The Blazers and the deal's backers told the Legislature the Rose Quarter generates roughly $670 million a year in economic activity. But that's gross churn, not money the public keeps: the city's own 2023 consultant put the actual tax at $17.9 million a year ($11.3M from the Blazers). Even counting every user and parking fee — ~$29 million in all — recouping the public's ~$1 billion commitment would take more than 30 years, for a 20‑year lease. Here's every number, from the headline to your pocket — and the question we all need to answer: is it enough?
Pro‑deal testimony tells legislators and the public that the Trail Blazers and the Rose Quarter generate roughly $670 million a year in economic activity. That figure traces back to a study the City itself commissioned — and the study does not say what the talking point implies.
In FY 2022‑23, the City of Portland — not the team — commissioned Crossroads Consulting Services of St. Petersburg, Florida to estimate the economic impact of the Blazers and the Rose Quarter Campus. The final report, dated August 30, 2023, was delivered to the City's Office of Management and Finance. Here is what that number is, whose data built it, and what the same study says actually reaches the public.
The study's headline — $631.0 million — is “total output”: every dollar that changes hands as the activity ripples through the regional economy. Not income, not net‑new wealth, and not a dollar any government collects.
It runs on data “provided by…the Portland Trail Blazers and Rip City Management,” which Crossroads says “was not audited or verified and was assumed to be correct.” The most important number in the whole study — how much of the players' ~$145M in salaries to count as local Portland money — was set from “confidential information provided by” the team. No outsider can see or check it.
The same study's estimate of actual tax revenue to all local and state government is $17.9M — $11.3M of it from the team. That's the figure that funds anything, and it sits on page 10 — a fraction of the headline.
The Blazers pay their ~15 players about $145M — and the study doubles it with its own 2.02× multiplier, on the theory those salaries recirculate through Portland like ordinary wages. They don't: players save them, invest them out of state, and spend them at offseason homes. One line on the roster sheet is ~46% of the entire headline.
Sources: City of Portland – Office of Management & Finance, Economic Impact Analysis: Portland Trail Blazers & the Rose Quarter Campus, FY 2022‑23, Crossroads Consulting Services (final report, Aug. 30, 2023) — full PDF, cover letter and pp. 1–10. On the two job figures: the pro‑deal pitch cites “$670M, ~4,500 jobs, 1.6M visitors” in legislative testimony (OLIS doc 247805); this study says $631M and 5,940 jobs. They are different sources — the round pitch numbers appear nowhere in the study. This page uses the study's figures throughout. See Relocation analysis.
The study presents five metrics, and they are not independent — each is stacked on the one before it. Direct spending is the seed; a multiplier turns it into output; output is then expressed as jobs and labor income; and a sliver of all of it surfaces as tax. Here is what each box actually measures, in the study's own words, and how the number was assembled.
Study's definition: “the initial change in spending that occurs as a direct result of Team and Rose Quarter Campus operations.” Three buckets — team operating expenses (players' salaries, front office, other), campus operating expenses, and attendee spending outside the venues — after adjusting down for leakage and for local spending that would have happened anyway.
Study's definition: “the total direct, indirect (business‑to‑business purchases) and induced (household spending of income) spending effects.” This is the “$631M” (rounded up to “$670M” in public). It is gross activity that changes hands — not income, and not money any government collects.
Study's definition: “the number of full‑time and part‑time jobs supported by operations of the Team and the Rose Quarter Campus.” Note the words full- and part‑time, and supported — these are not 5,940 paychecks at the arena. They are modeled job‑equivalents spread across the whole economy through re‑spending.
The study attributes 5,000 of the 5,940 jobs to the Blazers. The other 940 are the campus jobs — the real venue workforce that runs everything else in the building: event staff, concessions, security, box office and facility operations for the concerts, family shows and Winterhawks, plus their ripple. Those average ~$66,330 in the model, and — the key point — they keep going if the Blazers leave. The 5,000 Blazers jobs are a different animal: an NBA team directly employs ~15 players plus a few hundred staff, and the rest are modeled, mostly part‑time, induced jobs. What those pay is the question Metric 4 answers — and it is devastating.
Study's definition: “the wages and salaries earned by employees of businesses associated with or impacted by operations.” Sold as wages flowing to Portland workers. Look at what's inside the Blazers' $231.56M share:
Study's definition: tax revenues including “personal and business income tax, transient lodging tax, property taxes, and other sources.” This is the entire fiscal return — every tax, both levels of government — from all that activity. Set against the headline output, the scale speaks for itself:
Tax revenue is 2.84% of the headline — and of the $17.9M, $11.3M is the Blazers' share, $6.6M the campus. Even this is split across tourism partners, property‑tax districts, and “arena improvements” before any of it is discretionary money for services. This is the number to remember when the deal's cost arrives in the reckoning below.
All split figures verified from the study (Portland‑area table, p. 9; tax revenue, p. 10): direct $322.07M; output $631.03M; 5,940 jobs; labor income $293.91M; tax $17.9M. Player‑payroll figure (~$145M, HoopsHype) is external; the study does not disclose the salary it fed in, so the “~$145M / 63%” split is our reconstruction Est and is bounded below in the next section.
“5,000 jobs and $231.6 million in wages” sounds like a working‑class economy worth protecting. Divide it out and the average job pays $46,312 — already below the campus's $66,330. But that average is a blend of about fifteen athletes earning ~$145M and roughly five thousand modeled, mostly part‑time jobs. Pull the athletes out — using the study's own figures — and watch what's left.
Take the millionaires out of the study's own numbers and the “5,000 Blazers jobs” left over are part‑time, poverty‑level work. A real arena job pays far more. Even counting the players' pay as generously as possible, the figure tops out near $30,400 — still just a minimum‑wage job.
Real venue jobs clear minimum wage easily. Strip out the ~15 athletes — whose pay a renovation neither creates nor protects — and what's billed as a Blazers “job” lands at or below the minimum‑wage line.
Here is why the average craters so hard: the players are a rounding error in the job count but a majority of the money. That mismatch is the whole illusion in one picture —
Fifteen people are three‑tenths of one percent of the jobs and somewhere between a third and two‑thirds of the wages. Strip them and the “thriving local jobs economy” the public is told it will lose is, by the study's own math, thousands of part‑time job‑equivalents averaging poverty‑level pay.
Verified (study, p. 9): Blazers $231.56M labor income / 5,000 jobs = $46,312; campus $62.35M / 940 = $66,330. Estimated Est: roster ~15 players; gross payroll ~$145M (HoopsHype); Oregon‑allocated ~$79.8M (duty‑days, see Section 05). Ex‑player averages = (231.56M − payroll) ÷ 4,985. Benchmark: Portland‑metro minimum wage $14.75/hr × 2,080 hrs = $30,680 (Oregon BOLI, 7/2022–6/2023). The true ex‑player average lies between the two bases; both are abysmal.
“Economic impact” is not a check the public cashes. To see what the public actually keeps, you have to separate three different things the talking point blurs together: gross activity, tax revenue, and money the general fund can spend on services. They get smaller at every step.
| The stream | What it is | Where it actually goes |
|---|---|---|
| $631M output | Gross spending that changes hands across the tri‑county economy. Mostly local money and team payroll. Most attendees are local; their spending is “displaced” — it would have happened somewhere in Portland anyway. | Nowhere, as public money. It is an activity figure, not income. $0 of it is a payment to any government. The study says so: it is “total output,” not revenue. |
| $17.9M tax | The model's estimate of all taxes thrown off — income, lodging, business, property — across both state and local government. $11.3M Blazers / $6.6M campus. | Split many ways. Lodging tax goes to tourism partners (Travel Portland / Travel Oregon); property tax to districts; only a portion is discretionary general‑fund money. The study itself lists “fund arena improvements” as one of the destinations. |
| 6% ticket fee | A user fee on every ticket — about $150M collected 1995–2026. It never touches the team or the arena operator. | Ring‑fenced. Flows to the City's Spectator Venues Fund, recycled back into venues. To the general fund for schools and services: $0. |
| $11.23M fees | The one real, audited cash figure in the study — user fees, suite fees, parking and event revenue the City actually received in FY 2022‑23. Campus‑wide, not Blazers‑only. The only number not produced by the model. | Also ring‑fenced to venue operations. Real money — but earmarked for the buildings, not available for general services. |
| What's left for services | Of a “$670M” headline… | a sliverA fraction of $17.9M — and SB 1501 is built to divert even that. See below. |
Sources: tax destinations and “fund arena improvements” language, study p. 10; 6% user fee and ~$150M to the Spectator Venues Fund, History; $11.23M City fees, study p. 10; SB 1501 Oregon Arena Fund and income‑tax diversion, enrolled SB 1501 (2026) & Deals analysis; General Fund redirection of −$72.3M (2027‑29) and −$82.6M (2029‑31), Legislative Revenue Office Revenue Impact, SB 1501‑B (3/2/2026).
The study hands us $11.3M and refuses to break it down — no split by tax type, no state‑vs‑local line, no disclosed salary input. So we did the one calculation the study wouldn't: the actual Oregon income tax on the players, from public salary data and Oregon's own duty‑days rule. It is the realest, most checkable piece of the team's public‑revenue footprint — and it tells you how thin that footprint is.
Sit that next to the study. Crossroads attributed $11.3M in all tax revenue — every type, state and local combined — to the Blazers. Our estimate says $7–8M of public revenue comes from a single source: state income tax on the players' own salaries. In other words, the largest identifiable piece of the team's entire public‑revenue footprint is the players being taxed on the paychecks the team writes them — paychecks funded substantially by local ticket buyers and regional media money in the first place. It is not outside wealth arriving in Oregon. It is Portlanders' entertainment spending, taxed once on its way through.
And note the modeling sleight‑of‑hand it exposes: IMPLAN applies average tax rates to labor income — it does not know these are top‑bracket earners. So the “personal income tax” buried inside the study's $11.3M is almost certainly lower than what the players actually pay. The one tax figure most relevant to a deal built on tax revenue is the one the study never isolated.
Method: Oregon nonresident‑athlete duty‑days allocation, OAR 150‑316‑0175; Oregon top rate 9.9% on income above $125k single / $250k joint, Oregon Dept. of Revenue; payroll HoopsHype. Excluded (all of which would raise Oregon's real take): front‑office salaries, visiting‑player jock tax, and the Multnomah County Preschool‑for‑All tax. Est denotes our estimate.
Here is the test any banker would run before lending against an asset: does it throw off enough to cover the debt? But first — the debt. Before asking whether the revenue covers the bill, look at the bill itself, and where every dollar of it comes from.
Three governments are committing $1.02–1.11 billion over 20 years: the ~$600M build, the $166–258M interest to borrow it, and $280M of upkeep. The team's share is $0. And every dollar is funded by redirecting tax revenue Oregonians already generate — money that was paying for something else.
Sources: state $365M net bond proceeds and $531M–$623M total debt service, LFO Fiscal Impact, SB 1501; General Fund redirection −$72.3M / −$82.6M, LRO Revenue Impact, SB 1501; City $120M capital plus $280M of 20‑year upkeep (Clean Energy Fund, business license tax incl. ~$50M from the sale, Spectator Venues Fund), Mayor's Office — ModaFuture; County ~$88M (car‑rental & business income tax, up to $35M from the sale), KGW / OPB; sale approved 3/30/2026 at ~$4.25B, OPB. The bar shows the full 20‑year public commitment, $1.02B–$1.11B (the state's $531–623M debt service drawn at its ~$577M midpoint). Figures are publicly reported commitments and may shift in final agreements.
That's the full public bill — about $1.1 billion over 20 years, none of it new money, none of it from the team. Now run the test any banker would run before lending against an asset: does the building throw off enough to cover it?
Put every public dollar the Rose Quarter generates (~$29M/yr — all tax + all fees, nothing reserved for operations or schools) toward the cost. Here's how long each piece takes to recoup. The lease you're buying is 20 years; the renovation's useful life is about the same.
Just the bare build already outlasts the 20‑year lease. Add the bond interest and operations and it's the 35–38 years beside it.
A decade and a half past the lease you're paying for — using every tax and fee.
You'd still owe on this arena 18 years after the deal that justified it expired.
Run it backwards. Given what the Rose Quarter actually generates, here is the most the public could spend and still get its money back over 20 years — set against the real ask.
Even crediting every tax and every fee, 20 years of Rose Quarter revenue recoups ~$583M — just over half the ask. What the building actually needs is ~$253M, comfortably inside that. The gap between the ask and what comes back — ~$440M to $540M — is subsidy the public never gets back. Fix what's actually broken and it pays for itself; the rest is the giveaway.
Inputs: $365M state bonds and 20‑year term, SB 1501 (2026); “true cost” $531M–$623M and ~$72M/budget‑cycle income‑tax diversion, Oregon Legislative Fiscal Office estimates via Deals analysis; $600M renovation headline (Blazers‑originated placeholder), Renovation study; $365M bond repaid at $531M–$623M ($166M–$258M interest), LFO Fiscal Impact, SB 1501; City $120M capital + $280M (~$14M/yr) 20‑year upkeep, Mayor's Office — ModaFuture; County ~$88M; all‑in 20‑year public commitment $1.02B–$1.11B. Tax revenue $17.9M (study); user/suite/parking fees $11.23M (City‑reported, study p. 10). Revenue used here is the most generous basis — all Rose Quarter tax plus all fees, ~$29M/yr — even though the income tax is diverted to the Arena Fund and the fees are ring‑fenced to the venues, so little of it reaches the General Fund. Coverage, payback, and break‑even figures are ours: payback = cost ÷ ~$29M/yr; break‑even (most the public ever recoups) = ~$29M × 20 = ~$583M, 0% interest; subsidy = the $1.02B–$1.11B cost minus that ~$583M = ~$440M–$540M (which equals the ~$22–27M/yr shortfall × 20); $253M is the City's VSG scope. Hankins and Dundon quotes, the $800M+ Raleigh development, and Portland's “shrinking” economy: Bill Oram, “How Raleigh got an arena deal done with Tom Dundon — and why it's so hard in Portland,” The Oregonian/OregonLive, May 29, 2026. Our derivations (annual debt service, coverage ratios, payback periods) use the figures shown; the 5% rate is an assumption chosen to land inside the LFO range and is flagged Proj. We hold the city to its own figures — the $17.9M in tax and $11.2M in fees — and do not vouch for them; even at that most‑generous count, the deal doesn't cover its cost.
“Lose the team and you lose $670 million” only works if the arena empties out entirely. But the City owns the building, and the Blazers are a minority of what happens inside it. By the study's own attendance figures, most of the calendar has nothing to do with the team.
Total turnstile attendance was 1.7 million across 264 events (study, p. 2). The 41 Blazers home dates draw roughly 750,000 — about 44%. The other ~56% is the concerts, family shows, and Winterhawks booked under the “Rose Quarter Campus” ($148.1M), which the study counts separately and which continue whether or not the team is the tenant.
A family's entertainment budget is roughly fixed. If the Blazers leave, that money doesn't vanish into thin air — it goes to the next local thing. Flip the switch and watch where a Portland family's night‑out money lands.
The bar barely moves. Whether the family buys Blazers tickets or concert tickets, the dollars land in Portland either way — the same local workers, the same local businesses.
Seattle faced the exact same problem — a city‑owned arena that needed a billion‑dollar renovation. It did the opposite of what Portland is doing.
| The same situation, two outcomes | Seattle — Climate Pledge Arena | Portland — Moda Center |
|---|---|---|
| Who pays for the renovation | The operator — privately financed~$1.15B; the operator carries every cost overrun | The public~$600M construction, ~$1B all‑in; operator carries no construction risk |
| Operator's share of the cost | 100% | $0 |
| How the operator was chosen | Competitive public RFP (2017) | Handed to the incumbent — no bid |
| Who owns the building | The public | The public |
| What the operator put in | Everything | Nothing |
Verified (study): 1.7M turnstile attendance across 264 events, p. 2; Rose Quarter Campus output $148.06M, p. 9; 1.4M at Moda Center / 300k at VMC, p. 5. Estimated Est: ~750k Blazers attendance = 41 home dates × ~18,300, a subset of the Moda total; the ~44% / ~56% split is derived from these. Climate Pledge Arena (formerly KeyArena, city‑owned): ~$1.15B renovation, privately financed by the operator with no city construction money, operator selected by competitive RFP — Seattle Times, Construction Dive. Portland's zero‑private‑capital structure vs. 15 other NBA arena deals: Deals analysis. Full relocation analysis: what leaving would actually require.
The public was told it would lose $670 million. The city's own study says the team yields $11.3 million a year in actual tax revenue — and the deal is built to divert even that into paying the owner's renovation.
— The case, in one sentenceStack it up. The public is asked to commit on the order of $1.02–$1.11 billion over twenty years. The activity it's protecting throws off about $11.3 million a year in tax revenue by the city's own estimate — much of it lodging and property taxes already earmarked elsewhere, much of the rest local money simply taxed in transit. The one genuinely real cash stream, the ~$11.23M in City fees, is ring‑fenced for the venues. And SB 1501 stands ready to redirect new district income‑tax growth into the Arena Fund to service the very debt the public is taking on.
So what does the public keep at the end? A renovated building it already owns, a 20‑year lease, and a general‑fund return that rounds to a rounding error against the obligation. Meanwhile the franchise that grew from ~$70M to ~$4.25 billion lists its own contribution to the renovation at $0.
Every figure attributed to the study is quoted directly from the City of Portland's Economic Impact Analysis (FY 2022‑23), Crossroads Consulting Services — the full PDF is posted here so you can check the page citations yourself. Cost and bond figures come from our other sourced pages (Renovation, Deals, History), each tied to primary records and reporting.
Where a number is our own estimate or projection — the player income tax, the annual debt service, the coverage ratios and payback periods — it is tagged Est or Proj and its method is shown. We never present an estimate as a fact, and the strongest figures here are the city's own. We will correct anything the records contradict.