Pro Football Rumors
Despite being around since 1968, the Bengals are the seventh-youngest franchise in the NFL. Since their inception, though, the league has seen the Raiders, Colts, Cardinals, Rams, Oilers, and Chargers all change their locations; the Rams moved twice and the Raiders moved three times over that span. Now, there’s a chance the Bengals could dissociate from the city of Cincinnati, though that chance may be fairly small.
Yesterday, The Athletic’s Paul Dehner Jr. detailed the situation between the Bengals and Hamilton County. The two parties are currently negotiating the lease for Paycor Stadium, where the team has played since the 2000 season. This story has risen to the forefront of recent news due to an important upcoming decision deadline for the Bengals. By June 30, the Bengals will have to agree to a lease offer from the County or exercise an option that extends the current lease for two years.
The current lease doesn’t expire until June 30 of next year, so the team is, of course, guaranteed to have a home for the 2025 NFL season, but the team is seeking to make changes to the stadium that would require an updated lease agreement. The Bengals are hoping to make upgrade to their home of the past 25 years, and renovations don’t run cheap these days. Recent years have seen two comparable renovations to downtown stadiums that didn’t require new construction: an $800MM renovation that tied the Panthers to Charlotte for 20 years, and a $489MM renovation that tied the Ravens to Baltimore through 2037.
In these deals, a good portion of the funding is provided by the cities or states — Charlotte contributed $650MM, while the Ravens only contributed $55MM to the project, $35MM of which was reimbursable. The Bengals are teaming with the NFL to contribute $120MM through a G-5 loan, a loan that allows the Bengals to borrow NFL funds as long as the team matches the loan with their own funds. They want to contribute it to a project that will allow them to renovate their two club lounges, their concessions, and all of their 132 suites.
Dehner posits that if the Bengals can’t agree to a deal with the County, the G-5 loan could be end up going to waste, and if things unfold in this fashion, the Bengals may decide to explore the concept of moving cities. The team’s executive vice president Katie Blackburn, daughter of team president Mike Brown, didn’t rule out that option, though she emphasized that the franchise would prefer to stay in Cincinnati with the ability to make the abovementioned renovations.
If a new lease agreement isn’t signed by next Tuesday, the team will exercise the two-year extension options that works on a rolling basis, extending the current lease, one the team is unhappy with, for two years over and over until a new deal is signed or the agreement is terminated.
In order to terminate the lease to move to another location, though, the Bengals have to...
