OKC right now
The OKC deal is actually a pretty square deal. The team is putting up 50m and the city is putting up another 70m, but the city retains ownership and use over the property. The funding is also coming from extending a 1% sales tax weve already been paying for the last 5 years.
It’s not what I would prioritize, but at least we’re actually going to keep the infrastructure we’re paying for.
The problem in my town is the homeless people ruining the trails and parks. I feel bad for them but they will fill a park with tents and shit on the pavement
Where would you have them go, exactly?
On one hand, where’s the affordable housing? On the other hand, where’s the access to affordable mental health programs?
And now you’ve found the problem. There are many non profits helping them and making sure they aren’t starving but many of these people come from other places and have serious mental health issues.
There is habitat for humanity which is building houses with the idea that having a shelter and a shower can get people off the street. Its a cool project.
Commending your humanity, friend. It’s hard to see the problems that people like the homeless can cause in our day to day and not feel reproachful or angry. Even if I know the reason, and can empathize with the situation, it doesn’t make the interactions any less jarring or frustrating when they’re clearly in need or more assistance than they’re getting and that lack is harming them AND the community they need to rely on for survival.
Well I do my best to help them if I can. I sometimes volunteer in soup kitchens and donate to the orgs that help them.
You must understand though, some of these people have been homeless and hopeless for so long that they don’t really want to be helped. My city has very cold weather once in a while and before it happens the police are always out trying to talk people into going to a shelter. Each shelter is either a church, city building or business that is trying to keep people from literally freezing to death.
Its a bad situation but it gives me comfort to know that the homeless population is know decreasing. Its slow but we are making progress.
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Is this meme reporting live from Las Vegas, Nevada?
Because putting a stupid underground concrete bendy-straw full of manual-driving Teslas instead of…a subway system, and building like 8 more stadiums that shut down traffic and give us nothing but $600 concert tickets on Ticketmaster …is totally this city’s jam right now.
Hobart represents!
A typical stadium that costs that much generates profits of like $100-200M per year. So if the city isn’t dumb enough to pay that much for it and not get a sizeable portion of that income, they can fund a comprehensive public transit system with that new money without going to debt.
Owners pockets only have an in door, no out door.
Your money becomes their money.
For the record, N.E. Patriots paid for their stadium and continue to pay all upgrade costs. They just finished an expensive upgrade.
There also is a train stop on the property. Even though it is a commuter line, it’s not busy. The hours kinda suck. But, better than nothing.
That’s one out of like 50 teams though. Assholes like Stan Kroenke are far more common, demanding cities spend billions on his teams or he just moves them like he did with the rams
Okay but their friends don’t profit off public transportation so checkmate liberal
How about this: The government pays to create public transit and then loans it to a private company to run for 50 years?
They’re doing it with highways, after all.
… So we can pay for things twice? Pass
but the poor politicians need to make some money. /s
No, it’s just a different, less important group of friends
It’s really everybody, their problem is it doesn’t benefit their friends comparatively more
What city size can justify a $1 billion stadium and pull off comprehensive public transit for $150M?
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Being able to built 150 million dollar comprehensive public transit was the difficult part
What city size can justify a $1 billion stadium
Could have just stopped there. The answer is none regardless of the rest.
City: spends 100k out of $1B of transit budget on installing barriers for separated bike lanes.
My car-dependant city: tHeY sPeNt ToO mUcH oN bIkE lAnEs
My city painted lines in the road, and people still bitch about it 3 years later, the lines are almost gone from fading and chipping, and cycling is still dangerous due to some traffic specifically targeting them for harrasment.
Paint is not a substitute for infrastructure.
Yeah, there’s an especially shitty part of a city where used to live, that part is always mostly traffic jams and the bike lanes painted on the road side are just used as a parking lot for expensive cars 🤦♂️
People are freaking out about that in my city while the $500 million dollar highway interchange right next to it gets no attention.
Team owners: “We’re just humble billionaires and we care so much about your state. The team is part of the community… Now subsidize our massively profitable business or we’ll move the team.”
I’ll never understand why fans are die hard loyal to franchises that screw them at every possible opportunity. Insane ticket prices, seat license fees (which are somehow different than tickets?), insane concession prices, ads on everything- it hurts my brain.
“You will not believe this 2000 year old strategy, that still works today!”
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Just doing shit faster
seat license fees (which are somehow different than tickets?)
What the actual fuck is THAT bullshit??
From a quick search I found that it apparently gives the purchaser the right to a specific seat for the duration of a season. Makes sense I suppose, but still kinda scummy.
As a non north-american I never understood this franchise system. How could you cheer for a team that will move anytime to a city more profitable? In Europe and latin america, if your city sucks, is becoming poor or so, the team will fall to the second division and will deal with that cause they are from that city, cause they are a club, not a franchise. For me this makes much more sense.
As much a love to bash the yanks, it’s not just them any more .
You could take any of the top 10 brands in European football, move the stadium anywhere in the world, and no one would notice but for a handful Of die hards.
If Man City moved to Dubai tomorrow, would that really surprise you ?
If Real Madrid moved to Florida , Liverpool to Beijing, ? Your left with 10,000 pissed off locals, but that’s nothing when you’re a global brand.
You have a great point, but for me it is still too much conjectures, but looking to theses conjectures I still disagree. Moving to another country would destroy those teams, cause they aren´t just the teams, Liverpool actually is a global brand but it is the Liverpool that plays in the premier league and have their rivalries, leaving UK would mean leaving all these parts of the brand behind. It is also a very different scenario, those teams in US move to other cities in the same country and still compete in the same tournament keeping a lot more of their previous brand.
For me your example would be much closer to MLB, NBA, NFL and MLS if you thought about Liverpool goint to Bristol, for example. In this scenario I can see better your point but I still think that the club would lose a lot of their capital and the brand would suffer with the ridicule of the situation for the average football fan. But it is just another opinion based in my previous opinions.
Bread and games, it’s what the lizard brain craves.
it hurts my brain
those players brains will be hurting from concussions
I’ll never understand why fans are die hard loyal to franchises that screw them at every possible opportunity.
Because for many people it is a core part of their identity, without which they wouldn’t have much outside of work and sleep
Seems crazy. I think professional sports would be so much cooler if the community had stake in the team and got something out of winning/profits.
It’s just so weird to attach your identity to a team that you are in no way a part of, other than the location.
I mean I think most people are aware of how abusive the relationship is at some level (conscious or not) but ultimately the reason billionaires buy teams like this is if you truly love sports what are you by going to do?
I think the only correct perspective to view this from is that it is a tragedy that something so incredibly important to people that it might as well be a religion, is utterly controlled by the billionaire class. I couldn’t care less for professional sports in most ways and find it annoying that stadiums get so much subsidies from cities but at the end of the day I have no interest in bashing people’s rabid love of a sport. I think it is great, go wild and be totally obsessed with your sports team, it is an utterly benign love at the heart of it.
The Euro Leagues system
Your local team gets good enough that you have a team then there are stakes
NA leagues don’t do this because they are entertainment not competitive products
I’m not a huge football/soccer fan, but I love the concept of promotion/relegation. Around here if you have a losing team you get rewarded with a high draft pick. It’s a strategy to be terrible.
I also would love having lower level teams to watch, but that’s pretty rare. If you have a pro team in your city, you probably don’t have a semi pro team with the exception of baseball.
Maybe that’s why so many people enjoy watching college sports. Although I have my own issues with that scene, because of course I do.
everything would be so much cooler with that.
What’s the state of community sport in the US ?
In the UK we have the same mindless billions in Soccer, but there is still (just about) a good level of community sport, like semi pro and below, where you can watch for almost nothing then go the bar after the match and drink with the players.
You don’t get the same athleticism and artistry (from overtrained genetic freaks) But you still get brilliant entertainment, drama, fun moments with your tribe. Etc.
Community sports is where it’s at.
Nailed it. This is especially true with football in the UK. People are literally born and brought up with the expectation of supporting a certain team.
For the record, N.E. Patriots paid for their stadium and continue to pay all upgrade costs. They just finished an expensive upgrade.
There also is a train stop on the property. Even though it is a commuter line, it’s not busy. The hours kinda suck. But, better than nothing.
Their original stadium (Foxboro) cost an incredibly-low $7 million to build circa 1970. Rather than building a bowl-like structure fully above ground like conventional stadiums, they instead dug a stadium-shaped hole in the ground and filled it with seats - a really practical way to do something like this, as long as you don’t mind the flooding.
I remember it well. Shoveled snow out of the stands with FHS groups for $$.
Then Kraft built Gillette for $325 million. Just spent millions more on upgrades.
And, they act like stadiums are going to"drive economic" activity instead of creating dead zones in cities.
You know what would guarantee increased economic activity?
People being able to easily get to jobs and shops.Patriot Place @ Gillette Stadium is definitely not a “dead zone”.
Stadiums drive economic activity into city government officials pockets.
Even then, only in a shortsighted, politically deceptive manner. Taxation driven by sales in a thriving hub with free transit also pads the budget. But, taxes are unpopular and people like sports teams and arena shows and overpriced shitty beverages. They give the bigger dopamine hit.
Is that an economic activity in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
The Cincinnati streetcar cost almost exactly $150m and it serves like 0.5% of the metro population. It runs a 3.6 mile loop, that’s just over a 1.5 mile walk from one end to the other. I can walk it in 20 minutes.
Don’t get me wrong, I agree with the sentiment of the post. We need to invest in public transit. Where I live there are zero non-car options. But don’t pretend you’re building comprehensive public transit for $150m.
I just want some trails…
If you’re in Cincy there’s Metro bus, and TANK bus in northern Kentucky comes up into Cincy as well. You can also buy combo passes that let you ride both. It’s admittedly a very lacking public transit system, especially after cuts made in the Covid era, but it’s there and gets me to and from work.
Unfortunately the doomed underground rail system has such an infamous reputation that the thought of getting such a system put in place these days is a far fetched dream.
I have a Cincinnati address but I’m in Clermont county just outside of Anderson, in the 45255 zip. There aren’t buses near my house, or sidewalks, or bike lanes. Just a ditch on the side of the road and 40+mph traffic with lots of construction trucks.
It runs a 3.6 mile loop, that’s just over a 1.5 mile walk from one end to the other. I can walk it in 20 minute
Well fine if you want to brag I guess but most Midwesterners would need defibrillators and a fast food chain or two along the way to make this trek, and it ain’t taking 20min.
Okay you’re not wrong about most people. I saw a post in a couch to 5k thread recently about getting to running 14 minute miles. I can walk 13 minute miles. But the I-275 loop that circles Cincinnati is almost 90 miles around. The streetcar covering less than two miles of the city is still not helping the common person.
CAD 180 millions for a 35km long express bus lane where I live…
Where’s that? I’ve seen in Calgary it’s 280 million per km for their new green line
New roads: expensive
Repurposing roads: not as expensive
150m can do a whole bunch when you use properly rolled out busses, with their own lanes (and you can initially paint these if the budget is low). People driving their car on the bus lanes will nicely generate additional tax income (fines) and if the busses are good, the people will come.
Even in the Netherlands, where we have really good trains on even a European scale, we still have long-distance busses (comfy ones, for 1-2hr trips) and regional busses (still comfy, but those are 20-30 min trips). Custom infra doesn’t always cut it, especially when repurposing existing infra will serve the job just fine.
I’ve lived in the NL, we just have a different reality. Just the other side of my city is an hour away in a car with no traffic. Regional cities are 1.5-3 hrs away. There are some bus lines in the middle of the city but most of our metro area has zero non-car options.
City street cars seem to be a waste of money now but more trains would be nice. They never invest enough in it.
I live in Atlanta. We have a shitty street car and a shitty train system. They don’t go to enough places to be useful most of the time. But if they got the same kind of funding our stadiums got it would be crazy good. I could ride the train instead of driving to most places if they just expanded to some more parts of the city.
Are streetcars like trams? Because over here I love taking the tram in largerish cities like Ghent, they’re like busses but faster.
Yes, street cars or trolleys are essentially trams. Small, slow, go on rails in the pavement alongside cars.
Yes, street cars or trolleys are essentially trams. Small, slow, go on rails in the pavement alongside cars.
Nowadays trams can go pretty fast. Plus, a better aligned railway and a better suspension means that they became.uch more quiet.
I just hope that someday we will see more of those used in large cities
Hopefully but I’m doubtful. My city (st Louis) has burned millions in a trash can of trying to get a singular, less than 5 mile, trolley working for more than a month and failed miserably. It’s been a major embarrassment that they’ve been entirely capable of getting it to run reliably down one mostly flat, straight street.
In London, Ontario, the city gave the transit commission $350M to spend on a new transit overhaul called Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). It was the best plan possible for our city as our streets are too narrow to accommodate light rail and we sit on swampland at a low altitude above sea level which prevents a subway from being built. All the commission had to do was pour concrete for new bus pads and widen a couple of streets to add in a dedicated bus lane.
They blew half the money on consultations, construction fuck ups, and removal of fuck ups in 2022. They never finished BRT, bought themselves a brand new HQ at a cost of $120M, and now in 2023, they’re saying they’re $175M overbudget on BRT.
No one in our city is talking about this.
Which one gets the votes?
Seattle voted down T Mobile park twice and the city still found a way to push it through lol
I don’t know what sport uses that but no mayor would want to be known as the one that forced the Seawolves out of town
Just because it’s an easy attack vector
I get it but… The fact that a team changes town is such an insane concept to me. I don’t know the SeaWolves, but they are probably called Seattle SeaWolves, right? So they carry the name of the city.
Where I’m from (Germany) that team would be dead instantly in the eyes of the fans. If f. ex. Victoria Berlin renamed itself to FC Berlin, the fans would find it weird but probably go along. 7f the moved to Magdeburg and are now Victoria Berlin but not in Berlin they would lose their fans. And wouldn’t gain Magdeburger Fans.
If you’re interested I would recommend you to check out the recent rise of FC Union Berlin. They’ve risen to the first division about 5 years ago and still play in a pretty old and basic stadium. They display of the current goals is still done by changing boards with numbers on them through a window.
And they managed to play in the champions League despite having an old stadium. Sadly they played their European games in the bigger Olympia stadium. I wish they would have hosted Real Madrid in the old forestry (name of the stadium “die Alte Försterei”).
I watch Bundesliga :)
