Are Charlotte and Orlando being held hostage by NBA owners?

Great Debates
1

The city of Charlotte yesterday voted down funding for a new arena for the Charlotte Hornets. Speculation is the Hornets might move. . . a similar situation is happening in Orlando, though the DeVoss family has backed off a little after public outcry.

Both teams claim that they are losing money and need luxury boxes and a fancy new building to draw in revenue and compete in the NBA. Opponents reply that the owners are asking the city to fund a business for fat cats.

My question is . . I know Charlotte Coliseum was built in 1988 . . and seats 24,000 fans. I believe Orlando’s arena was built around the same time!

Is sports getting so bad we need to build new arenas for these teams every 15 years???

I recently spoke to a woman in Memphis who said that city is fighting hard to get the Vancouver Grizzlies to move there . . but the NBA told them that their arena, the Pyramid, is not up to NBA standards, and if they wanted a team, they would need to put $50 million into the Pyramid . . IN LIEU OF A NEW BUILDING!!!

The Pyramid holds 20,000 people and was built in the 90s (corret me if I’m wrong on this- but it is a newer building).

My gut instinct is to go with the people in these cities- well maybe not memphis since they are trying to steal a team: I think you need to get at LEAST 25 years of shelf life out of an arena at the very LEAST before begging for a new place to play!!! Besides, there’s a salary cap in the NBA, so there should be no excuse for not being competitive.
I think the owners of both teams are holding Charlotte and Orlando hostage.

Maybe someone can present the owner’s point of view on this.

2

As a firm believer in free enterprise, I strongly disapprove of using tax dollars to build stadiums for sports franchises. I think it’s absurd that taxpayers should be subsidizing private businesses, especially when those businesses are as frivolous and unimportant as sports.

Still, I can sympathize with some franchise owners who demand new stadiums. Whether I like it or not, many cities/counties HAVE coughed up hundreds of millions of dollars to subsidize their local teams, and have thus given their teams a huge advantage over their rivals. Thanks to the insane taxpayers of Cleveland, and the luxurious new stadium they paid for, the Indians are rich enough to sign expensive free agents.

Teams like the KC Royals and Minnesota Twins can’t possibly compete with that (DON’T tell me the Twins are in first place- first, because they WON’T be at season’s end, and second, because EVERY decent player they have will abandon Minnesota for bigger paychecks in cities like Cleveland in a year or two). So, if I owned the Twins or Royals… I’d be sorely tempted to abandon my anti-subsidy position.

Even the most die-hard Adam Smithite in sports has to look at how taxpayers in OTHER cities have showered their teams with money, and ask “Why not me???”

In ANY business, if most of your competitors are getting hefty subsidies from the public till, you’d be insane not to want the same thing.

3

Living in a state that just gave the Chicago Bears $587 million to renovate Soldier Field, I found this:

–to be highly amusing.