Although they’re always at risk for rain when they play in Miami and Tampa, and I assume they’re going to stay in the Super Bowl rotation
Fair point, though I think that SB XLI (Bears-Colts, Miami, 2007) was the only game which was substantially impacted by rain. A renovation to Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium in 2016 added a canopy over the seating area, which was apparently a prerequisite from the NFL for Miami to be considered for future Super Bowls, after the deluge in 2007.
There’s definitely winter concerts in these cities but places like the United Center and Allstate Arena seem more than adequate for them. I don’t think there’s huge pent up demand for NFL stadium sized spaces in the off season. Rarely are there shows that big and when they happen they tend to be multi-act festivals which are almost always in the summer.
I simply don’t think there’s a massive demand for 40,000+ seat concerts when the United Center can handle 25,000 in the winter. As a data point, US Bank Stadium in Minneapolis has had a handful of large shows each year but they’ve exclusively been in the summer in spite of the dome.
These points are those always brought up and I doubt anyone is likely to see the books to know the reality here.
I know the Bears don’t own the stadium or the land for Soldier Field, but they also don’t pay much upkeep and the lease is a sweetheart deal that makes their residence practically no cost. I don’t know what the cost sharing looks like for things like security, grounds keeping, and maintenance are but it’s possible that the park district pays much of that. While I’m sure there’s upside to owning the venue, most notably when calculating the value of the franchise in the event of a sale, I’m not convinced it’s a huge net-positive on the annual balance sheet.
4 or 5 big concerts, a Final Four or Super Bowl once a decade, and some random outdoor events in the parking lots don’t seem like they’d generate the kind of revenue you’d need to actually move the needle for an NFL team’s revenues. Sure every little bit helps, but is that 2-3% of the overall team’s earnings?
Maybe it’s prestige, maybe it’s avoiding drama with the city, maybe it’s just about controlling your own destiny. I don’t know, but I’m dubious of off the supposed economic benefits. Let’s face it, it’s not like Arlington Heights wouldn’t have the ability to be a bad host once the ink is dry and the stadium is built. The Bears are a captive audience at that point and a suburb full of NIMBYs might be harder to live with than a big city used to big, noisy events, traffic, tourists and drunken fans.
In the Seattle area, smaller venues such as the Tacoma Dome and previously Key Arena (now Climate Pledge Arena) are used for those things. Climate Pledge Arena is where the Seattle Kraken NHL team plays, and it is planned that if and when Seattle gets an NBA team back, it will play there too. (Key Arena is where the Seattle Supersonics played.) The Tacoma Dome has had minor league soccer and hockey teams in the past but isn’t usually used for sporting events anymore.
T-Mobile Park (formerly Safeco Field) is where the Seattle Mariners play, and Lumen Field (previously known as Centurylink Field, Qwest Field, and Seahawks Stadium) is where the Seattle Seahawks and Seattle Sounders play. I rarely hear of any other events happening at those places, and I’ve never heard of a concert at either one. I think they are just too big and expensive for such events, and not necessary considering other nearby options. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case for every metropolitan area with sports arenas.
Well, again, MetLife Stadium hosts concerts every weekend during the summer. I think it still hasn’t gotten back up to full swing since the pandemic, but there’s a concert pretty much every weekend from now until the NFL season starts. So not every metropolitan area with sports arenas.
(This is, of course, why the natural grass experiment in the early 2000s was such a disaster. Also hosting two NFL teams didn’t help the health of the grass any. Toss in some college games and now you’re literally spray-painting the clumpy dirt green on game day.)
I have recently heard someone connecting the dots of the the last decade of sucktitude for the Giants and Jets to the terrible surface causing more injuries. It’s true that injuries have not been kind to either team.
Fair enough. The NY metropolitan area, and I presume LA as well, probably have a population to support such a thing.
I agree; I don’t think that those would make much of an income difference.
My suspicion (and I may well be wrong) is that the Bears are looking to figure out a way to make their stadium, and related grounds, into an everyday tourist attraction. I could see stadium tours, a Bears Hall of Fame, a restaurant/bar district, and a pro shop, as everyday revenue streams for them.
I had no idea disliking the Browns would be so fun. I was worried when they got Amari Cooper for just a 5th rounder (and his salary looks like pretty good value now given the hyper-inflated WR salary situation). But getting just a 5th (maybe a 4th or 3rd) and having to eat a bunch of the salary for their “franchise QB” is just awesome. I’m not a fan of his attitude, but if injuries were the reason for his drop in performance last year, Baker Mayfield is a better than average NFL QB and is great value for the Panthers. Sorry Beef, but I think I’ll enjoy rooting against the Browns for the near future.
I get it. But one thing that always confuses me a bit - not about football but in general - there were 4 or 5 teams all going after Watson. Why is it that people only hate the Browns for stooping so low? Sure, they actually ended up with him, but it could’ve been any of those teams. It seems weird to hold people blameless when they have the intention to do the exact same thing as the team that you end up hating for it but didn’t manage to successfully pull it off.
I could see that, some sort of Bears Land. They could pull tourists and business travelers from both the city and those staying out by Ohare since it’s basically in the middle.
I think this is the big factor here is that once Virginia passes, the McCaskey’s might just sell the team. And have a huge chunk of land ready for a stadium (that they can’t really afford to build on their own right now) would make the team more attractive.
This wouldn’t surprise me at all. She and her son George (team chairman) have been very hands-off owners, and Ted Phillips (team president/CEO, and not a family member) has been the one largely running the team since George’s brother Michael was stripped of the president role in 1999.
The Browns, and Watson’s agent, deliberately structured the contract to allow for the absolute minimum amount of money lost in the quite likely event that Watson was suspended for the majority of the season. So there’s that. Losing $1 million off that contract isn’t even going to sting.
I got distracted, and didn’t fully flesh out my thought on this.
Virginia is 99; George is probably in his 60s or 70s (finding his exact age online is actually rather difficult). In the wake of the removal of Michael McCaskey as team president, 23 years ago, and the appointment of Ted Phillips, they haven’t, at least publicly, done anything to groom any members of the younger McCaskey generations for a role in team leadership.
And, unlike most current NFL owners, who became fabulously wealthy in other businesses, and then bought a team, the McCaskeys’ family business is the team. Compared to their fellow owners, they likely don’t have deep pockets to draw from.
That may point to a plan to eventually divest themselves of the team, after Virginia is gone.
Yeah, I checked Virginia’s net worth; the higher end of the estimates to renovate Soldier Field would just about wipe her out if she was paying for it herself. You certainly can’t say that about many NFL owners.
Baker has always had talent, but talent only provides a ceiling for a QB. The history of the NFL is riddled with players who failed to live up to their talent for whatever reason.
Mayfield can go one of two ways. Yes, it’s possible that he struggled due to injuries, and it seems that Baker is pretty tough to play through what he did. Which also speaks well for him.
But it’s also possible that 2020 was a blip for him, and it was the outlier. I just think of Cam Newton and how he had that one amazing year (2015) where he won the MVP award, nearly had an undefeated regular season, and led his team to a Super Bowl. The very next year, he suffered a concussion in Week 4, and was later benched for behavior issues. He had almost as many interceptions as TDs and his completion rate was under 60%. His team had a losing season.
He bounced back a bit in 2017 and his team made it to the postseason as a wild card, but lost in the first round. In 2018 and 2019 he had short seasons due to injuries. His career hasn’t improved since.
So, it’s possible that 2021 is an outlier for Baker Mayfield due to injuries, as that can happen to any player. But it’s also possible that 2020 was the one year he shined, and it’s all downhill for him, the way it was for Cam Newton and 2015. Time will tell.
2020 wasnt his only good year, though. He had a very good rookie season (11th rated QB, according to PFF), and was at least average (17th) in 2019. It could just be the fact he had an outstanding running game taking pressure off and a very good offensive line, but he’s been a pretty good NFL QB with a bunch of experience. A 5th rounder for that is a steal.
I guess we have different standards. He hasn’t seemed all that great outside of 2020 to me.
Yes, he had an exceptional rookie year, but it’s hard to judge a player on that. He didn’t even play a full year (his first start was in Week 3 when Tyrod Taylor went out with an injury) and yet broke a record for most TDs in a rookie season. So I can’t argue that he didn’t have a great start to his NFL career, he did.
I don’t consider being 17th of 32 QBs to be “good” though, so 2019 is nothing to be excited about. Let me also mention, in 2019 Baker had 22 TDs and 21 interceptions. In today’s NFL that is dreadful. His QB rating that year was actually worse than his 2021 season. 2020 was the only year where he looked like he might potentially be an elite QB, and those are the stats I keep hearing mentioned this offseason as people speculate where he might end up.
Let me correct myself… Newton was never an accurate passer, that just wasn’t his strength. He only had a few years where he was over 60%. He was under 60% for most of his career. But in 2016, he was barely above 50%. That’s what I should have said.
I’m talking about Newton in the past tense, but he technically isn’t out of the NFL yet. He’s not with a team currently, but who knows, he might at least end up as a backup somewhere.