Taxpayers Should Never Subsidize Stadiums
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
I assume there's rules against this, but take this to the extreme and see how preposterous it is: 365 days a year, 24 1-hour baseball games every day. The city will pay for it.
I'm finding something back in the 90s/early 2000s that might be related; the city was handling marketing and ticket sales, so maybe there was something there (if the city fails to sell so many tickets, they have to pay). But from what I'm seeing, that hasn't been true for about 15 years.
The article conveniently neglects to mention one of the more notable examples of a certain very well known official getting "played" in this fashion (for the benefit of a certain hugely unnecessary sports arena on the edge of downtown Brooklyn):
If I can reap the glory of a new stadium, or hosting the Olympics (as my city just narrowly avoided) while you pay the bill for years to come, that's a winning proposition.
Not allowing people a voice in the question and then blaming democracy for it? You can't blame an abstract system of government for sports owners making sweatheart deals that ignore public sentiment.
Having a Sports Team May help local restaurants, but I would think so would more houses. When there are so many homeless people, the housing stock is more important than a stadium.
Remember, people often have limited understanding of impacts focusing on a small percentage of what’s going on. Aka sound byte politics, a stadium is only half the story rarely used, low density parking can be a larger issue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13
They can buy multiple houses rent them out, and then let the kids live in them when they grow up.
Also, businesses can own multiple properties and sell them without reassessment (there is a well-known loophole involving shell companies that makes this possible).
Basically the only people that get hit by prop 13 reassessments this are young working families that need to upgrade, or want to buy into a stable housing situation to raise their kids.
It's already not worth any money to me to move between SF and mtv. Tried it for years. It's terrible already .
If you move somewhere especially the Bay Area be prepared to pay the transplant tax.
Leaving aside how these laws led to the dire situation for the UPS guy in the first place, what if he has children? The firstborn maybe gets the place for cheap but others are essentially forced to "pay the transplant tax".
I think it hurts non-homeowning residents because it eliminates a powerful incentive for densification. Where I live, homes are taxed as if they were developed to their maximum zoned potential. This motivates people to move out of single-family homes so they can be redeveloped into higher density and add much-needed supply to the market.
It's true that the homeowner is worse off, but society does not function unless we prioritize the needs of the many over the few. IMHO. Also, the homeowners usually make an incredible amount of money selling homes that they bought for nearly nothing, so they get some compensation for the trauma of having to move.
Sure they could sell the now very valuable home and downgrade, but I find it inhumane to force someone out to "downgrade" from a home they already own.
No, if you've bought a home, you want ever increasing prices. But people forget that during the first half of life, you generally try to move somewhere bigger each time you move. If prices increase 10% on average, your $500k property is now worth around $550. Yay!
However, the house you want to buy, that cost $1m when you bought your current property, now costs $1.1m. So actually, you lost $50k for the standard of living you're looking for, rather than gained it.
If prices decreased 10%, you would seem to have lost $50k, until you want to move somewhere bigger and therefore can cash in the proportionally bigger "discount".
I have 50K in cash which I can leverage into 250K worth of mortgage. That gets me more home despite the price increase. In turn, I get to pocket the difference between interest and home value increases when I eventually sell and retire to a place with normal housing cost.
If yes, everyone will do as you say and vote to restrict housing supply to maximise their property value.
Democracy works great for deciding if your community wants a nicer dog park or a bigger library, not so great for deciding if your community should consists of single family homes or 4-5 story apartments.
Call it NIMBY call it whatever you want but there is _no_ incentive for long term SF residents (10+ years) especially home owners to support more housing, especially for tech transplants.
I understand that the problem feels intractable, but it's because we treat the people make it so like something that simply is. It is not a thing that simply is, it is a moral choice made my hundreds of thousands of people over and over again and it is their failure.
For the new MLS stadium being built here, the stadium is being privately financed. Public money is going to be used for a parking facility and other supporting infrastructure like streets, etc.
Yes, the enhancements are needed because of the new stadium, but the benefit is not entirely to the MLS team.
And these are nothing like the deals made many years ago where the city/county build stadiums for the Bengals and Reds and covered the entire cost, which is what was alluded to in the parent.
That’s a huge subsidy. The lost property taxes on the developed stadium alone are huge
Housing is expensive in big cities because there are jobs, amenities and entertainment for a diverse group of people. That entertainment includes sports.
I think it’s more likely that mental illness and addiction are bigger factors, along with an absence of good interventions and an abuse of the prison system. Statistics showing a majority of American homeless people are either mentally ill, addicted to drugs, or both certainly support that view over yours, and reveals the deep complexity of solving the problem. You can’t just shove someone from the streets into a house and call it a day, they need far more support than that.
The causality of homelessness and addiction is more like a negative feedback loop. eg No insurance, get sick or injured, self medicate with alcohol or oxy, loose job, loose housing.
The link between mental illness and homelessness is pretty straight forward.
Solving the entire problem is more complex than more housing supply, that doesn't mean that more housing supply isn't an important part of the solution.
Because I've never seen anything that suggests that a majority of homeless people have addiction/mental illness problems. A higher percentage of such issues then the housed population, sure, but not a majority.
AFAIK, you can find a direct correspondence between increased rental prices and increased homelessness, and that's the main contributor. https://www.zillow.com/research/homelessness-rent-affordabil...
I mean unless you go back to the 1970's before the U.S. Government literally decimated it's housing budget (https://www.kcet.org/shows/socal-connected/the-rise-of-homel...)
https://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/addiction.pdf
https://sunrisehouse.com/addiction-demographics/homeless-pop...
https://mentalillnesspolicy.org/consequences/homeless-mental...
In January 2015, the most extensive survey ever undertaken found 564,708 people were homeless on a given night in the United States. Depending on the age group in question, and how homelessness is defined, the consensus estimate as of 2014 was that, at minimum, 25 percent of the American homeless—140,000 individuals—were seriously mentally ill at any given point in time. Forty-five percent of the homeless—250,000 individuals—had any mental illness. More would be labeled homeless if these were annual counts rather than point-in-time counts.
https://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/addiction.pdf
Although obtaining an accurate, recent count is difficult, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (2003) estimates, 38% of homeless people were dependent on alcohol and 26% abused other drugs. Alcohol abuse is more common in older generations, while drug abuse is more common in homeless youth and young adults (Didenko and Pankratz, 2007). Substance abuse is much more common among homeless people than in the general population. According to the 2006 National Household Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), 15% of people above the age of 12 reported using drugs within the past year and only 8% reported using drugs within the past month.
https://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/fixing-the-system/fe...
https://nationalhomeless.org/about-homelessness/ lists housing and poverty as the major factors contributing the homelessness, and under other contributing factors says that, "Approximately 16% of the single adult homeless population suffers from some form of severe and persistent mental illness"
I could go through and argue these step by step, but I think my larger point is that homelessness is an economic issue. Drug addiction rates haven't increased over time (see https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/10/chart-s... ) It's harder to talk about mental health rates, since so many mental health issues are untreated and increased mental health treatment can be mistaken for new rates, but I've seen nothing suggesting that rates have increased dramatically since the 1970s. Homelessness however, increased dramatically. So I don't think you can place addiction or mental illness as the main contributor.
Getting to your statement on housing first initiatives, even if homelessness was 100% addiction and mental illness related, a stable location allows better continuity of care, provision of treatment, followups etc. Certainly sticking someone in a house isn't enough, but it can be a meaningful start, even if the person suffers from addiction or mental illness. It also reduces street victimization, infectious disease spread, hypothermia, etc.
Also, I'd note that homelessness is not just a single person issue. Many families become homeless, the National Center on Family Homelessness estimates 1 in 30 children are homeless (https://www.air.org/center/national-center-family-homelessne...). Housing first helps kids and families. Incidentally domestic violence is one of the biggest causes of women and families being homeless :-(.
I believe treating homelessness as merely as mental health/addiction/public health issue and not an economic consequence to reductions in affordable housing, housing assistance, and lower real wages for low income workers misses the point.
We've probably strayed a bit far from talking about stadiums, so I'll leave it be.
You're right of course that the poorest people would still be unable to afford homes. Building more homes would reduce homelessness but not eliminate it.
The problem with NIMBYism isn't saying no to building more homes per se, it is saying no to more homes while saying yes to more jobs and more commerce that creates the problem.
Someone who works in SF, but lives 40 minutes away due to cost, should be considered a constituent of SF and their voice is as valid as that of a resident.
while saying yes to more jobs
Even in SF with the legendary homeless problems there 1000 people off the streets would make a gigantic impact.
But what about building a giant homeless shelter instead of a stadium? Or.. how about having homeless dorms in the stadium? May be just trying would help?
There's nothing wrong with building entertainment venues in cities if they're financed without tax payer money.
You’re also overstating the support from “local residents”: the fact is that the city council gave a prime plot of redevelopable land (in a city with little available) to a sports team, as part of a sweetheart tax deal. It’s a criminal misappropriation of resources that was made behind closed doors.
Not sure what closed doors you're talking about.
The Warriors stadium is literally a gold standard and a model that other sports teams should follow. Not only did they pay out of pocket, but they donated millions to the city to help manage traffic in the area.
Pacific Bell Park was wholly privately financed, much of that from seat licenses. And the ballpark was key to the redevelopment of the entire China Basin area -- look at aerial photographs of the region before 1999.
NIMBYs tend to welcome things that aren't new housing since they are likely to raise their property value. New housing has the potential to do the opposite.
The article is arguing from a perspective that amenities such as stadiums should be user-pays. There's an alternative viewpoint though; it could be a principle beneficiary-pays. Who benefits? Well for example the land values in the surrounding area are likely to rise, benefiting land owners through no effort of their own. If a portion of this windfall gain could be captured via say a land value tax, then that tax could partially fund the stadium in a fair way. But I agree with the author that subsidies through income tax seems unfair.
Where commercial property has more value due to more foot traffic, the closest residential property gets value too.
I think that AT&T Stadium (Arlington, TX) may be a good example of one that's helped. One article from 2015 says "WrestleMania — the Super Bowl of pro wrestling — is coming to Arlington’s AT&T Stadium in April, and it could pack a financial wallop for local businesses."
The new Rangers stadium nearby has benefited, and so has nearby Six Flags & Hurricane Harbor. The new Arlington entertainment district and local businesses have been picked up as well. It feels like the whole area has improved.
You have to look at the big picture of lots of different cases, rather than just looking at one example, to avoid the correlation == causation trap.
The other thing to look at would be, "what if we injected that money into the economy some other way, rather than into subsidizing a stadium?" It's possible that investing in, say, robust public transit would have an even greater economically beneficial impact.
Not in Arlington. It's a driving city between Ft. Worth and Dallas. No one is going to go visit Arlington because of robust public transit. They'd at best drive through to get to the Cowboys or Rangers games.
E.g. if someone drove across town to attend WrestleMania, then on the whole, that local economy probably got minimal extra activity out of the participant - they were likely going to spend some or all of that money in the government's local economy anyways. If someone flew from out of state, then all their dollars are dollars you weren't going to see without the event.
Vested interests and popularist politicians have no interest in the facts, and are why we need newspapers ‘telling them otherwise’.
AT&T Stadium may be a good example of one that's helped
Basically, to keep the population happy, provide them with food and games for entertainment. And try to have your city team the best in league. For international events (Olympic Games, soccer Euro Cup/World Cup, Formula 1) in addition international prestige for the hosting country comes to play in decision making. Every country that hosted soccer EC/WC or Olympic Games in the near past has made, sometimes vast, economic losses. Lot of F1 race tracks have closed for F1 as it's not profitable any more, and public support is dwindling, but politicians still want to have the photo job opportunity at opening and irate their electorate.
(Am on mobile so if anyone wants sources, reply and I'll update tomorrow, but everything should be 1 Google search away anyway)
Politicians shouldn't buy all of these stupid economic arguments for a simple fact they are often wrong. But governments aren't businesses. They don't have to make the smart economic move on every single decision. Creating a public park is rarely a smart economic move, but cities do it because that is what residents want. Politicians who let a sports franchise leave town without putting up a fight in negotiations are often quickly voted out (as well as politicians who offer too many incentives for a team to stay). So the people clearly want to keep teams when the cost is reasonable. The problem is what is "reasonable", especially when there is another city a few states over that has a slightly more generous definition of "reasonable"?
TL;DR - It is more complicated than "sports stadiums = bad" but these discussions rarely get deeper than that.
Additionally, the detractors often don't understand that these things are basically urban pacification projects. The argument has been made that having a place where the mayor sits down with a businessman on one side and a bricklayer on the other, where everybody has temporarily set aside their differences in politics, occupation, wealth, class, IQ, gender, religion, what-have-you and is lustily cheering for the same outcome, is good for social order.
To the extent that's true, it makes stadiums a valid subject for government funding. I don't like sportsball and I don't like being forced to pay for it, but I also can't see how to shoot any holes in this argument. It makes some sense.
If you can paint a rosy picture of community, or the happiness of children, or the safety of the vulnerable, it is indeed very hard to argue against. Saying the glowing vision is exaggerated or fabulated just makes you look like a grouch and a jerk.
In my town, the new stadium has a VIP area. Important people are specifically shielded from contact with bricklayers. Just saying.
Yep. Unfortunately, the people who want to treat stadiums as public works projects have 2000+ years of history on their side going back to classical Rome and Athens. I've concluded that it's not a battle worth fighting, if only because my lack of appreciation of team sports makes me a bad judge of how important they are to society.
Massive "sports" events have been a staple of social control since Greek and Roman times, and still are to some extent. Instead of going out and killing people on the streets, you just watch gladiators kill one another.
People still riot from time to time when their favorite team loses a big match, but those riots can be much more easily controlled and condemned than one that actually exposes deep fissures within the society.
Having said that, however, it's worth asking whether a democratic society should allow the government to encourage such a well-known method of silencing dissent.
It seems very plausible that this should be a non zero amount. (Also plausible that it shouldn’t be in the billions...)
A lot of people think sports are not a worthy use of government funds, which I totally understand. But looking past the relative pointlessness of most sports, it really is an exceptional experience to be in a packed stadium whether it’s for a football game or a concert or whatever.
When I go to the theatre or the symphony or the ballet or the opera, the programs and the placards in the lobby always make it clear that most of their funding comes from donations from big companies (in Seattle: always Boeing and Microsoft) and private donors.
If we're so excited to spend public money for gatherings at events that people want to see, why don't they ever spend that sort of money on the arts? Why don't I see Seattle Pops concerts on TV? Why do we depend on private donations to keep the theatres open? Why do we zone for stadiums, but not community theatre?
Everyone I know wants to see more of these performing artists but most have trouble affording tickets. When you can't afford an NFL ticket, you turn on the TV and watch it for free anyway. When you can't afford to see the local arts, you're mostly just SOL.
Go back a step. Why are sports so sought after? Well, they spend many millions of dollars on advertising, for one. That's more than the entire Seattle Symphony budget. How many people even know they play live movie soundtracks to popular movies here? Yet I don't even follow football and I can tell you about a team 2000 miles away which is in the playoffs. It's hard to avoid it. Why do they have that kind of money? Because they were successful in decades past.
I think a much simpler explanation is: a couple of professional sports leagues got big in the middle of the past century, for various reasons, and have used that success to gain a foothold into TV. Note that it isn't sports in general that are popular. There are really only 3 sports leagues that most of America cares about. Try to start a pro cricket league here and you'll just hear crickets.
The rich always get richer. In this case, the rich are getting richer using public money. It's not really about sports. Even the sports fans here aren't pushing to let kids play ball in the stadium when it's empty.
The 5th Avenue Theater holds a little more than 2,000 people, it’s not a giant logistical problem to fit an extra 2,000 people into downtown Seattle.
And I’m not trying to defend people’s preference for sports. I’m one of those people who wishes there was more of the arts around, but the demand for sports is enormous compared to the demand for local arts.
2000 seats isn't 2000 people. Add performers and stage crew and support staff -- and then consider that most of them have to leave town after the buses stop running for the night (and certainly can't afford downtown Amazon-esque rent). Do you think adding hundreds of cars downtown in the evenings isn't a major logistical problem?
In recent history, a significant theatre (not the 5th) was bought and sold under terms which turned out to be completely false. This isn't some libertarian fantasy where we're only giving people what they want. People in power are literally lying and cheating to keep the arts away from citizens.
We (San Diego) recently had a protracted fight for our sports team. They wanted a new stadium, the city didn't, they moved away. I voted against it. I probably still would have, just because I think the NFL is dead in the long run from all the TBI stuff.
You're going to compare a public park to a stadium? Go to a stadium without a ticket, and see for yourself just how "public" it is.
Really, really large numbers of people use public parks. Small, small numbers of people (by percentage, in large metro regions) ever see the inside of a stadium.
While I understand that there are many that enjoy professional sports, I certainly don't want my tax dollars supporting it.
Also, you might not want your tax dollars going to support professional sports, but many people do. That was my other point. We live in a democracy and the people generally are in favor of sports. The exact entertainment value it generates is debatable, but it is enough that these deals can be justified without requiring them to turn a profit. That was the only way I was comparing parks and stadiums. They don't need to be profitable to be a good use of money.
So let the taxpayers vote! If a majority wants to waste their money, then let them. But even then it is an absolute waste no matter your arguments because these are commercial entities backed by obscenely wealthy interests _that can afford to build them themselves_.
That is completely not true. But even if it was, why does the stadium have to be brand new and built in a high property value area? What's wrong with existing arenas?
> You can watch a game on free over-the-air TV
There are very few games that are shown OTA. And on top of that, there are commercials so it isn't free. Good luck trying to watch every game without paying money or doing something illegal. I'm willing to bet that this has never been accomplished by any fan in the history of sports.
There are very few games that are shown OTA.
And the reason why the stadium need regular upgrades is to attract the team in the first place. If a team doesn't have a new stadium like the St Louis Rams, San Diego Chargers, or Oakland Raiders they will move to a market that either offers them subsidies or would simply be more profitable. That is the fundamental cause of all these problems.
Seattle spent $5 million making public shelters for drug deals and prostitution[1], and I bet most residents would have preferred that money go toward a new basketball/hockey arena.
1. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/seattles-5-million...
In an electoral mechanism the 51% can compel the other 49% to spend tremendous resources on something the minority does not want. That is incredibly wasteful and those who want sports should pay for it directly via higher ticket prices instead.
Also a lot of these are a zero-sum contest between cities to attract the teams who demand the new facilities. The economic value is transferred rather than created when two cities are bidding against each other.
Same argument for bidding on Amazon HQ #2. Sports franchises and Amazon are leveraging their negotiating scale against local governments. Since cities cannot conduct "M&A", nor are they designed around the unyielding quest for growth, they will forever be out muscled by large businesses. This kind of subsidy simply needs to be illegal, as most cities are never in a strong negotiating position against private interests.
The increased tax revenue really surprised them despite the projections being made before the recession. (A 25 year bond only taking 11 years to pay off.)
[1]https://www.dallasnews.com/business/real-estate/2017/09/13/6...
https://www.outsidethebeltway.com/eminent_domain_ruling_affe...
https://www.goodjobsfirst.org/ is a good general resource on the issue.
I mean, I agree with you in spirit but at the end of the day the whole point of a democratic government is that it's empowered to work to better our collective lives. And that has to include dumb-but-popular boondoggles as offerings to attract football teams.
State constitutional amendments requiring a referendum.
Lost in the discussion of how many hundreds of million dollars St. Louis lost in its relationship with the Rams is the fact that the city loved that team and the stadium construction was a huge deal and a big political victory.
The underlying flaw in the reasoning here is that it's all based on a personal feeling that "My government is spending my tax dollars on something I don't like but other people do". Well... yeah. That's the cost of living under a government. The government's job is fairness, not pleasing everyone.
Can you quantify "the city loved"?
I'm sure the construction was "a huge deal", large construction projects almost always are.
Something professional politicians choose to support != something that a majority of voters would choose to support, given the chance.
Source?
>> because we’ve all been raised to think of them as ours despite owning nothing.
Not sure why there should be a connection between public funding for teams and teams staying in any particular city.
If all cities stopped public funding for privately-owned sports teams, the teams would still need a place to call "home".
The owners would just be slightly less rich.
There's no payback for politicians that waste tax money either explicitly or via tax breaks. Nor for them misstating benefits or outright lying about them.
So yea if politicians around the country are not held responsible then complaining is indeed a waste of time.
I don’t have a comprehensive statistic, but almost every time I read about stadium subsidies being put to a vote (or a poll), the funding is rejected [1][2][3][4].
[1] http://www.golocalprov.com/politics/golocal-statewide-poll-j...
[2] https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2016/07/28/poll-finds-...
[3] https://www.ktnv.com/news/political/ktnvrasmussen-poll-voter...
[4] https://amp.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/voter-revolt-on-stadiums...
Similar problems exist with subsidies for factories, although at least those are producing something at the end of the day.
It's a two part but simple questions for lawmakers: are you a profit making entity or are you not. if you are, please explain the benefits you will provide to the taxpayer, and it better wow me.
If it does go forward there should be contractual guarantees on jobs and tax revenue with fines for not producing.
Cities don't need to attract football teams. Football teams should be begging cities to allow them there.
I’d rather localities invest in community centers, libraries, museums, etc than stadiums.
Do you have a recent example of a new football stadium that had popular support among the constituent taxpayers? My memory can only recall ones opposed by the general public.
* Jerry Jones's $1B monstrosity for the Dallas Cowboys was narrowly approved around 2008 and the new Texas Rangers stadium was voted on this past year, not sure the margin or cost.
https://www.welikela.com/proposed-inglewood-football-stadium...
You want stadiums? Sure. Public gets the profits with the owner renting the space.
Governments can usually spend to improve general resources around a project, but not contribute to the project itself. With the idea of preventing market distortion from subsidy and a race to the bottom between different states.
I’m surprised they can give land for free, I’d have thought that would fall foul of the legislation.
That's easy! You just make the law only apply to stadiums.
I am sure it would be perfectly possible to include a detailed description of what a stadium is, in the law.
You can’t make something illegal if the majority of voters want it. Until voters stop wanting them publicly subsidized stadiums will continue to be built.
The easy shortcut is IQ and education cannot improve it.
Although I get the feeling that financing of sports stadiums is becoming less popular now.
You start with a common interest. Like golf. Then you invite them to party on your super-yacht. Before you know it you’ll be taking limousines to all the same $10,000 per plate charity events together and showering their non-profit-campaign-fund in ‘gifts’.
My preference is they should not have that right for publicly financed stadiums. Privately financed (meaning 100% private, don't ask for infra changes or anything else), then they can do what they want. Make it PPV for all I care.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Football_League_telev...
I don't think this changes my assertion that the agreements are very one-sided in favor of the teams. The very fact that the NFL can make that determination for publicly financed stadiums supports my point. I have no doubt they'd flip the switch again if they thought it was financially beneficial or gave them sufficient leverage, i.e. my main point.
Please, don't throw the baby with the bathwater, even if I don't use a stadium, people will enjoy their local running track, disk throwing field or soccer field.
It was partially subsidized by taxpayers...
As a Seattle sports fan, I am evidence that a lot of major American sports practice is not a democratic socialist exercise - we had a team and community anchor taken from us with zero recourse. And with what's happening in Columbus right now with the Crew has basically been a hostage situation for over a year.
It's funny that Americans love to throw around 'socialist' and 'communist' when it comes to parity and quality of play in the NFL/NBA/MLS/NHL with salary caps and strict team rules, but these clubs act like cartels. The fact that teams can at any moment be stolen or moved entirely negates any argument of social or economic return to the citizens. Now if only Bloomberg writers would wise up to the 'economic development' scams that companies like Amazon exploit, we'd actually have a better society.
Is anyone really not wise to this issue? I think everyone fully understands it is a race to the bottom, but people still want to win the race. Locally, people are making the best decision they can given the bargaining power they have.
I have been saying this forever. When we (New Yorkers) paid to redo the Yankee and Mets stadiums I was so unhappy. What a waste.
We all need a base line to work from. We should all have the same baseline
You might be conflating the football stadium with Jacobs Field, which was built for the Indians. (American League Baseball)
The original Browns played at Cleveland Municipal Stadium until they became the Baltimore Ravens.
Modell announced the move, and _the_ _very_ _next_ _day_ Cleveland voters approved funding to remodel Cleveland Municipal Stadium. It didn't work, Modell still wanted to move the team. The city of Cleveland sued Modell and a bunch of other entities with the result being Cleveland retained the Browns legacy and the franchise was considered dormant for three years [0].
The upshot of the whole affair was the passage of The Art Modell Law [1] which Save The Crew supporters invoked when Precourt Sports Ventures tried to pull the same trick on the Columbus Crew.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_Browns_relocation_co... [1] https://www.natlawreview.com/article/ohio-art-modell-law-sav...
https://www.dw.com/en/how-germany-got-the-russian-revolution...
Stadiums are not politics.
Taxes pay for roads - which is a critical infrastructure for all aspects of a modern society. This is an appropriate use of tax funds.
Stadiums are not critical infrastructure, and should not be paid for with public money.
I cannot fathom how this confuses you.
we are more than just the direct benefit of what something gives back. if its a matter of only people who use should pay, well there are a ton of stuff on my list that cost me a hell of a lot more that I'd like to get rid of.
what value do they add? congested roads on game days?
Well, for one, there's not a whole lot of evidence showing that they do add value.
But even then, the bigger issue here is that these venues are largely a handout to already wealthy team owners. It would be one thing if more sports team were like the Greenbay Packers, where the team itself has community ownership, but in most cases you have teams that are owned by individuals who are fully capable of financing the whole operation themselves. Owners shake down local municipalities by threatening to walk unless they receive some sort of subsidy that they feel represents the externalized "upside" of a stadium's presence.
Anyway, I think this behavior is starting to become a huge turn-off with voters. After a certain point, pissing off your tax base is going to cost you more votes than pissing off a rich team owner and their gaggle of sports fans.. and when that happens the gravy-train is over.
A computer match wouldn’t have either
We shouldn’t subsidize subways and rail transit for the exact same reason. Indeed, more people in any given metro region watch football than ride subways.
From where I sit, there are three possible reasons one might believe the above and still be okay with governments building roads.
1. Everyone uses roads.
2. Road users pay for road construction via gas & usage taxes.
3. Roads are important enough to subsidize, because all of us depend on goods delivered via roads and benefit by their economic activity.
Reason 1 is just too facile to worry about too much. Not everyone drives, especially in urban areas.
Reason 2 is extremely common, and extremely wrong. While gas taxes exist and do help pay for roads, they have never actually completely covered the cost of America's road network. While the exact percentage varies on a state by state basis, most states have less than 50% of their road costs covered directly by gas tax & usage fees. By 2010 only 34.4% of California's road costs were covered by said fees, the rest were provided by federal subsidy (presumably income & corporate tax based) and state/local taxes (income & sales ). Gas taxes have never covered the cost of roads, the highest they ever got was about 70% in the 1950s, and it appears that we're on a downward slide still.
Gas taxes are also extremely poorly structured ensure that those who do the most wear & tear to roads pay for them, see addendum.
Belief 3 is really tricky, because it encompasses the idea that infrastructure projects that one doesn't use directly might be worthwhile subsidizing for the economic benefits shared by all. It is very hard to hold the belief that "roads are worthwhile for the economic good, even if I don't drive on some of them specifically" while also believing that "public transit infrastructures are bad for me to subsidize because I will never use them". Put in this way, it is extremely incoherent to attack the existence of say, the NY subway, as worthless, ignoring the billions of dollars in economic activity that it helps facilitate.
Given these three options, it seems to me that belief 2 is the most probable. Hence my statement that the author would be pretty shocked if they were asked directly to bear the cost of their road use directly.
Addendum: While gas taxes might have utility in pricing in externalities of carbon production, they're god awful at distributing the cost of road wear and tear equitably. Gas taxes make the assumption that gas consumption is a good proxy of road use, which it is not. Roads experience wear and tear based on weather and the speed/weight of the vehicle. So a H2 (8,600lbs) appears to do roughly 21x the wear to the roads that a "standard" 4,000lb car does at the exact same speed. This produces some silly scenarios where a Fiat 124 (2,400lbs, 30mpg) would pay more in gas tax than a Prius Prime (3,300lb, 54mpg) on the same routes, despite the former doing much less damage all else being equal.
And that's not even getting into the issue of EVs which both pay no gas tax and are extremely heavy (~5,000lbs for a Tesla S or X).
Source: https://www.apta.com/resources/statistics/Pages/transitstats... which gets its data from the Federal Transit Administration.