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 upgrades 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 states or local governments — the Charlotte City Council contributed $650MM, while the Ravens only contributed $55MM to the project, $35MM of which was made reimbursable by the Maryland Stadium Authority. 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 the money to a project that will allow them to renovate their two club lounges, their concessions, and all 132 of their 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. Executive vice president Katie Blackburn, daughter of team president Mike Brown, didn’t rule out that option when discussing the matter in April, 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 work on a rolling basis, extending the current lease, one the team is unhappy with, for two years over and over again 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 let the County know by December 31 of the second year of the extension (six months before each extension’s expiration date) that they intend to look elsewhere. During that six-month period, the Bengals must give the County, any individual in the County, or any group of individuals in the County the opportunity to purchase the team, as Kelsey Conway of the Cincinnati Enquirer discloses.
However unlikely it may be for the team to change cities (or ownerships), Brown’s father, former Browns and Bengals head coach, owner, and co-founder Paul Brown, located the franchise in Cincinnati because of its centrality to large neighboring cities like Louisville and Lexington in Kentucky and Columbus, Dayton, and Springfield in Ohio. The “Louisville Bengals” or “Columbus Bengals” may sound strange to the ear, but their close vicinity to the team’s current location (combined with existing bases of dedicated collegiate fans) could bode well for their chances of landing a disgruntled NFL franchise.
The County exchanged two offers with the Bengals in April, but both showed wide gaps between the two parties’ desires in terms of contribution percentage, length, and type. In the months since, the two sides have worked to bridge that gap, establishing a memorandum of understanding that tentatively puts some terms in place for the renovation project.
The last day that the commissioners of Hamilton County are meeting before the June 30 deadline is tomorrow morning. In Thursday’s session, the commissioners could initiate a vote on one more potential agreement to offer to the Bengals. From there, the Bengals will make the decision to sign the new lease offer or move forward with the first of potentially several two-year extensions. If it gets to that point, there will be a close watch on just whom the Bengals’ top brass is communicating with in the next two years.
Ladies and gents….The Birmingham Bengals!!
Cincy should copy Cleveland’s law to prevent the Bengals from leaving.
Honestly, I thought it was law in the state of Ohio and not just the city. If I remember correctly, it’s what helped keep the Crew in Columbus.
I would love to see a national law prohibiting state and local money for any sports complex
Agreed! We just mortgaged the bank to build the Titans a new stadium in Nashville. Because we absolutely HAVE to have a roof so that we can get a Super Bowl here some day! A gigantic boondoggle and ridiculous waste of public funds.
That would be huge federal overreach.
Your point? It would be good for the states, whether or not the local pols say they like it, they know billionaires are bilking them via scare tactics.
Sorry but you don’t get to decide what’s good for the states. That’s kind of the whole point of the separation of powers.
My point is that the very local officials who clamor to “keep our team here.” Would be beyond relieved not to have the gun pointed to their head with billionaire subsidies by another city willing to dole out public money to rich folks. They might not say it, but if they’re being honest, they’d love to not have to spend money on a boondoggle like that.
And further, most taxpayers would deeply appreciate getting out of stadium boondoggles being on their tax ledgers. There really isn’t a common-sense argument for publicly funded professional sports stadiums. And no “keep your government regulations out of my local life” isn’t common sense. It’s non-sense. Publicly funded stadiums don’t make money for municipalities, they don’t bring people who otherwise would not visit the team in large numbers, they don’t provide financial value. This has been well established in study after study. Publicly funded sports (including the entire NCAA) is indicative of the political/financial rot in this country.
But, unfortunately, billionaires are very good at extortion and scare tactics. They use LA…then Vegas… San Antonio… then Portland…Seattle etc… and on and on to scare local areas into funding their BS.
I like a good stadium just like anyone else. Billionaires and the league who pays the bills can pay for them themselves. It’s just as bad as GE paying no taxes every year.
I’ve always said if sports teams want public funding to build their stadiums, the public should get a share of the profits. It’ll never fly but totally reasonable imo.
Edit: Overuse of the word billionaires here. Many owners are paper rich but dont have billions sitting around.
Agreed. That would be great. The world isn’t fair, and those with means do what they can to keep those means and grow them. And that means (overuse of means here lol) they do so at the expense of those with less by definition.
Billionaires to hundreds of millions.. even the poorest owner is a hundred-millionaire by definition. Their clubs are worth that much. I have zero pity for people who are in the top .1% claiming sisters of the poor from those who struggle to make ends meet who happen to be fans of their product because of the area they grew up in or memories with family and friends from childhood.
A family of 4 cannot afford to go to a game. The ticket prices, concessions, parking, etc. cost too much. Then the NFL shows these commercials of everyday fans cheering and screaming for their teams. It’s so fake. I won’t give a dime of my money to the NFL. I aye-matey the streams and intentionally buy non-NFL authorized merchandise (when I have to buy it).
Again, you don’t get to decide on a federal level what’s good for the states or local places. If they want one of those laws, they can pass it themselves.
Toronto Bengals eh?
Louisville
Wasn’t this story posted a couple of months ago?
Shhh….
St. Louis Bengals
I think the fans of the Bengals (who a lot are fans of the Reds), would blow a gasket or two if that ever happened.
San Antonio Sabre Cats
Benghazi Bengals
It’s hilarious, but has a nice flow to it!
Obviously they never will but at this point can the league remove the Browns from their ownership they are a flat out disgrace to the league
Maybe, maybe not, but they have plenty of company. Tepper, the Spanos, Kroenke, the Haslems, Strunk, Johnson, Kraft…all of these have done some kind of shameful thing of mismanaged their team or city relations over the years. The ones who fans can only criticize for football related decisions are far fewer in number by comparison.
I hat sounded more judgmental and reactionary than I wanted it to be, but when looking at the current generation if owners comparatively, many leave a lot to be desired. Of course, so do some of the players, and nearly all of the agents, so there’s that. But, at the end of the day, I will say that I and others should keep in mind that we are also only getting an outside perspective, so there’s that, too.
Bengals are not going anywhere. Useless article.
Mike Brown probably can’t move the team without an endorsement from Joe Burrow anyway 🙂
Well then,BYE!!!,the sorryest owners in all of Professional Sports, Mike Brown and Katie Blackburn can take their traveling Carnival show somewhere else!!!,Good freaking Riddance, the way they deal with their Players is a joke!!!, the top Sack leader 2 years running, and he’s not signed yet!!!,their 1st round pick Shemar isn’t either!!!,Bengals released their best Linebacker and tackle leader!!!,the way they run this team is a joke!!!,and I can guarantee that once Joe Burrow’s huge contract expires, if he’s still healthy from playing here with no protection, he will be out of Cincinnati so fast it will appear he left on a bullet train!!!,and Chase will be leaving with him!!!,The Brown Family run Bungles is a total joke,and I would feel for any American city that would want them to come there permanently!!!,because they just use the city and the fanbase to make their family more wealthy!!!,They don’t give a Damm about Winning!!!!,never have,never will,no matter what city they call home!!!!,Disgruntled 50 year plus fan!!!!
Calm down, Rob, they won’t move. They wrote this article 2-3 months ago and it only resulted in jokes in the comments, not actual panic.
Qatar Bengals
Who is gonna pay the Browns to get the Bengals?
Who seriously wants to deal with them?
In recent years there has been speculation that the Vikings would move, that Buffalo would move and that the Chiefs would return to Texas. This speculation about the Bengals is just another chapter in that fantasy.
Billionaire handouts on the lower middle class’ taxes. Love it. God bless the USA. 🇺🇸🙄🤡
Let them move. Not a penny of taxpayer money should be used to increase the worth of billionaires.
Brown’s not a billionaire, but I get your drift. Agreed.