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Follow the money · The Moda Center money map

What the publicly-owned Moda Center makes Tom Dundon's group $100 Million+ a year — from an arena he rents for $1 = $2.5 billion over the 20-year lease

Gate, concessions, parking, naming, events — revenue that exists only because he controls the public's building. Every figure below is reconstructed from public filings and Portland's own signed lease, sourced and labeled — and we'll update it the day the Blazers open their books.

And now he wants the public to spend $1 billion-plus to make it even bigger.

What he pays to rent it
$1/yr
The whole publicly-owned arena, for a dollar a year — Arena Lease §3.1.
What it just sold for
$4.25B
The Blazers + the arena operation, sold March 2026 — about 12.5× revenue.
What he's asked to contribute
$0
Toward the ~$1B+ the state, city & county put in — the City's funding page lists no private team contribution.

Everything else on this page sits between those three numbers.

Why one man captures so much

Dundon's group wears two hats at the Moda Center — and as of May 2026, collects from a third tenant too. Almost every dollar a fan spends in the building lands with one owner.

Hat 1 · The operator

Rip City Management

The company that runs the City-owned arena and keeps the revenue from every event in it — concerts, family shows, other sports. The City owns the building; RCM banks the operating income. Rent to the public: $1/year.

Hat 2 · The tenant

The Trail Blazers

The anchor NBA tenant — ~44 home dates a year of gate, premium seats, suites, and the naming deal. Same ownership as the operator, so the team's ticket and premium money and the building's operating money flow to the same place.

And now a third stream. Since May 2026 the Portland Fire (WNBA) play their ~22 home dates at the Moda Center. The Fire are owned by RAJ Sports — not Dundon — which means they're a genuine paying tenant: rent, facility fees, and a concession share that flow to Dundon's RCM as the building's operator. The public arena now monetizes a second pro franchise, and the operator collects either way.

What it adds up to

The franchise pulls in roughly $340 million a year in total revenue. Of that, about $100 million-plus is “arena-captured” — revenue that exists only because Dundon controls this public building. That's the slice below, and it's the slice the renovation is built to grow.

Arena-captured revenue stream Per year How we know
Blazers gate Tickets, club seats, and suites — the anchor figure $63Mrange $59–67M Reported  Forbes/Statista gate ($59M, 2022-23), escalated.
Concessions, food & drink, retail Net kept by the operator after the concessionaire's cut. Fans spend $34–74M gross. ~$24Mrange $14–37M Estimate  Benchmark per-caps × the operator's ~40–50% share.
Concerts & events Rental + per-ticket facility fees on non-Blazers dates ~$8Mrange $5–11M Estimate  ~30–45 ticketed dates × industry fee structures.
Arena naming rights The “Moda Center” deal — 100% to the team, none to the City that owns the building ~$4M Reported  ~$40M/10yr 2013 deal; kept under Dev. Agmt §31.
Parking The operator's 25% admin fee on non-event garage parking (the City keeps event & game-day parking) ~$1–3M Verified  Quoted from Parking Agmt §8.4.
Portland Fire (WNBA) tenant Operator's take from a second pro team in the public arena ~$1–2M Estimate  RAJ-owned tenant; lease terms not public.
Ticket resale cut Team's share of verified-resale fees ~$2Mrange $1–4M Estimate  Standard team/marketplace split.
Arena-captured revenue — money that exists because he controls this building ~$100M+range $85–130M About 30% of the franchise's total revenue.

These figures are reconstructed from public sources and the data that's actually available — team financials reported by Forbes, CNBC, Statista, and Sportico, the City's own studies, and Portland's signed lease — built up stream by stream and reconciled so the totals sit inside the franchise's ~$340M revenue, never stacked on top of it. The gate already includes premium seats and suites; the decomposition isn't double-counted. Where a number is a modeled estimate, it's labeled and given a range. If and when the Blazers release their actual numbers, we'll update this table. The full methodology and every source are at the bottom of this page.

The honest split — and why it still lands

Not every dollar he makes is about this building. So we separate the two, because the distinction is the whole point.

Arena-captured
~$100M+/yr

Exists only because he controls the public Moda Center. Gate, concessions, parking, naming, events, the Fire. This is the slice the renovation grows — and it's the highest-margin money in the building.

Follows the team
~$230M+/yr

Would move with the franchise to any city — not a reason to subsidize this building:

  • National TV money — $143M/team this year (up $40M), climbing toward ~$281M by 2034-35
  • League revenue-sharing — Portland is a net receiver
  • Team sponsorship & other deals
  • Local media — now a small net negative after the free-TV switch

The team's side will say: “Most of his money follows the franchise, so the building doesn't matter.” It's exactly backwards. The renovation expands precisely the arena-captured slice — premium suites, clubs, and bars — the part that exists only because he controls this public building, and the highest-margin money there is. The national TV check rolls in no matter where the team plays. The premium space does not. That's the part Portland is being asked to build — for free, in perpetuity.

How much of that is profit

Here the public record is murky on purpose. For the same 2024-25 season, Forbes booked the team's operating income at $111 million while CNBC pegged EBITDA at just $15 million — different measures of different things, and the audited books that would reconcile them stay locked.

So we anchor on the one number sophisticated buyers staked real money on: the Blazers and the arena operation sold for about $4.25 billion in March 2026 — about 12.5 times revenue — for a building its operator rents at $1 a year. If the deal truly pencils, let them open the ledgers and prove it. Until they do, Portland is being asked to underwrite a fortune it isn't allowed to see.

And he wants the public to make it bigger

By the City's own renovation study, about $238 million of the work — 47% of the scope — builds revenue-generating premium space: suites, clubs, bars, retail. The highest-margin inventory in the building. Funded by the public. Owned by the public. And every dollar it earns goes to him.

The uplift the public would fund
+$27–41M / year, forever
Built up stream by stream, the new premium space throws off an estimated $27–41 million a year in fresh revenue: premium seating, food & beverage, 8–15 added event nights, and a naming-rights re-rate as “Moda Center” re-prices on a rebuilt arena. Under the signed lease (Dev. Agmt §31), 100% of it goes to the operator.
That's an estimated $220–490 million of franchise value created with other people's money. His contribution toward the $238M that builds it: $0.

The renovation isn't filling a hole in his business — it's the single highest-yield use of public money for the operator, building the premium space that lifts his richest per-seat revenue, in perpetuity.

He could cover his half with pocket change

Suppose Portland did what an ordinary public-private deal does and asked the team to fund half the renovation. Here's what that would cost him each year — against the revenue this building already throws off — across all 20 years of the lease.

His arena revenue vs. the cost of his 50% share
Arena-captured revenue per year, in $millions — the red base is the ~$15M/yr that would pay his half
$0M $50M $100M $150M RENOVATION OPENS → ← BEFORE Yr 1 Yr 5 Yr 10 Yr 15 Yr 20 Lease year (renovation completes ~Year 5)
Revenue the building makes him His 50% renovation share (~$15M/yr)
The renovation doesn't just leave him able to afford his share — it hands him the money to pay it. The upgrade lifts his arena revenue by an estimated $27–41M a year (the jump after Year 5). That raise alone is more than double his entire ~$15M/yr half — so the public-funded renovation more than pays for the very contribution he isn't being asked to make.
$300M
His half of the ~$600M construction (the build, not the $1B+ all-in)
~$15M/yr
Spread across the 20-year lease, no financing
~4%
Of franchise revenue (~11–15% of the building's own)
$0
What the deal actually asks him to pay
Over the 20-year lease, this building alone makes him about $2.5 billion.
His half of the renovation — $300M — is about an eighth of what the arena hands him over the life of the lease. He's being asked for none of it.

What the public is actually asked for

Put the two sides on a scale. This is the trade Portland is being asked to make.

The public puts in
$1B+

~$1.02–1.11 billion over 20 years — state, city, and county combined. The state's share is repaid by diverting up to $83 million every two-year budget cycle of income-tax growth (including the Blazers' own players' withholding) out of the General Fund and into the Arena Fund.

The public's stake back
~$0

To the General Fund for schools, parks, and police. The ~$29M/yr in taxes and fees the building throws off is diverted to the Arena Fund or locked to the venues — by the City's own structure, the General Fund nets about nothing.

He already makes a fortune from a building he rents for a dollar.
He wants the public to spend a billion to make that fortune bigger.

He rents the public's arena for $1 a year. He keeps more than $100 million a year in revenue that exists only because he controls it. The enterprise just sold for about $4.25 billion. And he is asking Portland, Multnomah County, and the State of Oregon to commit over $1 billion — with the state's slice repaid not by him but by diverting up to $83 million every two-year budget cycle of income-tax growth, including the Blazers' own players' withholding, out of the General Fund and into the Arena Fund. The income taxes the building generates get captured the same way, and the ticket fees stay locked to the venues — so the General Fund nets about zero. All of it to build the highest-margin space in the building and hand him an estimated $27–41 million a year more, forever — while he contributes $0.

Renovate Moda. Keep the Blazers. But not on these terms.

Email Portland City Council →

See the fair-deal terms that fix this →

How we built these numbers

This campaign's edge is that every number checks out. So here's exactly how each figure is grounded, and what we still can't see.

Verified — quoted from Portland's executed lease or the statute Reported — published by a named outlet (Forbes, CNBC, Statista, Sportico) Estimate — modeled from public benchmarks; shown as a range

The total revenue (~$315–361M, mid ~$340M) is the range across CNBC, Forbes, and Statista for 2024-25. The arena-captured streams are built bottoms-up and reconciled to sit inside that total, not on top of it. We deliberately leave money out where the lease assigns it to the City: event and game-day parking and the 6% ticket user-fee are the City's revenue, not Dundon's, so they're not counted as his. We also don't put a dollar figure on the ticketing-affiliate service fees the lease hints at (Dev. Agmt §28.2.1) — the clause proves a skim exists but doesn't size it.

What we can't see without records requests — and what would sharpen each number:

Sources include CNBC's 2026 NBA valuations, Forbes (Oct 2025), Statista, Sportico, the City of Portland's 2023 Crossroads economic-impact study, the Legislative Revenue Office, and the executed Moda Center bridge lease under Ordinance 191857. The full sourced model is documented in the campaign's research file. Public-cost figures match the Economic Impact and Renovation Study analyses.