The arena deal is DOA, but not for the reason you think
So Mayor Mike McGinn, various city council members, and hedge fund gazillionaire Christopher Hansen got in front of the microphones this afternoon and finally unveiled some of the details of the plan the city has been cooking up for eight months to build a new basketball/hockey arena in SoDo.
So much attention is being paid to the financing of the deal (by people who are normally skeptical of such arrangements) and to the prospect of getting new pro teams (by sports fans) that almost nobody is paying attention to the huge caveat in all this: Hansen said today he doesn’t put a shovel into the ground until both the NBA and the NHL agree to locate teams here.
Let me blunt about this. Unless that stipulation changes, everything else about this deal is window dressing, subject to change–and Hansen isn’t likely to change his stipulation without additional financial incentives. That would drop us right back into the public financing muck this deal is meant to avoid.
Neither the NBA nor the NHL is about to expand. Relocation from another city is pretty rare – it only happens about every 5-6 years in a given league. Relocation of both winter sports (or any two sports at all) to the same city at the same time has never happened in the history of North American major men’s pro sports. And both leagues have other cities (Kansas City, Anaheim) with arenas already built that Seattle is competing against for any relocated team. Lastly, of the four major team sports, Seattle is by far the largest market to have only two pro teams – but it would be one of the smallest to have teams in all four leagues. It’s not entirely clear Seattle has an economy strong enough to make both the NBA and NHL want to come and compete not only with the Mariners and Seahawks, but with each other, for corporate, broadcast rights, and ticket and merchandise dollars.
Getting both leagues to agree to move a team to Seattle at about the same time isn’t impossible – but it’s damn near close. It’s encouraging that things have gotten thus far, and that they’ve figured out a model supposedly using essentially private financing. McGinn deserves credit for that. But as outlined today, this deal isn’t happening. The details don’t matter unless both the NBA and NHL play ball, and soon. Don’t bet on it.