My town lost its AHL team at the end of last season. The arena had just recently been remodeled, at the county’s expense, for this teams benefit. Now taxpayers cover all the costs of the place. Even when the team was still in town, they lost a lot of money, and the county had to pay most of the bills for the arena.
A sports team is a private business. Why should taxpayers be forced to buy facilities for a private business? I would say that if a team wants a stadium, they can pay for it themselves, or find private investors.
A very bold position you’re taking there.
Millions of people disagree with him.
I don’t happen to be one of them, but the fact is a great many people do think stadia should be publicly funded. If that wasn’t the case, doing so would be political suicide and it’d never happen.
That said, I think there’s several levels of sin here. Sometimes the government doesn’t consult the populace, lies like a rug in explaining the economics of it, and just does whatever the hell it wants. Other times they at least give the people a vote, even though they’re usually lying about the benefits. And, in theory, the government could be honest about it: “This will cost us a huge amount of money, your taxes will go up, and the job creation benefits will be minimal, but we’ll hav e an NFL team and that’s cool so it’s worth the money.” That’s a subjective call but, hey, at least it’s an honest argument.
There appear to be a substantial amount of population who STILL believes that sports teams have massive positive economic benefits. Even with all the studies and whatnot. Or they look for exceptions, etc. They would likely be pissed and claimed the government was lying because they “hate the ___” or something.
Obviously a lot of elected officials are scared to let sports teams go because they feel it would mean their jobs. Others probably thing sports teams “puts the city on the map” or whatnot, so they’ll try to get it by whatever means necessary - only a few teams of some size can get away with saying we don’t need a sports team to put us on the map and have the population go yep.
Field of Schemes. It is quite proven that most of the “benefits” of building these new facilities hardly ever pan-out in reality. Oh, except for the team owners making out like bandits.
I agree with the OP - the sports team owners use the perception of prestige in order to privatize profits with public risk. Sports arenas should be financed by the team, but when a city threatens not to chip-in a large share of the cost, the team threatens to leave town for some other sucker who is willing to cough-up public money. That’s what is happening in Oakland, presently.
Panem et circenses.
I think there are two separate issues.
One is that, as noted upthread, many people - and politicians - believe that having sports teams helps the local economy. The same also applies to various businesses, and causes politicians to give massive tax breaks to major businesses who are thinking of opening up shop in the area. I personally am opposed to all this, both in the case of sports teams and in the case of all other businesses.
The other issue is that - completely independent of any financial benefits - many citizens like having a local sports team, and think this is something their tax dollars are well spent on. I myself don’t happen to share this view as to my own tax dollars, but fundamentally it’s not different than anything else the government might spend tax dollars on, e.g. parks and museums and so on.
There is one crucial difference that i can think of.
If the government funds a park or a museum, those facilities are either free to the public or free to city residents, or, if they charge admission, the admission goes back to running the facility, and (if there’s any left over) to the city.
That’s not exactly how it works with a baseball or football stadium.
I don’t know if that’s true, but it is generally true that such institutions tend to be non-profit (though they do sometimes charge admission).
But leaving that aside, I agree that your distinction is a distinction but I don’t think it’s a crucial one. Bottom line is that if the people want to spend their dollars on that, then that’s what they get.
Considering that here in Cincy, the city doesn’t get any part of it. The Stadiums were paid for by tax dollars. They are maintained by tax dollars.
The teams get all of the ticket proceeds, as well as concessions profits (not insignificant). They also do not allow it to be used for other purposes for profit to the city.
Then the players and owners make tons of money off of it, while the taxpayers foot the bill.
When I hear of players making millions of dollars, that annoys me, as my taxes go to subsidize that. If the team was paying for the stadium in full, or even with a bit of a tax break, players salaries wouldn’t bother me, but when it comes out of my pocket…
I am liberal enough that I don’t mind my taxes going to help those less fortunate than myself, but I do have issue with them going to people much more fortunate than myself.
Really? The players are the first people you think of when you get annoyed about taxpayer money being used to pay for stadiums?
You, my friend, are an NFL owner’s dream come true: the sort of person who ignores all the profits made by the billionaire who owns the team, and focuses on the salaries of the players, many of whom have only about three years of effective earning ability in the NFL, and many of whom leave the game with life-long physical damage to their bodies as a result of playing.
Please note that I also talked about the owners in my post, even if briefly, so do not assume that I am unaware of their impact.
It’s just that players salaries are a much more public thing, and everyone talks about whether or not some player is worth the money. That conversation annoys me because I am subsidizing their pay. If I were not subsidizing their pay, then the players salaries would not effect me at all, and I might even care whether or not b-rob is worth more than c-shank. (Those are player names these days, right?)
We can talk about the owners too, if you like. They are the ones that pushed through the deals. They are probably making more money off my tax dollar than the players (though I do not know if that is true collectively, a quick google search doesn’t give me much info), and they don’t even have a freakish 1 in 10 million athletic talent that it takes to play in professional sports.
There’re two other solutions I can think of:
a) Force the team owner to subsidize his own stadium, either solely or through a private partnership/corporation, just like any other business.
b) Continue to have publicly funded stadiums, but have publicly owned teams (i.e., Green Bay). If a private team wants to use the stadium, then it has to pay the city just like you’d rent a shelter in public park.
I don’t see either one happening, though.
How much the players make really has no effect on what the stadium costs or what the tickets to get into the stadium cost.
Let’s be fair, though. Players still get paid the same or greater salaries from sports teams that have no or extremely little public funding for their stadiums. How much the owner bilks from the public for their stadium tends to have no effect on salaries paid out.
Or have publicly funded stadiums that are rented by the teams, or that the city gets some, most, or all of the profits, or something.
The stadium being a net loss for the city is not something that I think should be sustained.
How much the taxpayers subsidize does have an effect on how much money is left to the team to pay players and profit for the owners.
If the owners had to pay for, or at least rent, the stadium for use, they would have less left over for enormous player salaries, and even less to line their own pockets.
That’s debatable. Major League Baseball is in the middle of an eight-year $12 billion network TV contract. That works out to more than $50 million per team, per year. Then each team negotiates its own local broadcasting rights, which range from about $25/yr up to $200 million+. On top of that, about half the MLB teams actually own part of their cable TV networks, so they not only receive net earnings, but also a share of the gross the networks generate.
That’s only broadcast rights. Team revenues also come from ticket sales, “official sponsorships” and a ton of other anicllary sources. Plenty of money for everyone to line their pockets.
I don’t think it is realistic to think a sports team will agree to pay rent to play in a city they call home, with a few exceptions (Green Bay?). They are a profit center, and if their current home city starts to get uppity about paying more to play in that fair city, then the team will simply start motioning about moving somewhere else. Call it extortion; the sword of Damocles over the heads of the city council - it’s all emotion in spite of a mountain of evidence and facts showing these are bad deals for the city. With every mid-sized city and larger vying for a sports team or two, as feathers in their cap, it really is a race to the bottom. The teams have the city councils by the short-and-curlys.
But, as stated above, there are a lot of people who don’t care it is a bad deal, they still want that sports franchise in their city - makes them feel more important. I am sure there is literature on the psychology of this.
I know what you mean. No other for-profit business ever pays rent for space, so why should sports teams get treated so unfairly?
Yeah, and boy was I pissed off when we spent $50 million here on creating a new park, and then it up and left for Las Vegas, leaving a big hole in the ground.
People (including city officials, but also fans) are just not rational about sports teams. As long as they allow themselves to be bullied by owners (and by extension, players) into shelling out huge amounts of money for these facilities (for the extreme coolness of having a team to root for or the dough they can make off fans), they’ll pay through the nose, simultaneously burdening everyone else who doesn’t give a damn if the Springfield Stigmata stays or leaves.