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On 18 June 2013, City Manager Joyce Wilson, City Attorney Silvia Borunda Firth, and City CFO Carmen Arrieta-Candelaria signed an agreement with Joshua Hunt of MountainStar Sports Group amending the original Ballpark lease.
Per the Amendment, the City is currently leasing the Ballpark to MSSG for only $484,000 per year. Yet in 2023 (the last year for which data is available), the City spent $3,442,466 on Ballpark maintenance and upgrades.
CITY RECEIVES ONLY 61 CENTS PER TICKET SOLD
Section 1.4 of the amended lease stipulates that the City of El Paso shall receive “Fifty Cents ($0.50) for each ticket sold for each Ballpark Event during each of the first five calendar years” of the contract, $0.55 for years six to ten, $0.61 for years eleven to fifteen, $0.67 for years sixteen to twenty, $0.73 for years twenty-one to twenty-five, and $0.80 thereafter.
Let us put this in perspective. The El Paso Chihuahuas are playing against the Round Rock Express on May 6 and the tickets range in price from $29.00 to $129.00. Since we are now in year 13 of the original contract, the City will receive only $0.61 per ticket for that game, even though the City paid $64 million dollars of the $76 million construction cost of the Ballpark and, directly or indirectly, expended tens of millions of dollars more.
Let us put this in further perspective. During FY 2024, the City received only $303,941 in ticket revenue, with each ticket selling for somewhere between 40 and 210 times what the City received, meaning that MountainStar Sports Group earned many millions in ticket revenue, of which the City received only a tiny fraction. We cannot know the exact figure because each section of the Ballpark has its own pricing and we don’t know how many seats from each section were sold, nor do we know how the revenue from season tickets was calculated.
CITY RECEIVES ONLY $1.21 PER PARKING SPACE
According to Section 1.3, the City is currently receiving only $1.21 per parking space during Ballgames, yet those same spaces are sold to the public for at least $10 each. In FY 2024, the City earned less than $150K from parking for Ballpark events, so where did all the money go?
Joyce Wilson signed the worst contract in the history of our City and it will remain in effect until at least 2042. Isn’t she special?
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