Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones asked the Spurs Sports and Entertainment to pay the City of San Antonio the more than $2.5 million it is owed after a partnership between the sports team owners and local governments formed more than a decade ago failed to bring a top tier soccer team to San Antonio.
This week, it appears the San Antonio Spurs’ owners may pay up.
The San Antonio-Bexar County Soccer Public Facility Corp. (SABC Soccer PFC), a public, nonprofit corporation that owns and operates Toyota Field, will vote on accepting more than $2.5 million to fund renovations to the soccer-specific stadium in North San Antonio.
Public documents in the SABC Soccer PFC’s online agenda say that payment resolves the issue left pending after Spurs Sports and Entertainment, owners of the city’s NBA franchise, failed to bring a Major League Soccer team to San Antonio.
The organization has a wish list of current and future projects that total of more than $2.5 million. It needs roughly $464,000 for scoreboards, $196,000 for LED boards and more than $1.9 million for a facility assessment and future improvements.
Why do the Spurs owe the city money?
The issue goes back to December 2015, when the city, the county and Spurs’ owners put up $21 million to buy Toyota Field from the owner of the San Antonio Scorpions.
Bexar County and the City of San Antonio each put in $9 million. Spurs Sports and Entertainment agreed to contribute $3 million, lease the stadium for 20 years and operate San Antonio FC, which competes a level below the MLS in the USL Championship.
Spurs Sports and Entertainment still own San Antonio FC, which plays its home games at Toyota Field.
The partnership was focused on bringing an MLS franchise to San Antonio and, as part of the deal, Spurs Sports and Entertainment had agreed to pay the city and the county $2.5 million each if the effort fell through.
San Antonio still has no MLS franchise, but Austin got one in 2017. Officials in Bexar County felt they hadn’t had a fair shot to land an MLS team and Spurs’ owners halted their effort in late 2017. Bexar County let them off the hook for the $2.5 million obligation in 2022.
But Jones brought the city’s $2.5 million payment back to the table this year as the city faces a $158 million budget gap, sending a letter to Spurs ownership asking for the money the city was owed.
“[When] we’re looking at the scale of [budget] cuts that we are, and then on top of that, talking to people about, ‘Hey, we may have to raise your property taxes,’ I think we owe it to the people to say, ‘We’ve done everything possible to keep this number as low as possible,’” Jones said during an interview in June. “That does require collecting all the things that [we] are owed.”
The Spurs paid $250,000 of the $2.5 million in 2021, but has missed $1.7 million in payments since then. Interest brought the total owed to more than $2 million.
Jones and the budget gap
Jones has been busy over the past week, putting out proposal after proposal to bridge a budget gap caused by lower than expected property tax revenues.
That included a proposal to end the Ready to Work program early and looking for philanthropists to donate to city-funded organizations and programs.
She’s also raised questions about the public funding for the Spurs’ new downtown arena, urging officials to slow down and seek a better deal from the city’s lone major sports franchise.
The four-member board of the SABC Soccer PFC will vote on the $2.5 million payment from Spurs Sports and Entertainment on Thursday.
This story originally appeared in the San Antonio Report.
