The model

The study, slide by slide

What follows is the entire presentation — all five content slides, reproduced for review and comment, each followed by what to notice. Per Dr. Wilkerson’s testimony, the work was commissioned by the Trail Blazers and conducted “in late fall and early spring” for the state-funding push in Salem (SB 1501, the law that pledged $365M); Council saw it for the first time on July 30. There is no report, no appendix, and no named model behind these slides — yet.

Review · the provenance

Commissioned by the team for the state-funding fight; dated July 2026 on the cover but, per the author’s own testimony, completed around the spring session — then shown to Council for the first time on July 30, six days before public testimony. “If we’ve had this since the spring and I’m just now seeing it… that’s troubling to me,” said Councilor Mitch Green — an economist by training. A study’s timing is part of its content.

Review · the load-bearing slide

The base: $14.3B non-local + $7.7B local = $22 billion “supporting Blazers operations” over sixteen years — an average of $1.375B a year, against public estimates of team revenue near $350M today. No build-up is shown. (Questions 2 and 3.)

The asterisk: “Non-local revenue *” carries a footnote marker — and no footnote appears anywhere in the deck.

The study’s revenue base, 2030–45$22B

Build-up from public estimates (~$350M/yr growing with the media deal) Modeled≈$9–11B

Roughly double any public build-up. The year-by-year table would settle it. (Question 2.)

The caption’s quiet merge: the gray box says the difference represents the impact of “the renovation of the Moda Center and Trail Blazers operations” — the renovation and the franchise’s entire existence, fused into one number. And the no-team comparison redistributes local spending while assuming nothing about the building — as if no one else would ever run it: no replacement operator, no concerts, no Portland Fire. (Questions 5 and 6.)

Review · true of any $600 million

Ripple-effect math (each construction dollar re-spent through the economy, ≈1.57×) applied to the act of spending money. Schools, housing, or bridges built with the same dollars would produce comparable lines — this slide measures spending, not arenas, and says nothing about the best use of the money (we model that). Note the input: $600M, not the $573M actually committed — a ~5% pad on every number shown. (Question 12.)

$600M arena construction≈$942M

$600M housing construction≈$940M

$600M school construction≈$940M

Same construction industry, same ripple effect, any project. The question is never “does spending create jobs” — it’s what $600M should build. The ~$900M opportunity cost, modeled →

Review · the output that equals the input

$14B of “output” against $14.3B of revenue fed into the model — identical to within 2% (see the comparison below). Output is gross receipts, not income; the income line is $10B, before player-salary leakage out of Oregon. (Questions 4 and 11.)

$940M in state taxes is substantially the stream SB 1501 itself captures into the Arena Fund to pay for the arena — the Legislative Revenue Office books the diversion at −$72–83M per biennium from the General Fund. The slide counts as a return what the deal spends as its funding source. (Question 8.)

Claimed “incremental state tax revenue”$940M

Already pledged to the Arena Fund by SB 1501 itself (from the LRO’s −$72–83M/biennium) Modeled≈$700M+

What’s left for schools and services, after the diversion and the bond payments: approximately zero. (Question 8.)

Review · the dark-arena chart

The red bars are the tell. The no-team scenario carries losses deep into the 2040s — a shape only possible if the building’s economy substantially vanishes with the franchise. A City-owned arena with a replacement operator hosting the concerts, the Portland Fire, and the Winterhawks (the WNBA and hockey teams that share the building) — and paying market rent, as Seattle’s operator does — produces a very different red series. (Questions 6 and 10.)

And the orange bars are the other tell: three years of construction inside a working arena, with zero modeled disruption. Friction exists only in the scenario that helps the client. And the $15.2B header simply adds nineteen years of future dollars as if a dollar in 2045 were worth a dollar today. (Question 9.)

Slide 5, corrected — what the chart looks like if the building keeps operating Modeled · illustrative

The gold strip along the zero line is the series the study never models: successor-operator payments to the City — market rent plus revenue shares, roughly $5–15M a year. A sliver at this scale. Still larger than the deal’s $3M a year to the City.

Illustrative reconstruction at the slide’s own scale, in the slide’s own palette. Top: as presented — deep losses persisting to 2045, possible only if the arena’s economy vanishes with the team. Bottom, three corrections: a brief two-to-three-year transition instead of a permanent wound (the concerts, the Fire, and the Winterhawks continue under a new operator); the renovation disruption their construction bars omit; and the gold sliver they never model — successor-operator payments at market rates (Seattle’s operator financed a $1.15B rebuild privately and pays rent). Assumptions stated, adjustable, and answerable — unlike the original’s. (Questions 6, 9, 10.)

One more thing the five slides never contain: a City of Portland revenue line. Every fiscal figure is a State of Oregon number — a study built for Salem, presented to the council being asked for $120 million. Dr. Wilkerson said it himself: “there are some limitations here as it relates to the city.” That candor is to his credit. The deployment is not. (Question 13.)

Where it deserves real credit

The category error at the center

The study compares Oregon with the Blazers against Oregon without them. But nobody is voting on whether the Blazers should exist. Council is voting on the terms of a $573M renovation subsidy. Those are different quantities: the first is what the team is worth by being here at all; the second is what the public’s next dollar actually buys. If Intel announced that its departure would cost Oregon tens of billions, that might be true — and it would not prove Oregon should hand Intel any particular check. The value of a thing existing is not the value created by subsidizing it.

Attributing the full $15.2B difference to this subsidy requires an unstated assumption: that without this exact public package, the team leaves with 100% certainty. The study never states, defends, or prices that probability — and the public record leans against it: a lease through October 2030 (team-extendable to 2035) with a clause letting a judge order the team to stay, a $4.25B purchase priced on a team that plays in Portland, and the team’s own April letter proposing to finish a Portland lease by February 2027. Dr. Wilkerson was careful on this in testimony — the counterfactual “isn’t an assumption that that is going to happen; it’s a tool.” He is right: it is a tool for measuring what the franchise is worth by existing. The presentation then let the room read it as the return on the renovation. The missing scenarios are exactly the ones Council must weigh: a smaller renovation; a larger private share; the team staying on its current trajectory; the team leaving despite the renovation. The model contains none of them.

The arithmetic that needs showing

Output that equals input. The model retains $14.3B of non-local revenue and reports $14.0B of economic output — identical to within 2%. Either the multiplier and leakage work nets to approximately nothing, or revenue has been relabeled as impact. Six slides cannot tell us which. The full model can.

A revenue base roughly double any public build-up. $14.3B + $7.7B = $22B of revenue “supporting Blazers operations” over 2030–45 — an average of $1.375 billion per year. Public estimates put the team’s current revenue near $350M; even aggressive media-deal growth strains to average half the modeled figure. What’s in the base?

A fiscal benefit the deal itself spends. The marquee $940M in “incremental state tax revenue” is substantially the same stream SB 1501 captures into the Arena Fund to pay for the arena — the Legislature’s own revenue office records the diversion at −$72.3M and −$82.6M per two-year budget out of the General Fund — the account that pays for schools and services. Counting as a return what the legislation pledges as the funding source — without subtracting that diversion or the payments on $365M of bonds — is circular. The net-new-to-services number is the one that matters, and it isn’t in the deck.

Friction for leaving, none for building. The chart charges the departure scenario with years of “disruption” (negative bars deep into the 2040s) while the three-year construction period — in a working arena — shows no displaced events at all. Adjustment costs appear only in the scenario that helps the client.

Smaller, but telling: the construction slide runs on $600M, not the $573M actually committed — a ~5% pad on every construction figure; the $15.2B total adds up nineteen years of future dollars with no discount for time — a 2045 dollar counted as a today dollar; the testimony called 2030–2045 “a 20 year time horizon” — it is sixteen; and a team modeling a $1.4B-a-year revenue enterprise told the same Council, the same morning, that it has “accrued losses of more than $1 billion” and can’t pay for architects. Revenue is not profit — but the audience is being sold both stories at once: too big to lose, too poor to contribute.

Where the counterfactual falls apart — and what an honest model looks like

The dark-arena assumption. Look at the chart’s red bars again: the no-team scenario carries years of economic “disruption,” losses persisting into the 2040s. That shape is only possible if the model assumes the building’s economy substantially vanishes with the franchise. But the Moda Center is a City-owned arena in a functioning market for arena operators. In the real no-deal world, the City hires a new operator to run the building — the concerts, the family shows, the Fire, the Winterhawks — and pays for the privilege. That isn’t speculation; it’s the Seattle comp: when that city-owned arena went to market, the winning operator privately financed a $1.15B rebuild and pays the city rent.

Follow that to its uncomfortable end: under the study’s own logic, the counterfactual it never modeled — team leaves, City runs a market process — could produce more direct City revenue than this deal does, because this deal prices the City’s return at $3M a year while comparable operators pay rent on buildings they financed themselves. The study treats the team’s departure as the end of the building’s economy. The City’s own comparables say it would be a re-pricing of it.

What a decision-grade model contains — six components, all standard, none exotic:

• 1 · The actual decision. Model the subsidy’s increment against realistic alternatives — smaller scope, larger private share, current-lease trajectory — not team-exists vs. team-vanishes.
• 2 · A building that keeps operating. The no-deal scenario keeps the arena open under a new operator paying market rent and revenue shares, possibly bringing its own capital — because that is what actually happens to city-owned arenas, not the mothball assumption.
• 3 · A priced departure probability. The honest math multiplies what the team is worth by the chance it actually leaves if this deal fails. The lease to 2030, the stay-or-be-sued covenants, and the team’s own 2027 letter all say that chance is well below certain — and the study sets it, silently, at 100%.
• 4 · Net taxes, not gross. State taxes after subtracting what the deal itself diverts and what the bonds cost — and City revenue on its own line (this deck’s City line is blank).
• 5 · Opportunity cost. $573M of public capital has a next-best use; we model it — any honest analysis must, because “impact” without opportunity cost is just a description of spending.
• 6 · Income people keep, valued in today’s dollars. Not gross output, and not 2045 dollars counted at face value.

Run those six on the study’s own inputs and the story changes from “$15.2 billion” to something like: a real but modest expected value of retaining the franchise, against a public price that exceeds it under every scenario where the team wasn’t leaving anyway — and a no-deal world where the building itself keeps earning. That is the analysis Council has still never been shown, by anyone paid to produce one.

The grade

Should councilors use it? As evidence that the franchise generates real statewide value — yes, with the caveats above; it is the most serious effort yet on that question. As evidence for the $573M package, or for the City’s $120M share — no, not in its current form. It measures the wrong quantity, at the wrong level of government, with the machinery hidden. That changes the day the thirteen questions below are answered.

The thirteen questions

Each is answerable from the study’s own files — most in an afternoon. Together they determine whether the headline numbers are evidence or advertising.

1. Name the model and release the report. What software and version (REMI, IMPLAN, custom CGE, other), and where is the full report this six-slide deck summarizes?
2. Publish the revenue build-up. The year-by-year table behind the $22B base ($14.3B non-local + $7.7B local): what revenue categories are included, at what starting values and growth rates? How does a ~$350M-revenue franchise average $1.375B per year?
3. Derive the 65%. Category by category — national media, league revenue sharing, sponsorship, gate, arena events — and the treatment of player-salary leakage out of Oregon. What moves the figure to 45% or 80%?
4. Reconcile output to input. Is the $14.0B in output net of the $14.3B revenue fed in? Show the value-added shares and the effective multipliers by channel.
5. State the departure probability. What likelihood of the team leaving, absent this subsidy, does the analysis assume — and what is the impact per public dollar at that probability rather than at certainty?
6. Model the building, not only the team. What does the counterfactual assume about the arena itself? Does it go dark, or operate under a successor hosting the concerts, the Fire, and the Winterhawks — at market rent, per the Seattle precedent? How do the disruption losses change with a going-concern building?
7. Model the middle. Results for the scenarios Council actually faces: a smaller renovation; a larger private contribution; the team remaining on its current lease trajectory; the team leaving despite the renovation.
8. Net the fiscal claim. Of the $940M in state tax revenue, how much is captured into the Arena Fund under SB 1501’s own mechanism (LRO: −$72.3M / −$82.6M per biennium), and what remains for the General Fund after debt service on the $365M?
9. Show the discounting. Are the cumulative figures discounted? At what rate? What is the present value of the 2030–45 stream at 2–3% real?
10. Defend the asymmetry. What disruption to existing arena operations is modeled during the 2027–29 construction, and why do the counterfactual’s losses persist through 2045 rather than reverting fully?
11. Define the jobs. Are the 3,170 and 1,430 figures FTE jobs or job-years? New positions or existing employment “supported”?
12. Fix the horizon. Testimony described “2030 through 2045, which is a 20 year time horizon.” That span is sixteen years. Which horizon do the cumulative figures use — and why does the construction slide use $600M rather than the $573M actually committed?
13. Produce the city numbers. What are the City of Portland fiscal impacts of this deal — the line the deck does not contain — and does ECONorthwest advise a city council to rely on a state-scoped analysis for a city appropriation?