Giving money to football teams is not much of a step removed from putting it directly in the pockets of the already rich owners of the teams.
But this idea that opera is stuffy high culture is the same mistake people make with Shakespeare--it's pop culture, just removed from its context. Imagine upper-class twits a century from now screening an Adam Sandler movie.
These things ARE high culture today. Whether or not they were high culture when they were first produced doesn't change that in the slightest.
I could be wrong obviously, but I would be extremely surprised if Adam Sandler movies have centuries of longevity to them; I think even people who like his movies will acknowledge that they're not spectacular films.
Of course the "test of time" test isn't always an indicator of quality. There are plenty of old books that I had to read that I thought were terrible, and moreover there are plenty of modern music that I think is fantastic that no one else will really care about.
Today's superhero movies = yesterday's westerns. "I can't believe they made so many of these and just how bad most of them are."
I don't think that is historically accurate.
From what I've read "high" vs. "low" culture changes over time, very often based on aesthetics. Brahms wrote both high and low art by the late 19th-century audience's standards. Today it's all just Brahms, who is a "classical composer", hence all "high art."
Most importantly, there is no reason at all to believe that it cannot change again in the future. E.g., Brahms goes viral and gets treated as some kind of KPop sensation. Then we get some young punk doing cosplay as a steampunk Musikwissenschaftler claiming that Hungarian Dance No. 5 no longer slaps as high as it used to.
Sometimes you'd get someone singing pop tunes as arias, sometimes you'd see legit arias sung in full costume, sometimes just the local belting out of Carmen in sweatpants. It felt delightfully local, accessible, and devoid of highbrow/lowbrow nonsense.
I like tennis but I would not force you to subsidize its existence.
Yet, a significant portion of what you experience has been indirectly affected by these subsidies. I am willing to bet that opera has had a tremendous impact on the music you listen to, to keep a direct example.
Just arguing that "I don't immediately benefit from it, so I should not be paying for it" is probably a bit extreme.
But cities/states subsidize a lot of things from public transit to parks to parades to cultural venues to say nothing of schools out of taxes. To say all that should be completely privatized is, yes, an extreme position.
I was growing up in Calgary during the '88 Winter Games. As a child, it was pure excitement even though I wasn't particularly into sports. Somewhere in my parent's archive of my childhood are a couple of scrapbooks containing news clippings of what excited me from day to day, as well as the school's map to track the day-to-day progress of the torch relay. I don't know how I managed to snag that when a couple of hundred other kids and adults could have, but I did.
But this isn't to suggest that the excitement of the day is important. Roughly a decade later, I secured an IT job with a human performance lab at the University of Calgary. As much as I believe that professionalism in sport is contradictory to societal benefit, research related to improving physical performance is important. That was a legacy of the '88 Olympics. Sometimes outcomes are beneficial even though they are difficult to tally up.
As far as I can tell, the Vancouver games were beneficial as well. One of the outcomes was a mass transit line that reached capacity decades before anticipated. While that may sound like a negative, it does prove there is an underlying demand for reliable public transit. A more tangible benefit came from the conversion of Olympic facilities into community facilities. My recollections are of the a new False Creek community centre being used to host events to celebrate First Nations (North American Indian, for the Americans) culture and the dated Riley Park Community Centre being replaced with a modern facility. (I forget if the new facility included a pool, but the new rink was better than the old one.)
Overall, I would say that we should be funding facilities and programs that address the needs of society as a whole from a social perspective. That being said, properly planned funding of professional facilities can still serve that goal. While my example involved the Olympic Games, something similar could be said of facilities built for private interests. Provided the rent was in proportion to what is being offered and the facilities served the needs of other clients.
The recent Winter Olympics in Beijing used the swimming stadium from the 2012 Summer Games for curling. I assume they just put a floor over the pool(s?) with cooling loops in it, and possibly some of the machinery in the emptied pool itself. Maybe they did it the same way in Vancouver?
I am not a tennis enthusiast (actually, I hate tennis), yet I would suggest that there are good reasons to provide such funding. Encouraging participation in sport is a good thing. You don't have to agree with the particulars in order to agree with something in principle.
That said, I will agree that professional tennis (or opera, or football) should not be funded. For starters, it benefits a select few rather than society as a whole. Yes, that select few includes outside businesses who may see increased revenues or the people who may find jobs near the minimum wage and seasonal end of the spectrum. Granted, I have always been more favourable to the hope provided by social welfare (even when it doesn't work) than the cynicism of corporate subsidies (even when it does work), so don't treat my opinion as unbiased.
Superbowl viewership started at 18 million, hit 90 million in 1994, peaked in 2015 with 114 (true east coast/west coast game) and fell way down to 100 million or less starting in 2018. Correlation isn't causation, but there has been a pretty strong uptick in streaming media, and a similar decline in professional sports viewership, which has traditionally been on broadcast TV.
https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/super-bowl-ratings-historic...
Now that is a fantastic distillation of public goods as a concept.
Well goddamn done.
While we're at it why not extend that to all forms of user-pay and individual focused system?
* Why dont parents bear the full cost of their children?
* Why do we have publicly funded fire departments?
Etc.
As a society, for better or worse, we've decided we'd rather have a public good available to all than to make certain things only privately available.
Some things are good to have, even though they don't make money. There's a fun novella that parodies the opera mindset, called Maskerade:
“Who does the accounts?”
“All of us, really,” said Salzella.
“All of you?”
“Money gets put in, money gets taken out...” said Salzella vaguely. “Is it important?”
Bucket’s jaw dropped. “Is it important?”
“Because,” Salzella went on, smoothly, “opera doesn’t make money. Opera never makes money.”
“Good grief, man! Important? What’d I ever have achieved in the cheese business, I’d like to know, if I’d said that money wasn’t important?”
Salzella smiled humorlessly. “There are people out on the stage right now, sir,” he said, “who’d say that you would probably have made better cheeses.” He sighed, and leaned over the desk. “You see,” he said, “cheese does make money. And opera doesn’t. Opera’s what you spend money on.”
“But...what do you get out of it?”
“You get opera. You put money in, you see, and opera comes out,” said Salzella wearily.
But this is less true when the stadium is built and then surrounded with parking lots that you have to drive to to go park your car. It's more true when the stadium is built in a neighborhood or at least a walkable area.
Recently Columbus was going to lose the much beloved Columbus Crew soccer team. We had a stadium off of I-71 that was, you guessed it, surrounded by parking lots and not much else. You couldn't grab a beer before or after the game. People couldn't go camp out at a nearby bar and while you're not in the stadium you're close by and part of the atmosphere. Fortunately the state and local business leaders rallied together to #SavetheCrew and we were able to keep the team and we're building a new stadium next to Nationwide Arena in downtown Columbus where you can walk to the stadium. Hell, you can actually bike there from the suburbs using an existing bike trail and check-in your bike. Similarly, Ohio Stadium on the campus of Ohio State University is very walkable. People go and grab brunch before the noon game, they buy apparel, etc.
So I think that yea, a football team is likely to make money for the team owner and cities and governments should be weary of this. And I also haven't read the article so maybe the benefits I mentioned are washed away somehow, but I can't imagine Columbus without Ohio State football, Bluejackets hockey, or Crew soccer. I think it makes the city a better place, even if the owner (of the latter two) makes money.
The financial benefits are rarely worth the initial expense for professional sports stadiums.
Th article didn't claim governments shouldn't kick in any money, only that funding it wholly (or nearly so) via public funds is a bad use of tax revenue.
DC has two recent examples. Nationals Stadium (baseball) and Audi Field (soccer). Both in the same neighborhood downtown (southwest waterfront).
The baseballs stadium cost ~$1 billion. It was financed with bonds sold by the city and remains owned by the city. Rent to the baseball team and a portion of ticket/concession/etc are being used to pay back the bonds. As of a few years ago, it looked like the cost was basically a wash. But, that ignores opportunity costs of doing other things with that money (assuming it could be borrowed for other projects), so it's hard to say for sure if the stadium was better than other options.[1]
Audi Field's financing was quite a bit more complicated, with multiple land trades with 3rd parties, and mixed financing (the team paid a significant amount of construction costs). The team leases thee stadium for a nominal $1/year, so I have no idea how the city recoups it's investment. Part of that deal also pulled $30 million from public school funding, which seems like a big miss to me.[2]
All that said, the neighborhood where the stadiums are located was a derelict slum and industrial site before. It's massively revitalized. Does that development offset the costs of buildings/maintaining the stadiums? That's not clear. And both stadiums seem to have had a better mix of public/private financing than some of the NFL stadium deals of past decades (which are usually more expensive to start as well).
1 - https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/local/dc/nats-park-billio...
One of the things you mentioned was opportunity cost. I wonder if cities such as Columbus or other similarly sized cities actually lack opportunities and so they always latch on to projects like these? Are there intangible benefits to having an NFL stadium that aren't realized in economic cost-benefit analysis? For example, while Columbus is similarly sized to Cleveland and Cincinnati, if you watch the news or weather channel they always choose to show both of those cities instead of Columbus, the capitol (I know the likely reason is just makes more sense to display both of those). Or if I travel I always have to say Columbus, Ohio instead of just Columbus. Not the case with Cincinnati or Cleveland. Is that because the name of those two cities is so unique, or because we don't have an NFL team to get name recognition? Does that affect investment opportunities when companies are considering locating an office? Are we not front of mind because of that? I don't know either way, but I also wonder how this could be measured and if it provides any economic value.
Maybe not apples to apples, but DC's annual operating budget is ~$17b vs Columbus's annual budget of $1b. This despite DC having a smaller population (~700k vs ~900k).
Also I think the Columbus population comparison isn't great (omg we're the 15th biggest city !11!) because the city has annexed places that really don't make a lot of sense. Metro population is better to use for a comparison. And then I think for D.C. in particular you have the federal government located there so it's probably just "different".
Indianapolis has a budget of around $1.3 billion [1], Columbus is $1.04 billion [2], and Cleveland has a budget of around $1.8 bn [3]
[1] https://www.indy.gov/activity/city-and-county-budget [2] https://www.columbus.gov/finance/financial-management-group/... [3] https://www.cleveland.com/news/2022/02/mayor-bibbs-2022-budg....
Professional sports is incredibly lucrative, and college sports are incredibly lucrative for the coaching staff and some college administrators that don't have anything to do with it. I would much prefer tax money to go toward endeavors and projects that aren't completely self-sustaining and profitable, but until localities are legally prohibited from negotiating tax breaks in this manner, it's not going to happen.
There's a very simple solution to this issue.
Owner wants taxpayer money for the stadium? Taxpayer gets ownership in the franchise.
You're following the 'broken window' theory of economics, focusing on how breaking a window creates a job for a handyman. Of course when put this way you know it's ridiculous - but why? It's because it ignores the thing that the handyman could have done instead which must be foregone. Everything comes instead of something else.
If we build a stadium, we necessarily do so instead of a hospital, school, houses, etc or more abstractly we might be giving up haircuts, shoes and some amount of anything else. Money spent near the stadium in a bar isn't getting spend at some other business. All of the benefits of having a stadium come at the expense of giving up something else of greater-or-equal value elsewhere.
It's just hard to see this, because the benefits are concentrated in a single, highly-visible endeavor, and the costs are diffused throughout the rest of the economy.
> If we build a stadium, we necessarily do so instead of a hospital, school, houses,
Maybe as a global society this is true because of absolute capital allocation, but because people have the ability to allocate their own capital in the way that they would like to it's not a mutually exclusive endeavor. Further, building a new hospital, house, or school can be uneconomical and not necessary and also has the same issues you're highlighting. Building new housing for homeless people takes money away from special needs children etc... . It depends on the details and opportunities, so I'd disagree that this is necessarily true except in a specific example that we could analyze together.
> Money spent near the stadium in a bar isn't getting spend at some other business.
Yea that's fine. Both economically and morally.
If teams presented their cases more truthfully - this stadium won’t make any more money than other options, but the people of this city like sports, so please subsidize the rich owners- I would have less of an issue.
(Said from San Diego, where this former chargers fan is ecstatic to see the city didn’t kowtow to the team’s demands for a new stadium. They are now in LA, and I get 16 Sundays per year back into my life. )
Yea I mean they probably don't depict this in the best way possible, but undoubtedly it brings in tourists and other investment, at a minimum. But I think that this could also be used as an argument against, say, an airport because now people have easy access to travel to NYC, or Florida, or California and it diverts money spent from local entertainment to those cities/attractions/etc... Instead of spending money at MoMA in NYC why don't you spend it at the Columbus Art Museum? (I do say this to illustrate a point, but I actually agree we should spend money more locally).
I really wish we could get away from "XYZ rich owners" comments though because the government subsidies all sorts of people, rich or otherwise. Also it's not just the owners but the players too. They make millions upon millions of dollars. Intel coming to Columbus with tax breaks subsidizes the rich shareholders and CEO. The federal government maintaining a shipyard in New England subsidizes wealthy dock workers and the shipyard CEO. Roads? Same thing. Hospitals? Wealthy doctors. Wealthy defense contractors making bombs that our tax dollars are paying for to defend Ukraine from Russia. And you can play this game with any public investment or economic decision.
Your comment boils down to “all government spending on this list of items is equally inefficient, so why not build stadiums instead of airports.” I think that ignores the fact that airports are infrastructure, whereas sports are entertainment. Personally, I don’t think the govt should spend money on entertainment when the financial beneficiaries could easily cover the costs.
Also, in baseball, the owners are the last types of people I would support. They don’t even care all that much about the product on field - there is not a structural incentive to put a better product on the field. The comparison of billionaires to millionaires is also deceptive - that is a huge chasm, and players are being paid for producing value, using the income from their labor. Owners are paid because they have odd tax breaks (did you know they can depreciate their team purchase cost, despite team values consistently beating index returns?)
Lords of the realm is a great book to get insight into MLB owners.
Sorry, but I don't agree with this characterization. In response to your comment about bars and that a new bar at a new stadium diverting spend from previous bars this would apply to other things like commercial air travel which diverts local money to far away places.
Also civilizations have had entertainment for as long as they have existed. We need entertainment and it's quite critical to social stability and well-being as far as I know.
You're running away into pretty esoteric apples-Vs-oranges territory there. Compare local investments against other local investments, or if you're talking about a new communications hub, an airport against, say, a railway station. (Sheesh, didn't you even see how much like a cringe-worthy attempt at diversion that came across as?)
> I really wish we could get away from "XYZ rich owners" comments though because the government subsidies all sorts of people, rich or otherwise.
And I really wish we could get away from "Oh, those poor little rich owners" comments... The difference is that poor people need -- and (therefore), in many systems of ethics, "deserve" -- subsidies. Billionaires and gigacorps, not so much.
> And you can play this game with any public investment or economic decision.
Yeah, you can. But I wish you would stop.
There is a different, unrelated theory of similar/same name which might be what you were thinking of. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory (this isn't what I was talking about)
"I don't think building a new stadium is analogous to breaking a window." It is, in the sense that building a stadium or repairing a window both require forgoing something else that could have been done instead.
"...it's not a mutually exclusive endeavor." It is most certainly mutually exclusive. If I person is going to spend an hour building a stadium, they will not be creating anything else with that hour or engaging in valuable leisure time.
If we pay (or tell/force) people to build a stadium - regardless of who pays (the owner, the public, a Genie) those people will have to NOT do whatever else they might have done.
This is just talking about opportunity cost then, not the Parable of the Broken Window.
> If we pay (or tell/force) people to build a stadium - regardless of who pays (the owner, the public, a Genie) those people will have to NOT do whatever else they might have done.
Yes, there are opportunity costs to the things we do. But this applies to anything, not just new stadiums. If you choose to buy a new computer or travel for a vacation or install a new toilet you could have been doing something else with that money. The key here is that in market economies (this is everybody, US, Norway, Japan, wherever) people are independent agents and can allocate their time and resources how they see fit.
Both versions exist independently. AFAIK the one intended to illustrate the fallacy of "Anything that increases GDP must be good!" is the older, by far.
The reductio-ad-absurdum version is that the glazier putting his sons or apprentices up to going out and smashing windows must be a net benefit for society...
They are largely unavailable to the general public unless they are willing to pay for exclusive use.