Panthers owner demands $650m in public renovation money in exchange for 15-year lease extension (2024)

After four years of talking about how he wanted his 1996-built stadium either renovated or replaced,Carolina Panthers owner David Tepper finally revealed his proposal yesterday, detailing a massive renovation plan that would cost taxpayers — ooh, hang on, are those … renderings?

As with all vaportecture, these need to show happy fans, but happygeneric fans, which means they can’t be facing the camera. This leaves them to express their joy through such time-honored ways as waving huge flags and carrying small children on their shoulders.

Still no views of inside the stadium, but we can see the activity on the “south lawn” (actual lawn not included), where the crowd is much more diverse in ethnic background and age than over on the north side of the stadium. It’s not even clear whether all these people are even going to the game — I’m most interested in the group just left of bottom center who are running so fast they’re but a blur, and are apparently about to collide with a man pushing a baby stroller, something that is expressly prohibited within the stadium. (Strollers, I mean, not crashing into people at full speed, that’s pretty much the entire point of football.)

And here’s the inside! A bunch of upper-deck seats have been ripped out and replaced with open bar areas, where people can stand and drink and wave their huge flags while paying no mind to the game. Or they can fling their arms wildly in the air in excitement over something happening that only they can see! NFL fandom truly takes all kinds.

Okay, so where were we? Oh yes, the public price tag:

The city of Charlotte unveiled on Monday a plan to spend $650 million to renovate the city-owned Bank of America Stadium over the next four years. Tepper Sports and Entertainment — which owns the Carolina Panthers — would spend $150 million.

The city would use hospitality and tourism taxes to pay for the renovation, mostly from a 1% tax on prepared food and beverages. That tax was extended last year by the North Carolina General Assembly, essentially to help the city pay for stadium improvements.

An $800 million renovation, with $650 million coming from the public, is the kind of number that would have been eye-popping just a couple of years ago, but in the wake of billion-dollar-plusBuffalo Bills andTennessee Titans stadiums and $600 million and up forBaltimore Ravens renovations now seems like … still eye-popping, but routinely eye-popping, if there is such a thing. The stadium was initially paid for by Panthers then-owner Jerry Richardson, but is owned by the city — or maybe the land is owned by the city, the stadium itself by the team, reports differ — and had a series of renovations from 2014-2017 for which the city paid $87.5 million, It also got $50 million in added work in 2022 to accommodate the newCharlotte F.C. MLS franchise. The 1% restaurant tax was originally levied to pay for a NASCAR Hall of Fame, and was extended for 30 years last November to raise money for “hospitality-related projects,” which a football stadium is if you squint, kinda.

Tepper has been talking for years about how a twentysomething stadium is just painfully old — including saying “at some point, that building will fall down,” which is certainly technically true — but the leverage he had was the end of the team’s lease, which actually expired last year with no discernible impact. Still, he could have moved the Panthers if he’d wanted to, and if he had a place to move them, and if he got NFL approval; whereas now in exchange for $650 million in cash the city of Charlotte gets a guarantee that:

In return, the Carolina Panthers and Charlotte FC will commit to staying in Charlotte for another 20 years.

Okay, so that’s through 2044, while the restaurant tax surcharge would be in place through 2060, but—

Under the deal, the Panthers and Charlotte FC couldn’t leave the city until 2039. And if they left in the five years after that, Tepper Sports would be required to pay the city back its outstanding debt. That’s estimated to be $400 million in 15 years.

So really just a 15-year lease extension, followed by a five-year buyout period where Tepper could move the team by paying off the remaining debt. Depending on whether you count that as 15 or 20 years, that’s between $32.5 million and $43.3 million per year of lease extension, which would potentially break the Ravens’ record for most expensive per-year lease extension in history.

The big question for the city council members who will vote on this deal on June 24 would appear to be: Why is the city paying for 81% of the cost of a project that will 100% benefit Tepper? Even if the council agrees that this is needed to keep the team in town an additional 15 years despite it not showing any signs of leaving, or if they just like open-air bars, there are lots of ways to push back to make it more equitable to the public: Lower the amount of tax money involved, extend the length of the lease extension or raise the buyout clause amount, demand higher rent or a cut of stadium revenues, negotiate a slice of any windfall profits Tepper gets from selling the team once it is no longer saddled with a stadium older than Kylie Jenner, etc. Are Charlotte councilmembers thinking of anything along those lines?

Council member Marjorie Molina said she thinks the improvements will help bond the city to the Panthers and Charlotte FC.

She said when she gets off an airplane in Boston or Wisconsin she notices how many people are wearing hats and shirts for their teams.

“They are bought and sold,” she said of the fans.

Uhhhh, sure, okay. Be sure to mark your calendars for June 24, this council vote should be an interesting watch, if nothing else.