Two business questions

Centreville Bank Stadium in early 2025, shortly before construction was completed.

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

A question about the new Centreville Bank Stadium, in Pawtucket, home of the Rhode Island FC soccer team, is whether that it was sold out on May 3, for the team’s first home match, suggests that it  will be a  long-term success. Or were many of the about 10,700 attendees mostly there out of curiosity to see the pretty place, which will cost Rhode Island taxpayers around $132 million over 30 years? Americans’ increasing interest in the nearest thing to the world sport will help, but the seats are expensive – from $34 to $436 -- and baseball, football and basketball are deeply embedded in the national psyche.

Hasbro’s notably unpretentious headquarters, in the old mill town of Pawtucket.

Poor Hasbro, with so much of its manufacturing in China, has its hands full trying to adapt to Trump’s volatile tariff policies. Executives of the toy and entertainment giant hope to be making fewer than 40 percent of its products in China by 2026, down from about 50 percent now. It will not be moving much manufacturing to the U.S., but rather will  seek cheap labor and special favors in other Asian nations or maybe in Africa or Latin America.

A big question in Rhode Island is whether the cost of the tariff trauma will lead Hasbro to decide not to move to Boston but rather to stay in Rhode Island, where most costs are cheaper and there are many designers, in part because of RISD. To get it to stay, will state politicians promise it tax and other incentives that would deplete those that could be offered to smaller companies to stay in, or move to, the Ocean State?

 

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