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Field of Schemes @fieldofschemes.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

“If we don’t do something with that area, it will stay in disrepair and it will be a blight," said Jackson County Executive Phil LeVota of the current Royals and Chiefs site, maybe somebody should have thought of that before paying to move the Royals?

fieldofschemes.com

Monday roundup: Royals stadium could cut into KC police budget, leave old site “blighted”

Like I promised you, posts at unexpected times! Let's kick off the week with the news of last week, extended: The Kansas City council has approved plans to use sales tax money for a new Royals stadium...

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Field of Schemes @fieldofschemes.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Thiessen runs a development consultancy, owns restaurants, and has an MBA, that's all you need to do economics, right? www.linkedin.com/in/mike-thie...

linkedin.com

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Field of Schemes @fieldofschemes.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Such vital Nationals stadium upgrades as "wrapping the exterior of the parking in a more visually appealing material" will cost DC taxpayers $410m under Mayor Bowser's plan, part of a $7.8B district spending spree on privately controlled sports venues.

fieldofschemes.com

D.C. to spend $410m on Nats stadium upgrades because “teams rely on happy players”

The Washington Nationals' stadium won't even turn 19 years old until next spring, but the D.C. city council already approved spending tax money two years ago for renovations, including such important ...

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Field of Schemes @fieldofschemes.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Yep, the clear plastic binder rule was initially pointed out to me by @davidgratt.bsky.social, who had seen it firsthand when he worked on impact reports for casinos before getting the hell out of that field.

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Field of Schemes @fieldofschemes.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

The original model for sports economic impact consulting reports.

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Field of Schemes @fieldofschemes.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

The president of the consulting company that did the Royals report is a former real estate exec with a bachelor's in finance and music who got his start working under Indianapolis Mayor Stephen Goldsmith, who never met a sports giveaway he didn't like.

fieldofschemes.com

New clown document claims Royals stadium will generate $1.4B in vapordollars

Kansas City released a consulting report it commissioned on a new Royals stadium yesterday, with the intent of showing how it will pay off about $1.4 billion in taxpayer costs while team owner John Sh...

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Field of Schemes @fieldofschemes.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

None of this necessarily means that the Bears owners will necessarily give up on an Indiana move if Illinois coughs up property and sales tax subsidies — or, for that matter, that the Bears definitely will move to Indiana if Illinois doesn't.

fieldofschemes.com

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Field of Schemes @fieldofschemes.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

If you want to take Roger Goodell's meeting with IL leaders as a sign the Bears want a better option than moving to Indiana, go for it; if as a sign they want to create leverage on IN counties to approve final tax subsidies, that works too. Could be both!

fieldofschemes.com

Friday roundup: Goodell meets with IL leaders on Bears, KC okays public vote it says won’t apply to Royals

Slow news week, busy Friday roundup, as the saying goes. (I didn't say it was an old saying.) Roger Goodell and a Chicago Bears minority owner met this week with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and state le...

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Field of Schemes @fieldofschemes.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Royals owner John Sherman and Mayor Quinton Lucas have rebranded the mega-TIF district as a "stadium impact area," in hopes people will focus less on handing over $560m in taxes than on how a Royals stadium will (somehow) create economic impact miles away.

fieldofschemes.com

Royals mega-TIF district to divert taxes from much of downtown KC to pay for stadium

Kansas City has revealed the dimensions of the mega-TIF district where all increases in sales and income tax receipts, and half of all increases in hotel tax receipts, would be siphoned off and given ...

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Field of Schemes @fieldofschemes.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I don't for a minute doubt that what I write (and @jcbradbury.com and @gpropheter.bsky.social and lots and lots of others) is getting out there into the discourse, thanks to readers like you. It just seems like the gap between "educating the masses" and "affecting policy" has never been greater.

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Field of Schemes @fieldofschemes.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

“It's kind of strange that we got to be in a trailer for classes,” said one student who said they weren't notified about the Rays' plans to displace Hillsborough College for a $2B stadium. “I'd say that's definitely not really ideal for college students.”

fieldofschemes.com

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Field of Schemes @fieldofschemes.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I meant that the Ohio Dems don't actually think this will happen, it's just an excuse to troll the GOP. (But it's an excellent troll.)

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Field of Schemes @fieldofschemes.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

It's all just grandstanding, almost certainly, but yes, "If you want to fund your dumb gas tax relief then stop giving $600m to the Browns for no damn reason" is a pretty solid grandstand.

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Field of Schemes @fieldofschemes.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The current Wolves arena is only two blocks from the struggling mall floated as an arena site, but sure, maybe a new arena will cause restaurants and retail to spring up because this one will be different — there's a first time for everything, right?

fieldofschemes.com

T-Wolves exec, Minneapolis mayor float using public money to replace one downtown arena with another

Minnesota Timberwolves and Lynx owners Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez have been muttering since buying the teams in 2021 about wanting a new arena, and team officials just started muttering louder and i...

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Field of Schemes @fieldofschemes.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Barça does get some tax breaks. But it makes a big difference that they can't even pretend to move to Greensboro.

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Field of Schemes @fieldofschemes.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

The Dallas Morning News relying on advocates for and against a $700m Stars arena funding ballot measure to make the case for why this is a good deal or not is an abdication of what journalism is supposed to do: find out facts and inform readers about them.

fieldofschemes.com

BREAKING: $700m Stars arena subsidy is endorsed by advocates, opposed by critics

Is there any journalism trope more tiresome than bothsidesing? Ducking the hard task of investigating the facts by just throwing up your hands and saying "different people disagree" is so plainly egre...

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Field of Schemes @fieldofschemes.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

How much a TIF plan for future stadium upgrades would add to the total Browns public price tag is unknown until we see the size of the tax district, but "hundreds of millions" is a reasonable guess, which could push the total to near $2B.

fieldofschemes.com

Tax district to fund Browns upgrades could push public stadium cost to $2B

I mentioned briefly here the week before last that Brook Park had designated the land around a planned new Cleveland Browns stadium to be "blighted," which Mayor Edward Orcutt said “gives us the oppor...

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Field of Schemes @fieldofschemes.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Given the Guardians' and Cavs' leases only run though 2036 and 2034, Cuyahoga County could just not do the upgrades and dare the teams to break their leases early, but still nobody seems to be pricing out whether that would be cheaper than spending $261m.

fieldofschemes.com

Friday roundup: Cleveland, Nashville keep throwing good stadium money after bad

Running late today, let's do a speed round: Upkeep costs for the Cleveland Guardians stadium and Cavaliers arena continue to climb, with one estimate placing them at $261 million, and the county-run G...

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Field of Schemes @fieldofschemes.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

In reality, the public will cover closer to 3/4 of a Royals stadium cost than 1/2. It'd be nice if more journalists would care about reporting actual facts rather than what's in the press release, but that's been a problem for a long while now.

fieldofschemes.com

KCUR gets Royals stadium math all wrong (again)

Kansas City NPR station KCUR, which has a pretty bad record of trying to explain stadium financing, set out to do an explainer today on the city's plan to spend $600 million toward a new Royals stadiu...

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Field of Schemes @fieldofschemes.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

An LA County economic impact study is pretty much garbage-in, garbage-out. Combined with LA28 withholding financial details, it's still very likely that L.A.-area taxpayers will end up losing billions of dollars on the 2028 Games when all is said and done.

fieldofschemes.com

No, the 2028 Olympics won’t be a $20B boon to the SoCal economy

Speaking of bad math, an economic analysis of the impact of the 2028 Olympics on Los Angeles, conducted by the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. on behalf of the city's Olympic organizing ...

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Field of Schemes @fieldofschemes.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

"Infrastructure" in other stadium deals has been defined to include stairs and even building foundations. That's not to say Ishbia necessarily has a similar ask in mind for the White Sox, but "details haven't been finalized" isn't entirely reassuring.

fieldofschemes.com

Ishbia to ask for taxpayer “infrastructure” spending for White Sox stadium

The Chicago Sun-Times has a long explainer up about Justin Ishbia's proposed White Sox stadium, and while it gets off to a shaky start — "Why do the White Sox want a new stadium?" "The team is under l...

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Geoffrey Propheter @gpropheter.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Please let's not forget that DC United is in the middle of a 50% sales tax abatement incentive and only have to pay 25% of its real estate tax obligation. The first five years of land occupancy was 100% abatement of both, and the abatements phase out. Which is obvi why they want more DC money now.

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J.C. Bradbury @jcbradbury.com · 12/09/2026

New study in Regional Science & Urban Economics: Who scores from hosting sports events? Local spending evidence from the EURO 2024. Surprise! Major sports events are a net fiscal loss to host cities. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

$Host cities for the EURO 2024 championship in Germany used existing stadiums and infrastructure, with targeted investments to modernize them. Associated infrastructure and sports facilities are expected to remain in intensive use beyond the event, increasing the likelihood of positive long-term returns on investment. In total, public expenditures associated with hosting amounted to approximately 333 million Euros, of which around 292 million were borne by the host cities themselves. Against this benchmark, our estimates suggest that the short-term consumer spending gains in selected tourist-related retail and service sectors are of a similar order of magnitude to the public expenditures for hosting the event. This comparison, however, conflates gross consumer spending with public revenue. From a fiscal perspective, the latter constitutes the relevant benchmark for whether hosting is self-financing for host city budgets. As we show in Appendix G, only a small fraction of the additional spending translates into tax revenue: Our estimates suggest additional VAT and business tax receipts of at most a few tens of millions of Euros, well short of the roughly 292 million Euros in costs borne by host cities. From a public budget perspective, the EURO 2024 is best understood not as a self-financing investment but as a targeted subsidy to tourist-facing sectors, funded by host-city and federal taxpayers.$

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Field of Schemes @fieldofschemes.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

It was privately funded until it wasn't.

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Field of Schemes @fieldofschemes.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

KC approved spending $185m to expand the Current's 2-year-old stadium, which Fox4KC reported as "funded by revenue generated by the stadium and surrounding development." That's wrong: It'll be funded by sales taxes, most probably not new to K.C. at all.

fieldofschemes.com

Friday roundup: Nobody in media or politics can math or word right edition

It’s been a while since I’ve thanked everyone who makes this site possible through their generous donations, so: Thanks, everyone, who makes this site possible through your generous donations! I hope ...

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Field of Schemes @fieldofschemes.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Going into union talks, will MLB owners want to saddle themselves with more teams that don't bring much to the table other than a one-time expansion fee and an expectation to get a chunk of TV revenue despite not providing many new eyeballs of their own?

fieldofschemes.com

MLB expansion talk focuses on Salt Lake, other cities with major question marks

With the Athletics seemingly settled on setting the Fisher family fortune on fire in Las Vegas, and Tampa Bay Rays owner Patrick Zalupski about to receive the spendiest gift stadium in history, the th...

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Field of Schemes @fieldofschemes.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

I noticed that when I took it! If the Bears would only expand it to allow you to input your own stadium destination, maybe they could challenge Mapquest for the #1 app ranking.

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Field of Schemes @fieldofschemes.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Vegas stadium board chair (and unregistered sports lobbyist) Steve Hill said $75m for the Raiders was needed to drive "all those great results" promised by Jeremy Aguero, the unregistered sports lobbyist who for some reason gets to do all the economic analyses of NV sports projects.

fieldofschemes.com

Friday roundup: Vegas stadium board approves Raiders cash after “fastest meeting in the history of $75m giveaways”

Welcome to the end of another programming week, one that was way busier than you'd expect for the dregs of summer. Let's get through the rest of the week's news and get you out of here for the long we...

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Field of Schemes @fieldofschemes.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Uh, okay? Neither this post nor the note in the original article indicates who told Bloom that Kroenke planned a $2.5B stadium, if Kroenke's office told him otherwise.

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Field of Schemes @fieldofschemes.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Who wants us to believe that Angels buyer Stan Kroenke has a $2.5B Anaheim stadium up his sleeve, and why are they trying to disseminate that information via Forbes — and what changed over several hours yesterday that Forbes had to take down the claim?

fieldofschemes.com

New Angels owner plans $2.5B Anaheim stadium, according to nobody at all, apparently

Following Tuesday's announcement of the sale of controlling interest in the Los Angeles Angels to multi-sport team owner Stan Kroenke, Forbes baseball writer Barry Bloom wrote this: Kroenke intends to...

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Field of Schemes @fieldofschemes.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

D-backs owner Ken Kendrick has 600m reasons to want to get a lease done, and CEO Derrick Hall didn't make any threats about what happens if the stalemate continues, something he's never hesitated to do in the past. So this should get hashed out, unless...

fieldofschemes.com

D-backs exec calls lease talks “non-productive,” “draconian,” would like his $600m check already

Arizona Diamondbacks stadium renovation talks appear to be at a standstill again, with team CEO Derrick Hall telling Axios that lease talks with Maricopa County have been "non-productive to date" and ...

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Field of Schemes @fieldofschemes.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Rays management had to pretend their St Pete lease expiring after 2028 was a crisis in order to get Tampa to rush into this deal, so they can't say otherwise just yet. But yeah, the 2029 home opener being at the Trop seems like an easy prediction market win.

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Field of Schemes @fieldofschemes.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

"What would Shel Silverstein do?" isn't as bad as some local elected official decision-making processes, but you should then at least get the ghost of Shel Silverstein to testify.

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Field of Schemes @fieldofschemes.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

It appears the central players in getting $2B in subsidies for the Rays owner outsourced their "this one will be different" reasoning to ChatGPT. Stadium documents may be supplied only days before votes now, but at least we have robots to read them for us.

fieldofschemes.com

County officials cite AI, “The Giving Tree” as reasons for approving Rays’ $2B stadium subsidy

The Hillsborough County Commission voted 5-2 on Friday to approve a new Tampa Bay Rays stadium development on the current campus of Hillsborough College, making the team's long-running saga all over b...

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Field of Schemes @fieldofschemes.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Ken Hagan saying he asked AI if the Rays project will be an exception to the rule that stadiums are bad deals for taxpayers and it said "yes" is certainly a choice.

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Field of Schemes @fieldofschemes.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Hearing speaker after speaker call out the Hillsborough County Commission for ignoring the economic data about stadiums — and in particular @jcbradbury.com's Battery study — is an encouraging sign that some Florida citizens are paying attention, anyway. www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nW4...

youtube.com

Board of County Commissioners: Special Meeting - 08.28.26

YouTube video by Hillsborough County Meetings

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J.C. Bradbury @jcbradbury.com · 28/08/2026

I'm curious if Councilman Carlson is ever going to point to the case studies showing that stadiums can indeed pay for themselves. Or at least the list of the world's best economists he's worked with. You see folks, the plan was always to bluster and bluff until approved.

BillCarlsonTampa
@BillCarlsonTPA
·
Aug 26
For anyone against the Rays deal who wants to use economic reports as evidence, here is some advice a. read the agreement with the city and ask questions, b. make sure the economist has new case studies, c. make the sure the model the economist is using isn't politically biased. I have studied and worked with many of the best economists in the world and I've read most of the studies for and against this. Please don't assume that the public is stupid.

J.C. Bradbury
@jc_bradbury
·
Aug 26
Now you've piqued my interest. Please link to any case studies that show how the Rays stadium plan will work, unlike every other past stadium deal. Also, I'm curious who these best economists in the world might be. Names please.

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Field of Schemes @fieldofschemes.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Watching Carlson and Clendenin mansplain to Hurtak to "go read the agreement" when it's clear she's the only one who's done so in detail was a master class in bullying-as-governance.

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