Earlier this week, the Illinois state legislature adjourned without a vote on whether to devote hundreds of millions of dollars to build the stadium/">indiana-explaining-nfl-teams-done-deal-to-leave-illinois-for-new-stadium/">bears/326" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Chicago Bears a new stadium. Not coincidentally, the Bears announced Friday they intend to take their ball and decamp to Indiana instead.
The statement from owner/chairman George McCaskey and team president and CEO Kevin Warren was brief, vague and not especially insightful beyond its headline. It didn’t mention the Illinois legislature or its lack of action, but it was certainly pointed toward it.
“Yesterday, the Chicago Bears Board of Directors met and voted to advance our stadium development project in Hammond, Indiana, with the exact site to be selected,” the Bears’ executives said in their press release. “We believe a world-class stadium project in Hammond will transform the region, connecting Northwest Indiana to the South Side of Chicago through the Loop and across neighborhoods and suburbs stretching north of the city. It will bring Chicagoland together and deliver new opportunities to its residents and businesses.”
Nothing says bringing Chicagoland together like moving one of its oldest pro sports franchises out of the state and onto an industrial waste site. Hammond is roughly 25 miles southeast of Soldier Field, just over the border in Indiana and home to oil refineries that would likely loom over any stadium location. While it may well be a viable option for Bears brass, this isn’t a new technique in the battle to pressure lawmakers into publicly funding a privately owned stadium.
Sometimes, the home site steps up. The New England Patriots once announced a likely move to Providence, Rhode Island before securing local funds to build Gillette Stadium in their established base of Foxborough, Massachusetts. That’s not a guarantee, however. The Kansas City Chiefs are set to leave Arrowhead Stadium and Missouri for a site in Kansas and a record $1.8 billion in public money.
Ideally, both sides would like the Bears to stay in Chicago or a nearby Illinois suburb. But Bears leadership is betting on significant subsidies while state lawmakers are pushing back against spending public money on a private venue owned by some of the wealthiest people in America.
With limited data to paint these stadiums as the economic catalysts their owners make them out to be, it’s a difficult spot for lawmakers who want to balance the popularity of big time sports against fiscal responsibility. At a time where fans are getting crunched by rising cost of living and ticket prices that have long outpaced inflation, it’s a tough showdown between logic and fandom.
The Bears are betting their fandom will convince Illinois to reconsider its spending — or, failing that, follow them to Indiana.
