Some teams pay for most of their necessities themselves. The Los Angeles Rams owner, Stan Kroenke, privately financed the construction of SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, with a total cost close to $5 billion. The owners of the Golden State Warriors paid for their new arena themselves, costing them about $1.4 billion. There are others as well. To be fair, the Rams and Warriors did receive some taxpayer money. But considering how much the owners were putting in themselves, the amount of taxpayer money used could have been so much bigger for those taxpayers.
On the flip side, there are other teams who simply refuse to pay for anything. One such example would be the Arizona Diamondbacks. I don’t think the Arizona Diamondbacks get mentioned enough in discussions involving teams leeching off their local taxpayers. In 1998, the Arizona Diamondbacks began their first season. Their ballpark cost nearly $300 million to build. This was $70 million more than the costliest ballpark at that time, Denver’s $215 million Coors Field. How much did taxpayers kick in? 85% of the cost. Yes, you read that correctly.
In 1995, the Phoenix New Times wrote a story about the future of the Diamondbacks. It is certainly shocking but honest. The Diamondback owners and investors were just concerned about money and that is it. In the article, the team CEO, Jerry Colangelo, looks over the ballpark and “sees 75 luxury suites, each leased at $100,000 per year, generating at least $7 million for the team”. The CEO also “delights in 5,500-plus club seats at a $600 premium for each seat, that kicks in another $3.2 million for Colangelo and Company”. Did I mention that this CEO barely put in $1 million of his own money as a managing partner of the team?
Were owners/investors worried about anything? Yes. The team was worried about how they could “minimize their exposure to construction costs and future maintenance and renovations”. I guess this is why the CEO “put his foot down on extra amenities” like adding additional toilets.
Yet even though this ballpark is barely 20 years old, the Diamondbacks owners want a new ballpark…and for the public to pay for it. Over the years, the team has constantly bombarded local leaders for more and more upgrades to their ballpark. While the city is responsible for substantial repairs to the ballpark, the team is the responsible party if they want to upgrade a TV or something cosmetic. In 2016, Maricopa County refused to pay $65 million that the Diamondbacks requested for “ballpark upgrades and repairs”. The only issue was that all of these repairs were, in fact, cosmetic, such as upgrading suites and a new scoreboard. The lease agreement between the two is clear that the team must pay for those types of things.
For months, the team had cried to the public that the ballpark was falling apart and needed at least $200 million in repairs. Even worse, the team required $8 million dollars just to get the ballpark ready for the upcoming season (at the time). As the AZCentral wrote in a story, even though the team would not shut up about the ballpark requiring substantive steel and concrete repairs, once they got control of the ballpark, the team “has completed no concrete or steel repairs”.
In 2017, the Diamondbacks wrote a complaint to the city by claiming that the following issues were not being resolved by the county:
- Ballpark stands were crumbling
- Parts of the ballpark that hold it up are “deteriorating” and threaten the “structural integrity of the stadium”
- Sound system is so poor that fans can’t “adequately hear emergency announcements”
- Floodlights were rated the worst in the league by MLB
- Scoreboards don’t work
- The ballpark and its video production equipment is “obsolete and unusable”
Eventually, in 2018, an agreement between Maricopa County and the Arizona Diamondbacks was finalized that essentially allowed the team to take over all Chase Field maintenance in exchange for the opportunity to seek a new ballpark at another location. The team quickly fixed all of their issues with their wallet, right? No. What about those massive problems listed by the team? For some strange reason, after the team took over management of the ballpark, “hardly any stadium repairs” were done within the first few years. The team miraculously was able to make the ballpark work to start the next season without the $8 million dollars from the county or any of their other complaints being fixed.
Supervisor Clint Hickman commented that it was strange not to see more repairs completed in the eight months after the team took over:
“But to spend (hardly anything), that’s difficult for me to think about…That proves the point it wasn’t a stadium in danger of falling down like (the team) made it sound during the Diamondbacks’ lawsuit against the county” — Maricopa County Supervisor Clint Hickman in the AZCentral, 02/14/19
Keep in mind that this is the same team that spent 4+ years begging the county to lower their annual rent payments to $200,000 from the current $4.2 million. Even as the team also demanded more and more upgrades to the ballpark.
Then there are the threats. Every few years, the Diamondbacks threaten to leave the area. It has become so tiring to see, and yet we have seen the team do it in 2015, 2017, 2019 and just this year. It always makes the team look good when they complain about a ballpark being “unsuitable for current use” because it isn’t technically “state-of-the-art”. That will always win over the average fan who struggles to pay the increasing prices of attending sporting events.