Illinois Governor: No Time for Bears to Pitch a Stadium Deal to Legislature in 2024

Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker said there’s no chance the Bears can get a deal for a new stadium in 2024. Not if they want to fund it with taxpayer money at least.

Pritzker anticipates that the Bears proposal will have to wait until Spring of 2025, telling NBC Sports, “if there was a proposal put on the table that could get done, you couldn’t actually get it done during the veto session.”

The Bears would allegedly be seeking $900 million from public funding. The rest of the funding for their nearly $5 billion stadium would come from the Bears organization themselves and NFL contributions. This budget would put the future home of the Bears on par with the budget for SoFi Stadium and would blow away the budget for Cleveland Brown’s potential new stadium.

However, the Illinois governor has proved he’s hesitant to use public money to fund a stadium.

Contingency plans for the Bears could still include leaving the Chicago lakefront and moving to a suburb. They have not released any design plans for a suburban option. No matter where they eventually lay their claims, the public in Chicago doesn’t seem thrilled about paying for the construction. 

Chicagoans on the subreddit r/Chicago have expressed disdain for the plans saying, “Maybe the McCaskeys can bring in some corporate sponsorship. Let corporate America pay for corporate America.” And “If the public is paying so much, then the building needs to be publicly accessible at a reasonable cost (…) what other entity takes that much public funding and still charges $600 for tickets?” 

The concept of using public funding for the stadium comes under even heavier criticism when fans consider the outcomes of the Sunday Ticket antitrust case. Already,  NFL teams are thinking of subsidizing their lost funds from the case with taxpayer money.

“I’ve done a lot of research on this topic,” said Pritzker, “But let me be clear: There isn’t much change.”