Teams don’t always win. The As wanted to move into my town. The first site they wanted was not close to any public transit (their current site is right on BART) and the traffic would have been horrific. It was down the street from a reasonably new shopping center. The business owners there were dead set against the team moving in, since no one would shop on game days due to traffic and possibly parking overflow. They then tried to move close to the NUMMI plant, but access there was worse, and the people who would be neighbors objected even more loudly. The current mayor was for it, the former one against. Finally the As gave up, so the good guys can win.
They didn’t even ask for city help to build the stadium. But continuing extra costs for police, traffic, etc. still will kill you.
Around here, we use eminent domain to get the right venue for the newest and bestest stadium for America’s Team, in addition to having the public buy (part of) the stadium.
In Pittsburgh, it came to a referendum, did the people want to finance a portion of not one, but two new stadiums, one for the Steelers (yay Steelers, they win things) and one for the Pirates (who don’t win things ever) and the people voted no. A resounding no. They didn’t want a tax increase, they didn’t want tax financing, they didn’t want publicly funded stadia.
So then the lawmakers came up with “Plan B” which was given a hell of a lot of pro-lip service by all of the (otherwise conservative) talk show hosts on the big 50,000 watt powerhouse radio station in town (which at the time also broadcast all of the Pirates games and stood to lose major revenue if the team skipped town) and ramroded publicly financed stadia down our throats by fiat with a 17% hike in our sales tax to help pay for it.
For the record: I’m against public funds being used to build these large stadiums for many of the reasons that have already been listed. I especially dislike it when a city that has a deep connection to its sports team is held hostage by threats of making funds available lest said team packs up their bags and moves.
What about events like the Olympics? Would you want your city to build facilities to house it?
**Do major sports really need government handouts? **
No, and for the most part, neither do new factories, office parks, shopping malls and other commercial ventures.
Which misses the point entirely. The point being, if a big, for-profit entity of any kind comes to you with any kind of deal based on “if you build it we will come” or “if you don’t build it we will leave,” what would you say to them, and more importantly, the voters in the next election?
This little game will go on as long as their are more cities that want sports teams than there are sports teams, and more cities that want sales tax revenues from shopping malls than there are department stores to anchor them.
I don’t know the story behind the 1932 Games, but in the case of the 1984 Games, no other city wanted them, because no other city wanted to lose a kagrillion dollars. Consequently, the Los Angeles team was able to negotiate ridiculous concessions from the IOC. What choice did the IOC have?
And Three Rivers was a perfectly functional stadium. Ugly as hell, but it was only 30 years old and it got the job done.
One thing that isn’t mentioned here is competition from other cities. Take an up and coming city like Oklahoma City that really, really wants a team and will pay big bucks to one that is willing to relocate there.
And then a city like Pittsburgh that desperately wants to keep the team. Sure the owners don’t “need” the money, but cities pay for a million other things that aren’t desperately needed just for prestige. Why is this different?
Did the Rooneys really play the blackmail game to get the new stadium built? Because that’s kind of disappointing if true. I always saw the Rooneys as being very community-minded, and it always seemed like they loved Pittsburgh for what it was instead of for what it could do for the Steelers.
Not that I’m aware of. Sorry, I mixed two different thoughts in my post, but it still holds true: Cities have to be aware that other cities are offering money, so they must offer money as well to compete.
The Detroit Lions got the tax payers to build a stadium with 80,000 capacity. It was built under budget and beat the schedule , a rarity. But the Lions did not get the parking ,nor all the concessions. The Silverdome still sits empty ,but it was a perfectly fine stadium where the Lions had a home field advantage . So the Lions pushed to have a new one built where they got a smaller capacity, concessions, parking and boxes for the elite. It was a waste of many millions . As soon as it was finished the value of the Lions went up astronomically. The reason owners insist that communities build new stadiums is because they can. The people have to tell them to take a walk.
The only way to put a stop to the practice would be to get all the major cities make an agreement with each other not to offer such things to get or prevent sports teams from moving.
It’s much more expensive than most such things, and it simply doesn’t need to be done. If cities stopped building them the industry would do it themselves.
In the Uk an olympic Multi gold medalist has stated unless he gets grants and hadouts totaling £22000 a year he will not represent Uk in the next olymipics. He has made Millions on the back of his previous grant which i think he got over a period of 8 years. Surely the grants should be limited to young hopefuls who need the leg up not a greedy multi milionaire who has already made his money.
Not really, the owners of the Pirates were threatening to walk if they didn’t get something new. The only way to give them something new was to do two separate buildings. Three Rivers was going to have to go. So that’s how it went down.