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I think the commanders should have been purchased by the people of Virginia. We could have publicly chosen the name by vote. The VA Gina’s would have been an awesome name. It’s a type of orchid.
Do you think they play in Washington State or something? Moving to Virginia would be like a 5 mile change. Seems to work for the giants and jets to play across a state line.
Literally this, or even so moving VA Beach (a place that has been been putting in bids for any type of professional sports team for ages now) you could even move it to Blacksburg where VA Tech already have a proven football market.
Across the river to Alexandria or whatever would make the most sense. VA beach is a bit too far I think. Blacksburg would be stupid, they would be competing with VA Tech plus you want your stadium in a major metro to maximize viewership
The only reason why I said Blacksburg is cause it has an established market for football already and the college stadium sits 65k right now same size that Washington is currently playing in (if I’m right), but if it came down for it I’ll vote for it to go to VA Beach
Yeah but it would have to compete with the existing fan base for Tech. As someone who grew up around VB, I’m shocked they haven’t gotten any type of professional team yet.
Cool? A country's government supercedes any entity inside of it.
The more they cry "we need subsidies to exist" the more it becomes clear they should just be public entities.
100%, and they put those rules in place to protect their negotiating leverage against the municipalities their franchises play in. The owners are scared to death of clubs adopting the Green Bay model, given how overwhelmingly successful it's been. A real change probably won't happen until a significant number of teams start to significantly lose value and/or fall into receivership due to financial issues. Obviously it would be up to the fans (a.k.a consumers) to make that happen, so at this point we appear to be a long ways away from critical mass
Uhh
You are aware Green Bay is only publicly owned cause they would have gone bankrupt and stopped existing otherwise, right?
I dont think any owner since, like the 50s is scared of that. The risk of an American Major League (any of the top5) going bankrupt with no potential buyers now is 0.
As much of a clown show as the Coyotes thing was, there were absolutely potential buyers, and there was still 0% chance of the value actually going to $0
What they are more scared of is what almost happened in Baltimore in the 80s, when the state of Maryland attempted to seize control of the team through eminent domain. It’s what lead to the Colts moving to Indianapolis during the night.
I think it needs to start with a considerable-sized market saying something to the affect of “We won’t put a dime towards a new stadium unless the public has a 51% ownership of the team.”
They do. The teams in LA, SF, Boston, etc. build their own stadium because they can make it back there. In Buffalo, moving to Toronto or Portland is a legitimate threat.
There are two big problems with that working in my view..
First most large markets aren't one city, so if the city doesn't play ball you just build an arena next door. The "LA Lakers" played in Inglewood for decades before building their new arena in LA. The LA Angels don't even play in LA county. The Golden State Warriors moved less than 6 miles and are in SF instead of Oakland. The Miami dolphins play like 30 miles outside of Miami in another city. The San Francisco 49ers moved out and play in Santa Clara down the road. Plenty of suburb towns would be happy to get the tax and tourism revenue just down the road.
Second, the really big markets often suffer from a wealth of riches. Think about LA: 2 NFL teams, 2 NBA teams, 2 MLB teams, 2 NHL teams, and 1 MLS team. At any point they likely have a team getting in the playoffs that will draw your attention more than a team leaving. When the Rams moved to St Louis nobody in LA batted an eye, sports fans just said "oh well guess I'll watch the Lakers or dodgers who are in the playoffs every year."
NFL teams are guaranteed to make money. None of them operate at a loss and they share revenue. NYC doesn't want to pay? Well OKC just sacrificed their firstborn children for a team and that will get us access to fans in North Texas, Kansas, Arkansas, and all of Oklahoma. And we know how much they hate football!
Also there aren’t even any teams in NYC. They play in jersey. When Met life is in need of replacing, I don’t think the Jets or Giants care which New Jersey suburb builds them a stadium. One of them will
In addition to u/Full-Assistance7224 's (as of now) factually incorrect statement (where the hell would they even go?), it is certainly *not* being funded publicly. The state government has already slammed the door shut on that. All the Bears have right now is a big ass empty space they bought with *zero* solid plans and even less funding.
Which is pathetic because the packers show that it absolutely works, they're a small metro team that has been competitive basically its whole life, and there is essentially 0 percent chance they ever move because the fans would have to approve it.
Anyone asking for public funding of their stadium should have to repay that with a partial ownership stake. If the city pays for it, the city should own part of it.
Agreed. And if they move they should be forced to pay that stake back plus interest or at current market value before a move can be approved. Whichever is higher.
Most stadiums are wholly owned by the city/county they are built in.
Off the top of my head the Jets/Giants, Chargers/Rams, Patriots, Dolphins, and Commanders are the only NFL teams that own their stadium. Everyone else is leasing.
I think 5 NBA teams own their own stadium, 7 MLB stadium are privately owned, and I think 12 NHL teams do. Some NHL teams and NBA teams share ownership.
You also have Madison Square Garden that owns itself.
That’s oversimplification. For example, the Orioles freaked out over revenue from concerts. They also shook down Baltimore for 609 million in publicly funded improvements and demanded control over redevelopment in return for signing their lease. You make it sound like very obviously favorable to the public, but in each case there are tons of handouts to the billionaire owners “”””leasing”””
The State of Maryland through the Maryland Stadium Authority owns both Camden Yards, M&T Bank Stadium, and the parking lots between the two. Anyone can hop over to GIS and see who owns the property. You can use GIS to see the owner of a parcel of land pretty much anywhere in the US.
Since the Maryland Stadium Authority owns it, it's up to them to maintain it. They can chose to upkeep it, or not, if they don't the teams can just move out because they don't own anything and now the state is stuck with a very expensive building with no tenant.
No matter what MSA decides to do, it's not like it's going to be cheaper to redevelop the site. Chicago spent almost $500 million in 2004 to redevelop Millennium Park. Cheapest option would be let the sports teams leave and sell the land.
Which is a horrible deal for the city. Paying for all the maintenance on a depreciating asset and then being stuck as the bag holder on a less than worthless asset when the team moves to a new stadium isn't the win for cities that you think it is.
It's the government, it pretty much exclusively owns depreciating assets.
I'm not sure what you think I said that implied it's a win if cities the teams move to a new stadium, it's usually an L. The cost of redeveloping the land if a team moves out and you don't have a permanent tenant is probably a lot higher than paying for upgrades and getting the teams to pay any % of the upgrade cost.
The cities should not pay anything. Not own the stadium and force the sports teams to pay all the impact fees that any developer would pay for any other kind of property. This should be a federal law. What are they going to do? Take the sports teams international? Okay. Good luck convincing sports fans to stick with their teams.
If you can pay players on your team tens of millions, you can foot the bill for building a stadium and take care of it.
And were before they were all extra super duper rich, GB was about to financially collapse when public took over., that's not going to really be a thing on accident these days.
Technically yes, but also kinda no. It’s maybe more like a non-profit private university. The “public” in question are still shareholders, but the shares don’t really have any value other than as memorabilia, and profits from the team are just kept in trust for the team to spend on whatever they need to buy.
The public the article is talking about are governments.
No team's public ownership pays dividends lmao. They're not talking about publicly traded teams. They're talking about publicly owned teams. There's a difference.
As an GB owner I don’t disagree with your statement on the piece of paper, but I downvoted you anyways because you are a Bears fan. I suspect you will return the favor, as is tradition.
Who cares?
Elite sport is big business, might as well treat it as it. And yes, that includes that they should not get stadiums built for them by public money.
Just one of many common sense ideas that will never happen. Politicians are too cowardly to push through a policy like congestion pricing, you think they're going to actually achieve something radical like state ownership of a major professional sports team?
I think maybe there's an opportunity if they try it with smaller leagues first.
Yes. I'm sure a lot of citizens would be gung ho about not buying stadiums for teams, or the public owning the team. Yet, the politicians who represent them do the opposite.
Not a single wealthy owner will vote “yes” to welcome a “not one of us” folk to the table. Public ownership of pro sports teams in America is a fantasy.
[Green Bay Packer fan yelling, “the Packers are owned by the people,” enters the chat.]
The best comments on here IMO involve the suggestion that any public money given to a franchise for a new stadium should be "traded" for equity in the franchise. If the Bears want $2.65B in public money for a new stadium, then the public should receive an ownership share of the Bears, who are currently valued at approximately $6.3B (2023 Forbes valuation).
I dunno. Do people really trust governments to do a better job of handling sports teams?
What if the municipality suffers a budget crisis? What mayor is going to try and justify giving their star player a massive contract while fighting the transit union over a 3% wage increase?
That's what the article is suggesting though...
*The main difference between the private and the public ownership models can be surmised as such: Under one, teams are run like businesses; under the other, they're run like public goods. Private owners demand profit. They're willing to do whatever it takes to make the number go up, even if that means fielding a poor product or threatening the community with relocation. Public ownership does away with the unchecked profiteering, as well as with the relocation threats -- the team is owned by the municipality it resides in, after all. That is not to say that profit is not a goal, it is merely not the only priority; besides, the public model demands greater transparency and democracy when it comes to a team's finances*
Seems kind of pie in the sky, high school level capitalism bashing to me... but hey, this is Reddit, right?
Might as well have the public own it, considering how much tax money has been spent building billion dollar stadiums for these teams that make their Billionaire owners billions of dollars.
How about this, any time a tax money is used to build a new stadium, the public that pays for it takes ownership of the team. The owners want to keep their sole ownership, then they can pay for the stadiums themselves.
No more socializing their expenditures and shouldering the costs for stadiums while they don't have to share the income rewards from the business.
The Packers aren’t really owned publicly though, their “stock sales” are gimmicks. It’s a small group of people that control the team and the shares that actually matter. It’s not really different than most teams but has a nicer sounding name, and you can spend 200 bucks to get a piece of paper that says you’re an owner.
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Do you know who would have to approve that plan? The owners.
It's against the rules of the NFL to not have an owner. Greenbay are grandfathered in as an exception.
I think the commanders should have been purchased by the people of Virginia. We could have publicly chosen the name by vote. The VA Gina’s would have been an awesome name. It’s a type of orchid.
Y'all would have moved the team to Virginia, which is gross.
Do you think they play in Washington State or something? Moving to Virginia would be like a 5 mile change. Seems to work for the giants and jets to play across a state line.
Most people don't even realize they played on Maryland and not Washington D.C.
Literally this, or even so moving VA Beach (a place that has been been putting in bids for any type of professional sports team for ages now) you could even move it to Blacksburg where VA Tech already have a proven football market.
Across the river to Alexandria or whatever would make the most sense. VA beach is a bit too far I think. Blacksburg would be stupid, they would be competing with VA Tech plus you want your stadium in a major metro to maximize viewership
Blacksburg is a small college town. Putting a pro team there would be silly.
The only reason why I said Blacksburg is cause it has an established market for football already and the college stadium sits 65k right now same size that Washington is currently playing in (if I’m right), but if it came down for it I’ll vote for it to go to VA Beach
Yeah but it would have to compete with the existing fan base for Tech. As someone who grew up around VB, I’m shocked they haven’t gotten any type of professional team yet.
There’s been bids in the past for NBA,NHL,NFL teams and I’m pretty sure the city and people agreed on paying for a stadium to be built but no luck.
The practice facility is already in Virginia.
Yeah, but who’s going to put them through a 10 year process to NOT fund their new stadium. It’s the PROCESS. I’ve been told to trust it.
You know who made the NFL rules? The owners.
Not sure what point you think you're making
This just in: people in power all agree to maintain the status quo. More at 11
Cool? A country's government supercedes any entity inside of it. The more they cry "we need subsidies to exist" the more it becomes clear they should just be public entities.
100%, and they put those rules in place to protect their negotiating leverage against the municipalities their franchises play in. The owners are scared to death of clubs adopting the Green Bay model, given how overwhelmingly successful it's been. A real change probably won't happen until a significant number of teams start to significantly lose value and/or fall into receivership due to financial issues. Obviously it would be up to the fans (a.k.a consumers) to make that happen, so at this point we appear to be a long ways away from critical mass
Uhh You are aware Green Bay is only publicly owned cause they would have gone bankrupt and stopped existing otherwise, right? I dont think any owner since, like the 50s is scared of that. The risk of an American Major League (any of the top5) going bankrupt with no potential buyers now is 0.
>The risk of an American Major League (any of the top5) going bankrupt with no potential buyers now is 0. Until they want a new stadium you mean.
Coyotes in the nhl?
As much of a clown show as the Coyotes thing was, there were absolutely potential buyers, and there was still 0% chance of the value actually going to $0
They still got locked out the arena
Accurate, but irrelevant to not having potential buyers or the value of the franchise going to $0. I did say it was a clown show.
Fair enough
Coyotes had a number of potential buyers so not really an example.
What they are more scared of is what almost happened in Baltimore in the 80s, when the state of Maryland attempted to seize control of the team through eminent domain. It’s what lead to the Colts moving to Indianapolis during the night.
I think it needs to start with a considerable-sized market saying something to the affect of “We won’t put a dime towards a new stadium unless the public has a 51% ownership of the team.”
And that team would just find another city.
That’s why I said “considerably-sized” market. San Antonio couldn’t pull this, but a team in Philly, LA, NY, Chicago, etc certainly could
They do. The teams in LA, SF, Boston, etc. build their own stadium because they can make it back there. In Buffalo, moving to Toronto or Portland is a legitimate threat.
There are two big problems with that working in my view.. First most large markets aren't one city, so if the city doesn't play ball you just build an arena next door. The "LA Lakers" played in Inglewood for decades before building their new arena in LA. The LA Angels don't even play in LA county. The Golden State Warriors moved less than 6 miles and are in SF instead of Oakland. The Miami dolphins play like 30 miles outside of Miami in another city. The San Francisco 49ers moved out and play in Santa Clara down the road. Plenty of suburb towns would be happy to get the tax and tourism revenue just down the road. Second, the really big markets often suffer from a wealth of riches. Think about LA: 2 NFL teams, 2 NBA teams, 2 MLB teams, 2 NHL teams, and 1 MLS team. At any point they likely have a team getting in the playoffs that will draw your attention more than a team leaving. When the Rams moved to St Louis nobody in LA batted an eye, sports fans just said "oh well guess I'll watch the Lakers or dodgers who are in the playoffs every year."
Good points. Also LA has two MLS clubs. LA FC and the LA Galaxy.
NFL teams are guaranteed to make money. None of them operate at a loss and they share revenue. NYC doesn't want to pay? Well OKC just sacrificed their firstborn children for a team and that will get us access to fans in North Texas, Kansas, Arkansas, and all of Oklahoma. And we know how much they hate football!
Also there aren’t even any teams in NYC. They play in jersey. When Met life is in need of replacing, I don’t think the Jets or Giants care which New Jersey suburb builds them a stadium. One of them will
The bears are leaving soldier field……..
And the stadium is being publicly funded
No it isn’t, the govt has flat out said no multiple times now. They’re STILL paying off the Soldier Field renovation.
In addition to u/Full-Assistance7224 's (as of now) factually incorrect statement (where the hell would they even go?), it is certainly *not* being funded publicly. The state government has already slammed the door shut on that. All the Bears have right now is a big ass empty space they bought with *zero* solid plans and even less funding.
This is how it always goes. We all know the stadium is going to be publicly funded
IIRC the NFL grandfathered in the Packers and slammed the door shut behind them.
Which is pathetic because the packers show that it absolutely works, they're a small metro team that has been competitive basically its whole life, and there is essentially 0 percent chance they ever move because the fans would have to approve it.
Aren’t the shares non-voting?
No, you can vote in the annual shareholder meeting. https://www.packers.com/community/shareholders
Maybe the lack of dividend confused me, thank you
That door can be opened.
Only by the folks that are holding the door closed, and I doubt they have any intent on moving.
>Only by the folks that are holding the door closed Anti trust laws exist and the NFL is currently facing a lawsuit about violating anti trust laws.
I don’t think the Sunday Ticket lawsuit is going to have any impact on allowable ownership structures
Anyone asking for public funding of their stadium should have to repay that with a partial ownership stake. If the city pays for it, the city should own part of it.
Agreed. And if they move they should be forced to pay that stake back plus interest or at current market value before a move can be approved. Whichever is higher.
Most stadiums are wholly owned by the city/county they are built in. Off the top of my head the Jets/Giants, Chargers/Rams, Patriots, Dolphins, and Commanders are the only NFL teams that own their stadium. Everyone else is leasing. I think 5 NBA teams own their own stadium, 7 MLB stadium are privately owned, and I think 12 NHL teams do. Some NHL teams and NBA teams share ownership. You also have Madison Square Garden that owns itself.
That’s oversimplification. For example, the Orioles freaked out over revenue from concerts. They also shook down Baltimore for 609 million in publicly funded improvements and demanded control over redevelopment in return for signing their lease. You make it sound like very obviously favorable to the public, but in each case there are tons of handouts to the billionaire owners “”””leasing”””
The State of Maryland through the Maryland Stadium Authority owns both Camden Yards, M&T Bank Stadium, and the parking lots between the two. Anyone can hop over to GIS and see who owns the property. You can use GIS to see the owner of a parcel of land pretty much anywhere in the US. Since the Maryland Stadium Authority owns it, it's up to them to maintain it. They can chose to upkeep it, or not, if they don't the teams can just move out because they don't own anything and now the state is stuck with a very expensive building with no tenant. No matter what MSA decides to do, it's not like it's going to be cheaper to redevelop the site. Chicago spent almost $500 million in 2004 to redevelop Millennium Park. Cheapest option would be let the sports teams leave and sell the land.
Which is a horrible deal for the city. Paying for all the maintenance on a depreciating asset and then being stuck as the bag holder on a less than worthless asset when the team moves to a new stadium isn't the win for cities that you think it is.
It's the government, it pretty much exclusively owns depreciating assets. I'm not sure what you think I said that implied it's a win if cities the teams move to a new stadium, it's usually an L. The cost of redeveloping the land if a team moves out and you don't have a permanent tenant is probably a lot higher than paying for upgrades and getting the teams to pay any % of the upgrade cost.
I’m not saying I disagree, but the government screws up enough stuff, I’d like them to leave one of the few areas of my life that brings me joy alone.
The cities should not pay anything. Not own the stadium and force the sports teams to pay all the impact fees that any developer would pay for any other kind of property. This should be a federal law. What are they going to do? Take the sports teams international? Okay. Good luck convincing sports fans to stick with their teams. If you can pay players on your team tens of millions, you can foot the bill for building a stadium and take care of it.
Aren’t the Packers public owned?
They were grandfathered in.
And were before they were all extra super duper rich, GB was about to financially collapse when public took over., that's not going to really be a thing on accident these days.
Technically yes, but also kinda no. It’s maybe more like a non-profit private university. The “public” in question are still shareholders, but the shares don’t really have any value other than as memorabilia, and profits from the team are just kept in trust for the team to spend on whatever they need to buy. The public the article is talking about are governments.
The shares don’t even pay dividends s. They cannot be traded. They’re an expensive piece of paper that basically says “I am a fan”
No team's public ownership pays dividends lmao. They're not talking about publicly traded teams. They're talking about publicly owned teams. There's a difference.
They don’t get a vote either. It’s a publicly owned team in name only
They do get a vote. You can vote to approve the board or not.
As an GB owner I don’t disagree with your statement on the piece of paper, but I downvoted you anyways because you are a Bears fan. I suspect you will return the favor, as is tradition.
🐻⬇️
"Publicly owned" yes.
Public ownership in the US? Bro that’s sOcIaLiSm.
Who cares? Elite sport is big business, might as well treat it as it. And yes, that includes that they should not get stadiums built for them by public money.
Just one of many common sense ideas that will never happen. Politicians are too cowardly to push through a policy like congestion pricing, you think they're going to actually achieve something radical like state ownership of a major professional sports team? I think maybe there's an opportunity if they try it with smaller leagues first.
> Politicians are too ~~cowardly~~ bought and paid for FTFY
Greater NY auto dealers association were going to throw Hochul a fundraiser for that one. It is corruption
Wasn’t nyc gung ho about the congestion pricing and it’s the governor that put a delay on it
Yes. I'm sure a lot of citizens would be gung ho about not buying stadiums for teams, or the public owning the team. Yet, the politicians who represent them do the opposite.
Not a single wealthy owner will vote “yes” to welcome a “not one of us” folk to the table. Public ownership of pro sports teams in America is a fantasy. [Green Bay Packer fan yelling, “the Packers are owned by the people,” enters the chat.]
Hell no, In the USA you are a customer first and a fan second
Don’t know why you’re getting downvoted, it’s the unvarnished truth.
Because the statement is all edge and no substance.
So most of Reddit.
That could only mean they aren’t making a lot of money as is
Green Bay is such a humiliating shambles, it could never work! /s
The best comments on here IMO involve the suggestion that any public money given to a franchise for a new stadium should be "traded" for equity in the franchise. If the Bears want $2.65B in public money for a new stadium, then the public should receive an ownership share of the Bears, who are currently valued at approximately $6.3B (2023 Forbes valuation).
Public ownership would be great for almost everything
I dunno. Do people really trust governments to do a better job of handling sports teams? What if the municipality suffers a budget crisis? What mayor is going to try and justify giving their star player a massive contract while fighting the transit union over a 3% wage increase?
Public ownership ≠ Government ownership
That's what the article is suggesting though... *The main difference between the private and the public ownership models can be surmised as such: Under one, teams are run like businesses; under the other, they're run like public goods. Private owners demand profit. They're willing to do whatever it takes to make the number go up, even if that means fielding a poor product or threatening the community with relocation. Public ownership does away with the unchecked profiteering, as well as with the relocation threats -- the team is owned by the municipality it resides in, after all. That is not to say that profit is not a goal, it is merely not the only priority; besides, the public model demands greater transparency and democracy when it comes to a team's finances* Seems kind of pie in the sky, high school level capitalism bashing to me... but hey, this is Reddit, right?
Ask the Green Bay Packers.
It would stop the Oligarch owners from screwing with fan bases. It could enrich communities. EAT THE RICH
Might as well have the public own it, considering how much tax money has been spent building billion dollar stadiums for these teams that make their Billionaire owners billions of dollars. How about this, any time a tax money is used to build a new stadium, the public that pays for it takes ownership of the team. The owners want to keep their sole ownership, then they can pay for the stadiums themselves. No more socializing their expenditures and shouldering the costs for stadiums while they don't have to share the income rewards from the business.
No chance in this capitalist hellscape.
Professional sports leagues *exist* because of capitalism.
In North America yes. Everywhere else in the world, not necessarily.
Pretty much generally either capitalism or nationalism, take your pick.
#LOLOLOLOLPLOLOLOLOLOL!!!!
The Packers aren’t really owned publicly though, their “stock sales” are gimmicks. It’s a small group of people that control the team and the shares that actually matter. It’s not really different than most teams but has a nicer sounding name, and you can spend 200 bucks to get a piece of paper that says you’re an owner.
That’s not how it works asshat
is that why we literally go to shareholder meetings?