As Indiana lawmakers consider ways to persuade the Chicago Bears to cross the state line, experts say past NFL stadium deals might offer a few clues to what a Lake County deal could mean for both the team and the state.
Over the past 25 years, 18 of the league’s 32 franchises have moved into new homes, and more are working through the process, with two stadiums under construction. Several others franchises—including the Bears—have benefited from significant renovations.
For nearly half of the new stadiums, taxpayers covered at least half the bill, including a league-high 86% public contribution for construction of Lucas Oil Stadium that began in 2005.
“States have remarkable bandwidth to take on things that are of interest to certain political decision makers and special interests,” said Heywood Sanders, a professor emeritus of public administration at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
“We’ve seen a host of cities that have stepped up in terms of providing financing and facilities for teams when the opportunity arises.”
The Bears previously sought to build a stadium in downtown Chicago directly south of the team’s current home on Lake Michigan, Soldier Field. That project sought $1.5 billion in infrastructure and other improvements from the city and state.
The team also sought—and is still seeking—to build a stadium and 120-acre mixed-use campus in Arlington Heights, a northwest Chicago suburb where the franchise purchased a former horse track property. The team says it will pay for its own stadium there but is asking state and local leaders to contribute $855 million for roads, utilities and other infrastructure—and it wants its property tax bill capped.
But Illinois state leaders have so far failed to act on the proposals, leading the Bears to announce on Dec. 17 they had widened their search for a stadium site to include northwest Indiana. Both state legislative leaders and Gov. Mike Braun quickly threw their support behind that effort, maintaining communication with the team’s leadership and drafting legislation to establish a framework for any deal that might come.
The Bears have called that legislation, Senate Bill 27, a “significant milestone in our discussions around a potential stadium development in Chicagoland’s Northwest Indiana region,” while Illinois leaders have softened their stance some to try to keep the Bears from leaving their namesake city of 107 years.
“We’re not gonna build a stadium for the Chicago Bears,” said Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker last week, who has expressed concerns about wasting taxpayer money on new sports facility infrastructure. “Again, they’re a private business. We have offered to do a number of things, still talking as we always do with the Bears about how best to meet their needs.”
Taxpayer-funded deals
Some teams that have sought deals in recent years have managed to score just as much as what the Bears have asked for from Illinois—and sometimes more.
The Kansas City Chiefs in December announced they plan to jump across the state line from Missouri to Kansas, following a deal for a $3 billion stadium plus a $1 billion training facility and entertainment district that would be part of a second phase. Across the two phases, the state could spend up to $2.8 billion, or 70% of the cost of the development.
In Cleveland, the Browns are eyeing a move to a suburb as part of a messy departure from their longtime home downtown. While the team’s owners plan to pay for about 75% of the cost of a proposed $2.4 billion stadium, the state of Ohio plans to spend at least $600 million on the project.
In both cases, the teams are moving out of their namesake cities in favor of a suburb offering more financial support for their projects—the same situation Chicago is evaluating for its own stadium ambitions.
New stadiums for the Buffalo Bills and Tennessee Titans are already under construction, with the teams receiving 39% and 57%, respectively, of their facility’s funding from taxpayers. Buffalo’s is in the suburb of Orchard Park, while the Titans will continue to play in downtown Nashville.
In September, the Washington Commanders scored a deal for $1.1 billion in subsidies for their proposed $3.7 billion stadium district in Washington, D.C., moving back to their previous site from Landover, Maryland.
Sanders said a taxpayer-heavy model would likely be part of any agreement to bring the Bears to northwest Indiana. But legislation tied to that effort is still in the early stages at the Statehouse after Republican Sens. Ryan Mishler (Mishawaka) and Chris Garten (Charlestown) introduced their framework bill on Jan. 16.
“We are working hard to bring the Chicago Bears to the Hoosier State so they can really see what a great place [it] is to have a business,” Braun said in his State of the State address just one day before that bill was introduced. “We’ll work hard to do it. Let’s get it across the finish line.”
While stadium deals tend to have overlapping financial structures, project elements (domed venues are in vogue right now, particularly for colder-weather cities) and government-participation expectations, the event facilities expert said each deal is “very distinct.”
Sanders also said more teams are seeking greater control of stadium facilities, either through direct ownership, management or a revenue agreement with the facility owner. And the popularity of mixed-use districts surrounding new stadiums continues, because they can help bolster the tax base and drive non-football revenue for the team as well as generate revenue to pay for stadium-related debt.
“There is no question that teams prefer to get public subsidy where they can. The issue is that they can’t always” do that, Sanders said.
“New private development makes it much easier to sell, because that development can generate tax revenues that can offset the development cost of the facility,” he said. “So what we’re looking at is a dynamic of trying to make a new sports facility broadly acceptable, both to area politicos but also to the general public.”
Unpolished legislation
The Indiana bill’s current language proposes creating a sports authority that would own a stadium, enumerates certain management conditions for the property and allows for specific taxes—excise, food and beverage, and innkeepers—to cover the team’s lease payments for the venue.
There are multiple mechanisms at the disposal of state and local government to capture some of that revenue, including a professional sports development area, tax-increment-financing districts and Indiana’s newer Innovation Development District Designation.
The legislative framework doesn’t specify which of those tools, if any, might be employed for a northwest Indiana stadium. But the legislation does allow the new stadium authority to issue municipal bonds of up to 40 years for the project, which would be repayable from rent, insurance proceeds and “any other funds pledged or available.”
The bill also said the team would pay for repairs and operational costs at the facility. During the lease term, the NFL team would have the option to buy the stadium for the cost of the outstanding debt—or for $1 once the project is fully paid off. The team would also keep all the revenue from non-football events.
“A lot of times, these sports, they’re shiny objects,” said Doug Noonan, a professor of public policy at Indiana University Indianapolis. “They grab lawmakers’ attention, and I’m not convinced that the evidence is going to support the importance of retaining or attracting sports franchises for re-electability.
“Pro sports has not been a proven economic development strategy anywhere, so if you’re trying to improve your state’s fiscal conditions, subsidizing an out-of-state pro sports franchise has never been shown to be an effective strategy to helping the bottom line.”
A spokesperson for Mishler, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, did not return a call requesting comment for this story.
Facilities expert Sanders said that without more detail, it’s hard to know whether the bill’s framework is a good deal for Indiana taxpayers. He hopes to see more clarity as the state’s conversations with the Bears evolve.
“We’re talking about an action by some state legislators, so from my vantage point, it’s not clear the depth of the support or financial commitment, and that’s really the serious issue here,” he said.
“It’s an interesting piece of political symbolism to provide some kind of embrace of the Bears with a state-created sports authority, but it’s far from done. And it’s not at all clear the kind of deal that the state will, in the end, be able to offer the team.”
A different animal
The legislation’s provisions to keep the Bears on the hook for any improvements to the facility differs from the deal the state struck with the Colts to build Lucas Oil Stadium.
Since the stadium opened in 2008, the Capital Improvement Board has paid the team nearly $32 million in game-day operational subsidies.
And since 2019, the CIB has also spent $37 million on capital improvement projects, including Wi-Fi upgrades, new turf, a video board replacement and lighting upgrades. It spent $20 million on upgrades before 2019.
The Colts have also contributed to Lucas Oil Stadium’s upkeep, spending about $3.6 million toward video board and production-system updates and paying for a locker-room renovation.
As of Jan. 1, the remaining balance on stadium debt was just more than $463 million, with that debt expected to mature in 2037.
Marc Ganis, owner of Chicago-based sports consulting agency Sportscorp Ltd., said that while the Colts deal could be used as a template for wooing the Bears, shifts in the political landscape and the NFL’s exponential growth since 2005 could limit that agreement’s influence.
“I would expect there’ll be some aspects to it that might be used, because it’s easier for governments to use things that they’ve done before” as a guide, he said. “But I would expect that, because the economics of NFL and sports and government generally have changed so much in the [last] 20 years that there will have to be some significant changes.”
Noonan, the public policy professor, said Indiana’s push for the Bears assumes that an expansive development will complement construction of a stadium—something that is expected to be part of any deal, but with still-undefined parameters.
For a stadium in Lake County, any debt would likely be paid with taxes from restaurants, bars, retailers and hotels venue, making the development of a district surrounding the stadium of particular importance.
The same is true of the team’s Arlington Heights proposal. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has toured sites in both northwest Indiana and Arlington Heights.
Gary has also publicly shared three sites that could be used by the Bears, including two close to Lake Michigan and another adjacent to the Hard Rock Casino. Hammond is also campaigning for the team to move to one of that city’s available sites, although details haven’t been made public.
But while stadium projects in dense downtown areas can struggle to make the math work, it’s nearly impossible to do so in suburban areas, Noonan said.
“If you don’t bring in some other tools and make some other investments, this is likely to be a very impressively concentrated and captured amount of spending [inside the stadium] and may not spread very far,” he said.
“In the normal setup where there is an urban NFL stadium or other big pro sports stadium with a big city developed around it in some form or another, the economic impact of that spending … is [still] generally underwhelming at best.”
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