BFD. People aren’t going to move to your city to see Madonna, The Stones or Aerosmith, and the people that live in your city that overspent all that money that would be going out on the road to the next venue the next weekend might do your city better by spending it on the clubs and other locally owned entertainment venues you already have. Remember: When everybody is going to the big show from out of town, that means they aren’t going to all the places they usually go to.
There are a few stadiums in the US with history, such as Fenway Park, Wrigley Field or Lambeau Field. The old Yankee Stadium was one, but it was torn down and replaced.
Depends. You do see that with old enough American stadiums - once a stadium gets to be 45 years old or so, it’ll probably be seen as too historic to tear down, and will carry on, like the Soldier Field example upthread. But, to get there, it has to endure 15 years of the team incessantly complaining that their 30-year old stadium is an obsolete eyesore, and that they won’t be competitive until the city helps them pay for a new one, and if they won’t, maybe the team will just move to another city that will.
In Sacramento they are finishing the new Kings basketball arena - whose existence was contingent on the city keeping the team, which was nearly bought and moved to Seattle. The new area is being built downtown, and is being billed as a revitalization project, replacing part of a disused shopping mall (a prior revitalization effort). The details of the financing is somewhat opaque, the city had to chip-in a sizable subsidy. It is supposed to be an “entertainment complex” that will draw people to Sacramento’s moribund downtown to hang-out and spend money (as stated, money that they would have spent elsewhere in town), and of course there is the promise of “jobs, jobs, jobs!”.
The new facility has limited parking, and the local transit is, let’s just say, less than up to the challenge of getting tens-of-thousands of fans to and from the games. The street grid is also insufficient. Yeah, this will go well. Will it be worth it? Time will tell, but most likely not, but hey, the city can swagger with the big boys since they have a major league team!
Yes.
I am a sports fan, and I do find value in cities having large venues for sports, as well as concerts and other events. I am much in favor of cities working with sports teams to accommodate such venues in the city, where its events enhance the urban life and economy around them. (A suburban location with parking lots and highway ramps is much less valuable.)
But either the building itself should be privately-owned and privately paid for, in its construction, operation, and upkeep; or, the public owner should reap a fair share of all its proceeds.
Why would a team not be competitive at the old stadium? I can understand that a new stadium can bring in more gate receipts and have better facilities and training grounds, but surely that can also be achieved by renovating the current one.
I think (at least for baseball) that the event that changed everything was the opening of Camden Yards in Baltimore. It replaced Memorial Stadium (which was in a residential neighborhood in a random part of the city) and showed that a) a truly fan-friendly ball park could boost attendance, even for bad teams, and that stadiums built downtown in cities could jump-start an entire downtown area. Since then, most baseball teams have followed their lead, anywhere it was practical to build a downtown stadium.
As an aside, since someone mentioned Richfield Coliseum, 3 years ago I had to go to its former location for work. I was shocked at how far it was (or seemed, at least) from Cleveland proper, and how rural the area is. I doubt there will be any stadia built in the middle of nowhere, like this was, any time soon.
That’s a lie, of course. The sports stars dont live locally. The “jobs” at the stadium are minimum wage, part time, and seasonal, which are the crapiest jobs one can have. There are a few construction jobs of course.
I am against San Jose building a stadium for the "A"s. Why should my tax money be used to build a stadium for the owners. If it is worthwhile they can pay to build it. They are rich enough and they pay their players enough. Why should San Jose City tax money be spent so the people of Santa Clara and the other counties and cities can attend a baseball game.
The Shark Tank (S A P center) was build using third party bonds. San Jose does not manage the arena the Sharks do. So it is not being missed managed. From the profit the bonds are being paid and after deducting management fees the profit goes to San Jose. One of the few arenas that are running on the plus side for the citizens. If an arena or stadium can not be run to make money then let the team move else where and find different suckers.
Not so, according to the team owners. That was the case in Sacramento, where the current arena was deemed too old and not worth renovating. Note the new 19,00 seat arena there only has about 2,000 more seats than the old (17,300). I think the term “not competitive” is a dog whistle for “need more box seats to sell to wealthy corporate clients”.
To those who say it’s purely a matter of economics, if you applied that thinking to all cultural activities, there’s be no opera, no symphony, no libraries, or museums of any kind. You may not like sports, but a lot fewer people like opera.
There’s gret value beyond sports to having your city named dozens of times every night on TV. Companies pay tens of millions of dollars for that kind of recognition.
Yeah, that could have value. Like the Superbowl? In ** Levi’s** Stadium? In *San Francisco? *
Santa Clara, who footed the bill-* got jack shit. *
Oh, and the Rams are moving “back to LA” where the stadium is being build (not Inglewood, who is actually footing the bill)
Everyone sells the stadium name, thus taking away that benefit.
Cities are not profit-making organizations.
In terms of libraries, opera houses and such those tend to be funded by grants and other outside investments and not by city taxpayers.
The only honest argument I’ve seen about subsidizing sports stadia is the one that goes ‘it makes us feel good (get re-elected) to have a major league team in the city’. Everything else is handwaving to allow billionaires to increase their wealth at the expense of the middle class and the poor.
Show me an opera house, symphony hall, library, or museum that cost as much or utilizes as much public subsidy as the most modest, recently built sports arena.
Exactly so. I think it is right to question these decisions where the risk is for the public to bear, but the profit is privatized.
Doesn’t have a thing to do with liking sports - I like baseball just fine. Enough to have spent a fortune last year on post-season tickets and attend a minimum of 20 regular season games every year. Still think a team worth over $2 billion could have paid for their own stadium- since they do own it and get $20 million a year just in naming rights , and the funds they are repaying the bonds with are considered payments in lieu of property taxes , which is a neat trick. It’s as if I paid $10K to my mortgage and the city gave me credit toward my property taxes for the same $10K - which of course mean the city is actually paying the mortgage, but I own the building.
When a profit-making symphony , museum or library worth over $2 billion gets a city to build it a home, I'll complain about that , too. Funny thing is, all the museums, symphonies, libraries etc that I know of that get public funds are *non-profits*. And , at least where I live, they don't charge admission fees . Sure, they want donations. They even "suggest" or "recommend" an amount. But I can donate less or even nothing and my library cards (for two systems) don't cost me a dime out of pocket. Big difference. If Green Bay wants to build the Packers a new stadium, fine with me, but that's the only non-profit major sports team in the US. The rest can operate like the profit-making businesses they are.In many cases (at least here in Fresno, CA.) this is factored into the permit process and plans to build a new subdivision or major “game changing” addition to the city can have the contractors not just doing road improvements but building fire stations, police substations, and rerouting other infrastructure as needed.
Of course our stadium process was a giant nightmare (since it involved demolishing a huge section of downtown and massive eminent domain buyouts.
Do you mean the Sacramento Kings who were also known as the Rochester Royals, the Cincinnati Royals, the Kansas City-Omaha Kings, and the Kansas City but not Omaha Kings?
Take it from a St. Louisan. The only way for Sacramento to make sure they keep the Kings is for Sacramento to OWN the Kings.
I think your information is a little out of date. Carnegie built his libraries 100+ years ago. Maybe some small town libraries are funded by philanthropy, but not many. Salt Lake City has one of the more recent new big-city libraries, and the city issued $100M in bonds to pay for it. It is definitely taxpayer funded. I was involved in building a new library in my medium-sized city, and it too was funded by the city issuing bonds.
Denver has a publicly built performing arts complex (including opera house) right downtown.
I don’t know why a town would pay for a new stadium if it’s name is going to be appropriated by some bigger and well known nearby city. Seems stupid. I do know that Denver’s stadiums are all in the city of Denver (except soccer) and the city couldn’t buy the promotion and coverage it got for two or three solid weeks in February. Could it cause a big company to relocate there? Maybe. Workers tend to like to be in places that have major league sports.
Based on their last few seasons, I’d say the other teams own the Kings. 
It’s not that the larger city is going to appropriate the name of the stadium- the naming rights to those are usually sold. Like Metlife stadium-, you know, where the East Rutherford Jets and Giants play. (At least East Rutherford didn’t pay for the stadium). It’s that the team will use the name of the bigger city , sometimes even if becomes absurd like the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.