Rafael Castellanos
Rafael Castellanos covers stadium finance, public subsidy and the development economics of large venues. He previously reported on municipal bond markets.
5 articles
New York-
11 DEC2025Venues
Naming Rights Reprice, and the Buyers Change
Venue naming agreements signed in the last cycle are renewing into a market with different buyers, shorter terms and a measurement standard that did not previously exist.
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22 AUG2024Venues
The Olympic Ledger, Reconsidered
A Games delivered largely in existing venues has produced the first credible test of whether the host-city model can be made financially defensible.
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19 OCT2023Venues
Who Pays for the Stadium: The Subsidy Ledger, Twenty Years On
The venues built with public money in the 2000s have now run long enough to test the economic projections used to justify them. The results are not ambiguous.
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14 OCT2021Venues
The Retrofit Decade: Why New Stadiums Stopped Being the Answer
Construction cost inflation, tightening municipal appetite and a changed revenue mix have pushed the venue business from building new to rebuilding what exists.
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09 JUL2020Venues
Empty Houses: The Long Arithmetic of a Season Without Crowds
Matchday income is the smallest of the three major revenue pillars and the most expensive to lose, because it is the only one that carries the venue’s fixed cost base with it.
