Cincinnati Bengals helmet
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The Bengals have played in Cincinnati since the franchise played its first season all the way back in 1968, and it’s a bit hard to imagine they have any serious plans to leave the city they’ve called home for close to 60 years. However, a high-ranking executive has hinted that’s not out of the realm of possibility due to some drama over a stadium lease that’s on the verge of expiring.
It would be a bit disingenuous to suggest the Cincinnati Bengals are built on a foundation of spite, but the team only came into existence after Paul Brown was fired as the coach of the Cleveland-based NFL franchise he lent his name to before deciding to start one of his own.
Brown also opted to set up shop in the state of Ohio and debated between doing so in either Columbus or Cincinnati before landing on the latter, and the Bengals have been playing in The Queen City since their inception.
The team has played in three different venues over the course of its existence and has called what is currently known as Paycor Stadium home since the start of the millennium.
It was constructed with the help of the $555 million in public financing the franchise secured after threatening to move to another city if the taxpayers of Hamilton County (which owns and operates the stadium) refused to subsidize the project, and it looks like the Bengals are returning to the same page in the playbook as they near the end of their current lease.
According to The Cincinnati Inquirer, Katie Blackburn, who serves as the executive vice president of the Bengals (and just so happens to be the daughter of their owner, Mike Brown), declined to dismiss the possibility of the team relocating ahead of the expiration of the lease that will expire next summer while discussing the matter at the recent league meeting, saying:
“We play it day by day, and like everything else, we just continue to have discussions, see where things are, and then have to make decisions at the appropriate time…
We love where we are…I think that’s a great thing for the city. I think [the] location [of the] stadium right now is good. Our stadium obviously needs to continue to be maintained appropriately, and you want to keep it at a certain level that’s important, just so that we’re competitive with others.
But you know, at the end of the day, we’re playing it one day at a time, and it’s just we have to see where it all goes.”
As the outlet notes, the Bengals currently have the option to extend the current lease by two years but must officially state their intentions to do so by June 30th, 2025.
What if they don’t? Well, Blackburn issued a thinly-veiled threat by adding, “We could, I guess, go wherever we wanted after this year if we didn’t pick the option up.”
The activation of that option is inextricably linked to the stadium renovation proposal Hamilton County floated last year that would cost an estimated $1.25 billion, but the two sides haven’t come to an agreement when it comes to determining who would end up footing the bulk of that bill.
All signs point to Blackburn engaging in what essentially amounts to public negotiations in the hopes of squeezing as much money out of the county as possible, and there’s no telling where the Bengals would move if they’re not able to get their way.
There’s still plenty of time for things to come together, but this is certainly a situation worth keeping an eye on.