In 2019, the Anaheim Angels (I will not call them the LA Angels) agreed with the city of Anaheim on an extension to keep the team at Angel Stadium through 2050. The Angels owner, Arte Moreno, was going to buy the ballpark land and several lots around it for roughly $325 million dollars. But then the FBI arrested the mayor for corruption and other problems (including giving the Angels secret information for $1 million in campaign money). Therefore, everyone eventually agreed to just walk away and pretend that this deal never happened. This meant that the 1996 lease would dictate the rules of Angel Stadium unless another deal was negotiated. Presently, the Angels lease runs through 2029, with three three-year extensions through 2038.
Nowadays, the ballpark is over 60 years old and needs substantial maintenance and upgrades. As one Angels blog wrote, Angel Stadium is “far behind” other MLB ballparks. Who is responsible for these upgrades? While the city owns the ballpark, the team is the one “responsible for repairs outside of regular fixed payments”. Sports Illustrated noted how often Angel Stadium is found near dead last in almost all MLB stadium rankings “due to its age, lack of modern amenities, and perceived issues with concessions and accessibility.”
This means that the Angels are the ones who are legally obligated to pay for all major costs of the ballpark. In fact, the lease clarifies the Angels must maintain the ballpark “at a level at least equal to first-class professional baseball stadiums”. The Los Angeles Times recently did a story on this subject and found that the ballpark required “hundreds of millions of dollars of work” just to remain “viable” as an MLB ballpark moving forward.
So the team needs to keep the ballpark as a first-class professional stadium. Does the MLB or NFL or NBA have any documented standard for what that is? Of course not. But other teams have the first class standard in their contracts with their home cities. By my count, there are almost 20 NFL teams with clauses stating stadium standards of first class or state-of-the-art.
Let’s see what just a few of them entail:
Tennessee Titans: The 1996 stadium lease agreement required the county to maintain the Titans current stadium (or soon-to-be former stadium) in first-class condition. Here, first class condition means complying with current laws, the stadium being in “good condition and repair” with “normal wear and tear excepted”, and adding new improvements and technology reasonably “from time to time”…as long as the improvements and new tech perform a “completely new function rather than being a replacement”. The lease also claims that the structure of the stadium must be in first-place condition and that means it must be “generally consistent with the whole of Allegiant Stadium in Paradise, Nevada, Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia, and U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, Minnesota, as comparable NFL facilities”.
Cincinnati Bengals: Maybe the best example of an owner (Mike Brown) abusing the first class condition standard. This agreement has been called the “most fiscally disastrous stadium deal in American history”. Lately, Brown has been demanding almost $500 million from taxpayers for an upcoming renovation of the stadium. This would allow the stadium to have the “new bells and whistles designed to make the stadium first class”. The Bengals routinely and almost yearly spent millions on upgrading anything that he wanted. The Bengals upgraded their perfectly adequate 2016 scoreboard, forcing taxpayers to pay $25 million. In 2016, one estimate had taxpayers giving the Bengals almost $1 billion of taxpayer money, and there were still many years to go. This is done thanks to the Bengals lease stating that if “14 NFL stadiums have something, then taxpayers must buy the Bengals that thing”.
Houston Texans: After losing the Houston Oilers to Nashville in 1997, the city of Houston wanted another team badly. Eventually, they went out and built a stadium in 2002 for their expansion team, the Houston Texans. However, included in this stadium lease was a clause that stipulates the county must maintain the facility in a “first class condition…comparable to other stadiums”. When the Super Bowl came to Houston in 2017, the NFL wanted $50 million worth of upgrades to be done before the game. However, nobody wanted to pay for it, so the NFL released a statement slightly threatening and reminding the county that this upgrade was “common across Super Bowl stadiums” and to make sure the stadium is “state-of-the-art”.
Columbus Blue Jackets: The Blue Jackets have a lease that requires the arena be kept in “first class” condition. The arena’s financing, when the team first came to Columbus, burdened the owners with most of the expenses. But they whined and cried for years about their expenses, and used the threat of relocation to have the lease rewritten with new language. Right after this change, the city gave the team more than $60 million in taxpayer money for construction upgrades. But wait, now it needs $100 million more to address other issues! Hey, the lease says so…pay up. Worse yet, the city would have allocated that money to its general fund, supporting city employees and services. Anyway, here is my favorite part of this story. Why does the team want even more upgrades? Is something wrong with the arena? No, No. You see, according to the owners, they require extensive amounts of taxpayer money because the locker rooms are “not as glamorous as NHL home locker rooms in newer facilities”. Furthermore, the player lounge and training facilities are well-maintained “but not impressive”. Oh my goodness, get these men some money right now!
Milwaukee Brewers: I mention this because it actually happened a little more than a year ago. The owners of the Brewers threatened to leave unless a lot of taxpayer money was used for significant upgrades because of their “state-of-the-art” ballpark clause. Sure, some estimates show that taxpayers have already spent $1.1 billion on the ballpark since it opened in 2001. Eventually, the Brewers were able to get $365 million out of local taxpayers for upgrades thanks to their blackmail relocation tactics. The only thing that taxpayers got from this latest handout was a somewhat promise that the team will play another 13 seasons in this ballpark. But even that is questionable. Even today, nobody knows where exactly this latest $365 million of taxpayer money will go towards upgrading the ballpark. Oh well, no biggie.
Back to the Angels. If we were to adopt the standard that other sports teams employ against their local cities, it seems like the Angels have a lot of upgrading to do if they want their current ballpark to be considered first class. Except, they aren’t and haven’t for years put that much money into the ballpark. In fact, they often complain about the city/state not helping them with construction upgrades. This is remarkable given the lease’s clear wording.
Why is the ballpark so bad these days? Because nobody has made any major renovations to the ballpark since 1997. None. Across town, the Los Angeles Dodgers have spent more than $500 million dollars of the owner’s money on ballpark renovations since 2012. Now, the team claims to have put in “seven times more on maintenance than what’s required under the current lease” yet they refuse to go into any detail or proof of these fixes/upgrades.
Heck, across the street, the Anaheim Ducks of the NHL, also took over the maintenance of their arena years ago and the city has applauded them for consistently putting in money to make the venue better for fans.
“In a phone interview last week, former City Councilwoman Denise Barnes said one of the main differences between the two teams is how well the Ducks take care of the Honda Center and how poorly the Angels maintain the city-owned stadium…Barnes also said the Ducks are better to the city than the Angels…’They’re very friendly, very communicative with the community and nonprofits in any way that they can. They’re one of the best partners I’ve seen for our city, being so big and being ambitious to see us blossom and grow,’ she said. ‘The Angels not so much‘.” — VoiceOfOC.org, 09/2024
This topic appears to be insanely straightforward in that the Angels need to be held to the same standard as sports teams holding their cities when the government handles the facility. However, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to see some local leaders appearing to give the team ways out of their lease agreement. Others suggest the ballpark is, in fact, a first-class ballpark right now. One City Councilman told a local media outlet that the lease agreement to him seemed “vague” and that he believes the team has “met its obligations”. Which the team itself seemed to disagree with when it told the city years ago that the ballpark needed $150 million in immediate upgrades. Oh, and that the team “wants the city to help pay for it”.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the Angels admit that the ballpark now requires “easily double” that $150 million figure now. But haven’t the Angels been spending money to fix up their ballpark over the years? No. Not at all. A city report showed the Angels’ minimal spending on the ballpark since 2002. The Angels have spent $42.2 million out of their own pocket to make ballpark fixes and upgrades. These days, local leaders are slowly realizing what is happening. Last year, multiple legislators urged state auditors to look into whether the Angels violated their lease.
