Mr. WEO

interesting-thanks. The more I ask the more I know!

a different steel fabrication trade? are the tasks that different, re: the fabrication? I know it's a different "part", but why different trades?

Agree 100%. And thanks for the info--waiting to fabricate the finished steel parts makes sense. I guess I always assumed some or much of it would be constructed form standard length/size I beams or what not. But it's not Lincoln Logs! lol Is the raw steel supplier also the fabricator of the columns/beams?

I know you do. I respect your knowledge of construction/design. It’s always on point with this thread about the stadium. Several others have mentioned several times inflation is a reason for overruns (not you). I stated why I thought it wasn’t possible by pointing out that inflation has decreased significantly. You jumped in to say inflation was not decreasing but “it’s just slowed the rate it’s going up”. “it” in the context of your post, is “prices”. The rate of price increase (inflation defined) is going down. Prices alway go up. I was going to ask you upstream how steel purchase works for such a project. Do you buy it all at once (as much as you can accurately predict you will need) and store it somewhere? Do you buy it in bunches as you build? Do you buy some sort of futures contract to lock in a price for the duration of the project, no matter how much you end up needing?

You don’t seem to understand basic economics. If inflation is 7% when a project is initially conceived and a budget is created, it will certainly assume that prices will continue to increase annually at the same rate throughout the life of the project. if the rate of increase turns out to be less than half that, it makes no sense at all to blame cost overruns in a lower rate of price increases

Defined as the rate at which prices are increasing, inflation is going down. Prices are still going up as they always are all the time, but they are going up at less than half the pace they were 2 years ago. The rate at which prices were going up per year when the stadium was announced was 6-7%. Knowing this, the general contractor would assume that would hold throughout (prices for goods and services of this project would increase 6-7% a year). But in fact it’s less than half that. So you cant blame “inflation” for overruns, when the rate at which prices are increasing is a fraction of what was originally budgeted for…. who said prices are going down? you are the one conflating prices with inflation

I men, that's one way to answer simple questions I guess. But it's a poor dodge. Explain how these contractors have led to cost overruns. Everything you described would have been known and factored in a year ago. You think Gilbane/Turner had no idea what a billion plus stadium project in NY (with all of its rude regarding unions/"MWBE"/etc? Or that they had no concept of how to estimate "how long a project like this will take" (it's still on time, as far as we know)? Flesh that out for us. I won't ask you to back up your bad take on health care resource management. You based it on a nurse telling you something about something...lol. inflation happened....and it has dropped significantly since this project was conceived. a massive drop in inflation is hard to blame for current cost overruns.

You also blamed cost overruns on union labor (compared to non-union labor). But this would have been accounted for in the original estimate. It wouldn't be an unforeseen cost. Also, inflation rate was over 3% when they broke ground. It's 2.6% now. It was over 6% when the stadium deal was announced.

CT and MRI wait times are purely a function of the number of machines available for the demand---same as pre covid. Other than maybe in the most remote/rural areas in the country, there aren't many MRI machines sitting idle for lack of staff to run them. This is most likely the vast majority of the overrun. Again, how could they be so far off with labor estimates for a still on time projected completion? You think it will not be done on time? Hundreds of millions of extra labor costs because some contractors are owned by minorities or women? Got a link for that? And even if this was true, why wouldn't the general contractor already know this and accounted for it in their original total cost estimate? Also, comparing this to a public construction project doesn't help your argument. Since the beginning of public projects funded by the public, graft, theft, and corruption have been mainstays of doing business. Notoriously dirty business.

More hours?---you mean they are working around the clock? 2 shifts? Or did they bring in double the number of workers starting this month? if not, you are implying construction is way behind and will require months longer to complete. Where else would all of these extra hours come from? Or would this overrun represent a massive miscalculation by the contractor before ground was broken re: labor needs/costs. SoCal has the most likely explanation stated upstream---client changing what they want adds to cost.

this is all this guy is good for

Did the union workers get a huge raise since the original cost estimates were released? Covid's only lasting impact has been staffing costs--particularly nursing, where tons of them left their regular jobs to do travel nursing (even in the same city) where their hourly costs are double or more for the hospital. CTs, MRIs, procedures are humming along as ever.

Barstoolbets was created when bought by Penn. Bartstool Sportsbook was formed in 2020. Their recent agreement with DraftKings ended Barstool sports book.

for obvious reasons, this guy seems untouchable.....

Barstool operates it gaming arm as Barstool Bets. It's therefore also a gaming company. It sure "made sense" to Penn at the time to try to scoop up all those viewers as bettors and sweeten their deal with ESPN Bets. Penn bought BS to bring its readers in as potential bettors to offer ESPN in Penn's collab to form ESPN Bets. ESPN didn't want the toxic association (state licensing refusals were only part of their problem with BS). So, Penn dumps BS, partners with ESPN anyway and has access to far more bettors.

in October, Barstool had 5.4 million unique visits. ESPN.com had 632 million. ad revenue was about 250 million vs 4.4 billion for ESPN

Penn, a huge gaming/casino company, wanted Barstool for Barstool Bets to partner with ESPN in their online gaming venture. ESPN didn't want to be associated with Barstool in the creation of ESPN Bet. Without this partnership, Barstool was of zero value for Penn (which had 6.5 billion in revenue in 2022) as . They instead partnered with ESPN without BS. If Barstool was printing money, it stands to reason that they would keep BS as a profitable asset, rather than taking a writedown. Similarly, if they thought BS had significant market value, they wouldn't have sold it back to Portnoy (let alone for a dollar). Obviously not all (or, perhaps, any) revenue is profit. Last reports I see online are losses of 16 million Q1 and 12 million in Q2 for 2023. Can you link to the more recent public info re: current financials? Barstool Bets is an insignificant online betting player---Penn thought BS would funnel tons of it's broke ass readers to "ESPN Bets" for them. unfortunately their 18-34 viewers were the wrong betting demographic. Portnoy's politics aren't an issue for me (it's worth familiarizing yourself with this guy's history though), but they were for others--he was the reason that Penn could not get licensed to operate gambling online in certain states.

why doesn't Beane satisfy his penchant for re-signing aging former Bills throwaways and offer the 1 year special to...Marquise Goodwin?? He was fast!!

I think Gruden is a good watch. Always liked how he would interview QB draft prospects----grilling them on film and having them diagram plays for him. I bet the Colts wish Gruden had vetted Richardson like that. Interview would have been over in minutes, lol. Could have avoided their disastrous pick. Barstool is the Starter jacket of sports sites....

Brings me back to my original post---who's still watching this stuff? Bros stuck in 2014.....

It loses money. As you point out, it was only sold to ESPN because the latter wanted to use it as a conduit to gambling. ESPN, in the end, wanted no affiliation with Portnoy and Barstool, So Penn sold it back and realized a tax benefit. BArstool was a cutting edge thing for bro-sports info, etc, when it sold at it's peak. Since then, it isn't unique in any way and there are countless youtube imitators for it to off anything novel for advertisers.

Diggs is gone, so.....

The company bought it sold it back to him for $1 (2023---after Barstool lost 16 million in the first Q). It's estimated Penn lost 800 million overall on this deal. Penn, a gambling company, wanted to join ESPN and form ESPN Bet--using Barstool as the conduit. Turn out the Barstool viewers were felt to be too young and broke to maintain a gambling hybrid sports content venture, so they sold it back to Portnoy for nothing to cut their losses.

yeah--it's essentially Deadspin (which lost relevance years ago) for shlubs. It's a bunch of jabronies writing "articles" from twitters posts as well as meatheads sitting around and commenting on what everyone else comments on everywhere else. Plus the boss reviews pizza. lol, come on.

Yes great HC/QB combos are hard to beat. Several HOF combos come to mind. BB was a great coordinator/coach for the Giants. Brady was not a sure thing, and how many future HOFers were on that roster over that 20 year run? They have had no long term feature back, they had one great (or even very good) WR briefly. A couple of very good long term Defensive players. That's it. yet they went on a run that will not be repeated--2 decades, 7 SB's, 6 Lombardies. Once Brady left, no HC was going anywhere with that team.