Nobody likes a skeleton at the feast. But somebody's got to do it.
The Bengals are 2-1 so far this season, and everyone's excited. And yet we shouldn't forget each Bengals win costs us dearly.
The Bengals clearly came out on top of the recent stadium lease negotiations with the county, squeezing Hamilton County residents for another $350 million over the next decade. That's fully 75% of the cost of stadium renovations and upkeep during that period. The Bengals only have to contribute 25%, or $120 million.
What a deal for the Bengals! Especially after the Hamilton County taxpayers already spent $1 billion on the stadium and are still paying off the original bonds.
Were the Bengals in dire straits last year? Deep in the red? Did the commissioners
pity them? Is that why they gave them such a great deal?
The good people at Forbes magazine surely don't think so. Forbes just released their 2026 NFL team valuations. The Bengals came in at $8 billion.
And what was it in 2025? $5.25 billion. That means that last year, while the Bengals were frantically negotiating to chisel us out of $350 million, their value actually increased by 50% or $2.75 billion. In one year!
But surely the negotiations with the county started earlier, say in 2024. How much were the Bengals worth then? According to Forbes, $4.1 billion.
So in the past two years, while the stadium deal was hashed out and the Bengals somehow got away with only contributing $120 million, their value doubled, and the ownership gained $4 billion.
That's one heck of a racket.
Did the Bengals leadership work some brilliant business magic to double the value of their enterprise in just two years? Are they racing ahead of other teams and climbing the ranks of NFL valuations?
Not at all. The Bengals are still the least valuable team in the league, right where they've been forever.
It's just that with the surge in the stock market, largely driven by the AI buildout, there is a lot more money in billionaires' pockets. And what does a billionaire do when his net worth suddenly jumps 50%, 100%, or 300% thanks to his company's surging stock or his private equity firm's ballooning investments?
He goes out and buys a professional sports team. Owning a professional sports team is the greatest vanity project in America today. It's the ne plus ultra of signaling: I've made it.
The NBA's Los Angeles Lakers just sold for $12 billion to a consortium led by Jared Kushner's brother, who runs the world's most successful tech-focused private equity firm. That's more than double the $5 billion they were worth in just 2021. The NFL's Seattle Seahawks recently sold for nearly $10 billion to the former CEO of Sun Microsystems, now owned by Oracle, a dramatic increase from recent valuations.
So thanks to a surging stock market and legions of flush tech and finance executives, all sports team valuations have surged. The NFL has also opened partial ownership of teams to private equity groups, contributing to this surge. All the Bengals had to do was sit and watch their value double.
Easy as pie.
Why did the Bengals do it? Why did they fight so hard to chisel us for $350 million when they gained $4 billion in a couple of years just by doing nothing? Would it kill them to sell some equity or release a bond? Would it kill them to do literally anything to contribute to the cost of running their own business rather than mooch off the taxpayer?
Why would they, though, if Hamilton County's purse is always open? If our elected officials keep writing the checks, the Bengals will be happy to keep cashing them.
So when we're fretting over essential Cincinnati Public Schools and child welfare levies, or the cost of mitigating climate change-induced flooding in our neighborhoods, or trying to figure out how to pay for any number of other city and county priorities, just remember: the Bengals took us for $350 million. They took us for $350 million and then made $4 billion in two years just by doing nothing.
I sincerely hope the Bengals do well this year and launch a deep run into the playoffs. That would make everybody happy. But that doesn't mean the ownership should get any more public money.
Not a penny more for these leeches.
Christopher Wood is a neurologist who lives in Clifton.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Bengals stadium deal looks worse after team's value hits $8B | Opinion
