Let’s say you’re the proprietor of the Cincinnati Bengals. You might be on a number of lists as one of many richest men in the country. Your loved ones purchased the Bengals for $7M in 1967 and now the workforce is value $4B according to Forbes or $5B according to CNBC. You get tax breaks whenever you spend a little bit amount of cash updating your individual stadium. You’ve what many sports activities homeowners name the one finest stadium lease in NFL historical past. Nevertheless, anybody who doesn’t personal a sports activities workforce seemingly check with it as “one of the most exploitative leases” in sports activities. The Wall Road Journal referred to as it “one of the worst professional sports deals ever struck by a local government”. You get the concept.
But, I nonetheless discover it mind-boggling what Cincinnati officers allowed the Bengals to maintain within the unique 1996 lease. I can not perceive how these public officers thought that the county would see a single greenback in income if each dime of it was going to the workforce. The Wall Road Journal wrote an article on the Bengals’ stadium in 2011. Even at this level, the stadium lease continued “soaking up unprecedented tax dollars and county resources while returning little economic benefit”.
Let’s check out some lease highlights:
- The county agreed to “guarantee 50,000 tickets sold per game”, agreed to provide the workforce all stadium administration rights
- The county agreed to provide the workforce all promoting revenues
- The county agreed to provide the workforce all cash produced from meals or drinks
- The county agreed to pay for all stadium upkeep or capital initiatives
- Better of all, the county agreed to provide the Bengals a state-of-the-art provision that entitled the Bengals to demand from the county one of the best and most costly upgrades, irrespective of the price, each single 12 months.
With this historical past of the Bengals basically robbing native taxpayers yearly, let’s see how the workforce is appearing throughout latest stadium negotiations:
- “The Bengals repeatedly accused the county of defaulting on their 1997 lease settlement, mentioned it already ought to have spent greater than $300 million on stadium repairs”
- “The Bengals wished to spend $4 million to enhance concessions, and (the workforce) wished the county to kick in $5.5 million”
- “The Bengals imagine the workforce and the county already ought to have began on $494 million in primary facility enhancements outlined by consulting agency Gensler in April 2022”
- “(The Bengals) mentioned $137 million in repairs had been wanted now, a determine…elevated to $300 million on April 30, 2024”
You see, the emails present that the workforce needs to maintain the lease the way in which it’s whereas the county is aware of that a lot of it should change. Bengals officers try to behave as if the present lease “has worked well, better than people could have hoped”.
If it has labored so effectively, why does each public official and native resident hate this stadium lease? Why did polling knowledge in 1995 present that, even at the moment, 65%-80% of residents would fairly not give any funding to a stadium for the Bengals? I’m not somebody who believes that an individual with cash ought to fund each single factor that they do. However the Metropolis of Cincinnati at present has almost 30% of its residents dwelling BELOW the poverty line. Native colleges, police, and fireplace departments have huge monetary shortages. Weren’t residents promised a property-tax rollback and extra faculty funding from the brand new stadium? Has the general public been given greater than two years of property tax rollbacks since 1996? Has any faculty gotten $1 extra because of the stadium? In 2010, the county and workforce lastly got here to an settlement to cut back the property tax rollback.
Let’s see how the Bengals carried out themselves with this settlement:
“Then one thing surreal occurred. The Bengals referred to as the county and mentioned they didn’t actually have a deal—and that the workforce wished a 10-year extension on its lease. That will have meant 10 extra years of upkeep; 10 extra years of state-of-the-art upgrades; and a complete taxpayer price, to take a conservative estimate, of effectively over $100 million…The Bengals accused the county of reneging on the 10-year extension, although they by no means mentioned why the county would have given up a lot for a couple of million in hire. The commissioners denied that the extension had ever been on the desk. “I nonetheless can’t for the lifetime of me clarify what occurred on the Bengals facet,” Pepper says. In response to a number of individuals I spoke with, the Bengals officers did comply with the deal—solely to have Brown determine after the truth that he wanted the extension” — Cincinnati Magazine, November 2011
It’s as if the Bengals reside in one other actuality. Then once more, this is similar workforce who signed a 30-year stadium lease in 1970 after which sued the county for additional revenues in 15 of the next 23 years. In one other e mail, the Bengals threatened to relocate as a result of the county was not fixing stadium issues. That sounds dangerous for the county. The official responded by questioning why he had by no means been given any detailed data on these complaints, nor had he ever been given any closing prices for these supposed repairs. Now, one would assume that the workforce would give a solution to this query. As an alternative, the Bengals official states that “the note…hardly seems to have been written by you, so I won’t respond to it”. Good and detailed reply.
That jogs my memory of the time that Deadspin requested public documents on the Bengals’ stadium lease and obtained again paperwork that had been all blacked out. The Bengals additionally refuse to share their financials with anybody. To today, I don’t perceive why extra cities should not telling the groups that if they need taxpayer cash, they should do what each different enterprise within the space should do and present us their monetary books.
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