7 Responses to “Reason.tv on Stadium Subsidies”

1. #1 |  Kevin |  May 28th, 2008 at 1:12 pm

   Right on. Teams have 100+ million a year payrolls. A stadium that costs 600 million (and think about that number, is it really the equivalent of 600 1 million dollar homes?) should last at least 30 years. That’s about 30 million a year with a good amount of interest added in. They are paying twice that or more on salaries for the players. It’s obvious the beneficiaries are those players like A-rod making 10+ million a year. If teams had to buy their own stadium, they simply would not pay their players those ridiculous numbers.

   How much you wanna bet the politicians who pushed for the stadium subsidy have nice box seats any time they want?

   Missing from the video above is the astonishing fact that the Nads… ooops, Nats are suing D.C. for not finishing the stadium on time. So, D.C. foots the bill for the stadium. The stadium is not ready soon enough for their greedy arses, and so they threaten to sue the city that gave them a stadium.

   http://blog.washingtonpost.com/rawfisher/2008/05/nats_demand_100000_a_day_for_u.html

   This is why I like golf and poker. Those guys earn every penny they make, and at least so far, governments have not subsidized casinos or golf courses, at least not to the level they do stadiums.

2. #2 |  Edmund Dantes |  May 28th, 2008 at 1:33 pm

   The Mayor’s office gets prime box seats in the New Yankee Stadium, and Rudy got himself prime box seats also for helping to push it through first as Mayor then as ex-Mayor when Bloomberg and NYC started to balk.

3. #3 |  Nando |  May 28th, 2008 at 2:08 pm

   Kevin is right. If the Stadium costs $600 Million, there is no reason why a professional sports team with a payroll of $54 Million this year can’t afford to pay for most, if not all, of it.

   Not only that, but MLB’s earned $6.075 billion in revenues las year. Source: http://www.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/2007-11-15-mlb-revenue_N.htm

   Why can’t MLB put up half of the money when they’re CLEARLY earning so much?

   Also, take a look at how much teams pay in salaries alone (10 of 30 teams are over $100 Million this year): http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/teams/salaries?team=was

4. #4 |  Nick T |  May 28th, 2008 at 2:57 pm

   While I don’t agree with kevin about player salaries, I don’t understand why the leagues don’t just front the money for new stadiums at a low-interest loan to the owners of the respective team. Or for christs sakes, why the states don’t pay for the stadiums AS A LOAN.

   Those stadiums bring in so much money for baseball and for the individual team. But at the same time, it’s tough to imagine how a brand new shiny stadium generates that much more money for the community than an old crummy stadium. Sure, the new stadiums generate brand new revenue streams by maximizing the profitability of the physical space, but just collecting the taxes on all that new revenue is gonna make up for 600 million dollars plus interest!? Old crappy stadiums still employed a lot of people and should have helped develop the surrounding area just the same.

   The Red Sox have done a great job of remodelling old crummy (and I mean crummy) Fenway park, to find new revenue, without (to my knowledge) asking for tax-payer money, and the surrounding area is thriving with bars, restaurants, new condos etc. I’m sure most Sox fans would love to get rid of the 100-year-old wooden seats barely large enough for a little person, and would likely foot the bill if asked, but that old stadium still works wonders for the community and local economy without hundreds of millions of tax dollars.

5. #5 |  Mike |  May 28th, 2008 at 4:41 pm

   I certainly dislike the idea of taxpayer funded crap as much as anyone but am I the only one that found that particular video a little lacking?

   As far as I could tell the only fact was asking a single economist a single yes/no question. Excluding the $40 dollar remark as I don’t think the units were specified $40/person $40/stadium $40/what? If its $40 per stadium I’ll donate the $40 bucks to move my local Baseball team to my backyard :)

   As was alluded to in the video fans would stop driving to Baltimore MD to watch those games in favor of games in DC. So if all the money for the Stadium is coming from DC it seems like there is a possibility of it being a win for DC at the expense of Baltimore.

   I don’t doubt that stadiums are a bad investment but I think a couple more facts in that video are called for.

6. #6 |  Tom |  May 28th, 2008 at 5:04 pm

   Yes Mike, I too found the video lacking.

   I don’t buy the argument that spending money at and around the stadium is at the detriment to other places. That is very marxist in it’s thinking. They tend to think that there is a pie of wealth that is finite, and only gets dilluted down.

   I think that the stadium does bring in some positive to the community, but not 600 millions worth.

7. #7 |  Eric |  May 28th, 2008 at 6:02 pm

   I’m right with Mike and Tom. While taxpayer funded stadiums aren’t generally a good policy decision, the economic argument in the clip doesn’t really hold up as it is presented.

   The economist says that it doesn’t bring in new revenue because the money generated is just diverted from some other activity that the baseball fan would spend equivalent money on. First, from personal experience, that’s not true. I go to a couple of ballgames a year, and that money would otherwise be in my bank account. It’s not like I say “it’s Saturday night, what should I do? The opera? A museum? A baseball game? I choose the baseball game at the expense of those other pursuits.” Instead, it’s like “hey the Cardinals are in town. I’m going to go to that game.” Second, from living near Wrigley Field I can attest that there is a lot of outside money that comes in to our neighborhood each game day. Money goes to the bars, to the souvenir hawks, to my neighbors with private parking spaces to sell, and to me when I sell my house with a view of the ballpark. Third, even if the money really is diverted from other pursuits, it is diverted to city businesses. If some of that is diverted away from other places – Baltimore or Northern Virginia in the case of the Nationals – then the city gains and recoups its investment. Fourth, like Tom said, the concept that a ballpark cannot create additional wealth seems pretty contrary to free market ideas.

   Reason.tv is generally very good, but this seemed a little short on content.

---