Arizona governor Katie Hobbs has signed off on legislation committing up to $500MM (plus an annual inflation adjustment) in sales tax revenue over the next 30 years towards Chase Field renovations (link via The Associated Press). The bill had passed the state legislature on Tuesday. Hobbs has been a longtime supporter of the project, so her approval was largely a formality.
The next step is for the organization to agree to a lease extension with Maricopa County. Their current lease at Chase Field runs through 2027. “This could all be for naught if we don’t have a new lease extension, and we’re going to start negotiating that,” D-Backs CEO Derrick Hall told Arizona Sports this week. “I don’t see any issue there.”
The public funding will go towards infrastructure upgrades to the stadium. Hall told Craig Harris of 12 News that improving the air conditioning system and installing a new video board are among the initial priorities. The team has stated that they’ll commit $250MM to the project.
As noted by Arizona Sports’ Alex Weiner, the legislation includes financial penalties if the D-Backs leave Chase Field before 2050. They’d face a $10MM fine for leaving before 2035 with lesser penalties if they leave between 2036-50. In February 2024, when the team was encountering resistance in their pursuit of public funding, owner Ken Kendrick had remarked that they “may run out of time in Phoenix.” They still need to finalize the lease extension but now seem likely to stay for the long haul. Phoenix had lost its NHL team, the Coyotes, in a relocation to Salt Lake City before the 2024-25 NHL season.
They will get penalized if they leave the aircraft hanger in 2050??? Are they trying to make chase field into the next Fenway park???
These better be good renovations because it was literally falling apart
Where do you live that you think we can afford to give teams new stadiums every 30 years?
Atlanta, apparently.
Ya, I was never asked if it was ok to take my tax dollars to support multi millionaires with plenty of money.Does this mean Arizona residents can attend games for free.
Change back to “THE BOB”. It was a better Stadium name.
Change back to Bank One Ballpark? Pass on a corporate name like that, however nostalgic.
I mean $750m combined between the city and team would fund about half of a brand new stadium. This should easily help them get everything cleaned up and up to date.
That would fund about 20% of the new annex to the California State Capitol that is maybe 10% of the size and used by about 100 people.
Great place to watch a game, thanks to the AC!
Of all the stadiums I have been to since the early 1960s, Chase ranks only above the multi-purpose stadiums built in the 60s-70s for watching baseball.
As an Arizona resident, I do not approve of spending our tax revenue in this way. We have plenty of more serious problems in this state that could use the revenue rather than welfare for business.
States spend money on sites that bring in tourism revenue. This is exactly the kind of thing states should spend money on. This isn’t “waste”, this is investing in further revenue to continue to help pay for the more important stuff you are talking about. You can look at every state, the more a state spends on tourism appeal, the more they are self sufficient and don’t receive federal tax support. You should be applauding these types of things.
Yep Dodger fans spend a fortune to cheer there.
It’s been proven multiple times that public funding for sports stadiums doesn’t increase jobs or tourism dollars. You should never applaud public funds going to a private businesses in this way.
Wrong, the economic analysis does not support the claim that public funding of major league arenas is a good investment. For major league sports, most attendees are local. These locals are spending their “entertainment budget” which they would still spend anyway. The one exception that I can think of would be the funding of spring training facilities in Maricopa County whiere most of the attendees are from out of state.
The Coyotes left Phoenix and most Phoenicians didn’t care. While the D-backs have a larger following than the Coyotes, most Phoenicians would probably not care if they left. Not a knock on Phoenix, just a recognition that most residents are not fans.
@Dooper It’s not about increasing tourism dollars. It’s about making sure you don’t LOSE tourism dollars in the future
If you’re a legitimate tourist destination, you shouldn’t need govt handouts to maintain your business. Montreal survives just fine without a baseball team anymore. Yea, Arizona is a terrible state with little to visit outside of national parks but $500 million of taxpayer dollars given to a private business is BS. If anything these should be loans or the state should get a % of team revenue and the books should be publicly available because the public funds the stadium.
or the state should get a % of team revenue
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They do. It’s called sales tax.
Yo
@Phan There have been numerous studies showing that is false. Often the $ generated is $ that would have been generated elsewhere. Its not creating extra disposable income for familues or others. So if they spend $300 at a game thats $ not spent somewhere else. Considering they ll be paying extra sales tax to fund this, it very well could cost families more than it saves over time.
Skeptical: Then your recourse is to vote against it when it appears on the ballot.
The voters of Arizona did vote against the building of stadium, but the powers that be did an end around, created a commission that had the power to build without voter input. The Arizona legislature and other political bodies in Arizona have a habit of trying to circumvent initiatives passed by the voters. For how this happened to build the stadium, I would recommend “Big League, Big Time” by Len Sherman..
Also, note that this is not an issue being put to the voters.
Skeptical: I don’t care enough to read a book about it.
But tough noogies then, I guess. 🤷♂️
If you don’t care enough to read about it, then maybe don’t comment on it because you are ignorant of the facts. You got owned and responded with “tough noogies” like a child in the 80s. Maybe try being less of a ch0de.
Maybe keep your advice to yourself. No one asked you
william draper: And who asked you? Maybe keep your comments to yourself if you can’t be constructive.
@Skeptical So you admit the stadium is bad but want to do nothing about it? That sounds like a serious problem to me. Letting the stadium fall apart is the biggest reason the Athletics had to leave Oakland.
Also, people generally do NOT decide to spend most of their “entertainment budget” elsewhere if they stop going to local sports games.
Stadium is a dump
What a waste of money
Use that 500mill plus Owners money and build a new Stadium.
The AC system is crap and the inside is nothing Special
With all that money they better add a diving board to their pool
Points for having a stellar name
Isn’t the pool like 4ft deep or maybe 5ft? Where are you gonna dive? You’ll break your neck if you dive into a pool that shallow.
The team is paying a whole 1/3 of the cost of upgrades to their stadium? How very generous of them.
Should have forced them foot the bulk of the bill or find another sucker city to waste public funds to enrich a billionaire. Instead, we’re complaining about helping those most in need while giving out corporate welfare money without a second thought.
And a whole $10M to break the lease? Like that’s a deterrent.
I guess there’s no constituents in Arizona that need assistance. No schools that need fixing, teachers, police and firefighters all have what they need. Sounds like the stadium is the only thing left to maintain. Amazing!
Recall it’s wrong for the working class to get help from the government.. But, not the billionaire owners. These have never benefited the public; and always the owners.
The money that should go to fixing roads goes to homeless in cash payments so they can buy drugs from the cartel.
This is such a small percentage of the state budget being spent on this tourism investment. Why do people act like the other 99% of the state budget isn’t available to be used to help people?
Phantom,
It’s half a billion dollars given to a billionaire. I don’t care what percentage of the budget it is, it’s $500M that could go to more worthy causes.
The state budget is $16.1B. The stadium upgrades cost $33.3M per year. That’s .001 of the budget. If you take off all the tax revenue that the stadium provides, that .001 almost disappears.
Or, from another perspective, even before considering the tax revenue, the $16.6M py = $2.29 per year per resident.
As a born-and-bred Bronx, I was very pleased that the government kicked in enough investment money to keep the NYY in The Bronx. I hate the Yankees, but I like baseball.
You can almost always break it down to help justify public money with a little gymnastics.
But it doesn’t change the fact our country has a weird obsession with helping fund stadiums/arena’s for a private sector industry where the financial benefit of having these “necessary upgrades” goes to the owners, league and to the players at a lesser extent. It’s a joke.
A small amount for infrastructure I can get behind, but that almost never happens.
Just having major league sports teams helps city economies greatly. You can argue that the teams should foot more of the bill, but it’s no joke making sure these private sector industries are properly looked after.
No doubt there is some economic benefit to a city by having professional sports teams, though I’m not sure how to define “greatly.” I can’t see the investment ratio of 2:1 city:team making any economic sense whatsoever.
gbs42
No doubt there is some economic benefit to a city by having professional sports teams, though I’m not sure how to define “greatly.”
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I appreciate this response. At the end of the day, there is absolutely -0- doubt that having a pro team is good for a city.
But just as absolutely, there are numbers where it makes more sense, or less sense.
It’s impossible to like baseball and also like John Fisher at the same time, JoeBrady
I couldn’t care less about Fisher, but I do like the idea of baseball in LV. TBH, I don’t any issue whatsoever. No one in Oakland supported the As. The stadium was awful. So neither the fans nor the city looks like they lost anything.
“No one in Oakland supported the A’s.”
Fisher gutted payroll, jacked up ticket prices, and then complained the fans didn’t show up so he “had to” move the team. Fans demonstrated their passion for the team repeatedly, along with their frustration with ownership. “SELL THE TEAM” was their rallying cry.
You’d think he’d be an embarrassment to the league, but instead he’s – maybe – getting a new stadium built for him.
The As have probably out-performed most of the teams in BB since he purchased the team. How many teams have made the playoffs 7x since 2005?
And the highest he drew, even during the playoffs, was 2M, with an average of maybe 1.75M.
@Joe It does not truly create that much. The vast majority of $ spent at games is $ people would have spent elsewhere on entertainment or some type of indulgence.
As for any jobs created, they are nearly all part time low ayomg seasonal jobs.
Pro-sports leagues have quite a scam going. They should be getting zero public funding for anything they do.
The strange is that, if a team relocates, the politicians often get blamed. Strangely, they are incentivized to raise taxes to keep their constituents happy. In this instance, Arizona is paying the Diamondbacks about 20M a year to stay.
Some folks just dislike any public/private collaboration. In NYC, a developer on 59th Street wanted 2 more floors above zoning. Mayor Koch told them ‘and we need a new subway station under your building’ Guess what happened? The citizens of NYC enjoyed a nice new station, with breakfast and lunch kiosks, along with newly created jobs.
In Yonkers, the Ridge Hill developers were told they needed to supply a state-of-the-art animal shelter next to the shopping center. Done.
That is how things work.
When did all that happen, JoeBrady? Can you be specific? Give the dates and the developers involved, or you may be confusing that the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge is on 59th Street…
And that the 59th Street station wasn’t funded in the 1980s when developers for the NY Coliseum pulled out
Next time someone calls the Ricketts family cheap remember this post above. Completely renovated Wrigley at $1B (yes, that’s a B) with no public funding, state help, etc.
White Sox STILL getting subsidized for the stadium that was built by the state in 1990 and now want to have the taxpayers pony up for another one.
As of 2014, Montreal was still paying for the Expos stadium… which the team had left in 2005.
This is crazy. We keep giving billionaires free tax funds just so they a make a better profit when they sell for 10-20x what the paid, not counting the yearly profits. Some of the comments here are even more insane. “They built such a bad stadium it is a dump before it reached 30 years old, we better build them a new one.” I swear some of you are gluttons for punishment . Stop rewarding this behavior. If teams could build stadiums thathave lasted 100 years, they should be able to get by with self funded renovations
You should be glad they’re going with cheaper renovations rather than building an entire new stadium less than 30 years later like the Braves did.
Quit your freaking whining. Welcome to the world of capitalism.
Feudalism new clothes.
This is literally the polar opposite of capitalism. I hope you were being ironic, but it was a funny comment, nonetheless.
@Redsman Capitalism is a free market, free is in free of outside influence. Its more of a corporate oligarchy….
Not a fan of the Diamondbacks but no privately owned sports team should ever get public money for their ballparks. unless the public is guaranteed a return on the investment. If the public is footing 67% of the renovation costs, then they public should receive 67% of revenue increases that are generated until they are paid back the $500mm plus a generous percentage (20%?) for profit.
I want them to get a new stadium, chase field is so ugly.
Then the ownership group should open their pockets and fund it. No one should have a problem with that.
This is why the owners don’t want to open up the books. If we saw how much money they made, it would hurt the sport.
Owners should not have to open their books; they’re private companies. They should, however, have to open their pockets and pay for things they want for their private company with their money.
From my perspective, if the owners are not taking public monies for a private enterprise, then they can keep the books private. But if they want the public $$, then open the books. Pretty simple.
I get your perspective, but disagree on one point…a private enterprise should never receive public money whether they open their books or not, unless the public is sharing in the revenue directly generation from that public money.
If they want public money, which 95% of teams do eventually, then they should be required to do so. Even then the real money made is equity in the team value, not the year to year cash flow.
@Tom – In general I agree…to a point. There are examples, I am sure, that might be worth it that would be otherwise. But for the most part, corporate welfare tends to be a sham. Phony studies that folks forget about ten years down the road when it becomes clear that it was a failure, etc.
Stadium deals should be tied to revenue payback from specific income streams, whether it be a % of revenues from tickets / concessions / parking / adjacent development and whatnot. The goal would be to refresh the govt. coffers so that money is available for investment again down the road rather than simply lining the pockets of the billionaires.
Government investments in enterprise can be a good and necessary thing, and very rewarding if well conceived. Science investment has had tremendous returns over the years; there are proven returns for child care investment in many countries, etc. But our fascination with rewarding the rich because we are “free market capitalists” is one of many mysteries of how our society mythologizes our nature.
Meanwhile Phoenix and the surrounding communities dismiss teachers, firefighters and police to save a few bucks, only to gift the equivalent of a Lürssen mega yacht in taxpayers money to the oligarchs, running this rotten franchise.
Gotta have priorities.
Everyone complains about funding until the team leaves and then suddenly you’re begging for a team to stay or come back. The folks in Oakland would happily pay $500M to get the A’s back.
no they wouldn’t, those people would find better ways to spend $500 million. No one in oakland has ever begged for the A’s to come back
They would if they could get a new stadium out of it. The main reason attendance dropped so much was because Fisher didn’t abide by his responsibilities to properly maintain the stadium.
Meanwhile, the Oakland economy could very well lose over $500M over the next 10 years due to no longer having an MLB (nor NFL) team.
I don’t blame the teams at all. They are in it to make money. The ticket prices rise to what the fans are willing to pay, and the subsidies rise to what the State/county/city are willing to pay. The tightrope for the government is finding the line between palatable spending and losing the team to relocation. The teams are in the catbird seat.
There are A LOT of people on this thread that have no idea how public investment in private entities work. You all need to do your homework before sounding like the idiots you are. Go do some research on tax generation, quasi-public financing (and why it’s good for a city to partake – every time), job creation, real estate pricing, working wages, income tax from jobs created, sales tax from construction materials purchased, gas tax used during construction as well as people driving to and from the stadium daily, taxes from food sales, all the jobs inside the stadium, taxes from player salaries, only to name a few items (there are many more).
And stop confusing Business Development budgets with Public Service budgets. The Public Service budgets only exist due to Bus Dev investments.
Investments like this serve the public in a many major ways and make a city more desirable to live in. There is a reason so many cities subside projects l
Subsidize
actually they dont bring that much revenue, they just take money that would be spent on other things like dining, entertainment. the modest tax revenue around stadiums are no where near the amount subsidies pay. most of the money earned by these clubs is to wealthy individuals who have teams of accountants with their goal of lowering their tax payments
Can you cite research and factual reports that back up your claims? That’s always the idea behind it…”If we spend public dollars, the public will benefit due to X, Y, and Z.” Where is that actual benefit where the said public actually benefits more than their investment? Perhaps there are a few cases but, according to most studies I’ve read—here are two: journalistsresource.org/economics/sports-stadium-p…, stateline.org/2024/02/20/more-taxpayer-money-benef… doesn’t always work out that way.
Are you going to do the research or just repeat the propaganda put out by the owners?
You have a-lot of misconceptions.
Teams threaten to move to get funding and play the public and public officials who don’t really understand how this works.
God bless you P13.
Can’t decide if this is good or not…