re: What is your take on pro sports clubs building stadiums with tax payer dollars?

Or...hear me out. The billionaire owners could just pay for it themselves since they're the ones that will receive the benefit from it.

I’m happy to pay for it.

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I’m happy to pay for it.

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And you should be able to voluntarily donate to that cause

And if it had the great economic impact that the owners claim then they would have no problem getting businesses that would benefit so greatly from the new stadium to help crowd fund the endeavor.

I’m against it too. But the problem is a majority of these go to a vote and pass.

At minimum their should be a clause that if the owners sell team or their shares of team during the longevity of stadium, or 30 years - then at least half the profit goes back to city.

If value of team was say $2b in the year prior to passing local tax and if owner sells team 15 years later and its valued at $6b - then city gets $2b which is half the increased value.

That way there is some incentive for the taxpayera.

If tax payer dollars go to build a stadium then the tickets for said stadium should be either free or a greatly reduced cost, not like the $135 per head to get into Fenway Stadium in June.

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I think it's one of the most despicable things possible personally.

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Pro sports events can bring a tremendous amount of revenue to an area and spur economic growth. There is however a balance of reality and the wants. spending a billion or two on a public venue for a perpetually shitty team is not a good investment if the other event revenue cannot make up the difference

For a successful project the pro team is usually the anchor dollars for it. You cannot have a big mega event center and base it on 10-12 uses a year. I was in Houston a few wks ago near NRG and Morgan Wallen was playing that night. Hotel rooms were booked up at elevated event rates. The following weekend Beyonce was playing there for two shows I believe.

I’m against cities making deals like this and putting the taxpayers on the hook.

I’m also against teams not being in the city they’re named for. Who even gets taxed?

Auburn Hills Pistons
Santa Clara 49ers
Arlington Cowboys

I'll go one step further. These $50-$100 million youth sports facilities that mid-size towns are building throughout the South are even worse.

They sell it on "economic impact" but because Americans by and large do not understand economics, they don't even look at the math.

A local city to me just built a $50 million youth sports facility, all with tax dollars. They claim the economic impact will me "multiples times that"

If you hosted a 20 team tournament every weekend throughout the year, and each team had (and these numbers are ridiculous, I know)

20 hotel nights at $150 ($60,000)
A family of four eating out five times every weekend at $20/pp ($80,000)
Discretionary spending of $250 per family ($50,000)

And again, you did this 52 weekends a year. It would be $10 million in spending, or about $700k in tax revenue. It would take 71 years of doing this every weekend to pay the taxpayers back for that facility.

I'd be perfectly fine if all corporate subsidies were illegal on that note

But I will concede that you do bring up a fair point

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You can be entertained by football on TV There isn't a requirement to have a stadium in your city

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I don’t have one in my city