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 sourced and labeled, from public filings and Portland's own signed lease.
And now he wants the public to spend $1 billion-plus to make it even bigger.
The operator runs a public building for $1 a year and keeps what it earns — concessions, naming, parking, events. Stream by stream, this page prices that capture, each line labeled by how sure we are.
~$2.5B Modeled — what the building hands the operator over the 20-year lease (~$100M+ a year).
His half of a fair renovation (~$300M) is about an eighth of what the arena hands him across the lease. That is what “he can afford the market deal” means.
How these numbers fit together
The same scope, escalated and repeated over 20 years: $505M. Inside it: ~$164M genuine repair, ~$341M revenue-generating upgrades.
This is the current number. The earlier “$600M ask” you may have seen was the floated figure this draft replaced.
The balance sheet’s ~$850M–1B modeled core sits inside this range.
Not the $2.5M-per-year maintenance reserve — that is a separate recommended term.
Verified primary document · Calculated arithmetic from verified inputs · Modeled assumptions disclosed & adjustable. Every line’s paper trail: the Public Balance Sheet.
Why one man captures so much
Dundon's group wears two hats at the Moda Center — and collects from a third tenant too. Almost every dollar a fan spends in the building lands with one owner.
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 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 team money and building money flow to the same place.
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 — so they're a genuine paying tenant: rent, facility fees, and a concession share, all flowing to 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 the slice the renovation grows.
| Arena-captured revenue stream | Per year | How we know |
|---|---|---|
| Blazers gate Tickets, club seats, and suites — the anchor figure | $63Mrange $59–67M | Modeled 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 | Modeled Benchmark per-caps × the operator's ~40–50% share. |
| Concerts & events Rental + per-ticket facility fees on non-Blazers dates | ~$8Mrange $5–11M | Modeled ~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 | Modeled ~$40M/10yr 2013 deal, as reported; kept under Dev. Agmt §31. |
| Parking The operator's 25% admin fee on invoiced non-event parking — monthly passes and arranged blocks, not drive-up (Coliseum Operating Agreement §14.3.2, 2014). Plus the City-owned Arena Garage, whose books the City cannot copy | Records needed | Unpriced The 25% fee is quoted from Parking Agmt §8.4, but it reaches invoiced parking only — no document prices that stream. |
| Portland Fire (WNBA) tenant Operator's take from a second pro team in the public arena | ~$1–2M | Modeled RAJ-owned tenant; lease terms not public. |
| Ticket resale cut Team's share of verified-resale fees | ~$2Mrange $1–4M | Modeled 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. |
Reconstructed from team financials reported by Forbes, CNBC, Statista, and Sportico, the City's own studies, and Portland's signed lease — built stream by stream and reconciled to sit inside the franchise's ~$340M revenue, never stacked on top. The gate already includes premium seats and suites, so nothing is double-counted; modeled lines carry a range. If the Blazers release their actual numbers, we'll update this table. Full methodology and sources at the bottom of the page.
The honest split — and why it still lands
Not every dollar he makes is about this building, so we separate the two.
Exists only because he controls the public Moda Center. Gate, concessions, parking, naming, events, the Fire — the highest-margin money in the building, and the slice the renovation grows.
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.” Backwards. The renovation expands the arena-captured slice — premium suites, clubs, and bars. The national TV check rolls in no matter where the team plays. The premium space does not, and that's the part Portland is being asked to build — for free, in perpetuity.
Does the building need the Blazers — or just a tenant?
If the Blazers ever left — the owner’s call, never the City’s — wouldn’t the public lose all this revenue? No: the public barely shared in the team’s money to begin with, and most of what Portland collects stays.
The team’s ~$63M gate — tickets, club seats, suites — plus its share of concessions and resale. Dundon’s biggest number, but it follows the team to its next city. And it was never Portland’s money: the public collected a ~6% fee on it — about $2.9M.
Concerts, family shows, the Portland Fire, naming rights, parking — and the public’s own ticket fees. The publicly-owned building keeps earning whoever plays in it.
The tell, from the City’s own work-session figures: its ticket fee brings in more from non-Blazers events ($4.3M) than from the Blazers ($2.9M) — and the City’s parking widens the gap. Most of the public’s arena revenue is the rest of the calendar.
So if the team ever did leave, a publicly-owned, renovated, major-market arena wouldn’t go dark. It keeps its event business, opens dozens of premium dates, and draws competitive interest from the companies that run arenas for a living — leverage Portland doesn’t have today, and a real shot at the private capital, rent, and revenue share the current deal leaves out.
To be clear, we want the Blazers to stay — renovate Moda, keep the team. The narrower point: the building holds real value with or without them, and knowing that lets Portland hold out for a fair deal instead of a rushed one.
What the alternative is actually worth, priced line by line →
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 $15 million — different measures of different things, and the audited books that would reconcile them stay locked.
So we anchor on the one number 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. If the deal 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. Funded by the public, owned by the public — and every dollar it earns goes to him.
He could cover his half with pocket change
Suppose Portland asked the team to fund half the renovation, as ordinary public-private deals do. Here's the yearly cost against the revenue the building already throws off, across all 20 years of the lease.
What the public is actually asked for
The trade Portland is being asked to make.
~$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.
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, so the General Fund nets about nothing. (The July 17 draft's one movement: a $3M/yr tax offset split City/County/Schools.)
He already makes a fortune from the public's arena.
He wants the public to spend a billion to make that fortune bigger.
He keeps more than $100 million a year in revenue that exists only because he controls the public's building. The enterprise just sold for about $4.25 billion. And Portland, Multnomah County, and the State of Oregon are asked to commit over $1 billion to build the highest-margin space in the arena 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 →How we built these numbers
This campaign's edge is that every number checks out. Here's how each figure is grounded, and what we still can't see.
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. We also put no 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:
- The team's audited financials — would resolve the $15M-vs-$111M profit gap.
- The concessions contract (commission vs. management-fee, and who holds the liquor license) — swings the food-and-drink net by $10M+.
- The full-season suite and premium-seat price list — only per-game rates are public.
- The Portland Fire (RAJ Sports) lease with the operator — rent, parking, and concession share.
- The identity and per-ticket charge of the team-affiliated ticketing operation (§28.2.1).
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.