{"id":247761,"date":"2026-04-13T16:38:06","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T16:38:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/247761\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T16:38:06","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T16:38:06","slug":"san-antonio-mayor-wants-spurs-to-pay-back-city-county-after-failed-mls-bid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/247761\/","title":{"rendered":"San Antonio mayor wants Spurs to pay back city, county after failed MLS bid"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph sections-facilities \">San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones said that she wants the Spurs owners \u201cto pay\u201d money they owe to the city of San Antonio and Bexar County, according to Molly Smith of the SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS. Spurs Sports &amp; Entertainment owes the city of San Antonio and Bexar County $5M, but \u201cneither government has made an effort to collect it\u201d\u202f&#8211; even as they have agreed to spend <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2025\/11\/05\/bexar-county-approves-public-funding-plan-for-downtown-spurs-arena\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2025\/11\/05\/bexar-county-approves-public-funding-plan-for-downtown-spurs-arena\/\">public dollars on a $1.3B Spurs arena<\/a>. The city, county and SS&amp;E went in together to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Daily\/Issues\/2015\/11\/05\/Facilities\/San-Antonio-MLS\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Daily\/Issues\/2015\/11\/05\/Facilities\/San-Antonio-MLS\/\">acquire Toyota Field<\/a> from philanthropist and onetime developer Gordon Hartman in 2015 in the \u201chopes of luring\u201d an MLS expansion team. As part of the $21M deal, SS&amp;E was on the hook for a $5M \u201creimbursement payment\u201d for part of the public financing if it failed to bring an MLS team to San Antonio by 2021. San Antonio FC\u2019s lease agreement says that the $5M repayment \u201cwas to be repaid gradually from 2021 to 2028.\u201d City Manager Erik Walsh provided information to the City Council noting SS&amp;E has \u201crepaid $250,000.\u201d However, Walsh noted that \u201cit has missed\u201d $1.75M worth of scheduled payments. After factoring in interest, that outstanding balance \u201camounts to more than\u201d $2M. If SS&amp;E had acquired an MLS team, the city and county had \u201cplanned to ask voters to approve up to\u201d $45M in public funding for a stadium expansion (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.expressnews.com\/news\/article\/gina-ortiz-jones-san-antonio-spurs-toyota-field-22162210.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.expressnews.com\/news\/article\/gina-ortiz-jones-san-antonio-spurs-toyota-field-22162210.php\">SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS, 4\/13<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones said that she wants the Spurs owners \u201cto pay\u201d money they owe&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":247762,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1770,136,3080,82,84,83,731],"class_list":{"0":"post-247761","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-mls","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-san-antonio","12":"tag-san-antonio-headlines","13":"tag-san-antonio-news","14":"tag-soccer"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247761\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}