Some owners are seeking better stadiums.
National Football League owners will gather soon in Orlando to discuss ways of making even more money. That is what the NFL is all about figuring out how to enhance revenue streams. The 31 owners and the Green Bay Packers Board of Directors’ representative will be interested in listening to the Chicago Bears franchise CEO Kevin Warren’s deadline of getting a stadium plan approved sometime in 2024. The NFL bosses probably want to hear more about how Jacksonville elected officials may want to tap the city’s pension fund. Mike Weinstein, who is the chief negotiator for Jacksonville in the talks with Jaguars franchise owner Shad Khan, seems to know where he can find the billion dollars or so that is needed for the project. “If the city and the Jaguars come to an agreement on a renovated stadium, then how best should the city meet its financial obligations? And we’ve got to look at all kinds of possibilities as to what’s the best mechanism for us to meet that obligation. One of them may be the assistance and partnership with the pension funds.”
The Cleveland Browns franchise owner Jimmy Haslam is playing the stadium game and may have land outside of Cleveland available for a stadium-village. But Warren’s bosses, the McCaskey family has land in Arlington Heights, which is a Chicago northern suburb, and Warren has not been able to negotiate a lower property tax for the property and has returned to the negotiating table in Chicago with city elected officials. Haslam might have land but that doesn’t mean his Browns business will be building a stadium-village on the land. In Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Ohio, Bengals franchise negotiators are talking with local officials about extending a lease between the football team and the local municipality. The NFL is all about making exorbitant amounts of money.
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