Voice of OC (https://voiceofoc.org/tag/los-angeles-angels/)
Despite Anaheim’s efforts to keep the stadium appraisal secret, there are mounting questions about whether the value of the stadium has already been leaked.
Despite calls from residents, two Councilmembers and a vote by the previous Council to make the Angel Stadium appraisal public, city officials now say they won’t release the appraisal public until “the right time.”
Anaheim chipped in $30 million to help renovate Angel Stadium in the late 1990s, but it’s only made the city $1.6 million in the past 10 years and sports economists, along with a sports finance author, attribute that to a revenue sharing formula based on the number of total tickets sold, not the total dollar amount tickets produce.
While the Big A has made $1.6 million for Anaheim since 2010, sports financing economists say the city can get more if it allows the Angels to develop parking lots surrounding the stadium in order to bolster tax revenue and generate developer fees and avoid direct stadium financing.
Anaheim Mayor Harry Sidhu formed a negotiating team for a deal with the Angels, but it could fall outside of the state transparency law since it wasn’t created or voted on by the City Council.
The Angels, along with sports teams across the country, are given too much of the revenue sports stadiums generate and taxpayers fail to reap benefits because cities don’t negotiate hard enough, according to experts.