$309.2m

[Whatever]

(07-28-2021, 01:44 PM)Wes Mantooth Wrote: Mike threatened to move to Baltimore, not Cleveland.   I would like to read up on how Hamilton County screwed Mike on Riverfront.  I don't remember that.  A link to a story would be nice to catch up on this.

As far as the revenue, you act as if the Bengals are on an island.  They're not.  You can look up the revenue and see that there's an absolute ton of teams jumbled up.  In 2019, over half the league had total revenues that ranged from 380 million and 450 million.  You'll see tons of big names like Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Indy, etc all within a hair of the Bengals.  And that's just a snapshot in a down year.  In 2007 for example, we ranked 20th.  I would imagine if you could comb through each and every year since PBS was built you'd see our number move around quite a bit, usually ranging from 20-30, and usually jumbled up with many of these same teams.

And we all know what revenue is, right?  What about expenses?  Do you think there's many teams out there with less expenses than the Bengals?  How many teams have the stadium expenses we do?  Do you know how much money the Bengals have saved on the operating costs of PBS?  The last number I saw put county spending in the hundreds of millions just for the upgrades and maitenance.

You can't use revenue to explain not being able to spend more on the front office and for a practice facility.  That would only be true if we were always dead last, and our number was a fraction of everyone else.  But that's not the case at all.  We right in the mix with over a dozen other teams, and nothing is preventing them from spending in these areas.  And many of them don't enjoy the perks of a lopsided stadium deal either.

You can find some details here, literally the first link on a Google search.  The straw that broke the camel's back was the county being late on a payment in '95 but Paul took the county to court numerous times dating back to the '80's.

https://www.cincinnatimagazine.com/article/a-major-league-mistake1/

A continuous problem dating back to Riverfront was the county overpromising and underdelivering because they vastly overestimated tax revenue.  This is just a theory, but it's likely the county went along with PBS and GAB because they siphoned money out of those projects to pay other debts.  You can't tell me PBS is a $450 mil stadium when comparable stadiums in Baltimore and Cleveland were only $200-250 mil during the same time period.  

Both teams in the SB this year had 100% taxpayer funded stadiums.  You cited Dallas as an example of a privately funded stadium, which is somewhat true, but Dallas kicked in over $440 million in taxpayer money.  Las Vegas just gave the Raiders what many are calling the worst stadium deal ever with $750 million in taxpayer money.  I think you need to do a lot more research into who pays what for what.

You do realize that a lot of teams have indoor practice facilities paid for either largely or entirely with taxpayer money, right?