When Chicago Fire owner Joe Mansueto announced he would dip into his personal fortune to privately finance a new stadium for the Major League Soccer team at the site of The 78 megadevelopment, other billionaire sports owners and politicos took notice.
The lack of public money attached to the direct construction of the stadium positions the team as an outlier against circuitous and unsuccessful attempts from the Chicago Bears and Chicago White Sox to garner taxpayer financing amid resistance from state officials.
But it may also not be a sign of things to come — or as great a deal as it appears at first blush.
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Courtesy of CFFC and Gensler
Rendering of Chicago Fire Stadium interior
Mansueto's investment was met with fanfare from politicians like Mayor Brandon Johnson, who also backed a yet-to-materialize Bears deal.
“While it is still too early to say what the final deal might look like, it is a good sign for our city whenever someone wants to invest more than $600M in a new development,” Johnson said following the announcement.
Privately funded stadiums are uncommon in American professional sports, where team owners often flex their muscles for taxpayer subsidies by touting outsized economic development projections or threatening relocation.
But although the Fire’s new stadium construction will be entirely funded out of Mansueto's pocket, it isn't necessarily a sign of things to come.
And it doesn't necessarily mean the public will get off scot-free. There can be a hidden cost to building a new stadium that isn’t as widely discussed as fronting the bill for a new facility, said Michael Leeds, a professor of economics at Temple University.
“Beware of the fine print,” Leeds said. “When you consider the total cost of the stadium … it's not just the brick and mortar of building the stadium. There's all sorts of additional infrastructure that goes into it. There's the value of the land. There are tax abatements.”
Mansueto will pick up the tab for the Fire’s 22,000-seat stadium, which will serve as an anchor for Related Midwest's The 78 megadevelopment. Construction is expected to begin by the end of 2025 for a spring 2028 opening.
But responsibility for costs like road improvements, new utility lines and parking fall into a gray area, Leeds said. Though the Bears and White Sox are asking for considerably more than whatever hidden costs the Fire project might incur, the end result for taxpayers could still hurt, he said.
Related Midwest President Curt Bailey told The Chicago Sun-Times that the developer is hoping to draw from the $450M tax increment financing district previously approved by city government to fund the infrastructure needed to prepare the site for development. The total dollar amount of the ask is in the works, Bailey added.
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The 78 development site
The city’s other teams seeking new digs have hit roadblocks in their battles for taxpayer dollars.
The Bears proposed a mixed-use stadium project near Soldier Field in April 2024 with a $4.7B all-in cost that would be partially financed by taxpayer dollars. That plan has stalled after Gov. J.B. Pritzker opposed public financing for any new stadium project, and lawmakers have yet to take up the proposal.
The White Sox and owner Jerry Reinsdorf were transparent last year about their intentions to move the team to The 78 and build a new stadium at the development, which is still in play after the Fire’s move.
“We are actively exploring the co-location of dual stadiums for the Chicago White Sox and Chicago Fire, two organizations whose presence at The 78 would align with our vision of creating Chicago’s next great neighborhood,” a Related spokesperson told Bisnow late last year.
Reinsdorf also petitioned the state government for taxpayer dollars to fund the stadium and mulled moving the team out of Illinois entirely, though a future new team owner could complicate the situation.
Leeds said the cost to taxpayers works out to varying degrees of pain, even for a paid-for stadium.
“It's kind of like, would you want to get hit in the head with a plastic bat or a two-by-four?” Leeds said. “It’s not as awful as the others. But that doesn't mean it's not going to hurt.”
A 2020 Brookings Institution paper estimated that between 2000 and 2020, 43 out of 57 new or renovated stadiums in American sports were partially financed by tax-exempt municipal bonds. This makes the Fire’s financing play a relative rarity in modern stadium development.
These local dynamics reflect a broader shift in how stadiums are pitched and funded across the U.S.
In the past several years, the country has experienced a pair of offsetting trends in stadium funding, Leeds said. Generally speaking, teams are putting up a greater percentage of funds toward projects, but the total bill for stadium construction has gone up so much that cities are paying as much or more than ever for the build-outs.
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Courtesy of Manica
New Bears Stadium rendering
One of the levers teams pull now to entice lawmakers to release public funding is pitching the stadium and the area around it as a comprehensive mixed-use development, Leeds said.
Eric Nordness, managing principal at Marquee Development, led the work on the Gallagher Way project outside of Wrigley Field. He said the hottest topic in sports is figuring out ways to engage the community when they aren’t in the stadium itself.
“It’s really about how you connect to what's going on outside your venue when events aren't happening,” Nordness said.
It’s not yet clear how Related plans to program the area surrounding the Fire stadium or whether other entertainment tenants will follow.
Teams in the same city vying for new stadiums that anchor these mixed-use developments often highlight activations from other uses outside of game days, like concerts.
But there are only so many top-tier concerts to go around.
“Taylor Swift can appear in only one place,” Leeds said. “How many Taylor Swift concerts are there? They're all going to be competing for the same events.”
Eventually, teams may have to fill their event calendars with less attractive offerings like indoor lacrosse or Aladdin on Ice, Leeds said. If more venues open across the city, the supply of large event spaces may begin to outpace the supply of major events.
Still, the leverage the Bears and White Sox have to earn public financing for new stadiums is largely based on emotional appeal rather than financial impact.
Leeds said he did a “back of the envelope” calculation that found that the economic activity from Chicago sports teams accounted for a fraction of 1% of the city’s total economic output.
“The psychological hole created by the disappearance of all the teams in Chicago would be great,” Leeds said. “The financial hole would be barely noticeable.”