Several weeks ago, the San Antonio Express ran a story detailing how the San Antonio Spurs ownership group, Spurs Sports & Entertainment (SS&E), “owes the city of San Antonio and Bexar County $5 million.” SS&E owes $5M because of a failed 2015 MLS bid. The city, county, and SS&E were all involved in the bidding for a team and signed an agreement stating that SS&E would pay $5M if the bid didn’t produce an MLS team. Yet, to this day, SS&E has not paid for it, nor has the city tried to push the team to pay what is owed to taxpayers. Even so, the city did find time to help pay for a large part of the new $1.3B arena for the Spurs. Thankfully, the new mayor of San Antonio, Gina Ortiz, is now demanding that the team pay the $5M that is owed.
The failed MLS agreement stated that SS&E could repay the city over time, between 2021 and 2028. So far, SS&E has paid $250,000. It then missed every additional payment per the city manager. Why hasn’t the team just paid it? Because they would rather not pay for it, contract or not. The team has tried to get out of paying it several times. As the San Antonio Express found out, SS&E asked city officials to “let it off the hook” for the $5 million payment in 2022. According to SS&E, they shouldn’t have to pay it because they are “not to blame for San Antonio not landing an MLS team.” I highly doubt the contract included language that mandated the Spurs being at fault…so why would anyone care about that excuse? Apparently some city officials did find SS&E’s argument to be credible. In 2022, city officials from a previous city administration agreed to let SS&E off the hook. The city agreed to amend the stadium lease agreement and eliminate the language requiring a $5M payment. Except this deal was never approved by the City Council. This means that “SS&E still is legally responsible for paying the $5 million.”
So that is that, right? Time to pay the amount owed. Of course not. The next day, the team got several of their lapdogs to engage with local media outlets and assert that it would be unfair to make the team pay what they contractually owe the city. The San Antonio Express-News released an editorial claiming that if the mayor forced the team to pay what they owed, it would somehow be an own goal for the city. How exactly? The article insists that the current mayor must be blind if she cannot see that by forcing SS&E to pay the money, she is violating the “spirit of the agreement.”
Let’s touch on the main excuse that SS&E makes for not being responsible for the payment. According to SS&E, the MLS had a “secret agreement with Austin” all the while making San Antonio spend money for a team that was never coming. The problem is that no such agreement ever existed. The situation in Austin was changing quite a bit over the previous few months before they got the MLS team. Initially, Austin was going to get the Columbus Crew team to relocate to them. Then, that deal collapsed after the Ohio Attorney General filed a lawsuit to stop the team from moving. Austin then decided to try to get an expansion team. There was no special agreement. There was no agreement at all since things were constantly changing. Austin just did a better job at convincing MLS that they were the more attractive city. Speaking of doing a better job, I thought it was funny how the Express editorial also included a sentence that stated how “many believed at the time that SS&E didn’t try as hard as it could have”.
I am not sure why, but that phrase “spirit of the agreement” also annoys the hell out of me. Since when have sports teams/owners cared about the spirit of the agreement? Let’s look at how teams have viewed the spirit of the agreement in the past.
Anaheim Angels
Do you remember when the Los Angeles Angels were named the Anaheim Angels? Considering the Angels played in Anaheim, it made sense. Then Arte Moreno bought the team in 2003 and changed the team name to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. He did this because he wanted Los Angeles in the name for business and marketing purposes. But he was also forced to keep Anaheim in the name due to the stadium lease mandating that it be included. The city still sued Moreno, claiming that he was violating the “spirit of the agreement.” Moreno won a jury trial and the appeal. He would eventually take Anaheim off the name years later.
He didn’t give a single thought to the spirit of the agreement.
Golden State Warriors
In 1996, the city of Oakland, California, took out a loan to pay for $150M worth of upgrades to the Golden State Warriors arena. The city and team had signed an agreement that allowed the team to pay off this debt over 30 years. Once the upgrades were finished, the team paid the city $7.4M yearly to pay off the debt. However, when the team announced that they were moving to San Francisco in 2019-2020, the new team owners simply stopped the yearly payments, leaving $40M unpaid. Many were confused at this. The signed agreement plainly states that if the Warriors terminate the agreement before 2027, they owe the city the rest of the debt. However, the team argued that they weren’t terminating any agreement…they were “allowing the agreement to expire.” The Warriors would lose the arbitration ruling and the appeal ruling. As the New York Times noted in a story about this situation…“By the spirit of the agreement, you (the Golden State Warriors) are wrong.”
However, the owners didn’t care. They continued to make every excuse in the book until the state Supreme Court turned them down. They just didn’t want to pay it, spirit or not.
Oakland A’s
Ever since John Fisher bought the Oakland A’s a little over 20 years ago, the team has spent less and less money on their payroll. As Fox Sports noted, the A’s “are notoriously one of the cheapest teams in all of baseball” and are “consistently in the bottom half of the league’s payroll rankings.” What makes this even more incredible is that the A’s play in a large market, have a rich and winning history, and play in a league that has no salary cap. MLB teams like the A’s get financial help thanks to a revenue-sharing system that gives money from high-earning clubs to smaller-market teams. The MLB Players Association then filed multiple grievances that claimed that the A’s were taking the money from MLB and then simply not using it. The San Francisco Chronicle said it perfectly by writing that what the A’s were doing was “clear…maximize team owner John Fisher’s profits by slashing payroll.”
When the first grievance was filed by the MLBPA, it was noted how the A’s were violating the “spirit of the agreement” that the owners signed with the players on the last collective bargaining agreement. The A’s never got punished, nor did they really care about anything apart from when they could relocate to Las Vegas.
Pittsburgh Pirates
Much like Oakland, the Pittsburgh Pirates were given an owner who cares about the bottom line and nothing else. The Nutting family has had ownership interests in the team since 1996. Since then, they have never spent over $100M, nor have they ever put a title-contending team together. A Pittsburgh Post-Gazette report found records showing that since 2007, team payroll “is often covered by ticket and food sales.” In 2001, the Nuttings told numerous media outlets that they needed a new ballpark to financially compete with other MLB teams. Therefore, local officials allowed for taxpayers to fund 85% of the costs of this new venue. Even today, whenever the ballpark needs upgrades, it is the taxpayers who fund almost all of it.
Several years ago, the owner of DKPittsburghSports.com wrote a piece asking whether the Nuttings have in fact violated the “spirit of the agreement” that allowed taxpayers to pay for the new ballpark while getting zero in return. How did the Pirates live “up to their end of a civic bargain”? It cost the Nuttings almost nothing to get a new ballpark; they became billionaires because of this, and they continue to spend almost nothing on a year-in-year-out losing franchise.
Worcester, Massachusetts
The list of other examples is endless. In Worcester, Massachusetts, the city paid for a new ballpark and told taxpayers that the new development around the ballpark would pay for the construction. It didn’t, and the company hired to construct new buildings backed out after agreeing to the deal. The city sent a letter to the company that detailed how the developers were breaking both the letter and “spirit of the agreement.” As of today, the developer does not seem to give a ****.
Dallas, Texas
When the Dallas Cowboys owner, Jerry Jones, wanted taxpayers to help cover roughly 50% of his proposed stadium (though it ended up being closer to 33% due to cost overruns), he had to go through a public vote. This means he had to go to taxpayers and convince them that this would be a worthwhile investment. When Jones was going around the city to get community support, he spoke to a pastor at a local church in Arlington, Texas. To get the pastor’s support, Jones promised that he would hire a “good chunk” of minority workers to build the new stadium. After the meeting between the two, the pastor sent Jones a list of terms about minority contracts that he wanted the Cowboys to follow. Jones wrote back and said that he would “meet or exceed your expectations.”
Before the public voted on whether to give the Cowboys the money, the team signed a “fair-share agreement,” which committed the team to hire “25 percent of the contracting to minorities.” The public voted to give the Cowboys their money, and Jones gave one single contract to a Black firm. The pastor told a local outlet that the “spirit of the agreement has been violated.” Jones never got the memo about wanting or needing to follow the spirit of the agreement.
