The Cincinnati stadium deal is up in 2026.
Could the National Football League put a second team in Chicago? Chicago once had two NFL franchises but that ended in 1959 when the Bidwill family decided to leave town for St. Louis. But an NBC sports analyst Mike Florio thinks the ownership of the Cincinnati Bengals franchise should just pick up and leave Cincinnati and head to Chicago and help the McCaskey family’s Bears ownership in its attempt to build a stadium in either Chicago or the Chicago suburb of Arlington Heights. The Bengals franchise ownership’s stadium deal with Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Ohio, ends in 2026. The sides are negotiating but the talks seems to be moving at a snail’s pace and Bengals business Vice President Katie Blackburn said “We could, I guess, go wherever we wanted after this year.”
The McCaskey family would like to leave its present Chicago home stadium for a spot located in the present home stadium’s south parking lot or move to team to Arlington Heights where the McCaskey family has enough property for a stadium-village. Illinois politicians have not been impressed with the McCaskey’s want of over a billion dollars’ worth of taxpayers’ money to help pay the cost of a stadium and surrounding businesses. In Cincinnati, what to do with the stadium is a complex question. For instance should Hamilton County, Cincinnati and Ohio taxpayers kick in to help fund the cost of putting a dome on the stadium? That is one concept that Hamilton County officials are discussing. The cost of putting a lid on the stadium? Roughly one billion dollars. Cincinnati and Hamilton County officials claim they are ready to negotiate. But there have been a number of years of negotiations. Back in Chicago, Bears ownership had hoped to have a shovel in the ground by now and that has not happened. The stadium game continues.
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