Foundation Briefs Advanced Level September/October Brief Resolved
Public Subsidies are Not Good for the Public
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- Sports Don’t Attract Outside Investment
Public Subsidies are Not Good for the PublicHow Public Subsidies for Stadiums Hurt the Public AMS DeMause, Neil. “Why Do Mayors Love Sports Stadiums?” July 27, 2011. The Nation. http://www.thenation.com/article/162400/why-do-mayors-love-sports-stadiums “Public subsidies for stadiums are a great deal for team owners, league executives, developers, bond attorneys, construction firms, politicians and everyone in the stadium food chain, but a really terrible deal for everyone else,” concludes Frank Rashid, a lifelong Detroit Tigers fan and college English professor. Rashid co-founded the Tiger Stadium Fan Club in 1987, and for the next twelve years he fought an unsuccessful battle against Michigan’s plans to spend $145 million in public funds to replace that historic ballpark. “The case is so clear against this being a top priority for cities to be doing with their resources, I would have thought that wisdom would have prevailed by now.” America’s Poorest Cities Overspend on Sports AMS Gordon, Aaron. “America Has a Stadium Problem.” Pacific Standard. July 27, 2013. http://www.psmag.com/navigation/business-economics/america-has-a-stadium-problem-62665/ All the while, American cities, counties, and states continue to struggle. Glendale, Arizona, may actually sell City Hall so they can afford to keep subsidizing a hockey team that few people actually pay to see. Detroit isn’t exactly the paragon of fiscal responsibility, with its Emergency Manager—they have an honest-to-god “emergency manager”—offering a stern warning: In a report to be presented to Michigan’s treasurer on Monday, Kevyn D. Orr, the emergency manager appointed in March to take over operations here, described long-term obligations of at least $15 billion, unsustainable cash flow shortages and miserably low credit ratings that make it difficult to borrow. But, they’re somehow on the verge of finding $450 million for a new hockey arena. And in Hamilton County, Ohio, where a combined $805 million in taxpayer money built the new football and baseball stadiums, police and education budgets have been slashed, while one in seven people live below the poverty line. Not only are sports stadiums a bad economic investment—they are hurting the cities that need funding the most. Pro teams bring the wrong kinds of jobs with them DAT Bast, Joseph L. “Sports Stadium Madness.” Heartland Institute. 23 February 1998. Web. http://heartland.org/sites/default/files/sports_stadium_madness_02-23-1998.pdf While professional athletes are well paid, the great majority of jobs created by stadium development are low-paying, seasonal, and part-time, such as parking cars and selling refreshments during games. These are not the kinds of jobs that lead to greater economic growth for a region, or position a community to take advantage of national and international trends toward workforces with higher skills and familiarity with advanced technology. Many economists would agree that low-paying jobs often serve as valuable first rungs on the employment ladder. Young people and people with few skills can use these jobs to learn how to increase their productivity, thereby positioning themselves for better-paying jobs in the future. But research by Robert Baade suggests that growth in the number of low-skilled jobs tends to follow the creation of higher paying jobs, not the other way around. So the optimal economic development strategy, according to Baade, may be to foster the latter, not the former. Sports Don’t Attract Outside InvestmentStadiums and their teams replace other local entertainment without adding extra value DAT Bast, Joseph L. “Sports Stadium Madness.” Heartland Institute. 23 February 1998. Web. http://heartland.org/sites/default/files/sports_stadium_madness_02-23-1998.pdf Most people have an “entertainment budget” of time and money they are willing to devote to entertainment of any kind. The act of subsidizing a sports stadium does not increase the size of that budget: We are not somehow given more time to devote to recreation, and the price of tickets to see a live game does not go down (for reasons explained below). Consequently, most of the money spent at a sports stadium or arena would have been spent anyway at some other entertainment venue, such as a local theater, bowling alley, night club, or health club.21 A stadium would indeed generate “new money” for a metropolitan area if it attracted a significant percent of its fans from outside the immediate area. This is generally not the case for baseball and basketball, where “the number and frequency of games means that most of the market for ticket sales is metropolitan.” Football games, because there are fewer of them and they are scheduled on 22 weekends, draw fans from greater distances. However, the small number of football games—just eight regular season home games—means the total number of fans attending football games is much smaller than the number attending baseball or basketball games. The few sports teams that do attract fans from outside their immediate areas typically play in facilities (such as Oriole Park in Camden Yards, Maryland) strategically located on the outskirts of major metropolitan areas, in which case the host jurisdiction’s employment and tax revenue gains come largely at the expense of the neighboring jurisdiction. Finally, a few long-established baseball franchises located near the central business districts of major metropolitan areas also draw fans from outside the immediate area. From an economic standpoint, funding sports stadiums is, even in its most ideal and efficient state, a zero-sum game. In reality, the act of the public funding a sports team amounts to paying (typically millions of dollars) to shuffle money from other entertainment sources/locations. Stadiums are a poor tool for revitalization/gentrification efforts DAT Chapin, Timothy. “Sports Facilities as Urban Redevelopment Catalysts. Journal of the American Planning Association, Vol. 70, No. 2, Spring 2004.Web. The project that has most recently furthered the perception that Baltimore has survived and thrived in the postmodern economy is the Camden Yards sports complex. The twin stadiums at Camden Yards were initially intended to address two primary goals: (i) to keep baseball's Orioles in Baltimore and (2) to attract a National Football League franchise to the city (Richmond, 1993). The project can be considered a success on these two fronts, as the Orioles are now one of baseball's more financially successful clubs, and the NFL's Ravens now call Baltimore home after their relocation from Cleveland. As Camden Yards developed, an additional goal was attached to the project: the revitalization of the western edges of downtown. While projects along the Inner Harbor have revitalized the waterfront and nearby areas have seen hotels and a large new convention center open, areas to the west and southwest of the harbor have experienced few changes as a result of these redevelopment efforts. (…) In particular, the old retail district to the north of Camden Yards has not experienced an influx of new businesses; buildings along these corridors remain vacant and dilapidated. As for criteria number two-new construction in the district-downtown Baltimore's western edge has been strikingly unaffected by the new stadiums. New facilities for the University of Maryland at Baltimore (Figure 2, item 3) and a convention center expansion (item 4) represent the only major new construction in the immediate area. While plans for new hotels in the district have existed for years, Camden Yards has not sparked new hotel construction. On the residential front, the area did not experience an influx of housing in new or renovated spaces in the area, despite the trend towards downtown housing in the United States throughout the I990s (Birch, 2002). Only very recently has downtown seen any new residential development, along the Howard Street corridor far to the north of Camden Yards (Harlan, 2001). The case study in this card is an application of most points in the Con section: a city considers retaining sports teams a victory as its economics remain stagnant despite stadium investment. This shows one of the most relevant impacts to the debate: the infrastructure of the community surrounding the stadium, and how it develops alongside new stadium investments. Directory: school -> jchs -> staff school -> April 7, 2016 Theatre school -> Census in Schools and the 2010 Census – What’s Next? school -> Ap u. S. 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