Over the weekend, CBS Sports ran an article titled “Seattle City council wants to pull public funds from proposed arena”. In there was a quote from Tim Burgess.
“This deal’s just not doable, at least as it’s constructed today,” says Tim Burgess, the president of the Seattle City Council. “I wouldn’t say it’s dead. But we are not going to go ahead with this arena without substantial changes. And there are no plans right now for those.”
As far as I remember, Burgess has been consistent in this issue, the economics of the MOU need to change to accommodate an NHL first scenario. He has never got into specifics because there are several economic levers to pull to restructure the deal. It could be higher rent, higher surcharges or more guarantees/assurances.
This got me thinking….independent of NBA and NHL, does Seattle really need a new arena. I took a look across the Top 50 Metropolitan Statistical Arenas to determine how Seattle stacks up with other Metro areas and their arenas.
I first isolated the most modern arena equipped to handle major concerts and sporting events that had a capacity over 10,000 within each metro area. For example, for the New York Area, I selected the most modern arena of the 4 in the area, so Barclays Center in Brooklyn. The results may not surprise you.
Most Modern Arenas
The data shows that with exception of Virginia Beach and Richmond Virginia that do not have an arena, Seattle has the oldest primary arena. Maybe the City of Seattle needs the arena more than they are letting on?
For the heck of it, here is a list of all main arenas in the top 30 markets.
Leave a Reply