A couple days ago, Trump was holding another big rally here at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, home of the Dallas Mavericks. The Mavericks who are owned by Mark Cuban, no fan of Trump.
Days before that, Trump was rallying his base at the Target Center in Minneapolis. Target, presumably, isn’t a corporation in favor of Trump.
Ditto for dozens of major stadiums or convention centers where Trump has hosted his rallies- places like Toyota Center, Amway Center, etc. Why haven’t the business entities or owners of these places objected to Trump holding an event there? There seems to have been no pushback by Trump opponents against corporations who agree to let Trump hold his rally, either. (For that matter, no pushback against the Cleveland Cavaliers for allowing Trump and the GOP to hold their presidential-election convention in the Quicken Loans Arena in 2016.)
I’d like to see actual attendance numbers. Like they announce at baseball games.
As for how it’s paid for/promised to be paid for, I’m going with: Trump, credit, bankruptcy, creditors, lawyers, people who got stiffed. You know, the usual.
I always figured that the arenas sold enough concessions to turn a profit on the deal in addition to the rent. The security would be the local police’s problem and they’ll likely get stiffed by the campaign, which doesn’t matter to the arena. It’s probably tempting to sell MAGA hats at $8 each or 2 for $20.
Tickets are free, so I don’t know how the profit/pulling works for either Trump Co nor the stadium owners.
As for attendance, I saw a news story after the Min. rally that revealed an unexpected but curious fact: A lot of people are who go to these things are self proclaimed “groupies.” Many people interviewed follow the rallies around.
One couple of retirees said they bought a motor home and just follow Trump’s rally train around the US.
“This is our 52nd rally,” they bragged.
So there’s a non-negligible contingency of rally-goers who are not locals and are literally at every rally.
In both those cases the arena is owned by the city and its taxpayers, Target and Cuban only own the naming rights, and presumably those rights don’t extend to who can and cannot use the facility.
Can they bitch about who uses it? Of course. But why wade into that quagmire as a corporation or entity when the backlash could lose money and doing it as an individual accomplishes the same thing with less risk.
His campaign threatened to sue for breach of contract.
I guess these places have no experience dealing with politicians. If they don’t require payment up front they may never get paid. When the election is over the campaign committee may be broke or in debt, there’s no way to collect.
He had a rally either here in Tucson or up in Phoenix during the election and didn’t pay. News stations here in Tucson refer to this during some stories
I despise Trump but the tradition of not paying the bills by a campaign certainly didn’t start with Trump. I don’t have a cite handy (perhaps The Making of the President 1964) but the Johnson campaign had to pay in advance for a block of rooms at a hotel because they’d been stiffed by the Kennedy campaign in the past.
As far as arena scheduling goes, I did work a job like that for a short time. Although my experience is out of date, I doubt much has changed. Campaign rallies are generally scheduled on fairly short notice, think of it as getting last minute hotel rooms. An arena starts scheduling things a year or so in advance for major concerts and other events and then they’ll get the schedule for whatever sports teams they host probably 6 months in advance, making sure they work around events already booked. For years, the Blackhawks and Bulls had a long road trip because of the circus coming to town.
So, political rallies can fill in the empty days like the last minute hotel rooms that would otherwise go unsold. It also keeps the workers working for the various groups that provide the parking, concessions, and janitorial services. Plus, keeping events at the arena can help justify the naming rights since they’re reaching an audience that might not necessarily tune in for basketball but love the political candidate giving the rally.
Just ocurred to me that also, depending on the jurisdiction if the arena is a *public *property and the event is political there may be equal access policies in place that don’t let them impose on the Trump team different conditions than on, say, Buttegieg’s or say “no, sorry, we’re booked solid” to Trump in the morning and then in the afternoon book Warren for that same date.
(A privately-owned facility may be another story… *if *they figure it’s less trouble than ticking off a notorious nuisance litigant who has access to the heads of the IRS and the Anti Trust Division).
And yes, campaigns of all political bents and levels have been known to stiff venues and vendors. That this one candidate has made that behavior a banner of his way of doing business for a lifetime, is just an egregious special case. Campaign committees often end up insolvent at campaign’s end having blown everything on the final push, or run into cash flow crises during the run due to unpredictability of income. Radio/TV ad buys require payment by air time from everyone, IIRC, so often you’ll feel you have to prioritize your cash-on-hand there (and even then the check may bounce if they’re not quick enough).
Great. Trump is basically the Jerry Garcia of aging white grievance.
Even if I liked Donald Trump, even if I agreed with everything he said and thought he was doing a bang-up job as America’s bigliest and bestest president of all time, I couldn’t imagine how that could possibly be any fun. Watching him blather on for hours at a time, making the same “jokes,” the same taunts, the same boasts, again and again and again… how is that not torture?
It’s just like the people who would watch Rocky Horror over and over. They get to yell along and cheer. They get to hang out with other regulars and like minded people. It would be fun as hell if you loved Trump.