The Miami Dolphins Want Some of What the Marlins Got

Another Florida sports team wants government to help it finance a stadium

Miami Dolphins team owner Stephen Ross has a pre-game chat with head coach Joe Philbin in 2012Photograph by Robert Duyos/Sun-Sentinel/MCT via Getty Images

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By Ira Boudway

April 23, 2013 at 2:11 PM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

The Miami Dolphins want some help paying for a $350 million renovation to Sun Life Stadium. In particular, they want voters to back a plan for Miami-Dade County to set aside $289 million from a hotel tax. The team would borrow against this money to finance the upgrade and pay the county back up to $120 million in 30 years. (You can learn further details here.) The problem is that Miami has been down this road before. In 2009, the county agreed to help the Miami Marlins pay for a new $650 million stadium that now serves as a very expensive home for a team nobody wants to see .

So Dolphins owner Stephen Ross is making the rounds to sell the renovation plan ahead of a May 14 referendum. “Well, first of all, the benefits of this—the public is the one that really benefits,” he told the Miami Herald on Friday. “As we disclosed in our financials, we don’t make a lot of money. In fact, we lose a lot of money.”