Courtesy of Chicago Bears
Chicago Bears President and CEO Kevin Warren said the mixed-use district surrounding the team’s planned Arlington Heights stadium will host youth sports events.
The Washington Commanders — owned by Unrivaled Sports co-founder Josh Harris — recently pledged $20M toward a youth sports facility as a sweetener to get City Council to sign off on their new building/multi-use district on the RFK Stadium site.
And the Denver Broncos have also announced plans to build a new downtown stadium with a mixed-use district. Their announcement did not include any mention of youth sports, but the word “community” was included several times.
There are 30 NFL stadiums.
Nineteen were built between 1995 and 2010, including the Broncos and Commanders (and the Tennessee Titans, who also have a new stadium/surrounding district under construction).
We are going to see a bunch of these projects proposed in the coming years, regardless of whether 30ish years is a reasonable life span for a stadium.
It looks like youth sports opportunities will be a tool that is deployed to secure whatever support — public money or otherwise — necessary to get the job done.
You can no longer threaten to move the team to Los Angeles for leverage and the near-guarantee that new stadium = hosting a Super Bowl is not as big a motivator as it used to be. So you need other carrots.
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