Bills notebook
Taxpayers paid bill for new Indy stadium
INDIANAPOLIS — The Indianapolis Colts’ new downtown stadium is a rarity among the new wave of NFL palaces.
Lucas Oil Stadium, which opened with Sunday night’s exhibition game against the Buffalo Bills, was built with mostly public money.
Since the late 1990s, the NFL has found it politically difficult to ask state and local governments to absorb most of the cost of building new stadiums.
However, Indianapolis is one of the smaller markets in the league. Indiana state and county politicians decided they needed to sweeten the pot to keep the Colts, who had played in what had become a substandard RCA Dome since 1984.
So Indiana taxpayers footed 87 percent of the $720 million cost to build Lucas Oil Stadium.
Elsewhere in the league, it’s a different story.
New Jersey is contributing a mere $20 million to the $1.2 billion new stadium being built for New York’s Giants and Jets. Dallas’ new stadium, set to open next year, got about 30 percent of its funding from the public. New England’s stadium, opened in 2002, was financed entirely by private money, but Massachusetts kicked in $70 million for infrastructure upgrades. Philadelphia’s stadium, opened in 2003, got about 40 percent of its funding from the public.
The cost to Indiana taxpayers largely will be funded by a 1 percent tax on prepared food in nine of the 10 counties that surround Indianapolis. The city also raised taxes on car rentals, hotel rooms and stadium admissions to pay off bonds.
The city’s Capital Improvement Board must cover all costs for operating and maintaining the stadium.
However, the board apparently underestimated those costs by about $20 million. The operating cost for the first year is about $27 million. The county will dip into reserve funds to cover the deficit and expects increased revenue from convention business (the city’s convention center was expanded as part of the stadium deal) to cover future costs.
The new stadium is expected to boost the Colts from the bottom of the league in revenue to the upper half.
California-based Lucas Oil Products paid $6 million a year over 20 years for the naming rights to the stadium. The Colts recruited four main gate sponsors, each at $1.4 million a year. Four sponsors of the interior corners of the stadium each will pay $750,000 a year. Six suite-level sponsors will pay about $500,000 a year apiece. That brings the total sponsorship haul to $18 million a year.
Indianapolis has a strong corporate base. While the Jets and Giants each are expected to bring in more than $50 million in annual stadium sponsorships, the Colts’ haul is better than Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, which opened new stadiums this decade. Pittsburgh brings in $12 million to $15 million in annual stadium sponsorships, and Cincinnati gets $10 million, sports marketing experts estimate.
The Colts’ $18 million in annual sponsorships does not include proceeds from 140 luxury suites, which sell for anywhere from $40,000 to $235,000 a year. Ticket prices in the stadium range from $34 in the high reaches of the upper deck to $270 a game for club seats at midfield.
The stadium seats 63,000, which is 6,000 more than the old RCA Dome, which was torn down. The Colts have about 25,000 people on their season-ticket waiting list.
Lucas Oil Stadium will serve as host for the 2010 NCAA basketball Final Four and for the Super Bowl in 2012.
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Besides quarterback Trent Edwards, the Bills played without receivers James Hardy (sore hamstring) and Roscoe Parrish (sore knee).
Besides quarterback Peyton Manning, the Colts were without three defensive line starters: Robert Mathis (ankle), Raheem Brock (ankle) and Ed Johnson (calf). Also out were starting guard Ryan Lilja (knee) and rookie guard Mike Pollock (knee).
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The agent for Bills’ tackle Jason Peters, Eugene Parker, is based in Fort Wayne, Ind. However, there was no contact between Bills’ officials and Parker during the road trip to the Hoosier state.
