This has been rumored for decades. Arlington Park is/was a really nice place to watch horse racing. It burned down in the 1980s and was rebuilt and very classy. Not at all seedy like some other racetracks. Arlington Heights is a nice suburb, and as you say, it’s right on a train line to downtown. Anyway, the horse racing industry has been dying a slow death ever since casino/riverboat gambling came to illinois in the 1990s. It has always been “just a matter of time” before they pull the plug on horse racing. The crowds have been pretty small the 1 or 2 times I would go there per year over the last few years. The race purses were small too. And there’s this nice plot of land underneath the racetrack that could potentially hold a stadium. It’s a big, premium spot, better than anywhere else with any proximity to Chicago.
Soldier Field leaves a lot to be desired. The parking is poor. It’s far from the train stations. It is quite small by today’s standards. The last renovation removed 5000 net seats in order to build more skybox suites. It has no roof which limits its usefulness for most everything else. So it only gets used by the Bears, a handful of big name concerts per year (only acts that can draw 60,000) and very few other things.
The biggest drawback is that the Bears have a lease on Soldier Field through 2033. The 2002 “renovation” disaster was paid for mostly by bonds floated against the future revenue from hotel room taxes. Those bonds have balloon payments coming up this decade, and guess what, there’s no tax revenue coming in from hotel rooms because of Covid. I don’t see how the Bears could buy out their lease. The McCaskeys are rich, but they may be cash poor, as I think the franchise is their only asset. It may be worth 2Billion in resale value, but that doesn’t mean they are netting out huge lumps of cash.
This racetrack is only a few miles north of the SOA home office in Schaumburg.
There’s always a price to get out of the lease.
City of Chicago might be one of those municipalities that think it’s uber-important to keep their billionaires happy at the expense of pretty much everyone else.
And, rest assured, they probably won’t be using any of their own money for the new stadium, either.
They will get $321 million per year in TV revenue for 11 years. Add 70K tickets at over $100 each, times 8.5 home games per season, and that’s another $59 million per season. Minus a salary-capped amount, and other personnel expenses and owners’ interest, and they can get out of their lease. Will they WANT to pay the going price (whatever is left to pay on the bonds) to get of their lease? No, they’re billionaires. They’d rather pay their lawyers for a win.
Rams/Chargers stadium was built on the old Hollywood Park horse track.
I was just looking at the map. The racetrack has loads of room. It is as big as Soldier Field, the 3 Museum Campus (Field, Shedd, & Adler) Plus Northerly Isle Plus Burnham Harbor combined! They could put a top drawer stadium there. It would be nice to get something state of the art after the disappointment that was the Soldier Field reno.
Plus, the 49ers moved into Levi Stadium which is way the heck outside of San Fran proper. So there is NFL precedent.
$100 for a Bears ticket? 1978 called. It wants it’s prices back. Think multiples of that. I just looked some up. Good seats (not great seats) have PSL prices of $22,500 plus $7600 for season tickets per seat. I’m not sure if that is 8 or 9 regular season games this year. Bad seats are still probably about 1/3rd of that price. Chicago is a big city with only 1 team and a stadium that only seats 61,500. Demand is HIGH for tickets, even when the team is mediocre.
I wonder what happens to Soldier Field PSL owners when the team moves out of town. Is there an NFL precedent for that one?
Shows you how long it’s been since I’ve attended an NFL game. (1999, I think.)
Well, there is plenty of precedent for teams moving out of their designated cities:
Detroit moved to Pontiac, then back to Detroit proper.
Miami move to “Miami Gardens.”
Los Angeles Rams: Played at Coliseum until 1980; moved to Anaheim; (moved to St. Louis, back to the Coliseum;) now in Inglewood.
Los Angeles Chargers: moved to San Diego, back to Los Angeles area (El Segundo), now in Inglewood.
New England Patriots were the Boston Patriots prior to moving to Foxborough’s two stadia.
Dallas Cowboys played in the Cotton Bowl until 1971, moving to Irving, and now in Arlington.
NYG and NYJ played in NYC boroughs before playing in two Swamps of Jersey stadia.
Regarding PSL’s: no idea. STL Ram fans have sued over their PSLs being worth diddly squat.
Fair way would be to give current Bears fan the option to buy new PSLs. Yes, buy. Maybe with a discount.
Depends on what “rights” a Bears Soldier Field PSL “owner” has.
Looks like Bill Barnwell’s columns will be off the Insider / Plus hell. The only column about NFL worth reading (for free) imo. If you know of others, I’d like to know.
Ooh, fun might be in store, when the Manning Brothers host Manning Night Football (I need to get to the trademark store for this) on ESPN2, competing directly with the traditional boring ESPN broadcast.
Meanwhile, this decision creates an even greater incentive for teams to choose vaccinated players over non-vaccinated players when trimming the roster from 90 to 53. Although vaccine status technically should not be an issue in deciding whether a player should have a final roster spot, today’s memo creates a plain incentive to keep as many vaccinated players as possible.
I suspect it is what nearly every NFL owner would start with. Total cost is 1.5B and their first offer in the negotiations is to pay none of it.
It’s so unreasonable a start that it mainly suggests to me that they are angling to invite other cities to start making stupid offers.
In any event, it’s the wrong excitement to have swirl around a talented team that wants to make the leap. But the owner probably cares most about being the owner of a more valuable asset.
Jerry’s World
Originally estimated at $650 million, the stadium’s actual construction cost rose to $1.15 billion, making it one of the most expensive sports venues ever built. To aid Cowboys owner and general manager, Jerry Jones, in paying the construction costs of the new stadium, Arlington voters approved the increase of the city’s sales tax by 0.5%, the hotel occupancy tax by 2%, and car rental tax by 5%. The City of Arlington provided over $325 million (including interest) in bonds as funding, and Jones covered any cost overruns. Also, the NFL provided the Cowboys with an additional $150 million loan, following its policy for facilitating financing for the construction of new stadiums.
SoFi Stadium
The stadium was built privately, but the developer is seeking significant tax breaks from Inglewood.
The cost of the stadium project was originally estimated to be approximately $2.66 billion upon the commencement of construction. However, internal league documents produced by the NFL in March 2018 indicated a need to raise the debt ceiling for the stadium and facility to a total of $4.963 billion, making it [the most expensive sports venue ever built]. Team owners voted and approved this new debt ceiling at a meeting that same month. In May 2020, another $500 million in loans was approved by the NFL and the owners.
Probably those locations that can’t really support an NFL team to begin with. If the NFL didn’t have the TV revenue sharing that they do, do you think Buffalo would even have a team?
Las Vegas put up a lot of money to build their stadium but it wasn’t even half the cost. I’m thinking that the Bills owners really just want out of Buffalo but want a reason for leaving. I don’t know how much Buffalo (the city/county/government) can afford but most of the recent NFL stadiums have had significant contributions by the team, often in the form of a loan from the league.