77 ms·

Cities should not pay for new stadiums

596 points by droptablemain 5y ago

datavirtue 5y ago
In Cincinnati we got conned into this. We now have poor people paying for a stadium. People are still bitching about the fiasco 20 years later and a lot of people actively avoid living in the county so they do not have to pay the "stadium" taxes. It is a really bad deal.
ur-whale 5y ago
This topic has been a long standing issue for the Reason folks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1LDjTgMEGU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1LDjTgMEGU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMQsYENfWJ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMQsYENfWJ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5x3ECFemvk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5x3ECFemvk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBgpbTcpDEo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBgpbTcpDEo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIpJXfNPqVA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIpJXfNPqVA
- crate_barre 5y ago
  It’s also like the first topic covered in Urban Studies 101 for like 20 years. Weirdly, most of America needs to just take a basic Urban Studies course to fix half our culture issues.
Nursie 5y ago
I'm not a libertarian, far from it, but as someone who doesn't give the first #### about watching sports, this really does seem to me to be an area that should be left to market forces. These sports teams are businesses, they have customers, massive income streams etc. If they can't afford the facilities they need, then they need to restructure the business. The taxpayer should not be on the hook, as it's not a municipal service, it's just entertainment for a subset of the population. I find it weird this happens in the US, where there is such an emphasis on not providing things other countries may see as a state function (healthcare, public transport...). It's not just the US of course, but it seems to be most apparent there.
- crate_barre 5y ago
  We’re more susceptible to the narrative in which these stadiums used to get funding (now days more so is my meaning). Goes something like this: - You have poor shitty neighborhoods - Subsidize building of a stadium in said shithole, and watch the dollars come in. - You’ll have increased commerce and development of surrounding area with ample employment for said shitty neighborhood residents. We don’t need recent history to post mortem this, they figured out it actually doesn’t improve the region much a long time ago. ——— The only thing that reasonably works is gentrification, but, well, you know … that’s racist. How do you solve it? I don’t know, white people seem to have the money. We have to start much higher up to root cause analyze this, and while I’m annoyed by wokeness, root causing this kind of more or less leads us to ‘why the fuck are there so many white people with money’?. Anyways, stadiums. It’s just a bug way down the ladder. Have fun going to Yankee Stadium in the middle of the fucking South Bronx. Utopian shit never works.
  - 0xfaded 5y ago
    Repairation payments directly addresses the "white people have the money" problem. John Oliver made a much better case than I ever could in a HN comment. It also answers "why do the white people have so much money" question. https://youtu.be/_-0J49_9lwc https://youtu.be/_-0J49_9lwc
    - crate_barre 5y ago
      I just don’t think that’s realistic. We have all this commotion over dissolving student debt, but amongst minorities, they are saddled with all kinds of other debts. Dissolve that. Give credit score amnesty. Those house loans will be flying off the shelves if we ever did that. But nah, let’s focus on the guys that majored in Trombone or Classics at a private school for 25k a year. It’s technically cheaper for tax payers since credit defaults are usually sold to collections for pennies on the dollar. That seems way more affordable, and gives a proper tabula rasa (versus a 1000 stimulus check). We’ll just subsidize the collections payments which usually settle for way less anyway, and just free people up. We should technically do the same for student debt. Have these dumbass schools send the debt to collections, and we’ll pay the stupid 10 cents on the dollar. Fuck off and never over charge again. Why would we actually pay off the full ridiculous amount?
mnd999 5y ago
The same applies to Amazon warehouses.
- kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
  Do cities pay for Amazon Warehouses? I guess it would be comparable to countries trying to attract businesses by giving them tax breaks?
  - mnd999 5y ago
    As far as I can tell it’s a fairly regular occurrence. https://fortune.com/2020/08/23/amazon-coronavirus-taxes-local-governments/ https://fortune.com/2020/08/23/amazon-coronavirus-taxes-loca...
    - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
      I would guess, as I said, that towns simply compete for the business by making them an attractive offer. For example even when selling the ground for the warehouse towns could give Amazon a cheaper price while hoping for more future income in taxes. Presumably that would apply to other companies as well. The bit about "paying to destroy mainstreet" is of course nonsense. Amazon's business would exist either way.
Stratoscope 5y ago
We need a Hackerdome in Menlo Park. Sure, we have that Metaface company, a few little robin hoods, and those people who venture onto the sand dunes. But where can two teams of world class hackers fight it out to the finish? Nowhere, I tell you! There is some underused land in Bedwell Bayfront Park, at the end of Marsh Road. It gets a few hikers, some ham radio people on Field Day, and not much else? We can build our Hackerdome there, and insure that hackers will always be welcome to compete in Menlo Park! All we need is your support and your tax dollars. Vote YES to support the Hackerdome!
- pronlover723 5y ago
  Why would the Hackerdome not been in cyberspace/metaverse?
  - Stratoscope 5y ago
    And let one company control it? Even a company right down the street? No, you need a physical space. This is why it is so important to have public funding for the Hackerdome. We need a place where two teams of hackers can compete to see who is the best, and who should go down in shame. And we can do it all under standardized conditions. This is too important to leave to the private market. Vote YES now!
- stuntkite 5y ago
  Isn't that basically what they built in Vegas? The MSG Sphere. I've been building holographic performance tools for over 10 years and no one really knows who the fuck I am but I intend to be the first qualified act to rock that bitch till the wheels fall off. You're more than welcome to meet me there and we can do a battle of the bands style thing but it's also capture the flag for some weird as distributed systems. I've got analog bass that'll make you cry and enough compute power to model some pretty weird shit. I'm not sure if I'm a world class hacker, but I think the venue should be looking more at folks who win demoscene compos than top 40 acts. Maybe get top 40 acts to work with demoscene cats. I'm also not as good as those folks but I'm fine with tipping my hand here and see if anyone else is thinking the same thing. I've got a plan and the tools! Lets go. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydOn8qwLJzA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydOn8qwLJzA
_3u10 5y ago
Why not? It’s up to the people of a city how much they want to spend and on what. Sports happen to be very popular with a large group of people who aren’t interested in the rest of what a city spends on. You can have those people watching sports or you can have them complaining about the rest of the spending because they didn’t get their piece of the pie.
- bagels 5y ago
  Why doesn't the city buy lavish buildings for other wildly profitable businesses? Professional sports don't need our tax money, they merely want it. If sports enthusiasts want to contribute money to the football stadium fund, they are free to.
  - _3u10 5y ago
    They do. Arts, industry, ports, hospitals, schools, prisons, etc. People who buy things like season tickets pay for most of the rest of the money the city wastes, why not get some back?
- jrumbut 5y ago
  Seems like the issue is the fig leaf of stadium financing being about jobs and new small businesses and all that good stuff. It would be nice if there was more transparency ("Buffalo will pay for the stadium because we know you live the Bills one million times more than all your elected officials put together") or if cities banded together against paying these bribes but that's life. I did really like the ideas for federal level reforms, but one component the author missed is that a stadium has workforce with a fairly unique composition. If you replace it with an office park or museum will they need dozens of hot dog and beer vendors, a massive athletic training staff, a landscaping staff, outdoor lighting technicians, etc? These are working class or middle class people who will be scrambling for a limited job pool. Getting rid of 100 janitors and adding 100 web developers has a cost to it, because it will require 200 people to either move or retrain.
- pronlover723 5y ago
  Somewhat agreed. A city can want lots of things few people use. I'm sure the plenty of people don't take advantage of Central Park or Golden Gate Park yet they are paid for by the government. Further, stadiums are often used for more than just sports. They're a venue for concerts, fireworks shows, and many other things.
kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
There need to be strings attached where the owner is forced to set aside a portion of annual profits as an investment to future stadium construction.
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
  No. Just don't pay public money for these things. If they leave, they leave. Don't let pro sports teams and their fans extort everyone else.
slg 5y ago
The financials on this are settled. Sports stadiums are an awful financial investment. However, running a government is not all about making sound financial investments. Sometimes it is about pooling resources to provide a joint benefit to society. Other times it is about trying to price in externalities to allow the market to do its work. These two issues are not as settled as the investment angle and are almost never discussed. Sports teams provide utility to people in the region, including people who never pay a cent for a ticket or merchandise. How do you quantity that value and should the government compensate the sports team for that value? I don't know the right answer, but I would like to see some economists at least engage with that aspect of these decisions. Also the only way to stop these gifts to private companies is likely with a new federal law banning them. It is simple game theory. These businesses will go where the profit is. Any city or state that refuses to pay will lose out until every city or state refuses to pay. The best way to force that is with a federal ban.
- HNHatesUsers 5y ago
- Mountain_Skies 5y ago
  The federal government could help by removing the tax exemption municipal bonds enjoy should they be used for a stadium. It's not an all encompassing change that would stop all of the corporate giveaways but it would be a start.
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
  Lol no, a professional sports team is of little "joint benefit to society", at least not of the kind that seriously concerns the government. You may as well argue that the government should be subsidizing new Marvel movies, or Call of Duty, because those are popular forms of entertainment too. > Also the only way to stop these gifts to private companies is likely with a new federal law banning them. It is simple game theory. These businesses will go where the profit is. Any city or state that refuses pay will lose out until every city or state refuses to pay. The best way to force that is with a federal ban. No. You can just...refuse to subsidize them. Seems to be working fine for Seattle, where IIRC the renovated stadium for their new NHL team was privately funded. And if they do go somewhere else, what's the downside? Seattle lost its NBA team a while back, which was a bummer for basketball fans, obviously, but otherwise what was the harm to the city or region? Plenty of high prestige world cities like Tokyo or London or Paris aren't known for their pro sports teams. They seem to suffer little for it. For a while, the Olympics were able to basically threaten their way into huge subsidies from even developed countries, but this seems to have mostly gone away now, as everyone collectively woke up from the delusion that the Olympics were a major economic boon worth investing in. Sports team stadiums could easily go the same way. edit: Okay, obviously I should've picked different world cities as examples, but even taking those: Tokyo's pro sports teams don't have anywhere close to the foreign popularity that London's EPL teams do. Does that seem to hurt it?
firefoxd 5y ago
When the Rams chose Inglewood as their new home, my apartment complex roared like thunder. It's like we had just won the Superbowl. There was literally fireworks exploding at my door and everyone was happy. Few billion dollars later, construction everywhere, and the Rams are playing their first game. There are only two families remaining out of the 30 that lived here. Rent went up and everyone had to move out east, to a worst neighborhood. Sure we have a stadium now. But the neighborhood has been completely gentrified.
- throwthere 5y ago
  Worth mentioning that other than a few tax subsidies the Inglewood stadium was built with private money.
- gruez 5y ago
  In other words the government built some facilities and increased the land value of the surrounding area. Seems everything was working as intended?
  - MAGZine 5y ago
    do you suppose the residents were consulted in the same way they might be if ther were attempting to build in pac heights or west village or the hills?
    - gruez 5y ago
      Given how ecstatic the residents were, I'd think that such consultation would make little difference (ie. they already approve of the project). >When the Rams chose Inglewood as their new home, my apartment complex roared like thunder. It's like we had just won the Superbowl. There was literally fireworks exploding at my door and everyone was happy.
pkdpic 5y ago
I agree, make it stop. It's insane. Sacramento CA seems like its still reeling from building the Kings basketball stadium and its effectively made an entire district of town inaccessible and unaffordable for any of the small businesses that make this town vibrant. Minor league sports cost enough to support and teams support local pride and healthier fan followings imho. Ive been dying for covid to be over forever so I can start going to triple A baseball games. Id rather watch semi-normal humans play than a bunch of millionaires.
lacker 5y ago
Cities paying to attract sports teams is simply democracy. A lot of people like watching sports and having local professional sports teams. But the number of professional sports teams is limited. Not every city can be an NFL city, and many people are proud that their city is an NFL city. In a city like Los Angeles or San Francisco it might not be so important, but in a smaller city, for a Cincinnati politician to take an anti-Bengals stance would be political suicide. It is never primarily about the "jobs created".
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
  Ridiculous. Refusing to pay out public money for private profit isn't "anti-" anything. If Disney demands you give them a billion dollars to make a movie about your city, refusing that demand doesn't make you "anti-Disney." It just makes you sane.
- lelanthran 5y ago
  > A lot of people like watching sports I don't think that that is true anymore. It used to be, but sports is competing for eyeballs with all the other entertainment out there. Yeah, sure, sports had a large audience when people did not have games, instant messaging, social sites, Netflix, AmzPrime, Hulu and more in the palm of their hands. Basically, sports is in competition with all the other forms of entertainment. I'm looking around my circle of friends, family and acquaintances, and the only ones who are interested are: 1. Those with children on some team in school, and then they're only interested in that particular sport, and only when their children's teams are playing. 2. The older folk who were supporters all their lives, and will continue being supporters. 3. The people betting on matches. I know of only one family that actually is into sport, and regularly follows all the soccer and/or cricket matches that come around. The others have cancelled their sat-tv and just use netflix, amz-prime and the internet for entertainment.
  - culturestate 5y ago
    > I don't think that that is true anymore. It used to be, but sports is competing for eyeballs with all the other entertainment out there. In 2021, 95 of the top 100 most-watched TV broadcasts in the US were sports. More people watched the Raiders play on Thanksgiving than watched the presidential inauguration. 1. https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2022/01/10/Upfront/Ratings.aspx https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2022/01...
sz4kerto 5y ago
https://spinor.info/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/felcsut.jpg https://spinor.info/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/felcsu... We (Hungary) are spending huge amounts of public money on building stadiums everywhere (dozens and dozens of them). On the linked picture you can see a large-ish stadium built in a small town with a population of 2000 people. The marked place is the house of our prime minister :D He likes soccer.
- oblio 5y ago
  For you it's different since many people agree that those projects are just a way to siphon EU funds.
sdoering 5y ago
In Germany local municipalities for example pay for renovations of churches. The case I knew from my hometown was that the Church (as in country organization) payed one third. The congregation hat to pay one third as well and the secular municipality also had to pay one third. In Munich the "Allianz Arena" (named after a big insurance company) for the FC Bayern was also substantially supported by the tax payer. More than one third of the estimated costs were planned to be payed by the government. As they cannot subsidize directly that was mostly the cost of the infrastructure like streets, power, water and so on. The richest socker club in Germany argued that the tax payer has to finance it, as the city would profit from the visitors. If I remember correctly, BMW got 150 million subsidiaries (from the EU and Germany) for building a new production site near Leipzig as it was seen as helping the development of the former GDR states after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Seems like a regular thing at any scale for any organization/company with enough lobbying power and influence.
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
  > The case I knew from my hometown was that the Church (as in country organization) payed one third. The congregation hat to pay one third as well and the secular municipality also had to pay one third. The lack of institutional separation of church and state within Germany surprised me when I lived there. The populace isn't particularly religious on a personal level, but they tolerate a surprising amount of religious interference or intertwining with state institutions. IIRC there are church schools/daycares that are publicly funded as well, and of course the state cooperates with churches for religious taxation (yes, really -- if you're a member of one of those churches, you can't opt out short of leaving that church, they take the money directly out of your paycheck).
  - _lnwk 5y ago
    Which ends up funny if you migrate there. I've heard so many stories other Poles going there, declaring they are atheists so they won't pay taxes, and then being surprised when they come back only to their their local priests laughing them out of door when they want service XD
spoonjim 5y ago
Everyone has known this for decades but does it anyways.
- oblio 5y ago
  Easy way to score political points and get votes. Peak populism.
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
  IIRC Seattle recently refused to do it.
  - colinmhayes 5y ago
    Seattle still doesn't have a basketball team because they refused to pay for a stadium. That's exactly why teams are able to extort cities over stadium funding.
shoo 5y ago
the latest episode of the economist "checks and balance" US politics podcast touches on what cities in decline can do to try to turn things around: > Since the founding of America, its people and its economy have moved steadily westwards and, later, southwards. Recently, people and businesses have flocked to Sun Belt states, while cities in America’s old industrial heartland are struggling. What makes American cities boom and bust? they give the example of Pittsburgh investing in "Eds and Meds" -- education and healthcare -- to regrow the city's economy after the decline of steel manufacturing https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/checks-and-balance-city-limits/id1494037881?i=1000553729611 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/checks-and-balance-cit...
- BHSPitMonkey 5y ago
  On a similar note, the newest video from NotJustBikes focuses on what makes these cities (in)solvent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI
jedberg 5y ago
What really upsets me about public stadiums is when the locals can't even watch the game. Take the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. That stadium is 100% publicly funded by the taxpayers. Since 2011 the Rose Bowl game on Jan 1 has been on ESPN. So two colleges, the majority of which have been public schools, play in a public stadium and the locals can't even watch for free. I think at the very least they need to make a law that says all events that take place in a publicly funded stadium need to be broadcast on a free local channel that reaches all of the taxpayers who paid for the stadium.
- arijun 5y ago
  While your point is probably valid, your example wasn’t. The rose bowl is owned by the city of Pasadena, so the city gets payed when it’s in use.
  - jedberg 5y ago
    That’s usually the case with a public owned stadium but it doesn’t change the fact that the taxpayers payers own it.
- rascul 5y ago
  I'm not sure if it's still the case but from what I understand the NFL used to prohibit local games from being shown in the local area to encourage ticket sales.
  - jedberg 5y ago
    Not just the NFL but also MLB. Usually the rule is that it has to be a near sell out crowd so it isn’t blacked out. But they’ve gotten more lax about that after they realized that the trick doesn’t work — blackouts don’t really increase attendance.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    Exactly - the "blackout" sales level - if not enough tickets were sold, the game wouldn't be available locally. Sometimes a local entity (city, owner of the team, local businessman) would buy blocks of 10k+ tickets to ensure it could be shown locally.
dalbasal 5y ago
There are two aspects to this One is the problem that governments make investments, and private firms are the primary beneficiaries. This exists broadly. In some instances, it feels fine. Governments are supposed to make investments that benefit the economy. Roads, ports, fiber, etc. This gets sticky when it's a select group, monopoly or cabal that gets most of the benefit. Many national or regional postal systems currently have this dilemma. Postal systems need major public investment to keep up with modern e-commerce. AMZN & BABA, the world richest firms, are the main beneficiaries. The point at which people seem to stop and challenge is often when things get explicit. Sports stadiums are that. Team owners make explicit demands, or threaten local polities. That gets people upset. Imo, the only way to deal with these is returning "hardball" tactics. Make hard demands, like control of key assets (eg the team's brand/IP) in return for investments. Threaten financial ruin of owners' investments back. Legislate away contractual lock-ins. No one likes to be strongarmed. That's why people are so infuriated by "give us money or we take your team."
nielsbot 5y ago
John Oliver did a Last Week Tonight on exactly this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xcwJt4bcnXs https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xcwJt4bcnXs
mannerheim 5y ago
It seems that public officials are more fond of projects like stadiums than voters. Last November, voters in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Denver, Colorado; and Augusta, Georgia all voted against ballot initiatives to fund stadiums that would increase their tax bills. Meanwhile, the elected officials in each of these places seemed to have been fully behind these projects.[0] In the Buffalo Bills example from the OP article, it sounds like they're attempting to negotiate directly with the governor. Smart, I suppose, since if the other examples are any indication, the elected official will be more receptive towards giving them money than the taxpayers. [0]: https://reason.com/2021/11/05/voters-dont-want-to-pay-for-your-dumb-stadium/ https://reason.com/2021/11/05/voters-dont-want-to-pay-for-yo...
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- nobody9999 5y ago
  >In the Buffalo Bills example from the OP article, it sounds like they're attempting to negotiate directly with the governor. Smart, I suppose, since if the other examples are any indication, the elected official will be more receptive towards giving them money than the taxpayers. Keep in mind that the Governor of New York[0] is from Buffalo. I'd imagine that might make a difference. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Hochul#Early_life_and_education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Hochul#Early_life_and_ed...
- Kneecaps07 5y ago
  People in Buffalo aren't happy about this, but the Bills are a BIG part of this city's identity. The Bills owner (an oil billionaire, by the way) is threatening take the team to another city if the state doesn't help pay for the stadium.
tlogan 5y ago
The stadiums are rarely profitable. If there is no public funding, then stadiums would exist only in very few places. As far as I know majority of the stadiums in Europe are also own by municipalities. Also are cities really investing in something better? Oakland lost both Raiders and Warriors. It seems like Oakland spend that money on pension benefits of city employees. And they started laying off teachers. If you ask me: if you cannot spend money on schools (or anything useful) build a stadium. But this is politic: stadiums are easy target but do know that city will probably mismanage the money any way.
- mannerheim 5y ago
  If you can't spend the money on anything useful, let the taxpayer keep their money.
  - tlogan 5y ago
    Sure - but as a taxpayer of Oakland what one can do? I was with them when they said “no money for Raiders”. They mismanaged the money anyhow and one cannot elect anybody else because they need to be democrats. I’m just explaining how dynamic goes here: the cities will be still be funding stadiums because electorate will not trust them when they say “we will spend on x”.
- robbick 5y ago
  In the UK very few stadiums are publicly funded. This can be done. I'd prefer my city mismanage my money into nurses hands than into a stadium.
1337biz 5y ago
Stadiums are a in the end just a marketing instrument for 2nd and 3rd tier cities to brand themselves and stay in the national or international news. The alternative is spending money on image campaigns and other fluff marketing. Once you realize that every time a city is (positively) mentionen in news, it is "earned media", the whole calcuation shifts a lot around.
- dagw 5y ago
  brand themselves and stay in the national or international news. But to what end? Thanks to sport I know of lots of US cities like Green Bay, Buffalo, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Kansas City etc. that I might not otherwise ever have given any thought. But what is the next step after that? I'm certainly not going to holiday there because they have a pretty good (or used to be good) team I've heard of.
  - 1337biz 5y ago
    In the end once cities cover the basics have not that many opportunities to stay in the news with a somewhat positive impression. The name recognition is not going to be the core decision point for someone to spend holidays there or relocate there. But if you are relocating to a city and have three to choose from where non stands out in particular you might assume that the one with the stronger sports team is more vibrant or dynamic than the others.
lovehashbrowns 5y ago
This is one of those issues where I have a clear logical stance but an opposite emotional stance. I've tried so hard to be against /any/ kind of stadium subsidies. At the college level, at the national level, at the high school level. I've tried. Honestly, I don't watch sports, I don't care about sports, I wish teachers got paid more, I wish students had more programs, I wish we had more money for infrastructure and so on and so on. I've tried with every fiber of my being to be against these stadiums being subsidized. And I read some of their citations, like this one: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/sports-jobs-taxes-are-new-stadiums-worth-the-cost/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/sports-jobs-taxes-are-new... And I couldn't agree more with a lot of it. I think the "What Can Be Done?" section is really good. I think there should be federal incentives for forcing cities to work together on their contracts with these sports teams to make their deals more fair. I don't know how that would work? But, for example, one of the downsides listed in the article is that most of the jobs created by the stadium are low-paying jobs. Not just the construction work itself but maintaining the stadium. Janitors, cashiers, mechanics, etc. But that's not an issue /with the stadium itself/ that's an issue with ALL of the country itself. It's not like the stadium not being there is going to give janitors higher paying jobs. Whether they work low-paying and hardly livable jobs for the stadium or for a contractor that has deals with Google doesn't make a difference. It's al ow paying job that can't sustain a living wage. That's not on the stadium. That's not on the city making a deal with NFL. That's an irrelevant point. If you want to make those 10,000 stadium jobs better for the community, don't choose to NOT put a stadium there. Choose to increase the quality of life for the residents of the city. But, I think what taints my perspective more than anything is being from Chicago and having lived in Texas. I know of people that are proud of being Chicagoans, that love going to Wrigleyville, that love being from the North/South based on what team they follow. I know of people in Texas that are proud of their town because of how good their football team was. I know of people who went to A&M because of its sports teams. I know of people who travel there specifically to watch a game. I've seen content from their Fightin' Texas Aggie Band that's made me feel inspired. I think part of it IS economic and I know I'm biased towards success stories. But I do think there absolutely is an emotional component to it. And if you think a government shouldn't be making emotional decisions, that's totally fine. I don't disagree with you at all. I wish I could agree with you harder, actually. I just can't put myself completely in the camp of "cities should not pay for new stadiums."
seb1204 5y ago
This, yes. Cities need to invest in community sport and facilities for community sport. Yes there is also an infrastructure or building aspect to this but not giant stadiums. That is families, kids, tens playing (add sport of your choice). Cities should support those clubs that do this kind of work which is often shouldered by volunteers. Once it gets to stadiums that are used by clubs with payed players. It is a business and the business should pay for it.
supernova87a 5y ago
I remember a quote from an economist on hearing about a stadium project (or racetrack, or casino, for that matter -- I think it was either Baltimore or Atlantic City) -- "If the economic benefits of the proposed development turn out to be as the mayor suggests, he would be the first mayor in the history of such projects to be correctly predict the effects." The beneficiaries of these projects never end up being who the backers say they will be. And the beneficiaries who they actually are designed for are never the ones being touted. If economic benefit for the city were the motivation, let the developers put up their money to pay the difference if the economic benefits don't turn out to be as they projected.
jonp888 5y ago
The bizarre thing about the US is that as far as indviduals are concerned "socialism" and government assistance are dirty words, but not when it relates for corporations. So benefits that are absolutely standard like universal healthcare, employment protection, minimum holidays, parental leave etc. are very limited. Meanwhile the government builds stadiums for commercial sports businesses, runs airports and harbours so that commercial airlines and shipping lines can use them, implements strict protectionist legislation even in industries which operate fine in other 1st world countries without such legislation, and local authorities offer massive tax breaks to try and attract companies.
bell-cot 5y ago
My sense is that a large fraction of the population has a deep emotional need for "manly men" sports teams which they can easily identify with (whether local professional teams, teams at the college they attended, or maybe teams local to where they grew up). Greedy team owners know this, and also that a few phrases like "economic benefits" and "or we'll move to $new_city" serve both to sway the gullible (who buy the economic arguments) and to push the insecurity / fear buttons in the people with emotional needs for a local team. If ~nobody is mentioning, let alone discussing, the actual priorities of a large fraction of the voters, then rational public policy outcomes may prove rather rare.
- paulcole 5y ago
  Why shouldn’t the government serve voters’ emotional needs?
  - bell-cot 5y ago
    No reason it shouldn't...and say so right up front - "Our fine citizens wanted a new playground in this neighborhood, so the City spending $playground_cost and building one for them!". The combination of brazen lies about costs, and deep "nobody mentions that" motivations are the big problem with the stadiums.
hownottowrite 5y ago
This is happening in Northern Virginia right now. The state is going to create a control structure for a private city, provide unlimited debt funding, and lose significant tax revenues for decades to come. And for what? Bad football and more temporary food service/retail jobs?
bregma 5y ago
What cities need to invest in is a large exclusive trough where an elite can come to squeal and gobble their slops. Call it the "Pork Barrel Dome" and charge regular people to come and watch the rich satisfy themselves. Have publicly run gambling rings to make book on which participant will inhale the most in a limited amount of time just to keep things "interesting".
choward 5y ago
I find it baffling how much is spent on NFL stadiums for just 8 home games a year. That's just over 1 game per day for a week every year. And the stadiums take up prime real estate. Also, some teams are forced to play out of the country for one of their games and lose a home game.
- culturestate 5y ago
  It's exceedingly rare for an NFL stadium to be used exclusively for NFL games. If you look at the schedule for e.g. the Buccaneers stadium[1] in Tampa - which the city owns and leases to the team - you'll see that it regularly hosts concerts, monster truck shows, college football games, etc. 1. https://raymondjamesstadium.com/upcomingevents https://raymondjamesstadium.com/upcomingevents
- originalvichy 5y ago
  As a european football fan it is easy to forget how few games there is in regular season NFL. At the same time NHL, MLB and NBA have a crazy amount of games in a season. I just assumed the NFL had a similar-ish amount of games but that few games a season sound like a waste. Especially since franchises can just move away the stadiums don’t have a feeling of ”home”.
- colinmhayes 5y ago
  I know my local NFL stadium sees plenty of use outside of football season. Probably around 50 or so events a year even though no one wants to be outside 4 months of the year.
- vel0city 5y ago
  I've never been to a live NFL game but I've been in NFL stadiums probably >100 times. Here's the schedule at NRG Park, the stadium where the Houston Texans play. https://www.nrgpark.com/event-calendar/ https://www.nrgpark.com/event-calendar/ They're currently hosting the Houston Rodeo and have pretty big concerts every night for the next few days after already having events every night for the few days before. There's literally a massive rodeo going on on the grounds around it and in it. Then there's a large auto auction, then a lot of other shows going on. There's 21 days of events going on in the next 46 days, meaning something is going on in that stadium ~46% of the time in the next month and a half. Take a look at how full the calendar is for American Airlines Center, the stadium where the Dallas Stars (NHL) and Dallas Mavericks (NBA) play. https://www.americanairlinescenter.com/events https://www.americanairlinescenter.com/events Once again, a lot of things going on separate from both teams, and that's while both teams are actively playing season games as well! These stadiums aren't just for a single sport.
DeathArrow 5y ago
>Cities should not pay for new stadiums There is for every city to decide if funding some private business is in the interest of its inhabitants or not.
golergka 5y ago
I completely agree with this statement, but the core behind this argument is about the essence of taxation as a whole: nobody should be forced, with violence or threat of violence, to pay for something he doesn't want to consume. It doesn't matter if it's a stadium, a hospital or a subway.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
giantg2 5y ago
I can see the city paying for the stadium so that they can use it for a variety of events and purposes. They need to start charging the large revenue generating sports more.
dade_ 5y ago
Plenty of mention of different sports, but the post and references cited seem to focus on examples from the NFL. So I suggest the title should be Cities shouldn’t pay for new NFL stadiums. The NFL is over the top from an opulence perspective and isn’t international, so I don’t think it should be used as a baseline for anything. I am interested to know the actual net effect of FIFA World Cup 2026 for example, but the post doesn’t seem to focus much on basketball, hockey, soccer, or baseball.
jzb 5y ago
NFL teams demanding things is pretty much what's entirely soured me on professional sports. I grew up near St. Louis and the city has been screwed over not once (Rams) but twice (football Cardinals) in my lifetime by NFL teams. They enrich the owners and drain the locals. I lived in downtown St. Louis when the Cards were in the World Series (2011) and the benefit to local restaurants + bars was minimal. There'd be a flood of traffic to get to the stadium, and another flood out - very little spillover to local bars and restaurants around the stadium. (Not none, but not the rosy picture painted when they talk about driving business to local establishments, either.)
- throwthere 5y ago
  Did you see the NFL's settlement with the Rams over that move? It was something like $1 billion. You may have been screwed with the football Cardinals but I think St. Louis got a nice return on investment from that settlement with the Rams.
jeffwask 5y ago
It's nice that we need to write scholarly articles on why the public shouldn't buy billionaires new toys when they tire of their old ones. This is part of why I stepped away from sports couldn't be happier.
- Chris2048 5y ago
  - ianai 5y ago
    Stadiums aren’t infrastructure.
    - Chris2048 5y ago
      Says who? Definition of infrastructure 1: the system of public works of a country, state, or region also : the resources (such as personnel, buildings, or equipment) required for an activity
      - MAGZine 5y ago
        stadiums aren't public property generally, and not sure why they'd be considered "public works" like a road or a water system would be.
        Chris2048 5y ago
        > also: the resources (such as personnel, buildings Just b/c a road is infrastructure, doesn't mean all infrastructure is like roads
      - michaelcampbell 5y ago
        > public works Correct, you answered your own question. Stadiums are not this.
        5y ago
zip1234 5y ago
I think beyond the obvious large sports stadiums, local high schools are among the worst offenders. New tax levies for 'schools' almost always pass despite much of that spent on new sports fields meant for the exclusive use of sports teams that constitute only a very small percentage of the student body population (not to mention the overall population). Meanwhile, the school will not even have safe ways for children to ride bikes to school and bus service cannot even be properly maintained.
- rory 5y ago
  How about Opera Houses? Why should the federal taxpayer pour millions into the Kennedy Center just so rich old congresspeople can pretend to enjoy the plotless hellscape of "Cats"?
  - robert_foss 5y ago
    I think the difference is that football is a money making endeavor for the team owner. Opera isn't making money for anyone and needs help if it is to exist. Giving money to football teams is not much of a step removed from putting it directly in the pockets of the already rich owners of the teams.
    - mbg721 5y ago
      Actual opera fans are frothing at the mouth right now at the suggestion that Cats is opera. But this idea that opera is stuffy high culture is the same mistake people make with Shakespeare--it's pop culture, just removed from its context. Imagine upper-class twits a century from now screening an Adam Sandler movie.
      - User23 5y ago
        That’s why Opera has so many long boring bits. Attendees weren’t expected to pay attention as if it were a High Mass. It was a social event, a place to see and be seen, as well as trade gossip and so on. The performance itself was somewhat analogous to the TV on in the background at a bar.
ultrablack 5y ago
In Europe, the pro soccer teams either own their stadium or pay rent. And where would FC Barcelona move to. Paris??
sizzzzlerz 5y ago
Many years ago, the San Francisco Giants were looking for a new stadium to replace the decrepit Candlestick Park. They settled on some land in the south bay on the outskirts of my town. Local town officials approved a plan that would implement a utility tax on residents that would pay a portion of the costs. However, it required the approval of the voters. In the next election, the approval vote appeared on the ballot where, to my pleasant surprise, it was massively rejected, 70% to 30%. Ultimately, the Giants built a fine, new stadium with their own funding on land provided by San Francisco. For us, it was fortunate we had the opportunity to vote on it unlike so many other cities where they're given no choice. (See Seattle, Dallas, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Glendale, New Orleans, Chicago, ...)
- raldi 5y ago
  On the other hand, having the stadium built in SF was arguably the primary catalyst in the transformation of SOMA from an underused-warehouse district to the new tech epicenter of the world, stealing Silicon Valley's fire in a way previously thought impossible. If the stadium had been built in the south bay, SF might today be saying, "Whew, we really dodged a bullet there", and meanwhile Twitter and Dropbox and Uber and Airbnb would all be headquartered in Santa Clara county and giving them all their employees' tax revenue.
  - Drunk_Engineer 5y ago
    SOMA would have developed regardless, and it is nonsense to suggest tech companies want to locate near baseball stadiums.
    - raldi 5y ago
      I never said tech companies want to be near baseball stadiums. Rather (like in Baltimore and San Diego), the new stadium revitalized a neighborhood whose original reason for being had mostly dried up, bringing enough business to support the (re)emergence of nearby restaurants and other amenities, and those investments in the neighborhood made it an attractive place to have offices that eventually became the new primary source of support for the restaurants, condos, hotel, etc. The stadium was what broke the neighborhood out of the chicken-and-egg quandary.
clashmoore 5y ago
The article cites Buffalo as paying for the stadium, but isn't the public portion ($1B) coming from New York State and not the city itself? The stadium isn't even located in the city of Buffalo but well outside of it.
Tiktaalik 5y ago
> Teams will often threaten to leave their respective city trying to leverage new and expensive facilities in other places from their current cities. We've seen this happen time and time again. I wonder how viable government regulation around this would be, to effectively ban the concept of moving a sports club by making the barriers to moving so high that no one would ever want to do it unless the team was in genuine financial distress.
- browserman 5y ago
  There have occasionally been (completely wishful) proposals in the U.S. to have a team's IP (the name, logos, record, etc, basically the whole team's 'identity') belong to a city or a public corporation representing the region they draw their fanbase from.
nix0n 5y ago
I think we should go the other way and nationalize all major sports leagues and teams, because they really are an integral part of a community.
pards 5y ago
Light grey text on a white background? I was interested in the content but cannot force my eyes to endure the strain of reading the article due to its inaccessibility. Readability is dead.
rcpt 5y ago
At the very least don't subsidize the parking lot
scotuswroteus 5y ago
Cities should not pay for many, many things. Sports are not some special irrational thing that humans do to the exclusion of all the other random things public entities fund.
BLO716 5y ago
One need only look in my own backyard and the ongoing struggle between the Pegula's (https://www.psentertainment.com/ https://www.psentertainment.com/) billions and the post Ralph Wilson era in ownership of the NFL team in Buffalo, NY - the Buffalo Bills. They are located out in Orchard Park ("OP" in these parts), NY and before Wilson died, he negotiated a long term non-move clause in the Bills from OP to keep his legacy intact for as long as he could. Fast forward 10 (ish) years to 2022 the floated value of a new stadium is looking to be between 1.4-1.8B to mirror the other stadiums build in the state in NYC (can't off hand remember which ones are new). The average is about 1.6% paid out of local / state taxes, while it seems (perception) that the state is willing to pay an unprecedented 25-50% of the new stadium from local coffers. I'm not sure if anyone has looked around, but in the last two years I think the population dropped by 300K in NYS and Upstate (everything East of Rochester) and Western New York (everything Rochester and west) has been dying slowly. I think Buffalo has seen a mediocre rise back to glory under the "Billion to Buffalo" under Cuomo's governance, but tons of that left the state with Tesla's Riverbend plant and honestly real failure to deliver on its promises. The rest went to our startup and industrial technology companies with sprinkles into our medical institutions (our real meat and po-tats around these parts). The problem is - we have no money. Taxes are high (without blaming a party, but a culture problem in NYS) and social programs are abused. Billions in the pocket of the wealthy need to be spent and the local pockets need to contribute to their profits vs. being blead for them. Really hate living in a state that just hates business like we do here, but .. this what you get. Detroit, Cleveland, and Buffalo will all eventually fail on some level because of the continued regime's need to keep the status going. Someone really needs to speak truth to power, or its going to crush our country economically as capitalism is more oligarch feeling than Representative Democracy.
harywilke 5y ago
Or they can, but should keep all the concessions, branding, etc. profits.
aiisjustanif 5y ago
Can we please stay on topic. This article is about the US, all the references and the article it self point to that. Do not rope in international cities where sporting events have different impacts and are potentially funded differently. Thank you. :)
hnburnsy 5y ago
Check out Field of Schemes, the journalist there covers this news in depth... https://www.fieldofschemes.com/ https://www.fieldofschemes.com/
engineer_22 5y ago
I'm a technical student at a regional-sized state college. A significant amount of money is charged to each student to pay for athletic scholarships, fund the sports teams to travel, spend time in exotic locations, and train in good facilities with paid coaches and physical trainers. I have a hard time squaring this expense as necessary for my education. Especially for a state school. I've been an athlete and enjoyed being on travel teams, and those experiences helped me develop as a person, so I'm not saying sports arent useful training, but I have a hard time justifying the whole student body paying for those kids to run around.
EchoReflection 5y ago
It's really unfortunate that the extremely intelligent and self-filtering (via upvotes) nature of HN doesn't have an impact on policy-choices. :(
dirtyid 5y ago
Not a sports fan, but it's strange how much local sports contribute to local culture in large western cities, seems to bring abundant entertainment to sports fans in my life that it's better to bias towards having stadiums than not. Having lived in multiple large Asian cities without developed major sport franchises, I do feel like life is different without it.

596 points by droptablemain 5y ago

In Cincinnati we got conned into this. We now have poor people paying for a stadium. People are still bitching about the fiasco 20 years later and a lot of people actively avoid living in the county so they do not have to pay the "stadium" taxes. It is a really bad deal.

ur-whale 5y ago

This topic has been a long standing issue for the Reason folks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1LDjTgMEGU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1LDjTgMEGU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMQsYENfWJ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMQsYENfWJ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5x3ECFemvk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5x3ECFemvk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBgpbTcpDEo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBgpbTcpDEo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIpJXfNPqVA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIpJXfNPqVA

crate_barre 5y ago
It’s also like the first topic covered in Urban Studies 101 for like 20 years. Weirdly, most of America needs to just take a basic Urban Studies course to fix half our culture issues.

Nursie 5y ago

I'm not a libertarian, far from it, but as someone who doesn't give the first #### about watching sports, this really does seem to me to be an area that should be left to market forces. These sports teams are businesses, they have customers, massive income streams etc. If they can't afford the facilities they need, then they need to restructure the business. The taxpayer should not be on the hook, as it's not a municipal service, it's just entertainment for a subset of the population. I find it weird this happens in the US, where there is such an emphasis on not providing things other countries may see as a state function (healthcare, public transport...). It's not just the US of course, but it seems to be most apparent there.

crate_barre 5y ago
We’re more susceptible to the narrative in which these stadiums used to get funding (now days more so is my meaning). Goes something like this: - You have poor shitty neighborhoods - Subsidize building of a stadium in said shithole, and watch the dollars come in. - You’ll have increased commerce and development of surrounding area with ample employment for said shitty neighborhood residents. We don’t need recent history to post mortem this, they figured out it actually doesn’t improve the region much a long time ago. ——— The only thing that reasonably works is gentrification, but, well, you know … that’s racist. How do you solve it? I don’t know, white people seem to have the money. We have to start much higher up to root cause analyze this, and while I’m annoyed by wokeness, root causing this kind of more or less leads us to ‘why the fuck are there so many white people with money’?. Anyways, stadiums. It’s just a bug way down the ladder. Have fun going to Yankee Stadium in the middle of the fucking South Bronx. Utopian shit never works.
- 0xfaded 5y ago
  Repairation payments directly addresses the "white people have the money" problem. John Oliver made a much better case than I ever could in a HN comment. It also answers "why do the white people have so much money" question. https://youtu.be/_-0J49_9lwc https://youtu.be/_-0J49_9lwc
  - crate_barre 5y ago
    I just don’t think that’s realistic. We have all this commotion over dissolving student debt, but amongst minorities, they are saddled with all kinds of other debts. Dissolve that. Give credit score amnesty. Those house loans will be flying off the shelves if we ever did that. But nah, let’s focus on the guys that majored in Trombone or Classics at a private school for 25k a year. It’s technically cheaper for tax payers since credit defaults are usually sold to collections for pennies on the dollar. That seems way more affordable, and gives a proper tabula rasa (versus a 1000 stimulus check). We’ll just subsidize the collections payments which usually settle for way less anyway, and just free people up. We should technically do the same for student debt. Have these dumbass schools send the debt to collections, and we’ll pay the stupid 10 cents on the dollar. Fuck off and never over charge again. Why would we actually pay off the full ridiculous amount?

mnd999 5y ago

The same applies to Amazon warehouses.

kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
Do cities pay for Amazon Warehouses? I guess it would be comparable to countries trying to attract businesses by giving them tax breaks?
- mnd999 5y ago
  As far as I can tell it’s a fairly regular occurrence. https://fortune.com/2020/08/23/amazon-coronavirus-taxes-local-governments/ https://fortune.com/2020/08/23/amazon-coronavirus-taxes-loca...
  - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
    I would guess, as I said, that towns simply compete for the business by making them an attractive offer. For example even when selling the ground for the warehouse towns could give Amazon a cheaper price while hoping for more future income in taxes. Presumably that would apply to other companies as well. The bit about "paying to destroy mainstreet" is of course nonsense. Amazon's business would exist either way.

Stratoscope 5y ago

We need a Hackerdome in Menlo Park. Sure, we have that Metaface company, a few little robin hoods, and those people who venture onto the sand dunes. But where can two teams of world class hackers fight it out to the finish? Nowhere, I tell you! There is some underused land in Bedwell Bayfront Park, at the end of Marsh Road. It gets a few hikers, some ham radio people on Field Day, and not much else? We can build our Hackerdome there, and insure that hackers will always be welcome to compete in Menlo Park! All we need is your support and your tax dollars. Vote YES to support the Hackerdome!

pronlover723 5y ago
Why would the Hackerdome not been in cyberspace/metaverse?
- Stratoscope 5y ago
  And let one company control it? Even a company right down the street? No, you need a physical space. This is why it is so important to have public funding for the Hackerdome. We need a place where two teams of hackers can compete to see who is the best, and who should go down in shame. And we can do it all under standardized conditions. This is too important to leave to the private market. Vote YES now!
stuntkite 5y ago
Isn't that basically what they built in Vegas? The MSG Sphere. I've been building holographic performance tools for over 10 years and no one really knows who the fuck I am but I intend to be the first qualified act to rock that bitch till the wheels fall off. You're more than welcome to meet me there and we can do a battle of the bands style thing but it's also capture the flag for some weird as distributed systems. I've got analog bass that'll make you cry and enough compute power to model some pretty weird shit. I'm not sure if I'm a world class hacker, but I think the venue should be looking more at folks who win demoscene compos than top 40 acts. Maybe get top 40 acts to work with demoscene cats. I'm also not as good as those folks but I'm fine with tipping my hand here and see if anyone else is thinking the same thing. I've got a plan and the tools! Lets go. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydOn8qwLJzA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydOn8qwLJzA

_3u10 5y ago

Why not? It’s up to the people of a city how much they want to spend and on what. Sports happen to be very popular with a large group of people who aren’t interested in the rest of what a city spends on. You can have those people watching sports or you can have them complaining about the rest of the spending because they didn’t get their piece of the pie.

bagels 5y ago
Why doesn't the city buy lavish buildings for other wildly profitable businesses? Professional sports don't need our tax money, they merely want it. If sports enthusiasts want to contribute money to the football stadium fund, they are free to.
- _3u10 5y ago
  They do. Arts, industry, ports, hospitals, schools, prisons, etc. People who buy things like season tickets pay for most of the rest of the money the city wastes, why not get some back?
jrumbut 5y ago
Seems like the issue is the fig leaf of stadium financing being about jobs and new small businesses and all that good stuff. It would be nice if there was more transparency ("Buffalo will pay for the stadium because we know you live the Bills one million times more than all your elected officials put together") or if cities banded together against paying these bribes but that's life. I did really like the ideas for federal level reforms, but one component the author missed is that a stadium has workforce with a fairly unique composition. If you replace it with an office park or museum will they need dozens of hot dog and beer vendors, a massive athletic training staff, a landscaping staff, outdoor lighting technicians, etc? These are working class or middle class people who will be scrambling for a limited job pool. Getting rid of 100 janitors and adding 100 web developers has a cost to it, because it will require 200 people to either move or retrain.
pronlover723 5y ago
Somewhat agreed. A city can want lots of things few people use. I'm sure the plenty of people don't take advantage of Central Park or Golden Gate Park yet they are paid for by the government. Further, stadiums are often used for more than just sports. They're a venue for concerts, fireworks shows, and many other things.

kevin_thibedeau 5y ago

There need to be strings attached where the owner is forced to set aside a portion of annual profits as an investment to future stadium construction.

TulliusCicero 5y ago
No. Just don't pay public money for these things. If they leave, they leave. Don't let pro sports teams and their fans extort everyone else.

slg 5y ago

The financials on this are settled. Sports stadiums are an awful financial investment. However, running a government is not all about making sound financial investments. Sometimes it is about pooling resources to provide a joint benefit to society. Other times it is about trying to price in externalities to allow the market to do its work. These two issues are not as settled as the investment angle and are almost never discussed. Sports teams provide utility to people in the region, including people who never pay a cent for a ticket or merchandise. How do you quantity that value and should the government compensate the sports team for that value? I don't know the right answer, but I would like to see some economists at least engage with that aspect of these decisions. Also the only way to stop these gifts to private companies is likely with a new federal law banning them. It is simple game theory. These businesses will go where the profit is. Any city or state that refuses to pay will lose out until every city or state refuses to pay. The best way to force that is with a federal ban.

HNHatesUsers 5y ago
Mountain_Skies 5y ago
The federal government could help by removing the tax exemption municipal bonds enjoy should they be used for a stadium. It's not an all encompassing change that would stop all of the corporate giveaways but it would be a start.
TulliusCicero 5y ago
Lol no, a professional sports team is of little "joint benefit to society", at least not of the kind that seriously concerns the government. You may as well argue that the government should be subsidizing new Marvel movies, or Call of Duty, because those are popular forms of entertainment too. > Also the only way to stop these gifts to private companies is likely with a new federal law banning them. It is simple game theory. These businesses will go where the profit is. Any city or state that refuses pay will lose out until every city or state refuses to pay. The best way to force that is with a federal ban. No. You can just...refuse to subsidize them. Seems to be working fine for Seattle, where IIRC the renovated stadium for their new NHL team was privately funded. And if they do go somewhere else, what's the downside? Seattle lost its NBA team a while back, which was a bummer for basketball fans, obviously, but otherwise what was the harm to the city or region? Plenty of high prestige world cities like Tokyo or London or Paris aren't known for their pro sports teams. They seem to suffer little for it. For a while, the Olympics were able to basically threaten their way into huge subsidies from even developed countries, but this seems to have mostly gone away now, as everyone collectively woke up from the delusion that the Olympics were a major economic boon worth investing in. Sports team stadiums could easily go the same way. edit: Okay, obviously I should've picked different world cities as examples, but even taking those: Tokyo's pro sports teams don't have anywhere close to the foreign popularity that London's EPL teams do. Does that seem to hurt it?

firefoxd 5y ago

When the Rams chose Inglewood as their new home, my apartment complex roared like thunder. It's like we had just won the Superbowl. There was literally fireworks exploding at my door and everyone was happy. Few billion dollars later, construction everywhere, and the Rams are playing their first game. There are only two families remaining out of the 30 that lived here. Rent went up and everyone had to move out east, to a worst neighborhood. Sure we have a stadium now. But the neighborhood has been completely gentrified.

throwthere 5y ago
Worth mentioning that other than a few tax subsidies the Inglewood stadium was built with private money.
gruez 5y ago
In other words the government built some facilities and increased the land value of the surrounding area. Seems everything was working as intended?
- MAGZine 5y ago
  do you suppose the residents were consulted in the same way they might be if ther were attempting to build in pac heights or west village or the hills?
  - gruez 5y ago
    Given how ecstatic the residents were, I'd think that such consultation would make little difference (ie. they already approve of the project). >When the Rams chose Inglewood as their new home, my apartment complex roared like thunder. It's like we had just won the Superbowl. There was literally fireworks exploding at my door and everyone was happy.

pkdpic 5y ago

I agree, make it stop. It's insane. Sacramento CA seems like its still reeling from building the Kings basketball stadium and its effectively made an entire district of town inaccessible and unaffordable for any of the small businesses that make this town vibrant. Minor league sports cost enough to support and teams support local pride and healthier fan followings imho. Ive been dying for covid to be over forever so I can start going to triple A baseball games. Id rather watch semi-normal humans play than a bunch of millionaires.

lacker 5y ago

Cities paying to attract sports teams is simply democracy. A lot of people like watching sports and having local professional sports teams. But the number of professional sports teams is limited. Not every city can be an NFL city, and many people are proud that their city is an NFL city. In a city like Los Angeles or San Francisco it might not be so important, but in a smaller city, for a Cincinnati politician to take an anti-Bengals stance would be political suicide. It is never primarily about the "jobs created".

TulliusCicero 5y ago
Ridiculous. Refusing to pay out public money for private profit isn't "anti-" anything. If Disney demands you give them a billion dollars to make a movie about your city, refusing that demand doesn't make you "anti-Disney." It just makes you sane.
lelanthran 5y ago
> A lot of people like watching sports I don't think that that is true anymore. It used to be, but sports is competing for eyeballs with all the other entertainment out there. Yeah, sure, sports had a large audience when people did not have games, instant messaging, social sites, Netflix, AmzPrime, Hulu and more in the palm of their hands. Basically, sports is in competition with all the other forms of entertainment. I'm looking around my circle of friends, family and acquaintances, and the only ones who are interested are: 1. Those with children on some team in school, and then they're only interested in that particular sport, and only when their children's teams are playing. 2. The older folk who were supporters all their lives, and will continue being supporters. 3. The people betting on matches. I know of only one family that actually is into sport, and regularly follows all the soccer and/or cricket matches that come around. The others have cancelled their sat-tv and just use netflix, amz-prime and the internet for entertainment.
- culturestate 5y ago
  > I don't think that that is true anymore. It used to be, but sports is competing for eyeballs with all the other entertainment out there. In 2021, 95 of the top 100 most-watched TV broadcasts in the US were sports. More people watched the Raiders play on Thanksgiving than watched the presidential inauguration. 1. https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2022/01/10/Upfront/Ratings.aspx https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2022/01...

sz4kerto 5y ago

https://spinor.info/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/felcsut.jpg https://spinor.info/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/felcsu... We (Hungary) are spending huge amounts of public money on building stadiums everywhere (dozens and dozens of them). On the linked picture you can see a large-ish stadium built in a small town with a population of 2000 people. The marked place is the house of our prime minister :D He likes soccer.

oblio 5y ago
For you it's different since many people agree that those projects are just a way to siphon EU funds.

sdoering 5y ago

In Germany local municipalities for example pay for renovations of churches. The case I knew from my hometown was that the Church (as in country organization) payed one third. The congregation hat to pay one third as well and the secular municipality also had to pay one third. In Munich the "Allianz Arena" (named after a big insurance company) for the FC Bayern was also substantially supported by the tax payer. More than one third of the estimated costs were planned to be payed by the government. As they cannot subsidize directly that was mostly the cost of the infrastructure like streets, power, water and so on. The richest socker club in Germany argued that the tax payer has to finance it, as the city would profit from the visitors. If I remember correctly, BMW got 150 million subsidiaries (from the EU and Germany) for building a new production site near Leipzig as it was seen as helping the development of the former GDR states after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Seems like a regular thing at any scale for any organization/company with enough lobbying power and influence.

TulliusCicero 5y ago
> The case I knew from my hometown was that the Church (as in country organization) payed one third. The congregation hat to pay one third as well and the secular municipality also had to pay one third. The lack of institutional separation of church and state within Germany surprised me when I lived there. The populace isn't particularly religious on a personal level, but they tolerate a surprising amount of religious interference or intertwining with state institutions. IIRC there are church schools/daycares that are publicly funded as well, and of course the state cooperates with churches for religious taxation (yes, really -- if you're a member of one of those churches, you can't opt out short of leaving that church, they take the money directly out of your paycheck).
- _lnwk 5y ago
  Which ends up funny if you migrate there. I've heard so many stories other Poles going there, declaring they are atheists so they won't pay taxes, and then being surprised when they come back only to their their local priests laughing them out of door when they want service XD

spoonjim 5y ago

Everyone has known this for decades but does it anyways.

oblio 5y ago
Easy way to score political points and get votes. Peak populism.
TulliusCicero 5y ago
IIRC Seattle recently refused to do it.
- colinmhayes 5y ago
  Seattle still doesn't have a basketball team because they refused to pay for a stadium. That's exactly why teams are able to extort cities over stadium funding.

shoo 5y ago

the latest episode of the economist "checks and balance" US politics podcast touches on what cities in decline can do to try to turn things around: > Since the founding of America, its people and its economy have moved steadily westwards and, later, southwards. Recently, people and businesses have flocked to Sun Belt states, while cities in America’s old industrial heartland are struggling. What makes American cities boom and bust? they give the example of Pittsburgh investing in "Eds and Meds" -- education and healthcare -- to regrow the city's economy after the decline of steel manufacturing https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/checks-and-balance-city-limits/id1494037881?i=1000553729611 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/checks-and-balance-cit...

BHSPitMonkey 5y ago
On a similar note, the newest video from NotJustBikes focuses on what makes these cities (in)solvent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI

jedberg 5y ago

What really upsets me about public stadiums is when the locals can't even watch the game. Take the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. That stadium is 100% publicly funded by the taxpayers. Since 2011 the Rose Bowl game on Jan 1 has been on ESPN. So two colleges, the majority of which have been public schools, play in a public stadium and the locals can't even watch for free. I think at the very least they need to make a law that says all events that take place in a publicly funded stadium need to be broadcast on a free local channel that reaches all of the taxpayers who paid for the stadium.

arijun 5y ago
While your point is probably valid, your example wasn’t. The rose bowl is owned by the city of Pasadena, so the city gets payed when it’s in use.
- jedberg 5y ago
  That’s usually the case with a public owned stadium but it doesn’t change the fact that the taxpayers payers own it.
rascul 5y ago
I'm not sure if it's still the case but from what I understand the NFL used to prohibit local games from being shown in the local area to encourage ticket sales.
- jedberg 5y ago
  Not just the NFL but also MLB. Usually the rule is that it has to be a near sell out crowd so it isn’t blacked out. But they’ve gotten more lax about that after they realized that the trick doesn’t work — blackouts don’t really increase attendance.
- bombcar 5y ago
  Exactly - the "blackout" sales level - if not enough tickets were sold, the game wouldn't be available locally. Sometimes a local entity (city, owner of the team, local businessman) would buy blocks of 10k+ tickets to ensure it could be shown locally.

dalbasal 5y ago

There are two aspects to this One is the problem that governments make investments, and private firms are the primary beneficiaries. This exists broadly. In some instances, it feels fine. Governments are supposed to make investments that benefit the economy. Roads, ports, fiber, etc. This gets sticky when it's a select group, monopoly or cabal that gets most of the benefit. Many national or regional postal systems currently have this dilemma. Postal systems need major public investment to keep up with modern e-commerce. AMZN & BABA, the world richest firms, are the main beneficiaries. The point at which people seem to stop and challenge is often when things get explicit. Sports stadiums are that. Team owners make explicit demands, or threaten local polities. That gets people upset. Imo, the only way to deal with these is returning "hardball" tactics. Make hard demands, like control of key assets (eg the team's brand/IP) in return for investments. Threaten financial ruin of owners' investments back. Legislate away contractual lock-ins. No one likes to be strongarmed. That's why people are so infuriated by "give us money or we take your team."

nielsbot 5y ago

John Oliver did a Last Week Tonight on exactly this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xcwJt4bcnXs https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xcwJt4bcnXs

mannerheim 5y ago

It seems that public officials are more fond of projects like stadiums than voters. Last November, voters in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Denver, Colorado; and Augusta, Georgia all voted against ballot initiatives to fund stadiums that would increase their tax bills. Meanwhile, the elected officials in each of these places seemed to have been fully behind these projects.[0] In the Buffalo Bills example from the OP article, it sounds like they're attempting to negotiate directly with the governor. Smart, I suppose, since if the other examples are any indication, the elected official will be more receptive towards giving them money than the taxpayers. [0]: https://reason.com/2021/11/05/voters-dont-want-to-pay-for-your-dumb-stadium/ https://reason.com/2021/11/05/voters-dont-want-to-pay-for-yo...

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nobody9999 5y ago
>In the Buffalo Bills example from the OP article, it sounds like they're attempting to negotiate directly with the governor. Smart, I suppose, since if the other examples are any indication, the elected official will be more receptive towards giving them money than the taxpayers. Keep in mind that the Governor of New York[0] is from Buffalo. I'd imagine that might make a difference. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Hochul#Early_life_and_education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Hochul#Early_life_and_ed...
Kneecaps07 5y ago
People in Buffalo aren't happy about this, but the Bills are a BIG part of this city's identity. The Bills owner (an oil billionaire, by the way) is threatening take the team to another city if the state doesn't help pay for the stadium.

tlogan 5y ago

The stadiums are rarely profitable. If there is no public funding, then stadiums would exist only in very few places. As far as I know majority of the stadiums in Europe are also own by municipalities. Also are cities really investing in something better? Oakland lost both Raiders and Warriors. It seems like Oakland spend that money on pension benefits of city employees. And they started laying off teachers. If you ask me: if you cannot spend money on schools (or anything useful) build a stadium. But this is politic: stadiums are easy target but do know that city will probably mismanage the money any way.

mannerheim 5y ago
If you can't spend the money on anything useful, let the taxpayer keep their money.
- tlogan 5y ago
  Sure - but as a taxpayer of Oakland what one can do? I was with them when they said “no money for Raiders”. They mismanaged the money anyhow and one cannot elect anybody else because they need to be democrats. I’m just explaining how dynamic goes here: the cities will be still be funding stadiums because electorate will not trust them when they say “we will spend on x”.
robbick 5y ago
In the UK very few stadiums are publicly funded. This can be done. I'd prefer my city mismanage my money into nurses hands than into a stadium.

1337biz 5y ago

Stadiums are a in the end just a marketing instrument for 2nd and 3rd tier cities to brand themselves and stay in the national or international news. The alternative is spending money on image campaigns and other fluff marketing. Once you realize that every time a city is (positively) mentionen in news, it is "earned media", the whole calcuation shifts a lot around.

dagw 5y ago
brand themselves and stay in the national or international news. But to what end? Thanks to sport I know of lots of US cities like Green Bay, Buffalo, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Kansas City etc. that I might not otherwise ever have given any thought. But what is the next step after that? I'm certainly not going to holiday there because they have a pretty good (or used to be good) team I've heard of.
- 1337biz 5y ago
  In the end once cities cover the basics have not that many opportunities to stay in the news with a somewhat positive impression. The name recognition is not going to be the core decision point for someone to spend holidays there or relocate there. But if you are relocating to a city and have three to choose from where non stands out in particular you might assume that the one with the stronger sports team is more vibrant or dynamic than the others.

lovehashbrowns 5y ago

This is one of those issues where I have a clear logical stance but an opposite emotional stance. I've tried so hard to be against /any/ kind of stadium subsidies. At the college level, at the national level, at the high school level. I've tried. Honestly, I don't watch sports, I don't care about sports, I wish teachers got paid more, I wish students had more programs, I wish we had more money for infrastructure and so on and so on. I've tried with every fiber of my being to be against these stadiums being subsidized. And I read some of their citations, like this one: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/sports-jobs-taxes-are-new-stadiums-worth-the-cost/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/sports-jobs-taxes-are-new... And I couldn't agree more with a lot of it. I think the "What Can Be Done?" section is really good. I think there should be federal incentives for forcing cities to work together on their contracts with these sports teams to make their deals more fair. I don't know how that would work? But, for example, one of the downsides listed in the article is that most of the jobs created by the stadium are low-paying jobs. Not just the construction work itself but maintaining the stadium. Janitors, cashiers, mechanics, etc. But that's not an issue /with the stadium itself/ that's an issue with ALL of the country itself. It's not like the stadium not being there is going to give janitors higher paying jobs. Whether they work low-paying and hardly livable jobs for the stadium or for a contractor that has deals with Google doesn't make a difference. It's al ow paying job that can't sustain a living wage. That's not on the stadium. That's not on the city making a deal with NFL. That's an irrelevant point. If you want to make those 10,000 stadium jobs better for the community, don't choose to NOT put a stadium there. Choose to increase the quality of life for the residents of the city. But, I think what taints my perspective more than anything is being from Chicago and having lived in Texas. I know of people that are proud of being Chicagoans, that love going to Wrigleyville, that love being from the North/South based on what team they follow. I know of people in Texas that are proud of their town because of how good their football team was. I know of people who went to A&M because of its sports teams. I know of people who travel there specifically to watch a game. I've seen content from their Fightin' Texas Aggie Band that's made me feel inspired. I think part of it IS economic and I know I'm biased towards success stories. But I do think there absolutely is an emotional component to it. And if you think a government shouldn't be making emotional decisions, that's totally fine. I don't disagree with you at all. I wish I could agree with you harder, actually. I just can't put myself completely in the camp of "cities should not pay for new stadiums."

seb1204 5y ago

This, yes. Cities need to invest in community sport and facilities for community sport. Yes there is also an infrastructure or building aspect to this but not giant stadiums. That is families, kids, tens playing (add sport of your choice). Cities should support those clubs that do this kind of work which is often shouldered by volunteers. Once it gets to stadiums that are used by clubs with payed players. It is a business and the business should pay for it.

supernova87a 5y ago

I remember a quote from an economist on hearing about a stadium project (or racetrack, or casino, for that matter -- I think it was either Baltimore or Atlantic City) -- "If the economic benefits of the proposed development turn out to be as the mayor suggests, he would be the first mayor in the history of such projects to be correctly predict the effects." The beneficiaries of these projects never end up being who the backers say they will be. And the beneficiaries who they actually are designed for are never the ones being touted. If economic benefit for the city were the motivation, let the developers put up their money to pay the difference if the economic benefits don't turn out to be as they projected.

jonp888 5y ago

The bizarre thing about the US is that as far as indviduals are concerned "socialism" and government assistance are dirty words, but not when it relates for corporations. So benefits that are absolutely standard like universal healthcare, employment protection, minimum holidays, parental leave etc. are very limited. Meanwhile the government builds stadiums for commercial sports businesses, runs airports and harbours so that commercial airlines and shipping lines can use them, implements strict protectionist legislation even in industries which operate fine in other 1st world countries without such legislation, and local authorities offer massive tax breaks to try and attract companies.

bell-cot 5y ago

My sense is that a large fraction of the population has a deep emotional need for "manly men" sports teams which they can easily identify with (whether local professional teams, teams at the college they attended, or maybe teams local to where they grew up). Greedy team owners know this, and also that a few phrases like "economic benefits" and "or we'll move to $new_city" serve both to sway the gullible (who buy the economic arguments) and to push the insecurity / fear buttons in the people with emotional needs for a local team. If ~nobody is mentioning, let alone discussing, the actual priorities of a large fraction of the voters, then rational public policy outcomes may prove rather rare.

paulcole 5y ago
Why shouldn’t the government serve voters’ emotional needs?
- bell-cot 5y ago
  No reason it shouldn't...and say so right up front - "Our fine citizens wanted a new playground in this neighborhood, so the City spending $playground_cost and building one for them!". The combination of brazen lies about costs, and deep "nobody mentions that" motivations are the big problem with the stadiums.

hownottowrite 5y ago

This is happening in Northern Virginia right now. The state is going to create a control structure for a private city, provide unlimited debt funding, and lose significant tax revenues for decades to come. And for what? Bad football and more temporary food service/retail jobs?

bregma 5y ago

What cities need to invest in is a large exclusive trough where an elite can come to squeal and gobble their slops. Call it the "Pork Barrel Dome" and charge regular people to come and watch the rich satisfy themselves. Have publicly run gambling rings to make book on which participant will inhale the most in a limited amount of time just to keep things "interesting".

choward 5y ago

I find it baffling how much is spent on NFL stadiums for just 8 home games a year. That's just over 1 game per day for a week every year. And the stadiums take up prime real estate. Also, some teams are forced to play out of the country for one of their games and lose a home game.

culturestate 5y ago
It's exceedingly rare for an NFL stadium to be used exclusively for NFL games. If you look at the schedule for e.g. the Buccaneers stadium[1] in Tampa - which the city owns and leases to the team - you'll see that it regularly hosts concerts, monster truck shows, college football games, etc. 1. https://raymondjamesstadium.com/upcomingevents https://raymondjamesstadium.com/upcomingevents
originalvichy 5y ago
As a european football fan it is easy to forget how few games there is in regular season NFL. At the same time NHL, MLB and NBA have a crazy amount of games in a season. I just assumed the NFL had a similar-ish amount of games but that few games a season sound like a waste. Especially since franchises can just move away the stadiums don’t have a feeling of ”home”.
colinmhayes 5y ago
I know my local NFL stadium sees plenty of use outside of football season. Probably around 50 or so events a year even though no one wants to be outside 4 months of the year.
vel0city 5y ago
I've never been to a live NFL game but I've been in NFL stadiums probably >100 times. Here's the schedule at NRG Park, the stadium where the Houston Texans play. https://www.nrgpark.com/event-calendar/ https://www.nrgpark.com/event-calendar/ They're currently hosting the Houston Rodeo and have pretty big concerts every night for the next few days after already having events every night for the few days before. There's literally a massive rodeo going on on the grounds around it and in it. Then there's a large auto auction, then a lot of other shows going on. There's 21 days of events going on in the next 46 days, meaning something is going on in that stadium ~46% of the time in the next month and a half. Take a look at how full the calendar is for American Airlines Center, the stadium where the Dallas Stars (NHL) and Dallas Mavericks (NBA) play. https://www.americanairlinescenter.com/events https://www.americanairlinescenter.com/events Once again, a lot of things going on separate from both teams, and that's while both teams are actively playing season games as well! These stadiums aren't just for a single sport.

DeathArrow 5y ago

>Cities should not pay for new stadiums There is for every city to decide if funding some private business is in the interest of its inhabitants or not.

golergka 5y ago

I completely agree with this statement, but the core behind this argument is about the essence of taxation as a whole: nobody should be forced, with violence or threat of violence, to pay for something he doesn't want to consume. It doesn't matter if it's a stadium, a hospital or a subway.

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giantg2 5y ago

I can see the city paying for the stadium so that they can use it for a variety of events and purposes. They need to start charging the large revenue generating sports more.

dade_ 5y ago

Plenty of mention of different sports, but the post and references cited seem to focus on examples from the NFL. So I suggest the title should be Cities shouldn’t pay for new NFL stadiums. The NFL is over the top from an opulence perspective and isn’t international, so I don’t think it should be used as a baseline for anything. I am interested to know the actual net effect of FIFA World Cup 2026 for example, but the post doesn’t seem to focus much on basketball, hockey, soccer, or baseball.

jzb 5y ago

NFL teams demanding things is pretty much what's entirely soured me on professional sports. I grew up near St. Louis and the city has been screwed over not once (Rams) but twice (football Cardinals) in my lifetime by NFL teams. They enrich the owners and drain the locals. I lived in downtown St. Louis when the Cards were in the World Series (2011) and the benefit to local restaurants + bars was minimal. There'd be a flood of traffic to get to the stadium, and another flood out - very little spillover to local bars and restaurants around the stadium. (Not none, but not the rosy picture painted when they talk about driving business to local establishments, either.)

throwthere 5y ago
Did you see the NFL's settlement with the Rams over that move? It was something like $1 billion. You may have been screwed with the football Cardinals but I think St. Louis got a nice return on investment from that settlement with the Rams.

jeffwask 5y ago

It's nice that we need to write scholarly articles on why the public shouldn't buy billionaires new toys when they tire of their old ones. This is part of why I stepped away from sports couldn't be happier.

Chris2048 5y ago
- ianai 5y ago
  Stadiums aren’t infrastructure.
  - Chris2048 5y ago
    Says who? Definition of infrastructure 1: the system of public works of a country, state, or region also : the resources (such as personnel, buildings, or equipment) required for an activity
    - MAGZine 5y ago
      stadiums aren't public property generally, and not sure why they'd be considered "public works" like a road or a water system would be.
      - Chris2048 5y ago
        > also: the resources (such as personnel, buildings Just b/c a road is infrastructure, doesn't mean all infrastructure is like roads
    - michaelcampbell 5y ago
      > public works Correct, you answered your own question. Stadiums are not this.
      - 5y ago

zip1234 5y ago

I think beyond the obvious large sports stadiums, local high schools are among the worst offenders. New tax levies for 'schools' almost always pass despite much of that spent on new sports fields meant for the exclusive use of sports teams that constitute only a very small percentage of the student body population (not to mention the overall population). Meanwhile, the school will not even have safe ways for children to ride bikes to school and bus service cannot even be properly maintained.

rory 5y ago
How about Opera Houses? Why should the federal taxpayer pour millions into the Kennedy Center just so rich old congresspeople can pretend to enjoy the plotless hellscape of "Cats"?
- robert_foss 5y ago
  I think the difference is that football is a money making endeavor for the team owner. Opera isn't making money for anyone and needs help if it is to exist. Giving money to football teams is not much of a step removed from putting it directly in the pockets of the already rich owners of the teams.
  - mbg721 5y ago
    Actual opera fans are frothing at the mouth right now at the suggestion that Cats is opera. But this idea that opera is stuffy high culture is the same mistake people make with Shakespeare--it's pop culture, just removed from its context. Imagine upper-class twits a century from now screening an Adam Sandler movie.
    - User23 5y ago
      That’s why Opera has so many long boring bits. Attendees weren’t expected to pay attention as if it were a High Mass. It was a social event, a place to see and be seen, as well as trade gossip and so on. The performance itself was somewhat analogous to the TV on in the background at a bar.

ultrablack 5y ago

In Europe, the pro soccer teams either own their stadium or pay rent. And where would FC Barcelona move to. Paris??

sizzzzlerz 5y ago

Many years ago, the San Francisco Giants were looking for a new stadium to replace the decrepit Candlestick Park. They settled on some land in the south bay on the outskirts of my town. Local town officials approved a plan that would implement a utility tax on residents that would pay a portion of the costs. However, it required the approval of the voters. In the next election, the approval vote appeared on the ballot where, to my pleasant surprise, it was massively rejected, 70% to 30%. Ultimately, the Giants built a fine, new stadium with their own funding on land provided by San Francisco. For us, it was fortunate we had the opportunity to vote on it unlike so many other cities where they're given no choice. (See Seattle, Dallas, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Glendale, New Orleans, Chicago, ...)

raldi 5y ago
On the other hand, having the stadium built in SF was arguably the primary catalyst in the transformation of SOMA from an underused-warehouse district to the new tech epicenter of the world, stealing Silicon Valley's fire in a way previously thought impossible. If the stadium had been built in the south bay, SF might today be saying, "Whew, we really dodged a bullet there", and meanwhile Twitter and Dropbox and Uber and Airbnb would all be headquartered in Santa Clara county and giving them all their employees' tax revenue.
- Drunk_Engineer 5y ago
  SOMA would have developed regardless, and it is nonsense to suggest tech companies want to locate near baseball stadiums.
  - raldi 5y ago
    I never said tech companies want to be near baseball stadiums. Rather (like in Baltimore and San Diego), the new stadium revitalized a neighborhood whose original reason for being had mostly dried up, bringing enough business to support the (re)emergence of nearby restaurants and other amenities, and those investments in the neighborhood made it an attractive place to have offices that eventually became the new primary source of support for the restaurants, condos, hotel, etc. The stadium was what broke the neighborhood out of the chicken-and-egg quandary.

clashmoore 5y ago

The article cites Buffalo as paying for the stadium, but isn't the public portion ($1B) coming from New York State and not the city itself? The stadium isn't even located in the city of Buffalo but well outside of it.

Tiktaalik 5y ago

> Teams will often threaten to leave their respective city trying to leverage new and expensive facilities in other places from their current cities. We've seen this happen time and time again. I wonder how viable government regulation around this would be, to effectively ban the concept of moving a sports club by making the barriers to moving so high that no one would ever want to do it unless the team was in genuine financial distress.

browserman 5y ago
There have occasionally been (completely wishful) proposals in the U.S. to have a team's IP (the name, logos, record, etc, basically the whole team's 'identity') belong to a city or a public corporation representing the region they draw their fanbase from.

nix0n 5y ago

I think we should go the other way and nationalize all major sports leagues and teams, because they really are an integral part of a community.

pards 5y ago

Light grey text on a white background? I was interested in the content but cannot force my eyes to endure the strain of reading the article due to its inaccessibility. Readability is dead.

rcpt 5y ago

At the very least don't subsidize the parking lot

scotuswroteus 5y ago

Cities should not pay for many, many things. Sports are not some special irrational thing that humans do to the exclusion of all the other random things public entities fund.

BLO716 5y ago

One need only look in my own backyard and the ongoing struggle between the Pegula's (https://www.psentertainment.com/ https://www.psentertainment.com/) billions and the post Ralph Wilson era in ownership of the NFL team in Buffalo, NY - the Buffalo Bills. They are located out in Orchard Park ("OP" in these parts), NY and before Wilson died, he negotiated a long term non-move clause in the Bills from OP to keep his legacy intact for as long as he could. Fast forward 10 (ish) years to 2022 the floated value of a new stadium is looking to be between 1.4-1.8B to mirror the other stadiums build in the state in NYC (can't off hand remember which ones are new). The average is about 1.6% paid out of local / state taxes, while it seems (perception) that the state is willing to pay an unprecedented 25-50% of the new stadium from local coffers. I'm not sure if anyone has looked around, but in the last two years I think the population dropped by 300K in NYS and Upstate (everything East of Rochester) and Western New York (everything Rochester and west) has been dying slowly. I think Buffalo has seen a mediocre rise back to glory under the "Billion to Buffalo" under Cuomo's governance, but tons of that left the state with Tesla's Riverbend plant and honestly real failure to deliver on its promises. The rest went to our startup and industrial technology companies with sprinkles into our medical institutions (our real meat and po-tats around these parts). The problem is - we have no money. Taxes are high (without blaming a party, but a culture problem in NYS) and social programs are abused. Billions in the pocket of the wealthy need to be spent and the local pockets need to contribute to their profits vs. being blead for them. Really hate living in a state that just hates business like we do here, but .. this what you get. Detroit, Cleveland, and Buffalo will all eventually fail on some level because of the continued regime's need to keep the status going. Someone really needs to speak truth to power, or its going to crush our country economically as capitalism is more oligarch feeling than Representative Democracy.

harywilke 5y ago

Or they can, but should keep all the concessions, branding, etc. profits.

aiisjustanif 5y ago

Can we please stay on topic. This article is about the US, all the references and the article it self point to that. Do not rope in international cities where sporting events have different impacts and are potentially funded differently. Thank you. :)

hnburnsy 5y ago

Check out Field of Schemes, the journalist there covers this news in depth... https://www.fieldofschemes.com/ https://www.fieldofschemes.com/

engineer_22 5y ago

I'm a technical student at a regional-sized state college. A significant amount of money is charged to each student to pay for athletic scholarships, fund the sports teams to travel, spend time in exotic locations, and train in good facilities with paid coaches and physical trainers. I have a hard time squaring this expense as necessary for my education. Especially for a state school. I've been an athlete and enjoyed being on travel teams, and those experiences helped me develop as a person, so I'm not saying sports arent useful training, but I have a hard time justifying the whole student body paying for those kids to run around.

EchoReflection 5y ago

It's really unfortunate that the extremely intelligent and self-filtering (via upvotes) nature of HN doesn't have an impact on policy-choices. :(

dirtyid 5y ago

Not a sports fan, but it's strange how much local sports contribute to local culture in large western cities, seems to bring abundant entertainment to sports fans in my life that it's better to bias towards having stadiums than not. Having lived in multiple large Asian cities without developed major sport franchises, I do feel like life is different without it.