Giving welfare to team owners is America’s newest civic sport. By one count, 44 major-league pro teams have recently finagled new playpens for themselves or are angling to do so. Critics call much of this extortion: you help me or I’ll take my team to a city that will. Local officials typically cower when the owners play hardball, fearful that the loss of a pro franchise will relegate their city to the status of a ghost town. But the costs in tax breaks, bond issues and other goodies are making all but the blindest fans ask if the stadium game is worth the price. ““What we have is this perverse transfer of public money to wealthy players and wealthier owners,’’ says Mark Rosentraub, an Indiana University professor whose recent book, ““Major League Losers,’’ doesn’t hide what he thinks of most stadium deals.
The owners say they have no choice. The economics differ by sport, but the National Football League offers the simplest example. All 30 teams share television and gate receipts. But teams with the best stadium revenues - from luxury suites, food sales and the like - rake in about $40 million a year more than teams with older stadium deals. The extra change comes in handy when superstar free agents demand gazillion-dollar signing bonuses. Bottom line: the owners say that if they can’t maximize what they earn beyond their split of league revenues, they can’t field competitive teams.
But what’s really driving the stadium game is civic vanity. Allen didn’t force a deal down Seattle’s throat. In fact, the city went begging to him. He responded that he would buy the team and keep it there, but only if the public would help build a new stadium and exhibition hall. He spent more than $10 million of his own money lobbying, advertising and, remarkably, even funding last week’s state referendum. Voters got the point: chip in or wave bye-bye.
Pro teams insist they give cities more than an ego boost. They argue that big-time sports spawn economic development and raise tax revenues. Many trees have given their lives for studies by economists who can’t agree on that assertion. But the owners do make one irrefutable point: nobody wants to watch a game in a dump. ““We operate in a highly competitive sports and entertainment environment,’’ says Roger Goodell, an NFL senior VP.
Costly stadium deals do make sense in two cases. The first involves third-tier cities on the make. Nashville, Tenn., is building a football stadium for the soon-to-arrive Houston Oilers, and also put up a hockey arena on spec. Last week the National Hockey League responded by awarding Nashville one of four new franchises. Voila: Nashville has arrived. And deals like Seattle’s compute when voters know what they’re getting into, just as parents overpay for a house in the right school district.
But over time, sad endings may outnumber happy ones. The lesson here is, you can’t buy loyalty. Ask the people of Pontiac, Mich., who lured the football Lions from Detroit to their new Silverdome in 1975. Now the Lions have cut a deal to leave Pontiac for . . . Detroit. The bait? Another spiffy new stadium.
The stadium binge could topple of its own weight. Voters are wary, as tighter elections in Seattle, San Francisco and other cities attest. Los Angeles isn’t rolling over to attract an NFL franchise. And the Chicago Bears, eager for public stadium dollars, have so far been stiff-armed. U.S. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York is threatening to strip tax exemptions from government bonds used to finance stadiums. Then there’s the growing awareness among taxpayers that they’re playing a zero-sum game: when everybody has a new stadium, half the teams will still be losers.
