Rep. Greg Casar
Progressives on Capitol Hill want to make it harder for professional sports teams to jump to a new city, citing “billionaire” team owners who they say leverage relocation threats for big public subsidies.
The so-called Home Team Act, introduced by U.S. Rep. Greg Casar (D-Austin) and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), would require that sports franchise owners give locals at least a year’s notice before moving to another city.
During that time, the local community would have the right of first refusal to purchase the team, as Green Bay did with the Packers NFL franchise.
“Far too many Americans know the pain of losing a team just so that the owner can make a buck,” said Casar, who cited his own experience losing the Oilers NFL team to Tennessee in 1997 when he was a child growing up in Houston.
“The Home Team Act would have saved the Houston Oilers. The Home Team Act would have kept the As and the Raiders in Oakland. The Home Team Act would make sure that the Spurs stay in my home district, in San Antonio,” Casar said at Thursday’s press conference on Capitol Hill.
A spokeswoman for Spurs Sports & Entertainment declined to comment on the legislation.
The team’s owners just inked a deal with city and county leaders last year to build a new $1.3 billion arena downtown — paid for, in part, by roughly $800 million in public funding.
Spurs owners never publicly threatened to relocate if the deal didn’t go through, but Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai made no bones about that possibility while trying to bring voters on board with using the county’s venue tax for the new arena.
“Even when teams don’t actually move, the threat of moving sets off a race to the bottom,” Casar said. “Billionaire owners pit taxpayers against one another, and then extort the government for billions of dollars.”
[…]
Under Casar’s bill, if a team wants to relocate, its existing community could try to purchase it through a community ownership model. Or, the team could be purchased by a government entity, a nonprofit, a public partnership, or individual or company that would agree to keep it in the same location.
“You could imagine a world where the city has a stake in the team, alongside other partners,” Casar said.
You can see video of the press conference Rep. Casar and Sen. Sanders held here. I see uniforms for the Brooklyn Dodgers, Houston Oilers, Oakland Raiders, and Seattle SuperSonics on the table by the podium. The foam finger is for the San Diego Chargers, but I can’t quite make out whose logo is on the cap. Still, a strong lineup of relocated franchises to illustrate the point.
The Chron adds a bit of detail.
The legislation by Casar and Sanders was not expected to gain much momentum in the Republican-controlled House or Senate.
But the idea of reining in professional sports teams has had bipartisan appeal. In 2022, U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, a San Antonio Republican, filed the Strengthening Public Undertakings for Retaining Sports Act — or SPURS Act for short — that would set up strict requirements for teams to relocate.
State-level Republicans have also expressed frustration with the practice of professional sports teams moving to secure new stadiums and tax breaks. In December Missouri state Sen. Rick Brattin, a Republican, introduced legislation requiring sports teams leaving publicly-funded stadiums to help pay for their demolition after the Kansas City Chiefs announced plans to move across state lines to Kansas.
I could see how this might have bipartisan support. Whether it’s the best approach or not, I’m not sure. I like the basic idea but I don’t know how likely it is that any municipality could get the financing to pull this off. It’s not much of a deterrent if this isn’t a realistic contingency. Maybe that’s addressed in the presser, I don’t know. Surely one of the many economists who have opined on publicly-financed stadia may have some thoughts on this. I’d like to hear them. The Current has more.
I like this. I’ve also advocated for treating the public like other shareholders. If the taxpayers pony up 50% of the costs of a new stadium, then the city and /or county should own 50% and be entitled to a proportional cut of the revenue.
I believe the cap is for the NHL’s Arizona Coyotes, recently relocated to Salt Lake City (and, ironically, were the original Winnipeg Jets, but obviously this only covers US franchises).