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The financials on this are settled. Sports stadiums are an awful financial investment. However, running a government is not all about making sound financial in

by 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?
- faichai 5y ago
  Wat? London has Chelsea, Arsenal, West Ham, Tottenham in the premier league. People come from all around to watch them play. I say this as someone who cares little about football.
- namdnay 5y ago
  > Plenty of high prestige world cities like Tokyo or London or Paris aren't known for their pro sports teams. Not that I disagree with the general gist, I had to facepalm at that! I think the general risk is that a rival politician will promise to bring back sports teams, with some dodgy financial setup that conceals the true cost, and the electorate will gobble it up
  - TulliusCicero 5y ago
    Why? Tons of friends and family of mine have visited those cities, I've never heard of any of them doing it to see their sports teams.
    - yywwbbn 5y ago
      I’m sure that globally London and probably Paris (probably a bit more debatable) are much better know for their professional sports teams than any city in the US.
      - TulliusCicero 5y ago
        No London team even breaks the top 10 of most valuable sports team, but there are several US entries there, so that seems unlikely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbes%27_list_of_the_most_valuable_sports_teams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbes%27_list_of_the_most_val... I tried googling more directly for global popularity/famousness, but couldn't find any hard data. And of course there's the issue of "has well known sports teams" vs "well known for their sports team". The former you could probably get data on somewhere, but the latter, I doubt it.
        5y ago
bananapub 5y ago
> a joint benefit to society american top level sports teams are part of a multi-multi-billion industry. this isn't getting together to build a library, it's a direct transfer of tax money to private companies that can or should easily afford to pay for it themselves. christ alive.
- mardifoufs 5y ago
  Stadiums exist in the rest of the world, and multi billion corporations can still be a benefit to society. I don't agree with funding huge mega stadiums for a single team. But it's ridiculous to pretend sports teams, even big ones, can't provide a huge service for a community. It's hard to overstate just how important big teams like say, Chelsea or Barca are for a huge chunk of not just the people who live in their home cities but also across the world. How do you quantify that in terms of cost? It will obviously never happen but let's say barca wanted to leave Barcelona, do you think the city shouldn't do anything about it because it helps billionaires? Tons of Arts museums, especially those for contemporary/avant garde arts are usually displaying private collections and in practice only benefit a very small minority of usually rich people. Operas and orchestras too. Shouldnt we just stop funding those too then? Where do we draw the line?
  - sidr 5y ago
    > just how important big teams like say, Chelsea or Barca are for a huge chunk of not just the people who live in their home cities but also across the world. Here "important to" is equivalent to "liked/entertained by", as a form of entertainment. The question here is what forms of entertainment should tax payers pay for and your comparison with art museums, operas and orchestras is apt. > let's say barca wanted to leave Barcelona, do you think the city shouldn't do anything about it because it helps billionaires? If barca were extorting the city of Barcelona by demanding they pay 10s or 100s of millions to upgrade Camp Nou, then the city should tell the team to go to hell. This exact scenario has played out in multiple cities in the US and with the IOC and city bids.
  - wincy 5y ago
    If I don’t pay the taxes to fund the stadium, men with guns will literally come to my house (this happened when I did my taxes incorrectly) to tell me to pay. I think the line should be drawn somewhere before that and everyone calls me crazy.
lelanthran 5y ago
> Sports teams provide utility to people in the region, including people who never pay a cent for a ticket or merchandise. Wait, what? Are you sure? I don't see a value of having sports teams other than entertainment. > How do you quantity that value and should the government compensate the sports team for that value? Maybe a good start would be to simply ask the people "how many sporting events have you been to in the last three months?" If large numbers of people aren't that interested in sport now, they'll probably remain uninterested in the future. OTOH, if large numbers of people are interested enough to go to games then they'll probably remain interested enough to go to games in the future. My personal experience (not in the US), is that fewer than 1 in 20 people are interested in going to view live sporting events in a stadium.
- xxs 5y ago
  > I don't see a value of having sports teams other than entertainment At least in Europe, most teams have children organizations, and a lot of kids train. The sports provide motivation for the young kids to exercise and practice, watching high level plays is quite useful to learn tactics as well. >how many sporting events have you been to in the last three months It's COVID times, c'mon. Most events have no audience.
  - lelanthran 5y ago
    > It's COVID times, c'mon. Most events have no audience. Good point: Why use tax dollars to build a stadium that is going to be mostly empty? Let's wait to see if interest in sports pick up again.
  - ubermonkey 5y ago
    This is not generally true of big-money pro sports in the US. I'm unaware of any child leagues for the NFL (American / gridiron football), MLB (baseball), NBA (basketball), or NHL (hockey). Pro soccer might have something, but it's also a rounding error in the American pro sports landscape.
    - rascul 5y ago
NalNezumi 5y ago
If you're going to make the argument "There's other benefit to the society that also need to be considered" then you also have to consider the negatives of a stadium. There's a lot of negative aspects that follow building a stadium, too. I can't on the top of my head show any figures, but a classmate of mine that lived in the suburb with a stadium, a place everyone considered "the ghetto" because of crime rate, said it wasn't as bad as people said it to be; with the notable exception, and he was very clear about this: when there's a football match going on in the new stadium close by, every family in the vicinity knew not to let their kids out (or go out on the night) because the city got too unsafe to walk around because of supporters/drunk hooligans trashing places and being violent. (risk of getting robbed, raped, assaulted went notably up every time there was a match that stretched in to the night) The stadium to the locals felt like a net-negative. Bars and night life owners where happy, but to ordinary citizen it meant more crime, trashed streets, vandalized walls/shops + the immeasurable effect of the stereotype that got attached ("high concentration of immigrants = high crime rate")
- jasamer 5y ago
  I live close to a smaller stadium and recently rode past it while a game was being played. The number of police deployed there was insane, I estimate a ratio of 1 police per 10 visitors. The first thought that went through my head was that this could not possibly be worth it. Paying wages of the police alone has to absolutely dwarf ticket costs. But I guess it's worth it when you factor in that without security, football fans might trash the place and mess other people up like you describe.
  - jq-r 5y ago
    In my country those stadiums are just a money transfer schemes from public pockets via local government to local pockets. They have no problem building "temporary" stadiums while the old ones are "renovated" for hundreds of millions of dollars of tax payer's money. You cannot normally even visit the stadiums when there's no match being played. As you said, they usually need hundreds of riot police present each time because there is almost always vandalism and fighting. Those stadiums are not used for anything else. For example, I cannot ask the soccer team if I could use the pitch for say a day because I want to organize a drone racing competition. I would be laughed out of the room. As the other posters said, they just take my money and give it to some other persons who are living very luxurious. I know, Ferraris are expensive. However, I understand that those sport events are like a safety valve on a pressure cooker. It lets those aggressive members of the community to vent so they don't realize how fucked they are in their daily lives. It something like a pacifier for those people. It is bread and circuses, and the bread is getting smaller and smaller. That said, if the local government is spending money on (pretty much private) stadiums, then I would postulate that they have too much money and the taxes are too high.
rob74 5y ago
> Sports teams provide utility to people in the region, including people who never pay a cent for a ticket or merchandise Even if we assume that to be true, you have to also look at the costs: providing the required transportation infrastructure, policing sports fans, cleaning up after them (including vandalism) etc. Making matters worse, the "utility" sports teams bring is limited to a few businesses (hotels, restaurants, pubs, shops selling merchandise etc.), while the costs are paid by the taxpayer, i.e. all residents.
syshum 5y ago
While it may be true that sports teams provide some kind of emotional or non-monetary value to a city, the question is should a government use threats of violence to collect money to pay for it? One must always remember that government, specifically local governments, pay for things with compulsorily taxation, i.e if you do not pay government sends people will guns to force you to pay. I dont think sports teams should be treated as "critical infrastructure" and while you might be able to make the ethical case for Police, Fire, etc I am not sure how one would make an ethical case to use violence to fund a sports stadium So not only do you ave a financial problem with stadiums, you have an ethical one as well At the end of the day, Sports is not a proper function of government
anothernewdude 5y ago
> provide a joint benefit to society My sides!
spacemanmatt 5y ago
Sports and sporting events are a net harm to me. I don't attend, the traffic costs me, and I'm taxed for it. So team owners can get bent and start buying their own stadiums.
- colinmhayes 5y ago
  We live in a society. The question that the government asks when deciding whether to do an intervention isn't "will this benefit spacemanmatt?" it's "will this benefit our community?" I'm sure the government does things that you like and others don't care for.
  - spacemanmatt 5y ago
    Thanks for that analysis but it's not about me. The point is benefits go to a very small minority, and that's not a sustainable way to govern.
    - colinmhayes 5y ago
      > The point is benefits go to a very small minority 60% of Americans enjoy watching football according to https://www.statista.com/statistics/1108544/american-football-tv-audience/#:~:text=A%20January%202020%20survey%20showed,watching%20American%20Football%20on%20TV https://www.statista.com/statistics/1108544/american-footbal.... Even the 33% who strongly enjoy isn't a small minority. If a team decides to leave because the local city won't build them a stadium, it's very reasonable to think a majority of the local residents will be upset.
      - spacemanmatt 5y ago
        It's not a public good. It's a private enterprise and preferential entertainment, even if 99 or 100% of the population enjoy it.
jq-r 5y ago
> The financials on this are settled. Sports stadiums are an awful financial investment. Depends on what side you are. On the receiving side or on the spending side. If you're in the Stadium's management, or you're a player for the team, you're about to get rich, and you can buy your next yacht or your 7th Ferrari. Ask me how I know. This also goes if you're a construction contractor, or a local politician(s) who signed off the project. This is the side benefit of the "pooling the money" and usually the only benefit. If they've build the stadium with their own money; I would be more than happy for them. Also the local population would be that much richer.
tylergetsay 5y ago
I live in Cincinnati and without the stadiums a lot of businesses downtown wouldn't be able to survive
- sidr 5y ago
  That's what these economic studies look at - is it worth paying for the stadium in order to prop up those businesses? The answer appears to be overwhelmingly "no".
evanb 5y ago
If teams want a stadium, they should give the funding municipalities equity. A huge fraction of control.
- colinmhayes 5y ago
  They're not going to do that though. Sports leagues are a cartel, supply is extremely limited. Every city wants a pro team. It's too easy to get cities to compete against each other without federal guidelines.
Eddy_Viscosity2 5y ago
> Any city or state that refuses to pay will lose out until every city or state refuses to pay. They may lose out on the chance to fork over millions (or billions) to a bunch of already crazily wealthy team owners, and maybe that means the stadium doesn't get built, or maybe it means that team leaves and market forces are such that if its a big enough city is makes economic sense for a new team to come in an build their own stadium (maybe not as glorious, but good enough to host games and sell tickets). Those millions (or billions) not gifted to the old team owner might be then spent on improving infrastructure or making better schools and parks and things that make a city nice to live making it even better off then before. Remember when Amazon wanted all those perks from NYC to put offices there and then everyone was like 'no effing way' and so they backed down. Amazon still opened offices in NYC because it freakin' NYC. They never needed the incentives.
jokethrowaway 5y ago
The problem with this is that you're effectively forcing people who hate sports stadium to pay for them, not to mention those living nearby who are going to be affected by the noise, traffic jam and pollution caused by the stadium. Why not let the teams crowdfund and build their own stadium like any other risky venture without capital?
washadjeffmad 5y ago
I just wonder what the benefit really is to subsidizing billionaire's and multi-millionaire's private gladiators. I've always felt there was just too much money (and DoD involvement) in it for "we can take your people to the limits of human capability... purely for entertainment!" to make sense. Do they sell their private advances in sports medicine to defence contractors? Are they some kind of advertisement for super soldiers? If not, what's the gimmick?
antattack 5y ago
John Oliver already settled this in 2015. After watching it, it's pretty clear that cities should not pay for stadiums. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcwJt4bcnXs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcwJt4bcnXs
snarf21 5y ago
So you want a federal ban on all tax breaks? Government will always subsidize jobs and housing plus they will also prioritize external revenue sources like travel and tourism. Stadiums and convention centers and the like bring money into the city. Instead of taxing only city residents, you get to tax people who don't live there. Sure the owners are rich and don't need the kickbacks however part of politics is giving the public what they want. This is no different than Amazon looking for a handout for HQ2. This is no different than the (now cancelled) Foxconn nonsense in Wisconsin. Lots of existing factories have asked for massive tax breaks or they will outsource to Mexico, etc. This is all the same game. I think we are looking at this the wrong way. I think cities should build and pay for these stadiums. However, it should come with express community benefit. During the off-season, it is a great place to do blood drives, have social service fairs, have people register to vote, have people vote (at a place that is built for high volume), run job training programs, run food drives/pantries, etc. Both the city and the players should be demanding this as part of the deal.
banannaise 5y ago
Funding stadiums is about none of those three things. Running a government is also about winning reelection, which means raising money, which means not pissing off the richest people in your area who also have a giant built-in loudspeaker in the form of the current stadium, team, etc. At this point, publicly-funded stadiums largely amount to bribery. We'll let you keep your cushy elected position if you give us a few hundred million in public money and help us keep up the facade that this was for the public good.
maerF0x0 5y ago
> Sometimes it is about pooling resources to provide a joint benefit to society. That's what capital markets and entrepreneurs are for. Governments are about fixing broken economic games (such as tragedy of the commons, to cite a single example).
mywittyname 5y ago
> Also the only way to stop these gifts to private companies is likely with a new federal law banning them. Or a way to punish politicians who sign contracts like this. One of the issues that is that a mayor or whatever can be elected to a single term then indefinitely sign away the keys to the city. Either punish the people responsible, or give governments inherent "fuck you" clauses that allows them to back out of terrible contracts or bonds without penalty. Yeah, it makes lending more expensive. But the current system has massive loopholes that are being exploited.

by slg 5y ago

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?

faichai 5y ago
Wat? London has Chelsea, Arsenal, West Ham, Tottenham in the premier league. People come from all around to watch them play. I say this as someone who cares little about football.
namdnay 5y ago
> Plenty of high prestige world cities like Tokyo or London or Paris aren't known for their pro sports teams. Not that I disagree with the general gist, I had to facepalm at that! I think the general risk is that a rival politician will promise to bring back sports teams, with some dodgy financial setup that conceals the true cost, and the electorate will gobble it up
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
  Why? Tons of friends and family of mine have visited those cities, I've never heard of any of them doing it to see their sports teams.
  - yywwbbn 5y ago
    I’m sure that globally London and probably Paris (probably a bit more debatable) are much better know for their professional sports teams than any city in the US.
    - TulliusCicero 5y ago
      No London team even breaks the top 10 of most valuable sports team, but there are several US entries there, so that seems unlikely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbes%27_list_of_the_most_valuable_sports_teams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbes%27_list_of_the_most_val... I tried googling more directly for global popularity/famousness, but couldn't find any hard data. And of course there's the issue of "has well known sports teams" vs "well known for their sports team". The former you could probably get data on somewhere, but the latter, I doubt it.
      - 5y ago

bananapub 5y ago

> a joint benefit to society american top level sports teams are part of a multi-multi-billion industry. this isn't getting together to build a library, it's a direct transfer of tax money to private companies that can or should easily afford to pay for it themselves. christ alive.

mardifoufs 5y ago
Stadiums exist in the rest of the world, and multi billion corporations can still be a benefit to society. I don't agree with funding huge mega stadiums for a single team. But it's ridiculous to pretend sports teams, even big ones, can't provide a huge service for a community. It's hard to overstate just how important big teams like say, Chelsea or Barca are for a huge chunk of not just the people who live in their home cities but also across the world. How do you quantify that in terms of cost? It will obviously never happen but let's say barca wanted to leave Barcelona, do you think the city shouldn't do anything about it because it helps billionaires? Tons of Arts museums, especially those for contemporary/avant garde arts are usually displaying private collections and in practice only benefit a very small minority of usually rich people. Operas and orchestras too. Shouldnt we just stop funding those too then? Where do we draw the line?
- sidr 5y ago
  > just how important big teams like say, Chelsea or Barca are for a huge chunk of not just the people who live in their home cities but also across the world. Here "important to" is equivalent to "liked/entertained by", as a form of entertainment. The question here is what forms of entertainment should tax payers pay for and your comparison with art museums, operas and orchestras is apt. > let's say barca wanted to leave Barcelona, do you think the city shouldn't do anything about it because it helps billionaires? If barca were extorting the city of Barcelona by demanding they pay 10s or 100s of millions to upgrade Camp Nou, then the city should tell the team to go to hell. This exact scenario has played out in multiple cities in the US and with the IOC and city bids.
- wincy 5y ago
  If I don’t pay the taxes to fund the stadium, men with guns will literally come to my house (this happened when I did my taxes incorrectly) to tell me to pay. I think the line should be drawn somewhere before that and everyone calls me crazy.

lelanthran 5y ago

> Sports teams provide utility to people in the region, including people who never pay a cent for a ticket or merchandise. Wait, what? Are you sure? I don't see a value of having sports teams other than entertainment. > How do you quantity that value and should the government compensate the sports team for that value? Maybe a good start would be to simply ask the people "how many sporting events have you been to in the last three months?" If large numbers of people aren't that interested in sport now, they'll probably remain uninterested in the future. OTOH, if large numbers of people are interested enough to go to games then they'll probably remain interested enough to go to games in the future. My personal experience (not in the US), is that fewer than 1 in 20 people are interested in going to view live sporting events in a stadium.

xxs 5y ago
> I don't see a value of having sports teams other than entertainment At least in Europe, most teams have children organizations, and a lot of kids train. The sports provide motivation for the young kids to exercise and practice, watching high level plays is quite useful to learn tactics as well. >how many sporting events have you been to in the last three months It's COVID times, c'mon. Most events have no audience.
- lelanthran 5y ago
  > It's COVID times, c'mon. Most events have no audience. Good point: Why use tax dollars to build a stadium that is going to be mostly empty? Let's wait to see if interest in sports pick up again.
- ubermonkey 5y ago
  This is not generally true of big-money pro sports in the US. I'm unaware of any child leagues for the NFL (American / gridiron football), MLB (baseball), NBA (basketball), or NHL (hockey). Pro soccer might have something, but it's also a rounding error in the American pro sports landscape.
  - rascul 5y ago

NalNezumi 5y ago

If you're going to make the argument "There's other benefit to the society that also need to be considered" then you also have to consider the negatives of a stadium. There's a lot of negative aspects that follow building a stadium, too. I can't on the top of my head show any figures, but a classmate of mine that lived in the suburb with a stadium, a place everyone considered "the ghetto" because of crime rate, said it wasn't as bad as people said it to be; with the notable exception, and he was very clear about this: when there's a football match going on in the new stadium close by, every family in the vicinity knew not to let their kids out (or go out on the night) because the city got too unsafe to walk around because of supporters/drunk hooligans trashing places and being violent. (risk of getting robbed, raped, assaulted went notably up every time there was a match that stretched in to the night) The stadium to the locals felt like a net-negative. Bars and night life owners where happy, but to ordinary citizen it meant more crime, trashed streets, vandalized walls/shops + the immeasurable effect of the stereotype that got attached ("high concentration of immigrants = high crime rate")

jasamer 5y ago
I live close to a smaller stadium and recently rode past it while a game was being played. The number of police deployed there was insane, I estimate a ratio of 1 police per 10 visitors. The first thought that went through my head was that this could not possibly be worth it. Paying wages of the police alone has to absolutely dwarf ticket costs. But I guess it's worth it when you factor in that without security, football fans might trash the place and mess other people up like you describe.
- jq-r 5y ago
  In my country those stadiums are just a money transfer schemes from public pockets via local government to local pockets. They have no problem building "temporary" stadiums while the old ones are "renovated" for hundreds of millions of dollars of tax payer's money. You cannot normally even visit the stadiums when there's no match being played. As you said, they usually need hundreds of riot police present each time because there is almost always vandalism and fighting. Those stadiums are not used for anything else. For example, I cannot ask the soccer team if I could use the pitch for say a day because I want to organize a drone racing competition. I would be laughed out of the room. As the other posters said, they just take my money and give it to some other persons who are living very luxurious. I know, Ferraris are expensive. However, I understand that those sport events are like a safety valve on a pressure cooker. It lets those aggressive members of the community to vent so they don't realize how fucked they are in their daily lives. It something like a pacifier for those people. It is bread and circuses, and the bread is getting smaller and smaller. That said, if the local government is spending money on (pretty much private) stadiums, then I would postulate that they have too much money and the taxes are too high.

rob74 5y ago

> Sports teams provide utility to people in the region, including people who never pay a cent for a ticket or merchandise Even if we assume that to be true, you have to also look at the costs: providing the required transportation infrastructure, policing sports fans, cleaning up after them (including vandalism) etc. Making matters worse, the "utility" sports teams bring is limited to a few businesses (hotels, restaurants, pubs, shops selling merchandise etc.), while the costs are paid by the taxpayer, i.e. all residents.

syshum 5y ago

While it may be true that sports teams provide some kind of emotional or non-monetary value to a city, the question is should a government use threats of violence to collect money to pay for it? One must always remember that government, specifically local governments, pay for things with compulsorily taxation, i.e if you do not pay government sends people will guns to force you to pay. I dont think sports teams should be treated as "critical infrastructure" and while you might be able to make the ethical case for Police, Fire, etc I am not sure how one would make an ethical case to use violence to fund a sports stadium So not only do you ave a financial problem with stadiums, you have an ethical one as well At the end of the day, Sports is not a proper function of government

anothernewdude 5y ago

> provide a joint benefit to society My sides!

spacemanmatt 5y ago

Sports and sporting events are a net harm to me. I don't attend, the traffic costs me, and I'm taxed for it. So team owners can get bent and start buying their own stadiums.

colinmhayes 5y ago
We live in a society. The question that the government asks when deciding whether to do an intervention isn't "will this benefit spacemanmatt?" it's "will this benefit our community?" I'm sure the government does things that you like and others don't care for.
- spacemanmatt 5y ago
  Thanks for that analysis but it's not about me. The point is benefits go to a very small minority, and that's not a sustainable way to govern.
  - colinmhayes 5y ago
    > The point is benefits go to a very small minority 60% of Americans enjoy watching football according to https://www.statista.com/statistics/1108544/american-football-tv-audience/#:~:text=A%20January%202020%20survey%20showed,watching%20American%20Football%20on%20TV https://www.statista.com/statistics/1108544/american-footbal.... Even the 33% who strongly enjoy isn't a small minority. If a team decides to leave because the local city won't build them a stadium, it's very reasonable to think a majority of the local residents will be upset.
    - spacemanmatt 5y ago
      It's not a public good. It's a private enterprise and preferential entertainment, even if 99 or 100% of the population enjoy it.

jq-r 5y ago

> The financials on this are settled. Sports stadiums are an awful financial investment. Depends on what side you are. On the receiving side or on the spending side. If you're in the Stadium's management, or you're a player for the team, you're about to get rich, and you can buy your next yacht or your 7th Ferrari. Ask me how I know. This also goes if you're a construction contractor, or a local politician(s) who signed off the project. This is the side benefit of the "pooling the money" and usually the only benefit. If they've build the stadium with their own money; I would be more than happy for them. Also the local population would be that much richer.

tylergetsay 5y ago

I live in Cincinnati and without the stadiums a lot of businesses downtown wouldn't be able to survive

sidr 5y ago
That's what these economic studies look at - is it worth paying for the stadium in order to prop up those businesses? The answer appears to be overwhelmingly "no".

evanb 5y ago

If teams want a stadium, they should give the funding municipalities equity. A huge fraction of control.

colinmhayes 5y ago
They're not going to do that though. Sports leagues are a cartel, supply is extremely limited. Every city wants a pro team. It's too easy to get cities to compete against each other without federal guidelines.

Eddy_Viscosity2 5y ago

> Any city or state that refuses to pay will lose out until every city or state refuses to pay. They may lose out on the chance to fork over millions (or billions) to a bunch of already crazily wealthy team owners, and maybe that means the stadium doesn't get built, or maybe it means that team leaves and market forces are such that if its a big enough city is makes economic sense for a new team to come in an build their own stadium (maybe not as glorious, but good enough to host games and sell tickets). Those millions (or billions) not gifted to the old team owner might be then spent on improving infrastructure or making better schools and parks and things that make a city nice to live making it even better off then before. Remember when Amazon wanted all those perks from NYC to put offices there and then everyone was like 'no effing way' and so they backed down. Amazon still opened offices in NYC because it freakin' NYC. They never needed the incentives.

jokethrowaway 5y ago

The problem with this is that you're effectively forcing people who hate sports stadium to pay for them, not to mention those living nearby who are going to be affected by the noise, traffic jam and pollution caused by the stadium. Why not let the teams crowdfund and build their own stadium like any other risky venture without capital?

washadjeffmad 5y ago

I just wonder what the benefit really is to subsidizing billionaire's and multi-millionaire's private gladiators. I've always felt there was just too much money (and DoD involvement) in it for "we can take your people to the limits of human capability... purely for entertainment!" to make sense. Do they sell their private advances in sports medicine to defence contractors? Are they some kind of advertisement for super soldiers? If not, what's the gimmick?

antattack 5y ago

John Oliver already settled this in 2015. After watching it, it's pretty clear that cities should not pay for stadiums. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcwJt4bcnXs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcwJt4bcnXs

snarf21 5y ago

So you want a federal ban on all tax breaks? Government will always subsidize jobs and housing plus they will also prioritize external revenue sources like travel and tourism. Stadiums and convention centers and the like bring money into the city. Instead of taxing only city residents, you get to tax people who don't live there. Sure the owners are rich and don't need the kickbacks however part of politics is giving the public what they want. This is no different than Amazon looking for a handout for HQ2. This is no different than the (now cancelled) Foxconn nonsense in Wisconsin. Lots of existing factories have asked for massive tax breaks or they will outsource to Mexico, etc. This is all the same game. I think we are looking at this the wrong way. I think cities should build and pay for these stadiums. However, it should come with express community benefit. During the off-season, it is a great place to do blood drives, have social service fairs, have people register to vote, have people vote (at a place that is built for high volume), run job training programs, run food drives/pantries, etc. Both the city and the players should be demanding this as part of the deal.

banannaise 5y ago

Funding stadiums is about none of those three things. Running a government is also about winning reelection, which means raising money, which means not pissing off the richest people in your area who also have a giant built-in loudspeaker in the form of the current stadium, team, etc. At this point, publicly-funded stadiums largely amount to bribery. We'll let you keep your cushy elected position if you give us a few hundred million in public money and help us keep up the facade that this was for the public good.

maerF0x0 5y ago

> Sometimes it is about pooling resources to provide a joint benefit to society. That's what capital markets and entrepreneurs are for. Governments are about fixing broken economic games (such as tragedy of the commons, to cite a single example).

mywittyname 5y ago

> Also the only way to stop these gifts to private companies is likely with a new federal law banning them. Or a way to punish politicians who sign contracts like this. One of the issues that is that a mayor or whatever can be elected to a single term then indefinitely sign away the keys to the city. Either punish the people responsible, or give governments inherent "fuck you" clauses that allows them to back out of terrible contracts or bonds without penalty. Yeah, it makes lending more expensive. But the current system has massive loopholes that are being exploited.