Taxpayers Are About to Subsidize a Lot More Sports Stadiums | Hacker News Reader

Taxpayers Are About to Subsidize a Lot More Sports Stadiums

theatlantic.com

31 pointspaulpauper22 comments

> American cities would all be better off if stadium subsidies disappeared.

The author seems to believe that all publicly funded things need to pay for themselves. I disagree. Some things are good in their own right. Sports stadiums add culture to cities in the same way that aquariums, museums, music venues and art galleries do.

The questions for me are do sports stadiums need to be rebuilt every 30 years? And how can we prevent sports stadiums from becoming just another wealth transfer from the middle class to the ultra rich? On the second, I would submit that a proper progressive tax system handles it nicely.

I think the difference is for me (even as a sports fan) is it’s all to save a billionaire owner some cash. I don’t mind spending/losing money on culture; I’m not a fan of doing it to line the pockets of someone who is already stupidly rich.

> Sports stadiums add culture to cities in the same way that aquariums, museums, music venues and art galleries do.

Citation required.

Go outside and talk to any regular person in Philadelphia and ask them whether they’ve been to an eagles game or the art museum.

Going somewhere doesn't mean it adds culture. Is anything new or interesting happening at the eagles games? Anyone gaining new incite or having revelations over the human condition? Seems more like people are just eating the same-old food and yelling at one another.

They literally are part of the culture. "The same-old food" is also culture. You are describing culture, and then saying "that's not culture". I think you're just using the wrong word for what you're trying to communicate.

The stadiums aren't contributing to that culture. They serve mass produced commodity food that's ubiquitous. I concede that hot dogs and the history behind them is culture, as are interesting new variations or applications. Though, continued sales at stadiums isn't adding to the culture.

Culture isn't history. We are constantly creating new culture. You don't have to like it. There's lots of new culture I don't like. But you can't redefine culture to mean "historic stuff, or stuff I appreciate".

Sports stadiums don’t need to pay for themselves, but they certainly shouldn’t be owned and managed by an entity that isn’t beholden to the taxpayer.

We don’t expect that tax funded enterprises need to be profitable, but we do expect that if they are, the profits should accrue to the taxpayer.

The 30 years point is an interesting one. Consider Oakland, who has all but abandoned the Coliseum and A's field, both served by a dedicated BART station that opened in 1972 after planning since the late 1950s. Compare how easy it is to get to this stadium vs. the new one for the 9'ers built right on 237 with no transit.

It’s pretty simple: Americans value having sports teams over most other things.

> Economic research is unequivocal: These subsidies are a boondoggle for taxpayers, who have spent nearly $30 billion on stadiums over the past 34 years, not counting property-tax exemptions or federal revenues lost to tax-exempt municipal bonds. Stadiums do not come close to generating enough economic activity to pay back the public investment involved in building them—especially when they’re coupled with lease agreements that funnel revenue back to owners or allow teams to play in the stadiums rent-free.

It’s interesting they evaluate the cost benefit of stadiums without considering the actual benefit that drives these decisions: people like having sports teams in their city.

So there is no need for them to be taxpayer subsidized?

It’s not a subsidy, it’s paying to keep a franchise in the city versus the franchise going somewhere else. Voters in Baltimore care a lot about having the Orioles in Baltimore, even if they only watch the games on TV, because of the tribal aspect of team sports.

so extortion?

Only in the sense that any market clearing is extortionate.

A billion a year is actually pretty small compared with the size of the budget. When considering how central sports are to American culture, it seems like a steal. This is like someone who makes $200k a year and asking them if they’d spend $10 to have sports stadiums in their country.

The Oakland example at the end laments the 350M spent by Oakland. That works out to 1k a person or $33 a year.

It’s a lot of money but it should definitely be put in context around length of stadium longevity and size of population.

> It’s interesting they evaluate the cost benefit of stadiums without considering the actual benefit that drives these decisions: people like having sports teams in their city.

Plenty of times when a vote goes up for if a new stadium should be tax-payer funded it gets voted down [1]. It seems that for many cities; they'd rather pay less in taxes than have that sports team.

[1]: https://apnews.com/article/royals-chiefs-stadiums-taxes-publ...

Sometimes that happens. But many of these expansions are paid for with bond referendums, and they usually pass: https://law.marquette.edu/assets/sports-law/Referenda.16.pdf

This article mentions both Chicago and Cleveland as about to publically finance new stadiums.

Time will tell, but so far neither state government is interested.

As a followup to this comment, apparently while I was typing this comment the mayor of Chicago was down in the state capital giving the legislature a list of demands that included money for a new stadium. The state senate responded by bringing to the floor unrelated legislation that the mayor strongly opposed, skipped debate and held a vote. It passed unanimously. While the mayor was standing there. That's really not a good sign for the stadium plans.

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