Is there too much public funding for sports, stadiums and the like?

Great Debates
21

We’ve gone through all of this three times in the past couple of decades here in Colorado. First it was Coors Field, which got almost no opposition because the Coorses are pretty much Colorado royalty (hey, even I’ve had lunch with Pete Coors – he’s a pretty cool guy, for a conservative) and because we wanted MLB so damn bad we could taste it. But Denver owns Coors Field and Denver gets to maintain it and gets to say who uses it – besides the Chokies … er, I mean Rockies.

The Pepsi Center was a no-brainer. It was built by and is owned outright by a private company who also owns the local NBA and NHL tems. The city has little to do with it.

Invesco Stadium at Mile High (??) was another deal altogether. There was never any doubt that old Mile High Stadium was a scrape-off, pure and simple. Only the hard-core, persistently stupid insisted that it could be repaired. Nor was there ever any doubt that we in Colorado would do whatever we had to do, including mortgaging our first-born, to keep the Broncos here. Pat Bowlen said repeatedly he wouldn’t think of taking the Broncos anywhere else, but we weren’t taking any chances. There was a loud and persisten objection from a very small minority who don’t like football, but when it was pointed out that we knuckle-dragging sports fans never set foot inside the Denver Art Museum, for which we keep financing expansions and overhauls with nary a peep of objection, the point became moot. The final contorversy was that Invesco got to pay a paltry few million dollars to “finish” the project, in return for which its name goes on the damn thing for years into the future. Polls showed overwhelming public support for publicly financing the last of the construction, and there was even a movement to put it on the ballot, but all attempts to jimmy the lock on the public coffers for that last little bit were thwarted by the mayor and the governor, who insisted that their buddies at Invesco get to pay to slap their name on the side of it. And now, Invesco doesn’t even exist any more.

Our only regret here in Colorado? That we didn’t get a chance to pay for our stadium so we could name it after Saint John Elway.

22

As opposed to poor millionaires?

Not to point out the obvious, but the reason millionaires buy sports teams is that sports teams cost millions of dollars.

Having said that, as to the central point, Sam Stone has made what’s pretty much the salient point; Cities spend millions upon millions of dollars on initiatives that, taken individually, lose money. The City of New York spends Christ only knows how much money maintaining Central Park, and loses God only knows how many millions of dollars in potential tax revenues by not allowing development there. But you never hear anyone say that it’s terrible that New York has blown all that money on Central Park.

Of course, I’d like it if they’d be honest about it; “We’re going to spend $400 million on a new stadium because it’s awesome to have a baseball team here. Really, we’ll lose our shirts, but having a ball team here brings a lot of pride and joy to the city.” Regrettably, politicians usually lie about this; THIS Olympics will make money, they promise, though the Olympics never make money. THIS stadium will bring jobs, they promise, though they never do.

There are exceptions though. When Sydney held the 2000 Olympics I remember several Australians telling me, “well, of course it’ll cost us billions. It’s worth it; it’s really awesome, Australia will look great, and it’ll be a fantastic time.”

If the people of the city don’t want it then let them elect politicians who will vote against it. We had a hell of an opposition here in Toronto to the 1996 Olympic bid, and it helped Toronto lose the IOC vote. Wonderful. The democratic process had its say.