If this is best suited for Links and Articles, please let me know that it was moved. Anyway, this I feel makes for interesting disucssion on how sports franchises have been able to get cities to give them just about anything, as well as lease issues. Uses the San Diego Chargers and Indy Colts as examples. While its relation to soccer is very little in the US, Wimbeldon to Milton Keynes may be setting a very dangerous precedent overseas, hence this being posted on Big Soccer. How far do cities want to go to keep sports franchises happy, and just how valauable are these franchises to local economies: http://espn.go.com/sportsbusiness/s/2002/0919/1434048.html Personally, the economic question is tough, but I do agree about the part that notes it brings people together at times.
1. This subject really makes both sides mad. 2. The willingness of cities to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies, mostly in the form of public finance of stadia and arenas, has distorted the economics of professional team sports to the point that teams that don't get that subsidy can't compete or even survive, unless owned by a very rich man willing to throw millions of dollars away on his toy. 3. From a strictly dollars and cents point of view, subsidizing spectator sports is a bad investment for a city or county. Then again, all of the other recreations government subsidizes, all the way from art galleries to zoos to the parks department itself, are worse investments. 4. The presence or absence of sports teams is a major quality of life issue for many people. If you're about to post something about only evaluating them in dollars and cents terms, think about how much you would like some of the other amenities you do like your local government supplying (whether it be bike trails or Shakespeare in the park) subjected to the same no-prisoners-taken dollars & cents analysis. 5. In 1985, downtown Cleveland was decaying and a scary place to be after dark. Then, over the next ten years, they spent a billion taxpayer dollars on four playpens for rich people. The synergies worked the way they were supposed to. Now downtown Cleveland is full of people spending time and money after work. Do the numbers, and Cuyahoga county would be better off if most of that money were spent 20 miles away, and downtown was a desert of office buildings and parking lots everybody fled at the end of the business day. On a strictly dollars & cents basis, every city smaller than Chicago would be better off if they just rolled up the sidewalks downtown at 6 P.M. Is that what you want?
This is just complete nonsense. They kept touting measurable changes to the economy, people studied it, and those changes don't happen. So now they are talking about unmeasurable intangibles. It's all bunk. It's just a fleecing of taxpayers.
I can go with the fleecing of taxpayers thing, in particular Invesco at Mile High, but you can't say the neighboorhoods and local (neighboorhood and outlying) economic situations in Baltimore and Denver didn't improve significantly after Camden Yards and Coors Field were built. I must say that I don't know how much of Camden was built was taxpayer $$$, and Coors was at least paritally built with a special sales tax.
It is curious the article never mentions Cincinnati. The Bengals are the most profitable team in the NFL due to thier lease and have been the laughing stock of pro sports for a decade. The fan based is eroding and the county is near bankruptcy. For Cincinnati, this was not a wise investment.