I’m sure Orlando makes a killing on hotel room and rental car taxes,too. But the taxpayers didn’t pay to build Disney World and all those other amusement parks.
The question of whether publicly financed stadiums are a good idea doesn’t just depend on whether taxes can be raised enough on tourists to pay off the loans. First off, it’s questionable whether the teams even attract a significant number of actual tourists who would need hotel rooms and car rentals. For example, partially subsidized Citifield has about 45,000 seats. I would bet that for an average sold-out game, there are fewer than 5000 people who came to NY and got a hotel room specifically to see a Met game. There will be plenty who don’t live in NY but do live close enough to come in for the game and go home, but they aren’t getting hotels and rental cars. There is another bunch who came to NY for a week or two on vacation and will go to a game while they are in town, but would have come to NYC even if there were only three or two or one or even no professional baseball teams. They come to visit NY ,not specifically to go to a professional baseball game and if there wasn’t any baseball there are plenty of other things to do in NY. Related to that is the question of whether a new stadium will attract more people than an existing stadium. The Mets and the Yankees both have relatively new stadiums that were built to replace their existing stadiums , and I have never seen anything to suggest that the new stadiums had any effect on how many tickets were sold. I would be very surprised if they did , so the only “benefit” NYC got was that the teams didn’t leave town (and I don’t think anyone believes they would have even if they didn’t get the new stadiums)
And now we get to the money spent by the locals. I think my tickets cost between $600-$700 a year. I'm going to spend that regardless of who pays for the stadium. If the Mets leave town, I 'll spend it on some other form of entertainment - movies, Broadway, concerts, restaurants, a racino whatever. If I buy a T shirt, it makes no difference to the city coffers whether I buy a Mets shirt at Citifield , a Mets shirt at Modell's , a Phillies shirt at Sports Authority or a plain T shirt at Target. All that matters is how much I spent and whether it was within the city limits- the city gets no benefit from a Mets shirt sold on Long Island or a Yankee shirt sold in Westchester.
And it could be just me, or maybe it’s different in Arlington, but I’ve never heard of a city or county that couldn’t find a better use for $300 million tax dollars than building a stadium for a privately owned team that pays only $2 million a year in rent.
Yup. The original cost of the Edward Jones Dome was supposed to be amortized over 30 years. That leaves the taxpayers stuck with another 10 years of payments just to pay off the original bonds. The cost of maintenance, which had been budgeted at $4 million annually, is increasing as the structure ages.
In addition to the $500,000 annually the Rams paid to use the Dome, Edward Jones, which was paying almost $4 million per year for naming rights, has announced that they’re ending the deal now that the Rams have left.
Of course, the NFL has decided the Dome is no longer suitable for its needs. And pro soccer, which would be the second-best use for the Dome, prefers outdoor stadiums with somewhat fewer seats to fill.
Converting the Dome to a non-stadium convention facility would require so much infrastructure renovation that it might be cheaper to tear it down and start from the ground up.
The market isn’t too good for former stadiums. One might also consider the Pontiac Silverdome, which cost $55 million to build in 1975 and ended up selling at auction for $585,000 in 2009.
They made a lot of claims and gave a lot of reasons; I’m not totally sure which (if any) I believe. What I found funny were two things; when Sophie first proposed two new stadiums she was basically laughed out of town. The second is that every time there was a vote on the matter, those of us here basically said “NO!!!” so Tiny Tom (who was basically a neighbor and friend) turned around and said “You didn’t understand the proposal so I’m doing it anyway”. :smack:
(And I don’t think I’ll ever quite forgive them to the Igloo either. Especially since I was lucky enough to be there once with the dome open and back when it was used for multiple events at the same time)
I would assume that due to its small size, Green Bay is an outlier on the value of a stadium to the economy. It helps that the stadium itself is over 50 years old. The recent expansion was paid for by a 1/2% sales tax that was ended after about 14 years. The last news report I saw was that a game brought in $13-14m in revenue to the “local” economy. A vast majority of that would be the typical tourist stuff - food, booze, and rooms. A sizable number of the people that attend are not local. Most all hotel rooms are booked for about 60 miles out. Even the opening of training camp brings in many vacationers. The concession stands are mainly staffed by people volunteering 6-8 hours per game for some charity. Mine netted roughly $15k for 10 games last season.
That article doesn’t exactly say they “make a killing”. The jacked up sales, hotel and rental taxes make enough to pay off the municipal bonds. It is, from everything that I can tell, an outlier in a sea of “cities lose a tremendous amount of money building stadiums”. And as an outlier, it sounds like they’re breaking even.
Part of the equation is that big public stadiums are no longer thought of as “forever.” Soldier Field opened in 1924. It had a major renovation in the 1980s and another one in 2003. Given that it’s hosted everything from football to hockey to drag racing to ZZ Top in concert, it’s probably paid for itself over time.
Compare that to the 24-year life of the RCA Dome in Indianapolis, the 25-year era of the Georgia Dome and 21 years for Turner Field in Atlanta, and Olympic stadium in Montreal, which hasn’t had a permanent tenant for more than 10 years. Richfield Coliseum outside Cleveland lasted only 20 years until the Cavaliers moved out and has been plowed under and returned to nature.
Not to mention my prior cites of St. Louis and Pontiac.
We have one coming into Inglewood Ca and another about 8 miles away in Carson ca. that is being proposed. I am not sure how much the cities are putting into these.
Even if a stadium is financed entirely by the team, the municipality will almost certain incur costs, such as for a new off-ramp or improvements to the roads near the stadium. And then during games, additional police will be needed to direct traffic. (Plus I’ll bet that even though some people will be drawn to the stadium for the game, others will want to avoid the area. So some local businesses are going to have a slow day.)
*The developers promised at the time that the project that wouldn’t suck millions of dollars from taxpayer pockets, but it turns out that claim was a generous spin on the actual truth. While the group is not requesting any taxpayer money up front, they want to recoup $100 million in reimbursements or tax breaks in the stadium’s first five years, according to the AP.
… But the developers only want to promise the first $25 million a year to the city, after which they’d like to be reimbursed for “eligible costs,” and then any surplus would go back to the city. “Eligible costs” could include infrastructure around the stadium site, such as sidewalks, roads, and utilities, and landscaping.
The reimbursements would not be limited to infrastructure and other sunk costs, though: “developers can be reimbursed by the city for costs on event days for police, emergency medical crews and shuttle bus services from off-site parking.” Those payments could end being as high as “$8 million annually, or $40 million for a five-year period.” *
I guess I’m perfectly fine with those kinds of events only happening if, when, and where they are commercially viable. If the non-monetary benefits are so great, people will pay money to receive them.
I’d be kinda sitting on the fence rather a lot - but can you define “commercially viable”?
If you don’t have a “decent” stadium - they are never going to happen.
If you expect a stadium, somewhere relatively convenient to the city to be “commercially viable” on the basis of returning the sort of money an office tower would then the rental for one off events is going to be astronomical and such things are never going too be commercially viable.
take an example of my home town - population is circa 400,000.
They have a stadium that is the home of the Crusaders, who play maybe 10 games a year there or so. You might get one rugby, one league, one cricket international per year there. How is something like that sort of usage (naturally there will be a bunch of lower profile filler events that don’t pack the stadium to capacity) ever going to be viable.
But are you going to tell the entire city they have to take a 90 minute flight to the nearest city to watch their national team play?
I simply have no good metric to measure - but I don’t think “profitable” should be the only metric
Okay. I’m fine with that. If people aren’t willing to pay for tickets to sporting events and concerts at a rate that allows for the venues for such events to exist, I’m okay with those things simply not happening at all.
Although actually, it would be quite refreshing if a city argued that football games and concerts are fun, therefore everybody’s money should be used to build stadiums to make sure they come to town. I’d still personally oppose it, but it wouldn’t be dishonest like the claims that are made every time a sports league successfully cons a city out of the money to build a new stadium.
You don’t think there’s any benefits at all to having such things happening?
Whether it be concerts, sports, or other mass participation events there’s no argument to be had beyond the commercial?
I’d be willing to bet that in the scenario that you’re talking about - the vast majority of stadiums wouldn’t be profitable…
Mind you - my cultural perspective may be a bit different - NZ has a population of around 5 million…
Basically even if you had only 1 stadium in the country it would be tough for it to be commercially viable by itself…without some sort of taxpayer support.
And frankly - as a tax payer, I don’t mind supporting to some extent - the only argument from me would be “how much is appropriate?”
But to note - the stadium then belongs to “the community” and not any sports franchise
It might be that your cultural perspective is different.I know there are stadiums in the US that are not publicly owned and are still financially viable. And there are other venues that are publicly owned and that truly belong to the public , but as a general rule, sports are not played in those venues- I assume because sports teams need a certain amount of control over scheduling. Population density certainly plays a part as well , but that also goes for the US. These stadiums aren’t being built in the middle of nowhere. They’re being built where the population is dense enough to fill the stadium.
As far as supporting to some extent, as a taxpayer, I don’t mind supporting cultural institutions. I don’t mind paying for a venue to be used for all sorts of events with the rental fees going into the public coffers. I do however, mind subsidizing stadiums for the nearly exclusive use of teams worth multiple billions of dollars. Somehow, no one ever proposes that a city build a concert venue , charge a sweetheart rental fee, and let millionaire performers keep the revenue from ticket sales , concessions and parking. Because for reasons that are not clear to me, in the US sports are different from all other entertainment.
I take Americans are not as invested in the histories of their Stadiums as some others are.
I mean for me the big stadia are sacred ground. Lords or MCG or Nou Camp and Bernabau. Or National Stadium in Karachi. I have seen something similar in Europe and Asia.