How much does Richmond owe Washington’s NFL team?
The City has a deal with Washington’s NFL team, and the money we’ve made from the training camp hasn’t been enough to cover our end of it. Here’s a handy and sobering graph!
Photo by: Sky Noir
It’s nearly August, and that means professional footballers from the nation’s capital will soon fill the state’s capital (that’s us!), cramming themselves into the normal-sized-person chairs of restaurants and bars as NFL training camp season begins. Now in its third year, Richmond’s Training Camp has already twice fallen short of its $500,000 in required “local contributions.” This past February, the city stroked a $285,538 check to Washington’s NFL team to make up the difference.
There’s certainly not enough data yet to make statements about trends, but we can look at those local contributions over the past two years, and what’s left on Richmond’s balance sheet for the coming five years.
A couple of notes: Richmond was on the hook for $500,000 for each of the seven years of the contract. The shortfall from the first year ($286,110) was spread across the remaining years, making each annual obligation moving forward $547,685. The city can count some of its expenses and in-kind contributions towards the $500,000 (e.g. volunteer hours). These numbers come straight from the Economic Development Authority of the City of Richmond (terrible website alert).
This past February, Graham Moomaw at the RTD penned a great recap with a lot more details. And you can find the full schedule training camp schedule here–things kick off tomorrow.
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Ross Catrow
Founder and publisher of RVANews.
Notice: Comments that are not conducive to an interesting and thoughtful conversation may be removed at the editor’s discretion.
Kind of silly that you won’t use the term Redskins when you refer to the team, but instead use “Washington’s NFL team.” I understand the whole controversy over the name. And using Redskins in print or saying Washington Redskins does not make you a racist. The controversy is between the team and those legitimate groups that oppose the name. In my opinion your blog, as well as other quasi- and traditional media outlets, should report the news rather than take a stand against the name. If you are so concerned about potentially offending people by using the term Redskins as it pertains to the “Washington NFL team”, perhaps you should just avoid publishing blog posts about the team all together.
500K is pocket change compared to the $76 million in media coverage the Redskins generated for the City. Haven’t you heard there were 7 billion unique visitors! We’re practically swimming in tax revenue as a result of all that publicity. It only took 5 months from announcement to city council approval, a year to build, a couple of trees, and $10, sorry, $11 million in tax dollars. Don’t forget the 40 million in private investment that’s coming any day now….
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dc-sports-bog/wp/2015/07/29/no-every-person-on-earth-did-not-read-about-the-2014-redskins-training-camp/
http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2014/mar/04/dwight-jones/mayor-jones-says-redskins-training-camp-deal-gener/
http://rvanews.com/sports/mayor-vows-investigation-after-trees-razed-on-redskins-site/61457
I am still baffled as to how our fair city can shell out this many clams (clams we clearly don’t have) while our schools are literally falling apart.
@chris: The beauty of being an independently owned online magazine! While it’s still newsworthy and we’re not against the team per se (some of us are really into it, in fact), we just don’t feel comfortable saying the name. It’s a gross word and just because they say it, doesn’t mean we have to say it. So it is our policy not to.
Echoing what Chis said. The team’s name is the Redskins. See, nobody died.
Chris, you’re right on the money with your analysis. Some five million people live up in NOVA, DC and Maryland. It’s low hanging fruit and 3 or 4 weeks out of the year we are featured on every evening news broadcast, sports radio and newspaper. It’s low hanging fruit and we do a piss poor job marketing to these folks. We should be doing everything we can to tie into the DC market including affiliating the Squirrels with the Washington Nationals. We can say that, can’t we?
Regarding the Redskins’ name, hear hear to chris!
Thank you, Hayley.
You will notice how some of these commenters just want to keep on chasing tourist dollars, never mind the opportunity costs. Promises that these public investments in private enterprises will make a return to help with true public priorities never come to fruition. These ‘cheerleader’ commenters should be ashamed of themselves.
The local media should not trust the false numbers coming from City Hall, its Economic Development department, or any other corporate welfare ‘booster’. It should be doing more investigating and reporting on the losses from Venture Richmond, Center Stage, and the Redskins camp so that citizens can see what the true costs are.
(What is positive? Careful stewardship for the PUBLIC James River Park is paying off handsomely, with more and more people coming to enjoy the system and what NATURE has to offer. Let’s protect it from inappropriate development and crass commercialization.)
Richmond needs to extract itself and forcefully reject these neoliberal, corporate welfare scammers in order for it to reach its real potential..
Ha, Paul Hammond, you should go back and read Chris’s analysis again, more slowly! Without cheerleader goggles, and with sense of humor operational.
Schlep, you have a point, but whatever Chris’ intentions, the fact remains thar’s gold in them thar’ tourist dollars and media coverage. Our most lucrative tourist markets are the surrounding counties and the NoVA market. Many of these people, young, old and families travel to Richmond to eat in our restaurants, stay in our hotels (3 new ones coming online soon downtown) and support local businesses and jobs. Even Scott knows the value of tourism, though he conveniently forgets it at times. These people are coming in trains, planes and automobiles and there’s a lot more where that come from. We are about to be flooded with them for the bike race. The Folk Festival will draw tens of thousands more, most from outside the City limits where 80% of our population lives. Whatever reason they come here, once here they are likely to come back and visit our parks, historical sites and world class restaraunts. Ignoring this lucrative market is a true opportunity cost.
We seem to forget the sweetheart deal made with the hospital for the almost free lease on the school @ Patterson and Libbie. Not that the school system needed any more money from a possible sale of the site and building. Lots of hidden costs here.
REDSKINS REDSKINS REDSKINS REDSKINS
I wonder how the county that previously hosted them is doing without such a godsend?
Anyway, I hate this deal, it is grossly stupid. And I’ll try to make as many practices as I can, already have tickets for August 8 to see the Texas team.
Susan Hawson, saying “…we’re not against the team per se (some of us are really into it, in fact), we just don’t feel comfortable saying the name. It’s a gross word…” Makes no sense. …completely contradictory. That would be like me saying “I don’t dislike sushi, but eating raw fish wrapped in seaweed is gross.” You are clearly “against” the team name if you won’t use it…so I reiterate, why not just refuse to publish blog posts about the team rather than making backhanded political statements? I don’t think the RVAnews.com readers would miss this (or any other Redskins related blog post).
@chris
Are you really equating the use of a racial slur to eating sushi? what? They don’t have anything against the players or the fans or football. Just the team name, which many find offensive. Makes perfect sense if they don’t want to use the name.
peter – no I was not equating a racial slur to eating sushi…perhaps you should re-read what I wrote. Its pretty clear what I what my analogy was. Susan said, to paraphrase, we don’t have a problem team, but we find the name disgusting. My response: that doesn’t make sense. If you find the team’s name disgusting, then you clearly have a problem with the team…its name. My analogy was that would be similar to me saying I don’t dislike sushi, but I find it disgusting. Not sure where you picked up that eating sushi was “equal” to using a racial slur. But that is clearly not what I had said. Again my point is that it seems silly for RVANews to take a stand against the teams name. If they have a problem with the team or its name, they ought to just not post on the blog about it. Personally, I don’t think that the term Redskins is any more a racial slur than (Cleveland) Indians, (Atlanta) Braves, (Chicago) Blackhawks, (Florida State) Seminoles , or the name of our 46th state, Oklahoma.