Do the Chicago Bears really need a new stadium?

The writer is a contributing columnist, based in Chicago

World-class cities need world-class sports stadiums — so US taxpayers shouldn’t grouse when asked to kick in hundreds of millions of dollars to fund them.

That’s the logic behind Chicago’s glitzy proposal for a new $4.7bn stadium development for the Chicago Bears, the city’s legendary American football team. The Bears — who are struggling to recover from a dismal 2022-23 season — announced plans last month to spend more than $2bn of their own money to build a year-round covered stadium on the scenic shores of Lake Michigan, plus a $300mn loan requested from the National Football League. But another $900mn will have to come from public coffers just to build the stadium, plus up to $1.5bn more for publicly financed transport and other infrastructure. 

The plan is facing a cacophony of opposition. This is despite Bears president Kevin Warren and head of stadium development Karen Murphy stating they would cover 72 per cent of stadium construction, compared with what they told me in an interview was the NFL average of a 50-50 public-private funding split. Billionaire businessman and Illinois governor JB Pritzker has called it a “non-starter”. State legislators, whose approval would be needed for the deal, have also poured cold water on it. Beleaguered Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson is a rare top official backing it — promising “no new taxes” on Chicago residents. 

The $900mn in state bonds earmarked for stadium construction would be backed by the city’s 2 per cent hotel tax, which is paid mostly by tourists. But that tax hasn’t been enough even to repay about $430mn from a 2003 renovation of the Bears’ current home, Soldier Field — and many fear Chicago taxpayers could end up shelling out for the new project too. Murphy admits the old debt was based on a “too aggressive” growth projection for hotel taxes, but she says the current plan is more conservative and includes a “liquidity reserve”. 

Critics worry that Illinois taxpayers — including Chicagoans — could also be on the hook for infrastructure spending, with $325mn needed just to open the new stadium, rising to $1.5bn if all phases are completed. That is meant to be covered by state and federal government funds, but there are no details.

Progressive Chicago alderman Andre Vasquez says there are better ways to spend public money. “A world-class city needs world-class safety and world-class transport” much more than a world-class stadium, he told me. The proposed venue “is only a good deal for the Bears, not for the city and not for taxpayers”. 

Club president Warren tells me Chicago needs a new stadium to bid for high-profile sporting events such as American football’s Super Bowl and college championships, which would boost tourist revenues. But Illinois governor Pritzker has complained that the Bears plan to keep all revenue from concerts at the new venue: “If there’s a Beyoncé concert, they want all of that revenue,” he has said, which isn’t currently the case.

“Sports stadiums [in the US] tend not to pay off. Without exception the return on public investment is negative,” says JC Bradbury, a sports economist who has studied public funding of US sports venues. He takes issue with some of the Bears’ figures and lack of detail — such as the projection that the project will have a regional economic impact of $8bn. “For a city that already has a team, in exactly the same location, that’s ridiculous,” he says.

Despite Chicago’s political fireworks, most US sports stadiums end up being built with some public money, unlike Europe’s. Still, there are signs of pushback: Kansas City voters last month rejected a stadium tax, even though their football team won this year’s Super Bowl. 

But city branding is a delicate business, especially in Midwest cities such as Chicago and my hometown of Detroit, whose economic revival was kick-started in no small part by public-private construction of new sports stadiums. Chicago’s image would surely take a hit if its century-old football team leaves town — but the team will have to work a lot harder to earn the public money that it says it needs to stay there.