TRANSCRIPT 🔗
00:00:00
Speaker 1: Are the Bears... Is the stadium coming to Indiana.
00:00:04
Speaker 2: Or not, Hammer? You have a pulse on this. I don't... Like, I've seen the news. It looks like it's happening either way, but it kind of.
00:00:15
Speaker 1: Like, it'll go to Indiana one day, and then it'll go to Chicago, back to Illinois the next day. What's going on?
00:00:23
Speaker 3: So, gun to my head, and I've said this from the very beginning, even though.
00:00:29
Speaker 4: Illinois politicians are as incompetent as you're going to find.
00:00:32
Speaker 1: Yes.
00:00:33
Speaker 4: Governor fat pig, Chicago mayor, Brandon Johnson, some of the worst minds politically you will find. Even those losers don't want to be the ones that lost the bears to Indiana, even though it would still be Chicago bears. They don't want to have the stigma of having the headquarters in the state of Indiana.
00:00:55
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:00:56
Speaker 4: So it sounds like Illinois is now the favorite. And we've told you this from the very beginning. Even though Governor Braun's office and a lot of movers and shakers in Indiana basically put out statements earlier in the year celebrating the fact the.
00:01:12
Speaker 3: Bears were most likely coming to Indy.
00:01:16
Speaker 1: Yes.
00:01:17
Speaker 3: We said pump the brakes a little bit.
00:01:19
Speaker 4: Because even though these guys over here are total zeros, they don't.
00:01:22
Speaker 3: Want to be the ones that lost the Bears.
00:01:25
Speaker 4: So long story short, here is now what the state of Illinois is proposing. The Bears pay to build their stadium, but it's a government created authority that owns the stadium. So the Bears stadium, even though they would pay for it, would be somehow owned by the Illinois government. The Bears operated under a lease. Public ownership could exempt the stadium from property taxes. So if they decide to have some sort of public ownership, whether that's taxes, whether that's private investors, they would become exempt from paying any property taxes, and the taxpayers of Illinois would still be on the hook for the surrounding infrastructure and public improvements. So essentially, long story short, Illinois is offering public ownership and property tax breaks without directly paying for stadium construction.
00:02:30
Speaker 1: They got us.
00:02:31
Speaker 5: Meanwhile, Indiana's proposal involves more than $ 1 billion in public financing for the public stadium in Hammond.
00:02:43
Speaker 4: So long story short here, I know this sounds kind of complicated, but if you're playing the long game, the more the Bears stay in Chicago or the Chicagoland area, after so many years, it basically favors them financially because they're not paying property taxes.
00:03:04
Speaker 2: Because you lost me at like a billion dollars in public financing there for Indiana.
00:03:13
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:03:13
Speaker 4: And taxpayers in Illinois would still be on the hook for the surrounding area.
00:03:17
Speaker 1: Okay.
00:03:18
Speaker 4: Well, so these tax, so these politicians are like, Oh, the bears will build the stadium, but they don't tell you.
00:03:25
Speaker 3: You are going to be on the hook for.
00:03:26
Speaker 1: Everything around the stadium. You got to pay for the roads. You got to pay for the infrastructure.
00:03:31
Speaker 4: Right. And if we want to rebuild hotels or restaurants or a tailgate village anywhere around the stadium, which most NFL stadiums have, guess who's paying for that?
00:03:43
Speaker 3: Johnny Taxpayer.
00:03:45
Speaker 2: I got to tell you, I've never heard the words tailgate village before, and that sounds awesome.
00:03:51
Speaker 3: Awesome.
00:03:52
Speaker 4: In baseball, as much as I hate to say it, two best places that have it, one hand, Wrigleyville, right?
00:04:01
Speaker 1: Wrigleyville in Chicago, great.
00:04:03
Speaker 2: St.
00:04:03
Speaker 3: Louis has a good one too.
00:04:04
Speaker 1: Yep, I have been. St.
00:04:06
Speaker 3: Louis, those damn dirty Cardinals, they got a really.
00:04:10
Speaker 4: Cool great tailgate village of bars and restaurants.
00:04:14
Speaker 1: I've been there, but I didn't know that's what it was called.
00:04:18
Speaker 3: So locally, think about it this way.
00:04:20
Speaker 4: Think about what Speedway has done with their main street across from the Motor Speedway.
00:04:25
Speaker 2: Sure.
00:04:25
Speaker 4: They have revitalized that thing to where it is awesome businesses.
00:04:31
Speaker 3: It's bars. It's restaurants.
00:04:33
Speaker 2: Dawson.
00:04:33
Speaker 3: Yes, Dawson's is there.
00:04:37
Speaker 1: The go-karting place, man.
00:04:39
Speaker 3: They're all there.
00:04:40
Speaker 4: A lot of IndyCar businesses are there. They've revitalized that little main street across from the Speedway to where it's kind of a.
00:04:48
Speaker 3: Little village for those going to the track.
00:04:52
Speaker 4: That's basically what all these major stadiums have now, and the ownership has some sort of cut in it. So that's the latest with what's going on with the Bears stadium plan.