This article is free for anyone to read, but please consider becoming a Patreon subscriber to allow me to keep writing posts like this one. Sign up to receive articles like this one in your inbox here.
We’ve spent a whole lot of 2024 talking about the Tampa Bay Rays and the Oakland A’s, as well as how the former was set to stay that way while the latter wormed their way into just being the A’s, no hometown, for a few years. Those stories aren’t just covered because they involve the obscenely wealthy casually and easily lying in order to avoid spending their money as much as possible, but also because the thing they’re going for is public subsidies.
These subsidies don’t exist in a vacuum. If they go to a stadium, they aren’t going to something else. This is why Schools Over Stadiums formed in Nevada after state, county, and city politicians got into bed with the A’s: Nevada’s public schools were in desperate need of financial assistance, and, once again, everyone with the power to give those funds to a billionaire for a new stadium wanted to do that instead. As Chris Daly, the Deputy Executive Director of Government Relations for the Nevada State Education Association, told me last September:
Nevada ranks 48th in the nation in education funding, with the largest class sizes in the country. Nevada struggles with teacher vacancies, leaving thousands of classrooms covered by long-term substitutes. NSEA made a big push during this year’s legislative session to get Nevada to do better. Nearly 1,000 educators and supporters rallied in front of the legislature toward the end of the session, imploring state leaders to do more to help our schools. Instead, the politicians turned their attention away from struggling educators and students to give away the store to a California billionaire.
NSEA opposed this $380M giveaway. We couldn’t help but point out the irony of giving public money to the A’s after being the only state to receive 3 F’s in education funding in the 2022 ‘Making the Grade’ report.
Between the NFL’s Raiders getting Allegiant built, and the A’s securing $380 million in bonds from Nevada, that’s $1.13 billion in public subsidies that could have gone to literally anything else. Schools, hospitals, roads, infrastructure of some kind. Anything else, besides two sports teams with owners who have a combined net worth of over $5 billion.
Competing for the A’s, at one point, was the city they were already in before their initial land deal with Vegas: Oakland. Word is that Oakland was just $90 million off from getting a deal done with the A’s that would have given them a brand new ballpark in a massive renovation at Howard Terminal. The estimate for public subsidies in that deal came out to $567 million, per Casey Pratt, $375 million of which had already been raised when the price was going to be lower pre-pandemic and inflation, with another $100 million-plus in grants on the way.
Why bring this up now? The city of Oakland accidentally published a city council report detailing that the city was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, as it was projected to end the year with a $93 million shortfall. They would delete this one and publish a new one, with less alarming language to show that they didn’t think things were that dire, but it’s pretty clear there’s an issue, as Oaklandside detailed:
One report, published early Friday morning in connection with a City Council agenda, warned Oakland must take immediate action to “maintain the solvency of the General Purpose Fund and avoid the Chapter 9 process.”
The report, which had the signatures of the city’s top officials on it, also warned that “Fecklessness and failure to take dramatic and immediate steps to reduce expenditures will almost certainly result in insolvency.”
The city can’t keep its finances above water without an A’s ballpark project, and they were still lining up to hand over over half-a-billion in subsidies to John Fisher to keep him around? They should be thanking Vegas for taking the team on, at this point, and keeping them from doing something incredibly irresponsible.
Meanwhile, Pinellas County is having second thoughts about filling a dump truck with the most public subsidies for a stadium ever in order to keep the Rays in St. Petersburg. They’ve delayed the sale of $312 million of those bonds — two county commissioners were already against the deal in the first place and voted against it back in July, and two of the newly elected members of the council are also against the deal, which has changed the equation before any money actually changes hands.
Neil deMause has the details for you at Field of Schemes, but what I want to focus on here is how Pinellas County is being given a get out of jail free card like Oakland did, if only they’ll take it. It is a bad deal, as some of the commissioners fear. There is no reason for the county to be paying so much money to keep the Rays here, when Stu Sternberg could finance part of a new park himself, or find private financing, or sell off part of the team to add cash for a deal like even John Fisher attempted to do with the A’s as he tried to avoid asking his mother for money. And now they’ve got a chance to kill the bond sale entirely on December 17. The Rays are acting like it’s already dead, as if a delay of a few weeks signals the end of the relationship between the team and the county, pack it up, it’s time to start thinking of other places to move to. Which is ridiculous and childish, sure, but also the kind of behavior you expect from an MLB owner when they don’t get their way.
If the billions of dollars of destruction wrought by hurricane Milton weren’t enough of a reminder, let Oakland running out of money and Nevada giving $1.13 billion in public subsidies to teams instead of their schools that are desperate for help tell you why this money should be going elsewhere instead of to the Rays. With any luck, Pinellas County will end up voting against the $312.5 million bond sale in December, and the Rays will have to find their money elsewhere. If they want to stay in St. Petersburg (or move to Tampa, or whatever the plan would be), it shouldn’t be because a city or county was desperate to give them whatever they wanted, against any better judgement that might exist within the ranks of those decisions makers. Those funds don’t exist in a vacuum, after all.
Visit my Patreon to become a supporter and help me continue to write articles like this one.