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Comment by Nursie | Hacker News Reader

I'm not a libertarian, far from it, but as someone who doesn't give the first #### about watching sports, this really does seem to me to be an area that should be left to market forces. These sports teams are businesses, they have customers, massive income streams etc. If they can't afford the facilities they need, then they need to restructure the business. The taxpayer should not be on the hook, as it's not a municipal service, it's just entertainment for a subset of the population.

I find it weird this happens in the US, where there is such an emphasis on not providing things other countries may see as a state function (healthcare, public transport...). It's not just the US of course, but it seems to be most apparent there.

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I'm probably a smidge more pro sports than you. I don't go to many games (other than if my child is playing), but I do go to some.

But like, cities do all sorts of things that aren't economically sound. Who am I to say what they should do? If the taxpayers/voters/etc want to spend their money on a stadium, that's fine, as long as they know it's unlikely to make economic sense. Large stadiums are a prestige project, and those often don't make a lot of economic sense (and sometimes don't meet any of their other goals, either).

> Who am I to say what they should do?

A voter and a taxpayer? I mean, sure, like everything (hopefully) it's subject to democratic forces and what the local people want. But there's endless debate over what the state should and shouldn't get involved in. I and my vote, (not that I am eligible right now, as a recent migrant) think this falls on the "shouldn't" side, where community facilities, public transport etc fall more on the "should" side.

> as long as they know it's unlikely to make economic sense

I guess that's the thing - is it made abundantly clear that these things are likely to be a net negative? That those of us not into sports are going to be footing the bill equally and not benefiting from and side-effects? Perhaps it should be more so.

Provide infra for amateur sports teams, youth and adult?

Provide free public transport?

Provide better health care to the residents? Heck, how about just providing health care!

Provide bountiful resources to schools to improve education?

Oh, wait a sec, I forgot. Those suggestions are things which are economically sound. Sorry, my mistake.

Provide infra for amateur sports teams, youth and adult?

I wish this was demanded more when cities pay for stadiums. I mean the rink where our pro hockey team plays is used all the time by local youth hockey and figure skating teams. The stadium where our pro football team plays is basically always empty outside of those few hours a few times a year when there is an actual game.

I mean, I'm not sure how much of those are within the bounds of city council.

Around here, we've got a parks district for sport infrastructure. And a county transit authority for transport. Health care would be probably through the county health department. And the schools are through the school board.

So, the city couldn't do any of those things even if it wanted to. Of course, my city also is way too small for a pro sports arena, which is part of why I selected to live here.

> Who am I to say what they should do?

You're a citizen who can argue for it.

Of course ultimately, cities are democracies and can decide to give away money to private sports teams, I'm not gonna dispute their right to do so.

But I'll definitely argue that it's really dumb to do that.

> but it seems to be most apparent there

Looks more like they are less good at hiding it or don't need to. In the town's around here the cities usually bail out the sport teams after they go bankrupt (and thus don't) or put the stadiums into massive infrastructure plans so it gets murky how much was spent on it with public funds. Fortunately the trend seems to go towards letting the football (original, not the US version) clubs drown in their own mess more and more but it's far from over.

It's quite different. Outside of the US, football ( the original, not US version) is often a community thing, and clubs are bound to their localities. They won't just move to a more profitable location, they're a part of the community. In some countries stadiums are often municipal ( even in Italy, whose top flight is a top 5 one), so the city gets revenue directly.

Also it isn't even in the same ballpark between bailing out a club that's in debt and getting the club in return, and building new a stadium for a billion or more USD, and getting hope in return.

> so the city gets revenue directly

While I understand the community idea, it's still a small minority what you are talking about (at least here, I can't speak for elsewhere like Italy). For the revenue part: most revenue is generated by club sponsoring and not ticket sales. There are a few stadiums which can break even due to renting it out to whomever wants it, againt the will of the clubs from what I precieve.

Then again you might be correct it is a common net positive, but I haven't seen any studies comparing it to the cost of not having one and/or provinding other means of entertainment so it might actually be offset if the population "using" it, directly or indirectly, is large enough.

Panem et circences is still a thing.

Note since bailing out is not actually a good term to describe it: with bailing out the city (almost) never gets the club. It al kinds of messy but generally it's a rent free loan or some other cost negative solution like buying the stadium but renting it out for free... In my opinion sinking money into a bottomless pit is the same if done after or before the fact.

Stadiums in the US are often technically owned by the government. This is a dodge to get them out of paying property taxes on a billion dollar (or now multi-billion dollar) facility. The government then rents the stadium back to the team for a token fee. It also transfers certain liabilities to the government, making operations less expensive for the sports team.

> football ( the original, not US version)

For what it's worth, both association football (from whence, 'assoc' -> 'soccer') and gridiron football (which American and Canadian football are variants of) emerged at about the same time, during the mid-19th century. It would incorrect to refer to soccer as the 'original' for this reason, although they, along with a few other sports such as rugby and Australian football, descend from games that were played in this period in which the rules were still not yet set in stone.

There are not just spare parcels floating around zoned for stadiums (or hospitals, or university campuses, or whatever). Creating one of these things is always an act of government.

That’s not to say the government should also have to pay, but the idea of sports teams acting like any other consumer of commercial real estate is clearly off.

Sure, and my point was much more about funding than it was about land use. Yes, any project of that size is going to require not just a location, but infrastructure, transport etc etc. So perhaps you're right and it can never be a purely commercial project.

To my mind the sports team would also have to pay for the infrastructure improvements etc and knock-on costs too. But then I really have little time for professional sports!

Zoning is different than paying. Apple built a campus the size of a stadium without city paying for it.

Their counterpoint would be: why should they invest 100% of the capital in a stadium that bringing tens of thousands of middle class credit card holders to the city’s commercial district when — after you subtract the money spent at Mel’s Bar over the road — they only take 95% of the revenue?

Removes tongue from cheek

The real issue is touched on by the article. No mayor or town council member wants to go down as the person who "lost the team". Even if losing that team is an economic boon to the city, it's incredibly unpopular. Many things good for society are unpopular with society.

We’re more susceptible to the narrative in which these stadiums used to get funding (now days more so is my meaning). Goes something like this:

- You have poor shitty neighborhoods

- Subsidize building of a stadium in said shithole, and watch the dollars come in.

- You’ll have increased commerce and development of surrounding area with ample employment for said shitty neighborhood residents.

We don’t need recent history to post mortem this, they figured out it actually doesn’t improve the region much a long time ago.

———

The only thing that reasonably works is gentrification, but, well, you know … that’s racist. How do you solve it? I don’t know, white people seem to have the money. We have to start much higher up to root cause analyze this, and while I’m annoyed by wokeness, root causing this kind of more or less leads us to ‘why the fuck are there so many white people with money’?.

Anyways, stadiums. It’s just a bug way down the ladder.

Have fun going to Yankee Stadium in the middle of the fucking South Bronx. Utopian shit never works.

Repairation payments directly addresses the "white people have the money" problem.

John Oliver made a much better case than I ever could in a HN comment. It also answers "why do the white people have so much money" question.

https://youtu.be/_-0J49_9lwc

I just don’t think that’s realistic. We have all this commotion over dissolving student debt, but amongst minorities, they are saddled with all kinds of other debts.

Dissolve that. Give credit score amnesty. Those house loans will be flying off the shelves if we ever did that.

But nah, let’s focus on the guys that majored in Trombone or Classics at a private school for 25k a year.

It’s technically cheaper for tax payers since credit defaults are usually sold to collections for pennies on the dollar. That seems way more affordable, and gives a proper tabula rasa (versus a 1000 stimulus check). We’ll just subsidize the collections payments which usually settle for way less anyway, and just free people up. We should technically do the same for student debt. Have these dumbass schools send the debt to collections, and we’ll pay the stupid 10 cents on the dollar. Fuck off and never over charge again. Why would we actually pay off the full ridiculous amount?

public funding (and related: subsidies) is a part of market forces. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

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