{"id":549163,"date":"2026-03-27T21:09:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T21:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/549163\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T21:09:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T21:09:08","slug":"proposed-home-team-act-could-slam-door-on-bears-move-to-indiana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/549163\/","title":{"rendered":"Proposed “Home Team Act” could slam door on Bears move to Indiana"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new bill in Congress<\/a> would prevent sports teams from relocating without first providing local interests with a chance to buy the team. While it seems unlikely in the current political climate that the bill will become law<\/a>, it has direct relevance to the Bears.<\/p>\n

Currently, the Bears are leveraging Indiana against Illinois in the effort to build a new domed stadium. Under the \u201cHome Team Act,\u201d the Indiana option would evaporate.<\/p>\n

During a Thursday press conference, co-sponsor Greg Casar, a Democratic member of the House of Representatives, called it a \u201ckeep-the-Bears-in-Chicago\u201d bill.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven when teams don\u2019t actually move, the threat of moving sets off a race to the bottom,\u201d Casar said, via Tina Sfondeles of the Chicago Sun-Times. \u201cBillionaire owners pit taxpayers against one another<\/a> and then extort the government for billions of dollars. . . .<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see that right now in Chicago, where Indiana taxpayers are now put in a competition against Illinois taxpayers to subsidize a team worth $8 billion. Before you move a team away from the fans who have been rooting for it their whole life, you have to give them a chance to buy it and keep it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bill was introduced as a Democratic initiative. Via Eric Fisher of Front Office Sports, Casar believes the bill will eventually gather bipartisan support, and he said that there is \u201csignificant interest<\/a>\u201d from members of Congress from Illinois.<\/p>\n

The immediate reaction by many to the proposal is that Congress has better things to do. (And, frankly, it does.)<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time,\u201d Casar said. \u201cI\u2019ve been very vocal about funding TSA, very vocal about reforming ICE, and very vocal about avoiding endless wars. We also want to keep the spotlight on protecting sports fans, and we\u2019re going to do all of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, it won\u2019t be easy to get this one through Congress \u2014 or to get President Trump to sign it into law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new bill in Congress would prevent sports teams from relocating without first providing local interests with a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":549164,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-549163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/549164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}