Inter Miami FC seem to get into plenty of fights. Even though Inter Miami was only created in 2018, they have constantly been fighting with the city of Fort Lauderdale, where their temporary stadium is located and the city of Miami, where their main stadium is currently being built building. When Inter Miami isn’t illegally adding seats to their stadium, they are withholding money that is contractually owed to the city of Fort Lauderdale just in the hopes that they can somehow extort steal demand more money from the city. Several times already, Inter Miami has not followed through on a written agreement because the team claims that they made a super-secret deal with some unknown city person at an unknown time and location. Of course, none of these secret agreements are in writing. The only agreements in writing are the ones that state that Inter Miami is liable for the contract terms.
After getting the city of Fort Lauderdale to give them $170 million in taxpayer money along with a “50-year, rent-free lease of city-owned land”, the team was mandated to build a “sprawling park with a playground, dog park, walking trail, fitness area, yoga lawn, sports field, kickball zone and open green space”. Even though the team promised to have the park built by at the latest July 2022, they never built this park and instead used the land for overflow parking during game days, i.e…to make money for themselves.
When the city reminded the team of this contract agreement, Inter Miami had the nerve to ask the city to pay for the park. Why would the team do this? Especially when the lease agreement says nothing about the city paying for the public park? The team claims that during stadium negotiations, an unknown city person at some unknown time gave the team “certain agreements…but not all made it into the written contract”. After some time, the city told the team that they must build the park by July 2023 or else the city will build it and give the team the final bill.
Another time, the city claimed that the lease agreement is clear about the team being responsible for over $1.4 million in “building permit fees”. But the team refused to pay it, and the city threatened not to let them use the land-at-issue for game day parking. Inter Miami claimed that they didn’t owe this amount because of a “handshake” deal by a former city manager that allow the team to get refunded by the city for all permit fees. Granted, this language “never made it into the comprehensive agreement” and also “never got commission approval”. Eventually, a month before Lionel Messi was set to arrive at the club, the team paid the city in full.
But fast-forward to today, and we have yet another issue with Inter Miami and the city of Miami. This time, the city claims that the team has not paid $12.5 million that is owed from the lease agreement. The team agreed to pay $25 million dollars towards park improvements and a public promenade. Yet only half of that amount has been given by the team. Therefore, the city is “withholding the master permit for Miami Freedom Park, the site of the future Inter Miami soccer stadium”.
The Miami Herald got their hands on emails showing just how much the city has been helping the team build the stadium as fast as possible. Construction crews were given an “early start” even though the permit was not in hand. Still, the team has not done anything.
Therefore, the city is putting the team “on notice” over the payment:
“The Miami Herald newspaper has reported that the master permit will not be awarded until the developers provide the remaining $12.5m they owe the city to cover improvements to the park and a public promenade. The report notes that the City of Miami sent $12.5m worth of invoices to a Miami Freedom Park official on January 8. Assistant city manager Asael Marrero told the Herald that the payment was due to be made two days later, the same day the City of Miami provided a permit for the next phase of construction to proceed” — Miami Herald, 01/17/25
Just this week, the former mayor of Miami claimed that even with corruption issues hampering his administration, Inter Miami’s stadium was an achievement for everyone. According to the former mayor, this stadium is “privately funded” and one of the best sports deals ever put together. Inter Miami’s owner, Jorge Mas, has constantly brought up how this stadium would be “funded privately” and “require no public dollars”. The owner also has claimed that this new stadium would “generate almost $43 million per year in tax revenue”. What a deal!
Except, there are just a few problems. It isn’t difficult to see many examples of public money being used on this development. The Miami New-Times wrote a story that discussed this subject and found that “public funds for the project are now being requested”. Like so many other team owners looking to hide the public costs, Inter Milan’s owner does not mention that local taxpayers are, in fact, paying a “substantial portion of the costs…for both the land and construction of the stadium”.
There was the time when the city of Miami begged state lawmakers to “approve $5 million of taxpayer funding for a project to clean up arsenic-contaminated soil” at the site where Inter Miami CF’s 25,000-seat soccer stadium is set to be built.
In August, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis gave Inter Milan $8 million taxpayer dollars through a state grant for the stadium development.
Right before Inter Milan got the $8 million dollars, they also received another $3 million from another state grant that Florida’s Legislature attached into this year’s budget.
Then there are the $300 million dollars in local subsidies that are being given for the stadium development.
And the $70 million given to the team “for site prep and infrastructure”.
Nobody should be surprised at this owner and his team doing things in such a messy and borderline illegal way. When Inter Milan’s owner was pushing and pushing to get his stadium built last year, he forgot to give the FAA a copy of the stadium plans. This is mandatory, and the FAA is required to sign off on it before it gets built. As the Wall Street Journal noted, not only had the FAA not gotten the stadium plans this late in the game, but they had “not even received the proposed heights in order to consider them”. The traffic study that was supposed to be submitted in December 2022 was not finished until a year after its due date.
