Latest news with #NBCWashington.com
NBC Sports
24-07-2025
- Business
- NBC Sports
Adjusted D.C. stadium deal could be approved soon
The deal could soon be done. Apparently without anyone squeezing the Commanders to change their name. Via D.C. Council chairperson Phil Mendelson reached an agreement with the team to adjust the financial terms of the deal struck between the Commanders and Mayor Muriel Bowser. The revised agreement opens the door for D.C. Council to vote on the stadium proposal in 'a matter of days.' The vote is expected to happen after public hearings set for July 29 and 30. Bowser separately said she has no problem with the changes to the deal. Having a vote and having a successful vote are two different things. But implicit in the new reports is the notion that the changes to the deal are more likely to get it done. The goal is to get the stadium open by 2030. If the deal is approved by the end of the month, that timetable likely remains very realistic. Coincidentally or not, progress has been made in the aftermath of President Trump insisting that the team change its name, and then suggesting that he may refrain from helping the team get a deal done if it doesn't. Through it all, the Commanders have remained quiet. And while it appears a stadium deal may be finalized without the team being squeezed to change its name, it's safe to assume that the Commander-in-Chief will periodically rattle the R-word cage. If only to distract from the E-word.
NBC Sports
22-04-2025
- Business
- NBC Sports
D.C. mayor touts stadium deal for Commanders at RFK site
D.C. mayor Muriel Bowser is hoping to get a deal done to bring the Commanders back to the site of RFK Stadium. She'll need to get the D.C. Council to approve the arrangement. And she'll need to hope that efforts to force the measure onto a ballot will be unsuccessful. In her first public comments regarding the situation, Bowser made the case for bringing Washington's football team back to Washington, D.C. 'I think that D.C. residents . . . are very excited about world-class sports,' Bowser said at a media event on Monday, via 'They were excited about the Washington Nationals, the Washington Wizards, the Washington Capitals, the Washington Mystics, DC United. They know we're the sports capital and they know what that means for our economy. But more than that, I look forward in a couple of days [to] presenting our ideas about how we address a shifting economy.' That seems to be the primary argument for the stadium — the economy is changing, because government is changing. '[O]ur economy is shifting because of federal government decisions about people, headquarters and the like,' Bowser said. 'And so Deputy Mayor Albert and I, and our entire team, is very focused on how we prepare D.C. for a different economy. And a big, big bright spot in our economy is entertainment and sports. So we're gonna be presenting to the council a very robust plan about how we change our economy to get ready for the future.' Meanwhile, the organizers of the Homes Not Stadiums movement are attempting to put the issue on the table for a June 2025 election. To turn the opposition to public funding for the venue into a ballot initiative, the group needs roughly 23,000 signatures, per NBC Washington. Regardless of the local effort to derail the deal, the agreement as reported last week looks like a good one for D.C., relative to comparable NFL stadium deals. D.C. could be paying as little as $500 million for a $3 billion facility. At a time when the standard seems to be a 50-50 public-private split (with the team/league responsible for overages), 1/6th is, to use a technical term, not too shabby.
