The NFL Stadium Capex Tracker

Why this wave, why now, why it matters

NFL franchise values have compounded at roughly 15% per year since 2015, moving from an average of about $2.0B to about $6.5B per team on the Forbes 2025 rankings. Two levers explain most of that appreciation: the 2023-2033 national media package that roughly doubled the per-team broadcast pool, and stadium capex. National-media growth is now visible and priced-in; the 2033 renewal is the next event. Stadium capex, by contrast, is where individual owners can still capture asymmetric enterprise-value uplift, because stadium-derived revenue — premium seating, sponsorship, non-game-day events — is not shared with the other 31 owners under the league's revenue-share formulas.

The current wave is the largest in NFL history. Thirteen concurrent stadium projects. Combined capex reported north of $30 billion. Public financing at stake north of $15 billion. This is not a normal replacement cycle; it is a structural repricing of the stadium as a private capex vehicle sitting inside a franchise. The trigger was the 2020-2023 stabilization of SoFi Stadium (Rams and Chargers) and Allegiant Stadium (Raiders) as operating benchmarks for what a modern purpose-built venue produces in suite revenue, sponsorship inventory, concert and event bookings, and naming-rights value. Every owner without a modern building has run the same math since.

Three drivers push the wave. First, benchmark reset: SoFi (~$5B, entirely privately financed) and Allegiant (~$2B, roughly 40% public) established the top and mid of the market. Second, media-rights ceilings: with the national pool now growing at contract-escalator rates rather than step-function renewals until 2033, owners have to grow stadium-derived revenue if they want franchise value to keep compounding at 15%. Third, sponsorship inflation: Bank of America, Highmark, EverBank, SoFi, Allegiant, Hard Rock, Nissan, and Mercedes-Benz naming-rights deals have all reset the price ceiling for what a top-tier NFL venue can command over a 20-25 year term.

What follows is the ledger. For each active project we surface deal structure (total cost, public and private share, financing mechanism), timeline, naming-rights terms where reported, ownership party, and the strategic reader question — what enterprise-value uplift is the owner capturing, and who pays for it. Background sources: Forbes annual NFL team-value rankings; Sportico "The NFL Business"; Sports Business Journal; Bloomberg; state and municipal bond-issuance disclosures; team press releases; PitchBook for private-market context.

All 13 active projects, one table

Ordered by strategic newsworthiness, not alphabetical. Costs are Institute estimates aggregated from bond disclosures, team communications, and trade-press reporting; where the deal is still in concept the range is explicit. Timelines reflect the last publicly-stated milestone.

Dollar figures reflect the most recently reported public estimates; where a deal is in concept phase, figures are ranges pending final agreements. Public/private splits reflect bond-issuance disclosures, referendum ballots, team press releases, and legislative-authorization language. NFL G-4 loan program: the league contributes up to $200M per new stadium construction as an interest-free loan repaid from visiting-team share of premium-seat revenue — economically a subsidy from the other 31 owners to the building team.

The three benchmark completed stadiums that reset the wave

Every active project on this ledger is being underwritten against three completed comps — the modern venues that established what a new-build NFL stadium produces in premium-seating, sponsorship, naming-rights, and event-day economics. Owners without a modern building have run this math since roughly 2021, and the current wave is the operational result.

Intuit Dome (Clippers, opened Aug 2024, ~$2B, 100% privately financed by Steve Ballmer) is the current NBA-side comp and is the strongest recent data point for what a 100%-private-financing modern venue looks like inside a modern owner's underwrite. See the Institute's Clippers case study for the full deal.

The five practitioner questions this ledger raises

1. What is the enterprise-value multiplier of stadium capex?

Rough answer, benchmarked against the three completed comps: SoFi added an estimated $2-3B in combined franchise value to the Rams and Chargers on ~$5B of spend, plus land-value uplift on the surrounding Hollywood Park district that is captured separately in Kroenke's real-estate P&L. Allegiant contributed to the Raiders' valuation move from ~$3B at the 2020 opening to ~$7B on the current Forbes mark. Mercedes-Benz contributed to the Falcons' move from ~$1.8B to ~$4.5B over the same eight-year window. The multiplier is not one-for-one, but at scale and with disciplined financing structure it is comfortably positive as an EV lever — and it is one of the few EV levers still available to owners who missed the media-rights re-pricing window.

2. What does the public-financing arms race look like across states?

The Chiefs case (Missouri vs Kansas) is the current apex, and Kansas's STAR-bond structure sets a template other states will study. New York's 2022 commitment to the Bills at $850M-plus-Erie-County remains the largest state-level check on record. Ohio, Virginia, Maryland, DC, and Illinois are all live jurisdictions in the current wave, and each is watching the others. The pattern is that leaving-town credibility is the single largest variable determining how much public money an owner can extract — and the small-market teams (Buffalo, Nashville, Jacksonville) have surfaced the largest public shares by ratio, not the large-market teams. Sports-economics literature (Zimbalist, Noll, Rappaport) finds negative or neutral net local economic impact from stadium subsidies; the political economy is what explains their persistence.

3. How does the G-4 loan program affect the math?

The NFL's G-4 program contributes up to $200M per new stadium construction as an interest-free loan, repaid over 15 years from the visiting-team share of premium-seat and club-seat revenue. Economically it functions as a subsidy from the other 31 owners to the building team, but it is treated as a soft-cost line inside the private-share number in most reporting. On a $2B build, $200M interest-free financing over 15 years is worth roughly $80-100M in NPV terms depending on the reference discount rate — not decisive to the underwrite, but material at the margin.

4. What happens to the old stadium?

Usually the team (or an ownership-affiliated entity) retains the land, redevelops it, and captures the real-estate uplift as a separate line item from the franchise value. Kroenke did this with Hollywood Park around SoFi. The Chiefs, if they move sites, would face the same question about the Truman Sports Complex land. Panthers avoid the question entirely because Bank of America Stadium is a renovation-in-place. This is the piece of the modern stadium underwrite that shows up nowhere on the reported public/private cost split but matters most to the owning family's compounded return.

5. Who wins and who loses on the public side?

Standard sports-economics literature is consistent: at the macro level, public stadium subsidies produce negative or neutral net local economic impact once the substitution effect (dollars redirected from other local leisure spending) is netted out. What subsidies do produce is concentrated local employment during construction, a marginal upgrade to civic identity that voters value non-economically, and a real-estate uplift that accrues disproportionately to landowners near the site. The political economy of subsidy persistence rests on the concentrated-benefit-diffuse-cost asymmetry that public-choice literature identifies broadly. The Institute takes no editorial position on whether public subsidy is good policy; the ledger simply names who is paying what.

Cross-references from the Institute library

The three benchmark completed stadiums that reset the wave

Every active project on this ledger is being underwritten against three completed comps — the modern venues that established what a new-build NFL stadium produces in premium-seating, sponsorship, naming-rights, and event-day economics. Owners without a modern building have run this math since roughly 2021, and the current wave is the operational result.

Intuit Dome (Clippers, opened Aug 2024, ~$2B, 100% privately financed by Steve Ballmer) is the current NBA-side comp and is the strongest recent data point for what a 100%-private-financing modern venue looks like inside a modern owner's underwrite. See the Institute's Clippers case study for the full deal.

The five practitioner questions this ledger raises

1. What is the enterprise-value multiplier of stadium capex?

Rough answer, benchmarked against the three completed comps: SoFi added an estimated $2-3B in combined franchise value to the Rams and Chargers on ~$5B of spend, plus land-value uplift on the surrounding Hollywood Park district that is captured separately in Kroenke's real-estate P&L. Allegiant contributed to the Raiders' valuation move from ~$3B at the 2020 opening to ~$7B on the current Forbes mark. Mercedes-Benz contributed to the Falcons' move from ~$1.8B to ~$4.5B over the same eight-year window. The multiplier is not one-for-one, but at scale and with disciplined financing structure it is comfortably positive as an EV lever — and it is one of the few EV levers still available to owners who missed the media-rights re-pricing window.

2. What does the public-financing arms race look like across states?

The Chiefs case (Missouri vs Kansas) is the current apex, and Kansas's STAR-bond structure sets a template other states will study. New York's 2022 commitment to the Bills at $850M-plus-Erie-County remains the largest state-level check on record. Ohio, Virginia, Maryland, DC, and Illinois are all live jurisdictions in the current wave, and each is watching the others. The pattern is that leaving-town credibility is the single largest variable determining how much public money an owner can extract — and the small-market teams (Buffalo, Nashville, Jacksonville) have surfaced the largest public shares by ratio, not the large-market teams. Sports-economics literature (Zimbalist, Noll, Rappaport) finds negative or neutral net local economic impact from stadium subsidies; the political economy is what explains their persistence.

3. How does the G-4 loan program affect the math?

The NFL's G-4 program contributes up to $200M per new stadium construction as an interest-free loan, repaid over 15 years from the visiting-team share of premium-seat and club-seat revenue. Economically it functions as a subsidy from the other 31 owners to the building team, but it is treated as a soft-cost line inside the private-share number in most reporting. On a $2B build, $200M interest-free financing over 15 years is worth roughly $80-100M in NPV terms depending on the reference discount rate — not decisive to the underwrite, but material at the margin.

4. What happens to the old stadium?

Usually the team (or an ownership-affiliated entity) retains the land, redevelops it, and captures the real-estate uplift as a separate line item from the franchise value. Kroenke did this with Hollywood Park around SoFi. The Chiefs, if they move sites, would face the same question about the Truman Sports Complex land. Panthers avoid the question entirely because Bank of America Stadium is a renovation-in-place. This is the piece of the modern stadium underwrite that shows up nowhere on the reported public/private cost split but matters most to the owning family's compounded return.

5. Who wins and who loses on the public side?

Standard sports-economics literature is consistent: at the macro level, public stadium subsidies produce negative or neutral net local economic impact once the substitution effect (dollars redirected from other local leisure spending) is netted out. What subsidies do produce is concentrated local employment during construction, a marginal upgrade to civic identity that voters value non-economically, and a real-estate uplift that accrues disproportionately to landowners near the site. The political economy of subsidy persistence rests on the concentrated-benefit-diffuse-cost asymmetry that public-choice literature identifies broadly. The Institute takes no editorial position on whether public subsidy is good policy; the ledger simply names who is paying what.

Cross-references from the Institute library