Spurs Sports & Entertainment Chairman Peter Holt recently said the Frost Bank Center lacks amenities that make people want to arrive early and stick around after games. Credit: Courtesy Photo / Spurs Sports & Entertainment

The following story is a piece of opinion and analysis.

Late last month, Spurs Sports & Entertainment Chairman Peter J. Holt told the Express-News his team ranks “dead last” in the NBA for “overall fan experience.”

“What that means … is, what else is there to provide?” Holt told the daily. “What can you do pre-game? What can you do post-game? Can you make a day of your event, whether that’s a concert or a game, etc.”

Holt, who’s in what the Express-News described as “campaign mode” to drum up public support for a new downtown Spurs arena, also said the area around the team’s current home, the Frost Bank Center, lacks amenities that make people want to arrive early and stick around after games.

Holt’s comments beg the question: Whose fault is that, exactly?

When Bexar County approved funding for the construction of the Frost Bank Center in 1999, officials said the $175 million-plus arena would stimulate growth on the economically stagnant East Side. However, it’s hard for fans attending a Spurs game to see much of that promised development, other than a few nearby residents charging $20 or more for parking.

Precinct 4 County Commissioner Tommy Calvert, who represents the area where the Frost Bank Center stands, has long blamed the orange traffic cones that made it difficult for sports fans and concertgoers to break away from a direct line to the arena for the lack of economic development.

In conversations with the Current, Calvert said he’s received complaints from business owners near the arena who are frustrated that the cones make it difficult, if not impossible, for potential customers to stop for a bite or a drink on their way to games.

To Calvert’s point, it’s hard to imagine any meaningful economic development resulting if Spurs fans aren’t able to break away from the traffic flow to spend their dollars.

It’s not like there’s a shortage of land that could be used to develop dining and entertainment options around the Frost Bank Center. The city also owns the Willow Springs Golf Course, a 187-acre, 18-hole course located directly east of the arena.

So, whose fault is it for not facilitating economic development around the existing arena?

Spurs Sports & Entertainment contributed just $28.5 million — or approximately 16% — of the Frost Bank Center’s total cost and has never made any meaningful effort to develop the land around the site, according to Calvert.

That means the franchise shoulders some of the blame, the commissioner said.

Development of the Frost Bank Center came at the tail end of an era when teams and municipalities focused on developing sports facilities in suburban arenas and surrounding them by massive parking lots.

Since that time, developers and sports teams have seized on a new idea: the sports entertainment district.

These artificial neighborhoods are usually anchored by a stadium with retail, restaurants and other entertainment facilities within walking distance. Some recently built examples include Sacramento’s Downtown Commons, Los Angeles’ L.A. Live and Milwaukee’s Deer District.

While backers maintain these districts serve as engines of economic growth and development, economists including Jake Wegmann, an associate professor of community and regional planning at the University of Texas, question that.

“Most economists think it’s a pretty dubious claim that by building a sports stadium, you’re growing the overall economy, as opposed to just sort of shuffling spending from one part of downtown to another,” Wegmann told the Current in an earlier interview.

Economist Andrew Zimbalist, one of the nation’s leading experts in the study of sports entertainment districts, agrees.

“Sometimes the investment you get near this new facility is an investment that is already in town,” Zimbalist previously told the Current. “What happens is a restaurant or whatever moves from location A to location B to try to take advantage of the activity around the sports stadium to get more business.”

Typically, sports and entertainment districts provide meaningful economic growth if they’re built in areas that lack the amenities being built, both Wegmann and Zimbalist maintain. That means they must prove useful on a daily basis to residents living in close proximity.

A prime example of a team doing the best with the cards it’s been dealt is the NFL’s New England Patriots, who, much like the Spurs, are a storied franchise and a once-great, nearly mythical sports dynasty.

Similar to the Frost Bank Center, Gillette Stadium opened in 2002 and followed the outdated trend of building a stadium in a remote location. It’s nearly 30 miles south of Boston, to be exact.

However, when Patriots owner Robert Kraft wanted people to come early and stay late, he didn’t ask the notoriously frugal City of Boston to demolish historic buildings and pay for a new downtown stadium.

Instead, Kraft built his own sports and entertainment district in the quiet town of Foxborough, a village with a population of fewer than 20,000.

Dubbed “Patriots Place,” the sprawling 450-acre complex features two hotels along with nearly 63,000 square feet of retail space, including dining, entertainment, shopping and a medical center — all built on what was previously miles of asphalt.

Of course, Holt’s $200 million net worth pales next to that of Kraft, who’s worth an estimated $12 billion.

But Holt doesn’t own Spurs Sports & Entertainment outright. Instead, the ownership group includes several billionaires, including Michael Dell, worth $125 billion, San Francisco-based private equity firm Sixth Street Partners, which manages more than $115 billion in assets and the McCombs family, who control billions in assets.

In other words, there’s money to be spent if Spurs Sports & Entertainment wanted to redevelop the area and give back to the East Side, a community city leaders and the business elite have long neglected.

Instead of crying poor and complaining about a bad fan experience to the leaders of one of the nation’s most impoverished cities, perhaps Holt and the rest of the ownership group should get creative about reimagining the East Side. And they should be willing to spend money.

The Spurs are under the salary cap, and all those cash considerations could be spent on, well, something.

With the Frost Bank Center more than three decades old, it’s a fair argument that the team could use a new arena, and moving the Spurs downtown seems like a neat idea in theory. However, it’s insincere and unfair for Holt to lament the team has the worst fan experience in the NBA without looking in the mirror to ask who bears the blame.

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This article appears in Jul 10-23, 2025.

Michael Karlis is a multimedia journalist at the San Antonio Current, whose coverage in print and on social media focuses on local and state politics. He is a graduate of American University in Washington,...