Citizen initiatives, which are common on the West Coast but limited in much of the rest of the nation, can be hugely important as a check on owner power, since it’s way harder to lobby tens of thousands of voters than a mere handful of elected officials.

Important to note that it’s not for lack of trying though. Boston and Massachusetts have made the owners pay by refusing to give much public money, knowing that leaving the Boston market is simply not worth it for teams (and if someone dared, some other club would be instantly eager to take their place).

You can read more about the politics behind the Metrodome in future President Amy Klobuchar’s undergraduate senior thesis.

This is the case 100% in DC for Nats stadium. Construction around the stadium is booming and everything is skyrocketing in price. But... that was all planned before the stadium. DC taxpayers shouldn’t have had to subsidize all of those projects that are now going back into developers pockets.

this is exactly what’s happening in Worcester, MA. They’re taking an area of town which is experiencing healthy redevelopment already, and borrowing a shitload of money to put a ballpark next to it with the promise of “yes but this will REALLY jumpstart development.”

not on the scale of stadiums but all of the big distribution centers are largely using the same model. These bumblefuck towns that are located on or near major interstates and thoroughfares hand out these massive incentive packages and often 10 year Pilots and LERTA arrangements, then when the 10 years is up they move…

All of the Boston area sports venues were paid entirely with public funds. Even the renovations to Fenway have been all private. Kraft got some road improvements around the stadium, but I think he even had to pay into some of them. This being said, Kraft hasn’t been able to get a stadium built for the Revolution…

The note about SoMa in SFO redeveloping well ahead of PacBell is interesting. I think a lot of team owners tend to develop in the up and coming areas and then, as the development continues, like to congratulate themselves for all of their risk taking and foresight. This exact pattern is happening in Milwaukee right…

Asking me to choose which stadium scam I dislike most is like asking me to choose which of my children I dislike the most, by which I mean I hate them all equally because they make my life a living hell.

So is it “choked with ads” free or “secret front for gathering marketing intel” free?

The only—and I truly mean only—reason to scrub the archives of a site without notice and deny journalists their clips they desperately need to pursue further work is spite. I understand that Web Archive and Wayback will have cached versions of pages but rest assured that piece of fucking filth Ricketts did this to…

Unionization isn’t always just about pay. It’s about pay in cases where a business is raking in profits and underpaying staff, but unionization can also be about making sure staff are treated fairly, that any raises are given in an equitable fashion, that staff can’t be dismissed on a whim.

Any claim that this is anything other than retribution for unionizing is horseshit. If it was merely a matter of numbers not adding up - and Ricketts no longer being willing to eat the losses - he’d try to sell the business to someone else and thus recoup some of his losses.

Yeesh. At the home opener they brought out someone from Detroit Public Schools. All I could think was, the taxpayers are on the hook for this half empty building and the kids in the city don’t have textbooks, etc. What. The. Fuck...

The point of the arena deal and that wad of taxpayer cash was to “revitalize” a moribund downtown. That it’s taken a single home game (and that might even be generous) for the new car smell to wear off should encapsulate pretty neatly the scam of publicly financed stadiums.

As a Cub fan I know that curses don’t exist. But, the Youppi Curse lives!!!!

So the Red Sox are still stealing signs then?

Live in Calgary, can confirm several things about Neshi’s stance.

(Davis’s money grab in Nevada was successful in large part because he enlisted local casino mogul Sheldon Adelson in his cause, even if he ultimately double-crossed Adelson)

I heard Ponzi is having a terrible year in Serie B, which means the Revs will step right in and give him a deal.