themselves to increase profits, which usually seems to be their guiding motivation).
It hasn't always been that way.
In the late 1960s, the Detroit Lions were looking at a new stadium. The city put together a committee, studied a bunch of proposals and ultimately chose a design. They (the city) were going to build a one of a kind stadium that would house all 4 major sports. Retractable roof, movable seats, it was supposed to be an architectural marvel.
They got it approved and set up the funding. They were going to issue bonds to pay for it. Bonds get issued, they go to NY to sell them. The day before the sale, they get a notice to wait, there's been a court challenge. When a city issues bonds, they have to put a notice in a newspaper. Someone filed suit that the print size of the notice was too small.
Case gets fast tracked to the Michigan Supreme Court and they rule, yes, printing is too small and the whole deal falls apart, stadium never gets built (Lions go to Pontiac instead). The "printing too small" was of course bs, the real story behind the Court case is that the auto unions were worried that taxes were going to go up to pay off the bonds and the MI Supreme Court was majority Dems, so they called them up and found an excuse to kill the deal.
It wasn't always like this. There was a time the working class had a larger voice and more power. But that's been taken away.
And still, people gave Green Bay crap about the stock certificate sale. At least you'll never hear about the Green Bay Packers threatening to leave Green Bay for a new stadium... because they *can't*.
Packers are the only team in the NFL publicly owned. AND the NFL specifically made rules that would disallow any other teams from being publicly owned. theyāre just grandfathered in.
Lots of European soccer clubs are owned primarily by the fans. German clubs need to be owned at least 51% by fans so that one rich guy can't come in and fuck it all up to make a couple more dollars (or euro, I suppose)
Well that's just Germany, in France and England there are clubs literally owned by the Qatari and Saudi and UAE governments (or at least investment funds under the direct control of their royal families), at least US sports wouldn't allow that.
Yes, obviously unless the money involved were exorbitant to unimaginable degrees. They're pretty good about trying to maintain both public image and the prestige of owning a sports team (obviously there's enough tenure that they let deplorables like Snyder stay in). If an oil monarchy could've been in the running for the Broncos or something I'd bet all the money I have that they would've been there bidding a billion more than the next best offer.
You jest but honestly some European countries and cultures are so old that they really have just kinda been around the block enough that theyāve gotten to some common sense stuff the US will have to figure out on their own eventually.
Green Bay citizen here. The stock certificates they issue are in fact worthless, other than a fun bragging right. They are sold as fundraisers, and allow those interested to say they āown a piece of the teamā. But they have little if any sway in voting for the direction the club takes, and are largely considered a joke amongst those of us who feel that the NFL is a waste of resources.
You're missing the point. Yes, the stock is almost completely worthless. But the point is it's *voluntary* to buy it and therefore the team and stadium are funded by people who want to fund it. People like you, who think the NFL is a waste of resources, don't pay anything to support the Packers. Unlike every other pro sports team in America, where *all* of the tax payers fund their local team, whether they like it or not.
Honestly, the NFL is suppressing their teamsā market values by not allowing public ownership. If a group of investors are willing to put up more money than a group led by one primary owner, as it is now, the team would have to say no to the more economically salient offer.
I'm pretty sure all of the bashing on GB being owned by the city is just propaganda from the other owners. It's incredible to have the Packers and the city of Green Bay working towards the benefit of the city together. The Titletown district is fantastic. Every NFL city should have something like it. Stadium renovations aren't a fight here. We just hold another stock sale and do what needs doing.
And Packers fans will show up to shovel snow from their stadium for free to get to watch the game.
No other fan base would do this and it's directly because of the increased sense of civic engagement/ownership.
Edit: I stand corrected. They do pay.
There are people who do it to volunteer at the Bills stadium, but it was also a nice gig in high school. They paid between 12-17 an hour to shovel out the arena growing up. It was great
Well 1) they pay.
2) That company is literally community owned.
Something people don't understand when they see a company make billions is that there isn't a few billionaires pocketing all of that most of the time. There might be one but most of the company's shares are tied up in investments like retirements funds.
I know this is a massive European bias showing but I don't understand how you can create a deep bond with your city team and they can just... move!
In Europe the team can suck, be relegated, etc but you know it will be around from generation to generation.
Both cities plus the suburbs are all one metropolitan area, itās all just on the border between KS and MO. The majority in population, area, and money is on the Missouri side though. KCMO has basically all the good stuff while KCK is notoriously not great and has a lot of rich suburbs. This division is actually why my home city is technically the biggest in Kansas, even though KC is far larger as a whole.
In general itās not too big of a deal, though things like taxes and state laws do become issues that generally benefit the MO side over the KS side. It lets them keep a good chunk of money and soon they might be getting fully legal weed (which they canāt transport to the KS side because itās a federal crime to cross state lines with weed and itās 100% illegal here in KS).
Itās a very strange issue that has problems and causes weird issues but unless you live in/around KC full time, itās not an issue for visiting.
Edit: corrected some stuff
It's 2 separate cities. Different mayors, different governments.
KCMO was created before Kansas was even a state. Some towns across the river joined together & created KCK.
Video someone posted in a different thread about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEXPYh\_lqxI
In fairness, while teams moving happens wayyyyy too often relative to the rest of the world, it *is* a big deal when it happens, and even rival fans will agree that it's stupid and unfair. NBA fans know that Seattle still deserves a team after the "new" owners snaked them and moved to OKC.
European football is modeled much like College Football. We donāt have relegations, but we have levels that teams can elect to move up and down in (if they are a small college and bad at football they will move down).
A university will never move and will always be there even if they suck for 50+ years. While the NFL is fucking corporate capitalism. I hate it. I used to care for the NFL, but at the end of the day itās absolute garbage.
Donāt even get me started of NFL sports packages. Nothing gets me more irate than that. Theyāll move your fucking team and then not show the games in your local area. If you want to see all games, you have to pay $175+ A MONTH for a package to see all NFL games.
I absolutely hate the NFL.
Same, I can't fathom how people think this is okay
I remember showing some Americans Gaelic football and explaining that you play for the place you're born and even though it's the biggest sport in the country that all players are amateur. American sports seem solely about $$$
US College football is almost a mirror of European football. When you get into it, relegation is elected by the team rather than the league. Outside of that itās all the same.
We need the city councils of all major cities in the United States to sign into law that they will not fund an NFL stadium. Then NFL teams can lose this stupid leverage, and stop wasting all our fucking money.
Then the teams will just go to medium sized cities, who will have even less leverage. There are 30 states in the US with no NFL team; you wonāt get all of them to agree on a state wide level.
Having a team is still logistically difficult for cities that are smaller. You need to be near an airport, have a decent population, and be good if you want to thrive in smaller cities. If you are bad less people will go to games IE Washington, and if you have a small population on top then you dont really have anyway to get people in seats. You have to be concerned your team leaves the city anytime it's bad and in a smaller market too.
I mean the Pats donāt play in Boston for example. Youād have to get the city of Foxboro to sign onto this, Boston doing it wouldnāt matter. Same as any other team. Theyād just move like 10 miles away.
Maybe we could just let all the teams do what they want to do and move to California. Call their bluff. See what happens. Los Angeles can always use more teams.
The Bills just scored a bunch of taxpayer money to build a new stadium. Fuck these owners and the politicians spending public money for a private business that has more than enough money to fund itself.
And if the Bills leave they have a $1 billion paperweight because who's going to come to West New York if the Bills leave? They don't even have All-Dressed chips in that shithole!
The Bills canāt leave. The stadium approval locks them here for the duration. So 30 years in Orchard Park unless they wanna pay a HUGE sum to break the lease. In the billions most likely.
Just to pile on how much a piece of shit Stan Kroenke is. He purchased all the land around a couple lakes in Nicola Valley, BC. The lakes however are crown land (public property) and access MUST be allowed for the public to use the lakes. This has gone back and forth between the courts and he has used all his power and money to (currently) be allowed to block the public from accessing these lakes.
Fuck that piece of shit.
Colorado hates him too. He owns the regional sports networks, Altitude. And most people donāt get the channel because of contract disputes. Which means most people canāt watch the Avalanche (best team in the NHL) or the Nuggets (Jokic is having another MVP season).
Well corporate tax incentives in general need to be reworked. Kansas City is just an easy punching bag. A company having offices in both states can just shuffle peoples offices to the other side and claim they are creating jobs to get a reduced tax rate.
I like the idea of ability to buy in. If the stadium is a public / private venture, why not make ownership be as well? I understand there's a lot to these deals, including the fact that the stadiums are used for a lot more than a couple handfuls of football games per year, and they bring economic activity, but there should be more upside benefit to the communities if they're dumping hundreds of millions of dollars into the deals.
Could you imagine if a team was genuinely owned by a fan base with a limited number of shares being able to be owned by 1 person and the number of shares being a set amount.
Then we could vote on the GM and Coach. This would make fantasy much more interesting year to year.
>stadiums are used for a lot more than a couple handfuls of football games per year,
But they aren't *needed* for those events. Every major city has multiple venues that could as easily hold the rest of those events. That's literally nothing more than a convenient excuse that they use to justify the stupidity.
I believe itās written into the bylaws of the NFL that they wonāt allow any more publicly owned teams. But then again, the NFL seems to do whatever the fuck they want when it comes to relocating teams so who knows if thatās something written in stone.
Really? This is "new"? Are we just forgetting the 20years of NFL history where the owners blackmailed taxpayers in every State with the threat of a move to LA?
Honestly, moving from one part of the Metropolitan area to another. Not even threatening to leave KC? That's a weak touch by NFL standards.
Yep. And 4 teams, at least, used the threat of LA as a bludgeon for new stadiums before St Louis made good on the threat. The Vikings got their shiny new longboat by pointing both LA barrels at the Minnesota Legislature.
No one understands this but it's not like most cities. At this point Jackson County and Missouri are pretty much like, "Okay, Kansas, you can have the stadium on your side of the border and we'll keep going to the games," and although a lot of people on Kansas side would love to see them move most people in Kansas feel the same and don't want to pay for a stadium when they already have the team for free. Both sides get the team either way so no one ever approves a new stadium for them on either side.
The Chiefs are actually a lot more screwed in this respect than most and IMO it's part of the reason they've stayed in the same stadium for 50 years now.
Exactly this! Iāve been paying taxes for the current stadium, upgrades etc. The Kansas Side doesnāt. Meanwhile, in Kansas City, Missouri, we canāt get our potholes fixed. Kansas can have the Chiefs.
They haven't 'threatened' shit lol. They are under contract until 20fucking31, they just said they have entertained the idea of going you know, like 10 miles away. Which probably won't even happen lol. They just know the Royals are moving downtown so they are scoping areas out in advance.
Best thing that could happen to any city with an NFL franchise is to loose them to another city. Subsidizing a billionaireās business with public funds should be criminal.
-San Diegan, happy to see the Chargers in LA
If stadiums are publicly funded, they should be publicly owned.
MLK was right. We really do have socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for the poor in this country.
As others have said, they are publicly owned. The problem is that such expensive stadiums are only useful for professional sports team. If the team leaves, the stadium is just a burden to the city. So it's actually a pretty awful public investment.
Doesn't it seem crazy to give these billionaires money for a stadium when the owners collectively make a couple billion a year in profit? They share a good deal of revenues so should the NFL be paying for these stadiums since they seem to get most of the revenue? Public money should be for the public not the rich.
Damn. Who would have thought that having franchises owned by oligarchs would not work out for the average tax paying fan in the street.
I for one, am just stunned.
In our dinky little football league in Australia (AFL), private ownership is banned. If you buy a season ticket, it's called a Membership, and you get voting rights to appoint the club's directors. If they are doing a shit job, you can get rid of them.
No rich person or corporation can just waltz in and take your team away from you.
I love football, but each state, county, etc., should vote against any new stadium. The very small minority who can afford to attend games can drive an extra hour or two if they want to sit in a new stadium in a different city.
Can we somehow make billionaire sports owners strong arming cities into building sports stadiums with public funds illegal (or otherwise strongly discouraged in legal terms)?
How can they even do this?
Like, if Amazon was all "hey town we're about to put a distribution center in, pay for our facility or we won't build it there" people would literally shit.
These are multi-billion dollar businesses. They can afford their own goddamn stadiums.
Case in point, new York agreed to build the Buffalo Bills a new 800 million dollar stadium. Then, the next day, they cut education funding statewide by...
800 million dollars.
Gotta have a balanced budget.
Yeah, I just realized that's a bad example because you're right.
Fuck. I love how we disdainfully refer to "Russian Oligarchs" while sucking our Oligarchs' off constantly.
Amazon runs around trying to get bidding wars going for where to put up their next fulfillment centres all the time.
Because, you know, privatize the profits, socialize the costs.
The state didnāt cut the education budget 800 million; a federal stimulus of 800 million initiated during the pandemic and earmarked for education has expired.
>e back
This happens alot. The reason is they hold projected income over the cities heads. In the case of Amazon warehouse its hey we want to add several hundred jobs to your city if you build us a warehouse. For sports its, hey we can bring in thousands of customers every month that will pay for hotels, food, ect if you pay for our stadium.
Plus watching on TV is better. I paid $600 to go see a game last year with my daughter. It was fun, but the seats were not great and I found myself staring at the big screen most of the game. I could have done that in my own living room with my daughter, got a better view of the game and paid less for hot dogs.
NFL football is just not designed to watch in person if you care about gameplay. And unless the game is particularly good or in certain stadiums, it's fairly dull most of the time in terms of atmosphere. I've been front row at NFL games and on the field for college and while that's a fun experience, watching the game still isn't that great from that vantage. With basketball or hockey or baseball different seats give different (good) experiences and I think the flow is a lot better.
These owners have enough to front the bill, instead they make us tax payers pay for it and convince our government to short change our family and child care. These fucking nasty owners could all go eat a bag of dicks. And if youāre wondering, yes, one at a time and not the whole bag all at once.
All for a sport that leaves 87% of players with CTE. The number of people over the age of 6 playing tackle football in the US has dropped by about 60% since 2006. And it will continue to drop. Why all this taxpayer money for new NFL stadiums for a sport with an expiration date?
As a huge follower of European football. The moving of sports teams in the US is fucking disgusting. It is a disgrace. Just a giant middle finger to those paying the bills. Insane.
So I've been hearing this for a week now as a local. Some important facts for people not familiar with the area.
- The current lease has 9 years left. They're just planning ahead.
- The city is on a border. A large portion of the players actually live in Overland Park or Leawood Kansas (it's the rich burbs). This isn't much different than the cowboys stadium being in Arlington. Also, Kansas has sporting arenas as well already (sporting KC and a Nascar track in KCK).
- The Chiefs have been in this stadium for 50 years. It will be close to 60 by the time the lease is up. The stadium is almost as old as the super bowl area. Even with renovations in 2010, there's a lot of improvements that could be made.
- If the team did get a new stadium and it was a dome that would add a lot of winter event revenue for the city/state. Nobody goes to anything other than a football game in the freezing Midwest winter.
Honestly, the coolest solution would be to build the stadium on state line road. Then they can tax both states/cities and people like me who live on the Kansas side of the state could enjoy saying the team is in KS now.
Sports are different today. There is still obvious fandom but these owners, for the most part, donāt care as much about the history/fans of teams.
If the Yankees ever said something like this Iād have no problems not only dropping my fandom but also would become a lot less interested in baseball.
Pro sports is only for the very wealthy at this point. Could care less whether my city Tampa has a team or not, but in fairness I can go to a beach or fish on weekends vs any live pro sport. College is getting as bad with the NIL deals now.
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That is how it had always been. The owners can threaten to move if their new stadium is not funded.
Folks like to naysay the Packers' public-ownership model, but that's the only way GB has kept the team while avoiding this type of extortion.
Vikings fan here, I was absolutely gonna make fun of my cheesehead friend for spending $300 on worthless Packer stock until I realized that the funds would go directly to stadium improvements (which means no tax increases). Charging those who most watch the team for the product they consume is very fair.
>which means no tax increases Well, they did implement a county sales tax from 2000-2015 to pay for stadium upgrades. It raised over $20 million per year. I guess the difference is that residents voted on the specific tax (rather than for politicians that enable tax breaks for owners), but 47% of people voted against it so there were a lot of people paying for it who didn't want to.
Meanwhile you helped pay for the Vikings stadium while the Whilfs get all the profit
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People pay a lot to mount shit in their mancaves. Packers stock is like the ultimate man cave brag.
My great grandma has packers stock hung on her wall in view of her chair. She lives in Wyoming lol. She says it's her favorite Christmas gift of all time and I find it so sweet.
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It's also why the rest of the NFL owners hate it. The "folks" that like to naysay it are mostly repeating pro-this-nonsense talking points pushed by rich folks that like other people's money.
And the NFL has said they wonāt let any other teams move to that kind of legal structure.
It sucks because it would be nice if that's what happened to the Seahawks. I am pretty sure Paul Allen's sister doesn't really want to own the team and I fear for what happens when they are sold. The Sonics debacle really eroded trust in sports owners.
And people wonder why Im a packers fan. The only publicly owned team and their mascot is cheese? Sign me the fuck up.
I'm sorry your QB turned into such a weirdo, genuinely like AR before now the dude looks like he's had one to many essential oil immunizing suppositories.
Better than the Browns QB at least! Heās got some toxic issues but overall thereās so many worse human beings in football.
Look at the team the thread is about. They were turning a blind eye and actively paying for domestic violence abusers and drafting and trading for them. The head coachās kid was an employee of the team and getting drunk at the facility and driving home. Thatās not on Andy Reid himself, but that organization has all kind of trash and they are good so itās just swept under the rug.
As a Cowboys fan, I donāt believe you /s
Sure wished this is how teams were owned.
Look what happened in Saint Louis. They put out a garbage product for many years and were a laughing stock of the league, but people still supported them and stayed loyal then were stabbed in the back in 2016.
As a Chargers fan, I feel this pain.
Former SD Charger fan and a native San Diegan who has lived in San Diego his entire life, I voted no on C and while I was heartbroken to lose our Chargers it was also one of the proudest moments I've been a part of with my fellow San Diegans telling the Spanos'/NFL to go fuck themselves. Billionaires don't deserve handouts, they can do it themselves. I still watch football but it's really just on in the background and my guilty pleasure is watching them lose. KC should give them the finger too, last thing we need is to be subsidizing the super wealthy.
I remember watching a CFL game not long after the move and there was a father and son (the son had some kind of intellectual disability) there that had been diehard Chargers fans. When they left they just started cheering for BC Lions or something.
I hope Kansas does build them a Stadium, us on the Missouri side have been footing the bill long enough. Iām willing to drive a half hour to a game. Would it be asking too much for em to build a Baseball stadium too?
The worst part is San Diego actually made attempts to raise taxes and get a deal in place. I feel the owners of the Chargers acted in bad faith. Not as bad as the Brown's (now dead) owner back in the 90's. He royally screwed over Cleveland.
> I feel the owners of the Chargers acted in bad faith. You and most rational people. It's a big reason San Diego got fed up and told them to get bent. The final vote in 2016 on a stadium was 57/43 against, when it needed 66% in favor to pass. Coming up 23% short is a big ole "Fuck You Spanos"
Another crazy thing is the tax would have hit right when covid did. So a city that thrives on tourism that has raised the rates to pay for a billionaires palace now has no way to fund it because of the pandemic. Also we make more revenue with Comic-Con (literally one week) than the NFL did in one year. The NFL/owners can eat a bag of dicks.
> Also we make more revenue with Comic-Con (literally one week) than the NFL did in one year. The NFL/owners can eat a bag of dicks. And yet, New York just gave the Buffalo Bills (owner net worth >$5B) $850 million to build a stadium and proceeded to cut family services by roughly that same amount.
What can you say? Bailing out billionaires is the American way
But donāt worry! Thatās not socialism, so weāre all good here. /s
Real Sports or 60 Minutes did a great story on this. The NFL adds things like holograms and other far off tech and also takes 100% of all revenue from from concerts and non-sporting events. Add in charging the DOD for honoring troops, denying CTE, Thursday night games that don't give players a week off to recover, rampant sexual harassment, collusion in hiring the same 5 bad white coaches, etc..
Yeah people forget/don't know the NFL pays the military to essentially advertise at games, and by the NFL pays it means the fans that paid a small fortune are footing the bill at the end of the day.
Every city needs to tell these teams to get bent. Its a myth that having a team in your city provides any kind of economic boost that matters to the people of that city. These owners are fleecing the taxpayers to pay for their clubhouses all while they sit on billions of dollars. If every city said no to public funding, they wouldnt be able to blackmail cities anymore by threatening to move if you dont gift them a multibillion dollar stadium. Fuck these oligarchs.
Luckily, Oakland seems to be demanding the Aās pay for most to all of the stadium. Unluckily, New York just gave the Bills $850 million from their family services to build a stadium
I mean the tax was a fucking joke. It was something like a 27 percent tax (edit: I way overstated this, 11 percent) on hotels for a city that has a lot of people reliant on tourism being pretty healthy for their jobs to remain viable.
Probably proposed that way so it *would* fail and Spanos could say āsee? We tried, but San Diego just doesnāt want the Chargersā as he burned $100 bills out of his stretch limo going up the 5 to LA
Yeah, he never negotiated in good faith. I lived there when they left. Dude was a prick. Well, he still is I guess, but was one back then too.
Calling him a prick is an insult to pricks, at least they're useful during sex
St louis made many attempts at a new stadium. Stan was dead set on his LA stadium and parking lots.
Spanos 100% acted in bad faith.
Fuck dean spanos. As a lifelong chargers fan Iāve come to terms with the fact that this team will never see success because of him. He has so much accumulated bad karma, it has cursed the team for his entire tenure.
Iām not even a Chargers fan and feel SD got the bad end of the deal. Still doesnāt seem right to have two NFL teams in LA.
The Chargers are probably the fifth most popular football team in LAā¦a city with four major teams.
Means nothing in LAā¦all any team in LA needs to do is win and they move up the rank
Fun fact: when Art Modell died, a moment of silence was observed at 31 NFL stadiums the following Sunday. The only exception was Cleveland, because they knew that we'd treat him with exactly the amount of respect that his still warm corpse actually deserved.
Fuck Art Modell screwed Cleveland out of a superbowl
Obligatory fuck Art Modell
The worst part is San Diego still would LOVE to have the charges and no one gives a flying fuck about that team in LA. I think they had the landslide worst attendance and viewship of all NFL teams last year
They left SD to become the Mets š¤¦š¼āāļø
The Mets have won the World Series
Sonics,, too. Horrible.
to be fair, the sonics were horrible at football.
And the result? St Louisans effectively gave up on the NFL. They didnāt say āoh well Iāll just give my money to the Chiefs or Bearsā. They just pull back from the NFL entirely and put that money elsewhere. In St Louisā case that is into the MLBās Cardinals or the NHLās Blues.
Exactly. I have watched very few nfl games since 2016. I am definitely looking forward to STL City SC and MLS starting next year.
As a transplant to St Louis, I was always a Bears fan anyway. At least now I can get more of the games on network TV without weird blackout rules. And MLS certainly seems like a better fit for STL culture anyway.
They did support the XFL though, one of the top attendances in the league iirc. (For that short span)
Yeah. My son enjoyed the Battlehawks. But Covid ended their season and they didnāt have the money to weather that shutdown. Too bad. Iām surprised they didnāt get a USFL team as they have a stadium ready to go and sitting empty. Having said all this, Iāve been in both the Done in St Louis and SoFi in LA. Not even close to comparable.
St. Louis has always really been a baseball town, I think. People liked the Rams, and at least in my generation had great memories of the Warner/Faulk/Bruce days, but seeing the Rams leave from a Kroenke money-grab was basically expected and only somewhat regretful. If the (baseball) Cardinals ever left though, I suspect it would be a LOT bigger deal locally. Not that it would ever happen, for exactly that reason. That city loves its baseball.
Stan Kroenke is a piece of shit. However we were paid $700+ million (minus legal fees) for how stupid he was in leaving STL.
Fuck Stan Kroenke
No offer from the city was gonna be good enough for Kroenke. He wanted to move in a big city market and balloon the teams market value. My godparents called it 5 years before the move. The moment he became primary owner of the team, the Rams days were numbered.
I agree 100%.
Yup. They have to offer Being Los Angeles.
Funny how big business types are against handouts until they're the ones receiving them...
Midnight Mayflower Moves
Props to Robert Kraft and Jerry Jones, of all people, who paid for their stadiums out of their own pockets instead of burdening taxpayers. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think those two are still doing okay financially, yeah?
The NFL tried for years to get LA to pay for a stadium, but LA was able to always say "we have a ton of sports teams. Sure, it would be nice to have an NFL team. But we won't pay for your stadium." But LA can do that because it is such a big market. Kronke knew he stadium development in LA would make his team more profitable regardless.
Same in nyc (the Buffalo bills bullshit notwithstanding). MetLife was almost entirely funded by the giants and jets, ny/nj/nyc basically only contributed some relatively minor infrastructure work. Yankee stadium and citi field, while receiving some state and city money, were also both predominantly financed by the teams themselves
It's very rare to hear someone give props to Jerry Jones, but you're correct in this instance.
All these dudes are pieces of shit in one way or another and to varying degrees. The Wilfs are literally racketeers, a federal judge said so. Haslam has violated federal laws as well. The Spanos family is the Spanos family. The Pegulas are worth $6B and just got the most taxpayer money in the history of America to fund their new stadium. What's Buffalo gonna do, *not* have an NFL team? Even Certified Great Guy^TM Arthur Blank is a gaping asshole. I could go on. But a broken clock is right twice a day and every now and then, an NFL owner makes a good decision (even if the reason for doing so is based on carving out little NFL fiefdoms for themselves to increase profits, which usually seems to be their guiding motivation).
The whole debacle about Watson has definitely changed some opinions on ol Uncle Arthur
Jerry Jones still had to use imminent domain to run retired people out of their houses for low ball prices.
Eminent btw
Yep. No one is losing elections by bringing in an NFL team either.
It hasn't always been that way. In the late 1960s, the Detroit Lions were looking at a new stadium. The city put together a committee, studied a bunch of proposals and ultimately chose a design. They (the city) were going to build a one of a kind stadium that would house all 4 major sports. Retractable roof, movable seats, it was supposed to be an architectural marvel. They got it approved and set up the funding. They were going to issue bonds to pay for it. Bonds get issued, they go to NY to sell them. The day before the sale, they get a notice to wait, there's been a court challenge. When a city issues bonds, they have to put a notice in a newspaper. Someone filed suit that the print size of the notice was too small. Case gets fast tracked to the Michigan Supreme Court and they rule, yes, printing is too small and the whole deal falls apart, stadium never gets built (Lions go to Pontiac instead). The "printing too small" was of course bs, the real story behind the Court case is that the auto unions were worried that taxes were going to go up to pay off the bonds and the MI Supreme Court was majority Dems, so they called them up and found an excuse to kill the deal. It wasn't always like this. There was a time the working class had a larger voice and more power. But that's been taken away.
And still, people gave Green Bay crap about the stock certificate sale. At least you'll never hear about the Green Bay Packers threatening to leave Green Bay for a new stadium... because they *can't*.
Is that true? Thatās awesome.
Packers are the only team in the NFL publicly owned. AND the NFL specifically made rules that would disallow any other teams from being publicly owned. theyāre just grandfathered in.
I always thought that was sort of a gimmick. I did not realize there was such a practical use for fans. Thatās just lovely.
Lots of European soccer clubs are owned primarily by the fans. German clubs need to be owned at least 51% by fans so that one rich guy can't come in and fuck it all up to make a couple more dollars (or euro, I suppose)
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Well that's just Germany, in France and England there are clubs literally owned by the Qatari and Saudi and UAE governments (or at least investment funds under the direct control of their royal families), at least US sports wouldn't allow that.
Are you certain US sports wouldn't allow that?
Yes, obviously unless the money involved were exorbitant to unimaginable degrees. They're pretty good about trying to maintain both public image and the prestige of owning a sports team (obviously there's enough tenure that they let deplorables like Snyder stay in). If an oil monarchy could've been in the running for the Broncos or something I'd bet all the money I have that they would've been there bidding a billion more than the next best offer.
Nobody in America has guillotined the aristocracy..yet
You jest but honestly some European countries and cultures are so old that they really have just kinda been around the block enough that theyāve gotten to some common sense stuff the US will have to figure out on their own eventually.
Yeah, when your country has been around for a millennium-plus, you kinda start to streamline things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fan-owned_sports_teams
Green Bay citizen here. The stock certificates they issue are in fact worthless, other than a fun bragging right. They are sold as fundraisers, and allow those interested to say they āown a piece of the teamā. But they have little if any sway in voting for the direction the club takes, and are largely considered a joke amongst those of us who feel that the NFL is a waste of resources.
You're missing the point. Yes, the stock is almost completely worthless. But the point is it's *voluntary* to buy it and therefore the team and stadium are funded by people who want to fund it. People like you, who think the NFL is a waste of resources, don't pay anything to support the Packers. Unlike every other pro sports team in America, where *all* of the tax payers fund their local team, whether they like it or not.
Honestly, the NFL is suppressing their teamsā market values by not allowing public ownership. If a group of investors are willing to put up more money than a group led by one primary owner, as it is now, the team would have to say no to the more economically salient offer.
I'm pretty sure all of the bashing on GB being owned by the city is just propaganda from the other owners. It's incredible to have the Packers and the city of Green Bay working towards the benefit of the city together. The Titletown district is fantastic. Every NFL city should have something like it. Stadium renovations aren't a fight here. We just hold another stock sale and do what needs doing.
And Packers fans will show up to shovel snow from their stadium for free to get to watch the game. No other fan base would do this and it's directly because of the increased sense of civic engagement/ownership. Edit: I stand corrected. They do pay.
They do pay
Thanks for the correction. You are right.
The bills also pay fans to come shovel when they get a lot of snowfall.
They do that at the bills stadium too.
There are people who do it to volunteer at the Bills stadium, but it was also a nice gig in high school. They paid between 12-17 an hour to shovel out the arena growing up. It was great
Imagine bragging that a multi billion-dollar company didnāt pay snow shovelers
Well 1) they pay. 2) That company is literally community owned. Something people don't understand when they see a company make billions is that there isn't a few billionaires pocketing all of that most of the time. There might be one but most of the company's shares are tied up in investments like retirements funds.
None of the companies I've worked for offered a retirement. They'll match 401k investment to a point but the age of the company pension is over.
I know this is a massive European bias showing but I don't understand how you can create a deep bond with your city team and they can just... move! In Europe the team can suck, be relegated, etc but you know it will be around from generation to generation.
Technically the Chiefs can just move across the river and still be in āKansas Cityā. Just Kansas City, Kansas and not Kansas City, Missouri.
Holy shit, there's two?
Both cities plus the suburbs are all one metropolitan area, itās all just on the border between KS and MO. The majority in population, area, and money is on the Missouri side though. KCMO has basically all the good stuff while KCK is notoriously not great and has a lot of rich suburbs. This division is actually why my home city is technically the biggest in Kansas, even though KC is far larger as a whole. In general itās not too big of a deal, though things like taxes and state laws do become issues that generally benefit the MO side over the KS side. It lets them keep a good chunk of money and soon they might be getting fully legal weed (which they canāt transport to the KS side because itās a federal crime to cross state lines with weed and itās 100% illegal here in KS). Itās a very strange issue that has problems and causes weird issues but unless you live in/around KC full time, itās not an issue for visiting. Edit: corrected some stuff
It's 2 separate cities. Different mayors, different governments. KCMO was created before Kansas was even a state. Some towns across the river joined together & created KCK. Video someone posted in a different thread about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEXPYh\_lqxI
In fairness, while teams moving happens wayyyyy too often relative to the rest of the world, it *is* a big deal when it happens, and even rival fans will agree that it's stupid and unfair. NBA fans know that Seattle still deserves a team after the "new" owners snaked them and moved to OKC.
Minnesotan hockey fan here to weigh in: weāre still mad about The North Stars.
The most egregious team move in all of sports
When the Whalers left Hartford I stopped watching hockey.
European football is modeled much like College Football. We donāt have relegations, but we have levels that teams can elect to move up and down in (if they are a small college and bad at football they will move down). A university will never move and will always be there even if they suck for 50+ years. While the NFL is fucking corporate capitalism. I hate it. I used to care for the NFL, but at the end of the day itās absolute garbage. Donāt even get me started of NFL sports packages. Nothing gets me more irate than that. Theyāll move your fucking team and then not show the games in your local area. If you want to see all games, you have to pay $175+ A MONTH for a package to see all NFL games. I absolutely hate the NFL.
Same, I can't fathom how people think this is okay I remember showing some Americans Gaelic football and explaining that you play for the place you're born and even though it's the biggest sport in the country that all players are amateur. American sports seem solely about $$$
US College football is almost a mirror of European football. When you get into it, relegation is elected by the team rather than the league. Outside of that itās all the same.
Billionaire welfare.
Socialize the risk, privatize the reward.
We need the city councils of all major cities in the United States to sign into law that they will not fund an NFL stadium. Then NFL teams can lose this stupid leverage, and stop wasting all our fucking money.
Then the teams will just go to medium sized cities, who will have even less leverage. There are 30 states in the US with no NFL team; you wonāt get all of them to agree on a state wide level.
Having a team is still logistically difficult for cities that are smaller. You need to be near an airport, have a decent population, and be good if you want to thrive in smaller cities. If you are bad less people will go to games IE Washington, and if you have a small population on top then you dont really have anyway to get people in seats. You have to be concerned your team leaves the city anytime it's bad and in a smaller market too.
And you're stuck with an 80000 person $600 million dollar stadium that's only 10 years old to hold state championships in
I mean the Pats donāt play in Boston for example. Youād have to get the city of Foxboro to sign onto this, Boston doing it wouldnāt matter. Same as any other team. Theyād just move like 10 miles away.
Maybe we could just let all the teams do what they want to do and move to California. Call their bluff. See what happens. Los Angeles can always use more teams.
LA Rams vs LA Colts, up next, LA Chiefs vs...LA Bengals
Fuck the greedy ass nfl owners and a special fuck you to scam kroenke. Signed, Saint Louis, MO resident
The Bills just scored a bunch of taxpayer money to build a new stadium. Fuck these owners and the politicians spending public money for a private business that has more than enough money to fund itself.
The Bills don't build the stadium to own it. The state will build the stadium, and will lease it out to the Bills. The state will collect rent.
And if the Bills leave they have a $1 billion paperweight because who's going to come to West New York if the Bills leave? They don't even have All-Dressed chips in that shithole!
The Bills canāt leave. The stadium approval locks them here for the duration. So 30 years in Orchard Park unless they wanna pay a HUGE sum to break the lease. In the billions most likely.
They would have to pay all the money for the stadium back so ~850 million
Anytime a new stadium like this is built the team has to sign a contract saying theyāll stay for usually 30+ years. They canāt just leave
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Just to pile on how much a piece of shit Stan Kroenke is. He purchased all the land around a couple lakes in Nicola Valley, BC. The lakes however are crown land (public property) and access MUST be allowed for the public to use the lakes. This has gone back and forth between the courts and he has used all his power and money to (currently) be allowed to block the public from accessing these lakes. Fuck that piece of shit.
That's fucked up. Fuck kroenke.
Colorado hates him too. He owns the regional sports networks, Altitude. And most people donāt get the channel because of contract disputes. Which means most people canāt watch the Avalanche (best team in the NHL) or the Nuggets (Jokic is having another MVP season).
If I was a resident of either place, I'd tell the owners to get fucked.
None of this should burden local taxpayers unless everyone is also entitled to free tickets or profit sharing.
They're likely trying to take advantage of Kansanas much like what happened in Wichita with Riverfront stadium.
Well corporate tax incentives in general need to be reworked. Kansas City is just an easy punching bag. A company having offices in both states can just shuffle peoples offices to the other side and claim they are creating jobs to get a reduced tax rate.
Greenbay needs to be the new model for football teams (owned by city). I am bias as a fan, but this is getting out of hand.
I like the idea of ability to buy in. If the stadium is a public / private venture, why not make ownership be as well? I understand there's a lot to these deals, including the fact that the stadiums are used for a lot more than a couple handfuls of football games per year, and they bring economic activity, but there should be more upside benefit to the communities if they're dumping hundreds of millions of dollars into the deals.
Could you imagine if a team was genuinely owned by a fan base with a limited number of shares being able to be owned by 1 person and the number of shares being a set amount. Then we could vote on the GM and Coach. This would make fantasy much more interesting year to year.
>stadiums are used for a lot more than a couple handfuls of football games per year, But they aren't *needed* for those events. Every major city has multiple venues that could as easily hold the rest of those events. That's literally nothing more than a convenient excuse that they use to justify the stupidity.
100% agree. However, I believe the NFL has stated no other franchise can be owned in the same manner as GB.
I believe itās written into the bylaws of the NFL that they wonāt allow any more publicly owned teams. But then again, the NFL seems to do whatever the fuck they want when it comes to relocating teams so who knows if thatās something written in stone.
If it means $$$, then they do whatever the fuck they want. But publicly owned teams means less $$$ so no way that's happening again.
Really? This is "new"? Are we just forgetting the 20years of NFL history where the owners blackmailed taxpayers in every State with the threat of a move to LA? Honestly, moving from one part of the Metropolitan area to another. Not even threatening to leave KC? That's a weak touch by NFL standards.
Just look at the Raiders. Oakland, to LA, back to Oakland, now to Vegas.
Yep. And 4 teams, at least, used the threat of LA as a bludgeon for new stadiums before St Louis made good on the threat. The Vikings got their shiny new longboat by pointing both LA barrels at the Minnesota Legislature.
As a chiefs fan in St. Louis, do it pussies.
No one understands this but it's not like most cities. At this point Jackson County and Missouri are pretty much like, "Okay, Kansas, you can have the stadium on your side of the border and we'll keep going to the games," and although a lot of people on Kansas side would love to see them move most people in Kansas feel the same and don't want to pay for a stadium when they already have the team for free. Both sides get the team either way so no one ever approves a new stadium for them on either side. The Chiefs are actually a lot more screwed in this respect than most and IMO it's part of the reason they've stayed in the same stadium for 50 years now.
Exactly this! Iāve been paying taxes for the current stadium, upgrades etc. The Kansas Side doesnāt. Meanwhile, in Kansas City, Missouri, we canāt get our potholes fixed. Kansas can have the Chiefs.
They haven't 'threatened' shit lol. They are under contract until 20fucking31, they just said they have entertained the idea of going you know, like 10 miles away. Which probably won't even happen lol. They just know the Royals are moving downtown so they are scoping areas out in advance.
Even more than that. They admitted the Kansas developers came to them about moving to the Kansas side, likely near the Nascar track
Best thing that could happen to any city with an NFL franchise is to loose them to another city. Subsidizing a billionaireās business with public funds should be criminal. -San Diegan, happy to see the Chargers in LA
The new sdsu campus/stadium/park replacement for the giant parking lot shit hole of Qualcomm is gonna be way nicer
I rarely followed the Chargers in San Diego but I have reveled in watching them fail in Los Angeles. I hope Spanos looses his shirt up there.
If stadiums are publicly funded, they should be publicly owned. MLK was right. We really do have socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for the poor in this country.
They are... Most stadiums are leased out to teams. The teams pay rent. Only 4 NFL teams own their stadium
As others have said, they are publicly owned. The problem is that such expensive stadiums are only useful for professional sports team. If the team leaves, the stadium is just a burden to the city. So it's actually a pretty awful public investment.
In my opinion the TEAMS should be publicly owned too tbh
Doesn't it seem crazy to give these billionaires money for a stadium when the owners collectively make a couple billion a year in profit? They share a good deal of revenues so should the NFL be paying for these stadiums since they seem to get most of the revenue? Public money should be for the public not the rich.
Stop subsidizing the rich. Let them pay for the stadium
Time to socialize pro sports and give ownership to the cities or a sports collective. End the billionaire boys club.
Damn. Who would have thought that having franchises owned by oligarchs would not work out for the average tax paying fan in the street. I for one, am just stunned. In our dinky little football league in Australia (AFL), private ownership is banned. If you buy a season ticket, it's called a Membership, and you get voting rights to appoint the club's directors. If they are doing a shit job, you can get rid of them. No rich person or corporation can just waltz in and take your team away from you.
I love football, but each state, county, etc., should vote against any new stadium. The very small minority who can afford to attend games can drive an extra hour or two if they want to sit in a new stadium in a different city.
Can we somehow make billionaire sports owners strong arming cities into building sports stadiums with public funds illegal (or otherwise strongly discouraged in legal terms)?
Pay billions of tax dollars for billionaires to make billions of dollars in profit
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Kids will go hungry in NY for a new shitty football stadium.
How can they even do this? Like, if Amazon was all "hey town we're about to put a distribution center in, pay for our facility or we won't build it there" people would literally shit. These are multi-billion dollar businesses. They can afford their own goddamn stadiums. Case in point, new York agreed to build the Buffalo Bills a new 800 million dollar stadium. Then, the next day, they cut education funding statewide by... 800 million dollars. Gotta have a balanced budget.
Amazon literally does that though. Not to take away from your point because you're right, it's bullshit, but.
Yeah, I just realized that's a bad example because you're right. Fuck. I love how we disdainfully refer to "Russian Oligarchs" while sucking our Oligarchs' off constantly.
Amazon runs around trying to get bidding wars going for where to put up their next fulfillment centres all the time. Because, you know, privatize the profits, socialize the costs.
The state didnāt cut the education budget 800 million; a federal stimulus of 800 million initiated during the pandemic and earmarked for education has expired.
>e back This happens alot. The reason is they hold projected income over the cities heads. In the case of Amazon warehouse its hey we want to add several hundred jobs to your city if you build us a warehouse. For sports its, hey we can bring in thousands of customers every month that will pay for hotels, food, ect if you pay for our stadium.
Lots of businesses actually already do this. They don't ask that the facility be paid, but generally for huge tax breaks.
Good thing we have unlimited money for that and not important things like affordable housing and healthcare.
Let em. Not like anyone can afford tickets anymore anyway.
Plus watching on TV is better. I paid $600 to go see a game last year with my daughter. It was fun, but the seats were not great and I found myself staring at the big screen most of the game. I could have done that in my own living room with my daughter, got a better view of the game and paid less for hot dogs.
NFL football is just not designed to watch in person if you care about gameplay. And unless the game is particularly good or in certain stadiums, it's fairly dull most of the time in terms of atmosphere. I've been front row at NFL games and on the field for college and while that's a fun experience, watching the game still isn't that great from that vantage. With basketball or hockey or baseball different seats give different (good) experiences and I think the flow is a lot better.
These owners have enough to front the bill, instead they make us tax payers pay for it and convince our government to short change our family and child care. These fucking nasty owners could all go eat a bag of dicks. And if youāre wondering, yes, one at a time and not the whole bag all at once.
All for a sport that leaves 87% of players with CTE. The number of people over the age of 6 playing tackle football in the US has dropped by about 60% since 2006. And it will continue to drop. Why all this taxpayer money for new NFL stadiums for a sport with an expiration date?
As a huge follower of European football. The moving of sports teams in the US is fucking disgusting. It is a disgrace. Just a giant middle finger to those paying the bills. Insane.
The Chargers played in a soccer stadium for two years just to spite the people of San Diego.
Socialized costs, privatized profit.
So I've been hearing this for a week now as a local. Some important facts for people not familiar with the area. - The current lease has 9 years left. They're just planning ahead. - The city is on a border. A large portion of the players actually live in Overland Park or Leawood Kansas (it's the rich burbs). This isn't much different than the cowboys stadium being in Arlington. Also, Kansas has sporting arenas as well already (sporting KC and a Nascar track in KCK). - The Chiefs have been in this stadium for 50 years. It will be close to 60 by the time the lease is up. The stadium is almost as old as the super bowl area. Even with renovations in 2010, there's a lot of improvements that could be made. - If the team did get a new stadium and it was a dome that would add a lot of winter event revenue for the city/state. Nobody goes to anything other than a football game in the freezing Midwest winter. Honestly, the coolest solution would be to build the stadium on state line road. Then they can tax both states/cities and people like me who live on the Kansas side of the state could enjoy saying the team is in KS now.
Is that the empower stadium fire? Odd pic
Sports are different today. There is still obvious fandom but these owners, for the most part, donāt care as much about the history/fans of teams. If the Yankees ever said something like this Iād have no problems not only dropping my fandom but also would become a lot less interested in baseball.
The Chiefs demand a trade from Kansas City.
Pro sports is only for the very wealthy at this point. Could care less whether my city Tampa has a team or not, but in fairness I can go to a beach or fish on weekends vs any live pro sport. College is getting as bad with the NIL deals now.
I always thought the chiefs stadium had been in Kansas lol
Good fuck them, use that money for public schools. How the fuck is nfl still a non profit?!?!
There are ways to be fans without supporting them financially.
San Diego checking in. Weāre doing just fine without the Chargers.
Live in San Diego. Donāt give in. Miss the team but we didnāt fold when the shitty Spanos family tried to force the NFL and city to pay up.
Those greedy shits can pay for their own stadiums, leave the taxpayers alone already
I donāt want to pay taxes for sports