{"id":87600,"date":"2025-05-29T09:18:14","date_gmt":"2025-05-29T09:18:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/87600\/"},"modified":"2025-05-29T09:18:14","modified_gmt":"2025-05-29T09:18:14","slug":"bengals-lease-problem-at-paycor-stadium-needs-a-regional-fix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/87600\/","title":{"rendered":"Bengals lease problem at Paycor Stadium needs a regional fix"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Bengals are not just a Hamilton County team \u2212 they are a regional institution. So why is Hamilton County still footing the bill alone?<\/p>\n

Dennis Doyle
\n\u00a0|\u00a0 Opinion contributor<\/p>\n

\"play\"<\/p>\n

Paycor Stadium renovation plan: What does it look like<\/p>\n

Hamilton County officials unveiled a $1.2 billion plan to renovate the Bengals’ stadium and the area around it.<\/p>\n

Provided by MSA Design<\/p>\n

There\u2019s been a lot of public talk lately \u2212 especially from the Hamilton County prosecutor<\/a> \u2212 about wanting a “good deal for the taxpayers” in the ongoing stadium negotiations<\/a> with the Cincinnati Bengals<\/a>. But all that talk avoids the elephant in the room.<\/p>\n

The Bengals already have a good deal. They have one of the most team-friendly stadium agreements in professional sports. While the public often hears that the lease “expires in 2026,” what\u2019s rarely mentioned is that the Bengals hold the power to\u00a0extend it unilaterally for up to 10 more years, through\u00a0five two-year periods, on the same favorable terms. The current lease officially ends\u00a0June 30, 2026, but if the Bengals choose to exercise the extensions, they could stay through\u00a02036, continuing to pay\u00a0no rent\u00a0while\u00a0Hamilton County remains responsible for major expenses.<\/p>\n

That includes capital maintenance, upgrades and certain game-day operations \u2212 all at taxpayer expense. These aren\u2019t hypotheticals; they\u2019re binding terms. The Bengals don\u2019t need to make any new commitments because\u00a0they already hold all the leverage.<\/p>\n

More: From the editor: The philosophical divide that stands in the way of a new Bengals lease<\/a><\/p>\n

What\u2019s changed recently is the Bengals\u2019 interest in upgrading the stadium<\/a>. A speculative plan has been drawn, hinging on\u00a0non-county funding\u00a0\u2212 possibly from the\u00a0state of Ohio\u00a0\u2212 and tied to the hope that a\u00a0new lease\u00a0might finally bring a return on the county\u2019s original (and ever-growing) investment. But so far,\u00a0the state hasn\u2019t committed a dollar, and\u00a0the Bengals haven\u2019t agreed to pay rent or share new revenue.<\/p>\n

By the time the current lease and extensions run their course,\u00a0Hamilton County will have spent $1.5 billion\u00a0on a facility that still doesn\u2019t generate rent and may not guarantee a long-term team presence. The county hopes to negotiate something better \u2212 but that\u2019s\u00a0hope, not strategy. The Bengals can simply extend the lease and continue as is.<\/p>\n

A regional solution, or a white elephant?<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t have to end this way. Other cities \u2212\u00a0Minneapolis, Indianapolis and Kansas City\u00a0\u2212 have found better ways. They\u2019ve created\u00a0regional sports authorities\u00a0or\u00a0multi-county funding mechanisms\u00a0to reflect the\u00a0regional nature of their teams and stadiums. Cincinnati should do the same.<\/p>\n

More: Williams: Let Cincinnati Bengals stadium talks get nasty. Should result in better deal<\/a><\/p>\n

The Bengals are not just a Hamilton County team \u2212 they are a\u00a0regional institution. So why is Hamilton County still footing the bill alone?<\/p>\n

Without a shift in how we fund and govern our professional sports venues, we risk repeating the same mistakes, only on a larger scale. Because in 10 years,\u00a0Hamilton County will have spent a billion and a half dollars, and the\u00a0elephant in the room\u00a0will no longer be ignored.\u00a0It will have turned white \u2212 a gaping hole of a stadium in the middle of downtown Cincinnati, reminding us of every missed opportunity to fix the deal when we had the chance.<\/p>\n

Dennis Doyle\u00a0lives in Anderson Township.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Bengals are not just a Hamilton County team \u2212 they are a regional institution. So why is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87601,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2053],"tags":[821,247,265,822,228,227,256,2296,8409,8417,8135,441,816,7,4420,6571,243,828,820,830,246,88,6,4779,8410,245,264,4239,815,9,266,7125,776],"class_list":{"0":"post-87600","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cincinnati-bengals","8":"tag-affiliate","9":"tag-american","10":"tag-american-football","11":"tag-arts","12":"tag-bengals","13":"tag-cincinnati","14":"tag-cincinnati-bengals","15":"tag-cincinnatibengals","16":"tag-columnists","17":"tag-columnists-opinions","18":"tag-county","19":"tag-entertainment","20":"tag-events","21":"tag-football","22":"tag-hamilton","23":"tag-hamilton-county","24":"tag-live","25":"tag-live-sporting-events","26":"tag-local","27":"tag-local-affiliate-arts-u0026-entertainment","28":"tag-neutral","29":"tag-news","30":"tag-nfl","31":"tag-oh","32":"tag-opinions","33":"tag-overall","34":"tag-overall-neutral","35":"tag-politics","36":"tag-sporting","37":"tag-sports","38":"tag-sports-news","39":"tag-stadiums","40":"tag-u0026"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114590377890197942","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}