Sports Topic Patriot Brief 2014

George Mason Debate2014-2015 [File Name]

Sports Topic---Wave 1---Patriot Brief 2014

Sports Topic---Patriot Brief 2014......................................................................................................................................................................1*** Definitions..............................................................................................................................................................................................2

On Balance................................................................................................................................................................................................3Professional Sports Organization (PSO)...................................................................................................................................................4Public Subsidies........................................................................................................................................................................................5

*** Con.........................................................................................................................................................................................................6Subsidies BAD --- Economy.....................................................................................................................................................................7Subsidies BAD --- Economy --- Framing...............................................................................................................................................14Subsidies BAD --- Economy --- A2: Teams Will Relocate....................................................................................................................15Subsidies BAD --- Budget --- Expensive................................................................................................................................................16Subsidies BAD --- Budget --- Trade-Off................................................................................................................................................20Subsidies BAD --- Sports Diplomacy.....................................................................................................................................................21Subsidies BAD --- Urban Sprawl BAD..................................................................................................................................................22Subsidies BAD --- Urban Sprawl BAD..................................................................................................................................................23

*** Pro........................................................................................................................................................................................................25Subsidies GOOD --- Economy................................................................................................................................................................26Subsidies GOOD --- Public Engagement................................................................................................................................................30Subsidies GOOD --- Sports Diplomacy..................................................................................................................................................31Subsidies GOOD --- Urban Sprawl GOOD............................................................................................................................................32

Resolved: On balance, public subsidies for professional athletic organizations in the United States benefit their local communities.


*** Definitions


On Balance

Definition of “on balance”Cambridge Dictionary (http://books.google.com/books?id=pqlRO2jdI2gC&pg=PA66&lpg=PA66&dq=%22after+considering+the+power+or+influence+of+both+sides+of+a+question%22&source=bl&ots=zGRKCl0XaU&sig=a19rdN82dbLQOuLgPA5fJDlfQFQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ngq7U5n5CNWuyATRz4CIBw&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22after%20considering%20the%20power%20or%20influence%20of%20both%20sides%20of%20a%20question%22&f=false)

“On balance” : after considering the power or influence of both sides of a question (Cambridge)

http://books.google.com/books?id=pqlRO2jdI2gC&pg=PA66&lpg=PA66&dq=%22after+considering+the+power+or+influence+of+both+sides+of+a+question%22&source=bl&ots=zGRKCl0XaU&sig=a19rdN82dbLQOuLgPA5fJDlfQFQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ngq7U5n5CNWuyATRz4CIBw&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22after%20considering%20the%20power%20or%20influence%20of%20both%20sides%20of%20a%20question%22&f=false




Professional Sports Organization (PSO)

The government definition of a professional sports organizationUS Code 3701(USCS 3701 Article 3 Title 28 Judiciary and Judicial Procedure: Part 6. Particular Proceedings: Chapter 178. Professional and Amateur Sports Protection)

a professional sports organization is (A) a person or governmental entity that sponsors , organizes , schedules , or conducts a competitive game in which one or more professional athletes participate, or(B) a league or association of persons or governmental entities described in subparagraph (A). above

Sports organizations are directly involved in the sports industry --- have explicit boundaries to separate members and non-membersSlack, Parent, associate professor in sports management, 2005(Trevor, Milena, “Understanding Sports Organizations- 2nd Edition: The Application of Organization Theory”, Google Books, JMM)

- people/groups of people interact together who are directly involved in one or more aspects of the sport industry , such as the production of sport-related goods . Sports organizations have a goal directed purpose , and its members are structured in a certain way so as to complete activities and achieve that goal. Organizations also have an identifiable boundary between members and nonmembers, usually a contract with members in which they receive money for their involvement.


Public Subsidies

Public subsidy is a provision of economic value given to a private entity for public benefits --- the provider can’t receive goods or services in returnBrownstein, has a Masters in Political Science from Stanford, 2007(Bob, “Public Subsidies Definition”, 7-06-14, http://www3.sanjoseca.gov/clerk/TaskForce/SRTF/pdf/051707/Revised%20Pu-blic%20Subsidy%20Defintion_Brownstein_5_9_07.pdf, NV)

“A public subsidy is a provision of economic value by the City or the RDA to a private entity for purposes beneficial to the public, such as the operation of a business or event within San Jose, but for which the City or RDA do not directly or indirectly receive goods or services in return for that expenditure

Public subsidies are given for the purpose of poverty reductionWodon and Angel-Urdinola, an adviser in the World Bank's education department and senior economist in the Human Development Department, 2006(Quentin and Diego F, “Do Utility Subsidies Reach the Poor?”, 7-06-14, http://siteresources.worldba-nk.org/INTISPMA/Resources/Training-Events-and-Materials/UtilitySubsidies.pdf, NV)

Given the budget constraints faced by many governments a good targeting performance of public subsidies (whether in cash or in kind) is important for the reduction of poverty .

Public subsidies are cash payments or tax benefits to remove a burdenJalota, Claremont McKenna College, 13Annie Jalota, “India: Subsidy State or Developmental State?” 7-7-14, http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1615&context=cmc_theses, AM)

Public subsidies- A benefit given by the government to groups or individuals usually in the form of a cash payment or tax reduction in an effort to reduce poverty. The subsidy is usually given to remove some type of burden and is often considered to be in the interest of the public .

http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1615&context=cmc_theses

http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1615&context=cmc_theses


*** Con


Subsidies BAD --- Economy

Subsidies don’t generate any positive economic outcome --- they increase government debtGarofalo, Economic Policy Editor for ThinkProgress.org, 12(Pat, “If You Build It, They Might Not Come: The Risky Economics of Sports Stadiums,” 7-7-14, http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/09/if-you-build-it-they-might-not-come-the-risky-economics-of-sports-stadiums/260900/ Y2K)

This is an altogether too common problem in professional sports . Across the country, franchises are able to extract taxpayer funding to build and maintain private facilities, promising huge returns for the public in the form of economic development.For instance, just three of the NFL's 31 stadiums were originally built without public funds. In two of those cases, public funding was later used to upgrade the stadium or surrounding facilities, even as all 32 of the NFL's teams ranked among Forbes' 50 most valuable sporting franchises in the world in 2012. (Only MetLife Stadium, shared by the New York Jets and New York Giants, received no public funding.)Time after time, politicians wary of letting a local franchise relocate -- as the NBA's Seattle Supersonics did, to Oklahoma City before the 2008-2009 season -- approve public funds, selling the stadiums as public works projects that will boost the local economy and provide a windfall of growth.However, according to leading sports economists , stadiums and arenas rarely bring about the promised prosperity, and instead leave cities and states mired in debt that they can't pay back before the franchise comes calling for more ."The basic idea is that sports stadiums typically aren't a good tool for economic development," said Victor Matheson, an economist at Holy Cross who has studied the economic impact of stadium construction for decades . When cities cite studies (often produced by parties with an interest in building the stadium ) touting the impact of such projects, there is a simple rule for determining the actual return on investment, Matheson said: "Take whatever number the sports promoter says, take it and move the decimal one place to the left. Divide it by ten, and that's a pretty good estimate of the actual economic impact." Others agree. While "it is inarguable that within a few blocks you'll have an effect," the results are questionable for metro areas as a whole, Stefan Szymanski, a sports economist at the University of Michigan, said.PUBLIC MONEY BALLThere are numerous reasons for the muted economic effects. The biggest is that arenas often sit empty for a significant portion of the year. Jobing.com Arena is guaranteed 41 hockey games annually. The other 324 nights, it must find concerts, conventions or other events to fill the schedule, and in Glendale, where the arena competes with facilities in nearby Phoenix, that can be tough to do."We've looked at tons of these things, and the one that we found that seemed to make sense is the Staples Center in Los Angeles," Matheson said. "But they use it 250 dates a year. They don't make sense when you're using it 41 times a year and competing with another venue down the street."Another reason the projects rarely make sense is because of the way they are structured. Stadiums and arenas are financed with long-term bonds , meaning cities and states will be stuck with the debt for long periods of time (often 30 years). And while cities make 30-year commitments to finance stadiums, their commitments to government workers and other local investments are often made on a year-to-year basis, meaning that, just as in Glendale, it becomes easier to eliminate public sector jobs and programs than to default on debt incurred from arenas.The counterargument -- made by council member Joyce Clark, who voted for the subsidies, and Glendale First, an organization in favor of the package -- is that the Coyotes and their arena provide support to the local economy that otherwise wouldn't be there."It's a huge economic engine for Glendale," Bea Wyatt, a spokesperson for Glendale First said. According to Wyatt, who doesn't live in Glendale but frequents the city for Coyotes games, sales tax revenue made up 41 percent of Glendale's budget last year, and a significant portion was derived from sales around the arena. Supporters also claim the deal with Jamison is a good one for the city, since he will eventually pay for the arena's management and employ local workers.But again, economists don't seem to buy the argument . While Glendale First claims that more than 600,000 visitors -- three times Glendale's population -- came to the city for hockey last year, the Coyotes finished last in the NHL in attendance. And it is unclear how many of those visitors were, like Wyatt, residents of nearby communities who may patronize restaurants but don't spend money shopping or staying in hotels.Matheson estimates that 20 percent of fans for a Major League Baseball game come from outside the local area, and that the figure for hockey games is likely much smaller. That's hardly enough to fill the local hotels or to add outside spending to the local economy in other ways, he said."It's not generating new revenue. This is local spending on a local event," Matheson said, adding that most of the money spent in and around arenas and stadiums would likely be spent elsewhere in the local economy if there were no sporting events to attend.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/09/if-you-build-it-they-might-not-come-the-risky-economics-of-sports-stadiums/260900/



Though it is clear that new facilities are not a wise investment for taxpayers, the argument from Glendale First stems from the fact that Jobing.com Arena is already there. Refusing to use more public financing - and potentially allowing the Coyotes to leave for a new town - Wyatt said, would amount to the city turning its back on its initial investment and risking the failure of hotels, restaurants, and other businesses.

Empirical studies validateEasterbrook, a contributing editor at The Atlantic, 13(Gregg, “How the NFL Fleeces Taxpayers: Taxpayers fund the stadiums, antitrust law doesn't apply to broadcast deals, the league enjoys nonprofit status, and Commissioner Roger Goodell makes $30 million a year. It's time to stop the public giveaways to America's richest sports league—and to the feudal lords who own its teams,” 9-18-13, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/10/how-the-nfl-fleeces-taxpayers/309448/ Y2K)

It's a story that could have been told in almost any American city over the past two decades. Owners of teams in the "big four" sports leagues — the NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL — have reaped nearly $20 billion in taxpayer subsidies for new homes since 1990. And for just as long, fans, urban planners and economists have argued that building facilities for private sports teams is a massive waste of public money . As University of Chicago economist Allen Sanderson memorably put it, "If you want to inject money into the local economy, it would be better to drop it from a helicopter than invest it in a new ballpark ." Studies demonstrating pro sports stadiums' slight economic impact go back to 1984, the year Lake Forest College economist Robert Baade examined thirty cities that had recently constructed new facilities. His finding: in twenty-seven of them, there had been no measurable economic impact ; in the other three, economic activity appeared to have decreased . Dozens of economists have replicated Baade's findings, and revealed similar results for what the sports industry calls "mega-events": Olympics, Super Bowls, NCAA tournaments and the like. (In one study of six Super Bowls, University of South Florida economist Phil Porter found "no measurable impact on spending," which he attributed to the "crowding out" effect of nonfootball tourists steering clear of town during game week.) Meanwhile, numerous cities are littered with " downtown catalysts " that have failed to catalyze, from the St. Louis "Ballpark Village," which was left a muddy vacant lot for years after the neighboring ballpark opened, to the Newark hockey arena sited in the midst of a wasteland of half-shuttered stores."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."

You should prefer con’s statistics --- their studies are filled with ideological biasesEasterbrook, a contributing editor at The Atlantic, 13(Gregg, “How the NFL Fleeces Taxpayers: Taxpayers fund the stadiums, antitrust law doesn't apply to broadcast deals, the league enjoys nonprofit status, and Commissioner Roger Goodell makes $30 million a year. It's time to stop the public giveaways to America's richest sports league—and to the feudal lords who own its teams,” 9-18-13, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/10/how-the-nfl-fleeces-taxpayers/309448/ Y2K)

For politicians eager to embrace sports deals, it's easy to find consulting firms willing to produce glowing "economic impact studies" — even though sports economists nearly unanimously dismiss them as hogwash. For example: Economic Research Associates told the city of Arlington, Texas, that spending $325 million on a new stadium for billionaire oil baron Jerry Jones's Dallas Cowboys would generate $238 million a year in economic activity. Critics immediately pointed out that this merely totaled up all spending that would take place in and around the stadium. Hidden deep in the report was the more meaningful estimate that Arlington would see just $1.8 million a year in new tax revenues while spending $20 million a year on stadium subsidies.

Every credible sources conclude --- sports subsidies don’t produce substantial economic benefitsShultz, a professor @ Hamline University School of Business, 11(David, the editor of the Journal of Public Affairs Education (JPAE), “Dumb and dumber: The folly of taxpayer handouts for professional sports,” 2-10-11, http://www.minnpost.com/community-voices/2011/02/dumb-and-dumber-folly-taxpayer-handouts-professional-sports, Y2K)

Three basic arguments are usedIn general, as one surveys local debates about stadium construction in the United States, three basic arguments are employed to support using public money to build sports stadiums. First, proponents claim that building a new stadium will have a big impact on the economy, generating many new jobs and bringing new businesses to the area. However study after study has demonstrated that advocates of public spending on stadiums consistently exaggerate the benefits of sports to a local economy.

http://www.minnpost.com/community-voices/2011/02/dumb-and-dumber-folly-taxpayer-handouts-professional-sports

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/10/how-the-nfl-fleeces-taxpayers/309448/





A 1996 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report, "Tax-Exempt Bonds and the Economics of Professional Sports Stadiums" (Zimmerman 1996) concluded that sports stadiums represent a small percentage (generally less than 1 percent ) of a local economy. It also stated that there is little real impact or multiplier effect associated with building sports stadiums. By that, if one looks at the economic impact of the dollars invested in sports stadiums, the return is significantly smaller than compared to other dollars invested in something else. Moreover, the building of stadiums merely transfers consumption from one area or one type of leisure activity to another , and overall, sports and stadiums contribute little to the local economy and instead represent an investment that costs the public a lot while failing to return the initial investment. Dollar for dollar, the opportunity costs of investing in sports stadiums is a terrible option if the goal is economic development, job development, or producing new economic development in a community. In short, the nearly $3 billion in sports subsidies it documented produced little, at the cost of over $120,000 per job.Same conclusion: a bad investmentLiterally hundreds of other studies and books — by individuals such as long-time sports economists Arthur T. Johnson in "Minor League Baseball and Economic Development" (1995), Mark Rosentraub in "Major League Losers" (1997), Kenneth Shropshire in "The Sports Franchise Game" (1995), Roger Noll and Andrew Zimbalist in "Sports, Jobs, and Taxes" (1997), and Michael N. Danielson in "Home Team" (1997) — reach the same conclusion: Public support of professional and minor league sports is a bad investment.

There’s no multiplier effects from sports subsidiesZimbalist et al, American economist and Professor of Economics at Smith College, 1997(Andrew Zimbalist, Roger Noll, Economic Professor at Stanford University, Sports, Jobs, & Taxes: Are New Stadiums Worth the Cost? 1997, http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/1997/06/summer-taxes-noll, AM)

Unfortunately, these arguments contain bad economic reasoning that leads to overstatement of the benefits of stadiums. Economic growth takes place when a community's resources—people, capital investments, and natural resources like land—become more productive. Increased productivity can arise in two ways: from economically beneficial specialization by the community for the purpose of trading with other regions or from local value added that is higher than other uses of local workers, land, and investments. Building a stadium is good for the local economy only if a stadium is the most productive way to make capital investments and use its workers.

In our forthcoming Brookings book, Sports, Jobs, and Taxes, we and 15 collaborators examine the local economic development argument from all angles: case studies of the effect of specific facilities, as well as comparisons among cities and even neighborhoods that have and have not sunk hundreds of millions of dollars into sports development. In every case, the conclusions are the same. A new sports facility has an extremely small (perhaps even negative) effect on overall economic activity and employment. No recent facility appears to have earned anything approaching a reasonable return on investment. No recent facility has been self-financing in terms of its impact on net tax revenues. Regardless of whether the unit of analysis is a local neighborhood, a city, or an entire metropolitan area, the economic benefits of sports facilities are de minimus.

As noted, a stadium can spur economic growth if sports is a significant export industry—that is, if it attracts outsiders to buy the local product and if it results in the sale of certain rights (broadcasting, product licensing) to national firms. But, in reality, sports has little effect on regional net exports.

Sports facilities attract neither tourists nor new industry. Probably the most successful export facility is Oriole Park, where about a third of the crowd at every game comes from outside the Baltimore area. (Baltimore's baseball exports are enhanced because it is 40 miles from the nation's capital, which has no major league baseball team.) Even so, the net gain to Baltimore's economy in terms of new jobs and incremental tax revenues is only about $3 million a year—not much of a return on a $200 million investment.

Sports teams do collect substantial revenues from national licensing and broadcasting, but these must be balanced against funds leaving the area. Most professional athletes do not live where they play, so their income is not spent locally. Moreover, players make inflated salaries for only a few years, so they have high savings, which they invest in national firms. Finally, though a new stadium increases attendance, ticket revenues are shared in both baseball and football, so that part of the revenue gain goes to other cities. On balance, these factors are largely offsetting, leaving little or no net local export gain to a community.

One promotional study estimated that the local annual economic impact of the Denver Broncos was nearly $120 million; another estimated that the combined annual economic benefit of Cincinnati's Bengals and Reds was $245 million. Such promotional studies overstate the economic impact of a facility because they confuse gross and net economic effects. Most spending inside a stadium is a substitute for other local recreational spending, such as movies and restaurants. Similarly, most tax collections inside a stadium are substitutes: as other entertainment businesses decline, tax collections from them fall.

http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/1997/06/summer-taxes-noll


Promotional studies also fail to take into account differences between sports and other industries in income distribution. Most sports revenue goes to a relatively few players, managers, coaches, and executives who earn extremely high salaries—all well above the earnings of people who work in the industries that are substitutes for sports. Most stadium employees work part time at very low wages and earn a small fraction of team revenues. Thus, substituting spending on sports for other recreational spending concentrates income, reduces the total number of jobs, and replaces full-time jobs with low-wage, part-time jobs.

A second rationale for subsidized stadiums is that stadiums generate more local consumer satisfaction than alternative investments. There is some truth to this argument. Professional sports teams are very small businesses, comparable to large department or grocery stores. They capture public attention far out of proportion to their economic significance. Broadcast and print media give so much attention to sports because so many people are fans, even if they do not actually attend games or buy sports-related products.

A professional sports team, therefore, creates a "public good" or "externality"—a benefit enjoyed by consumers who follow sports regardless of whether they help pay for it. The magnitude of this benefit is unknown, and is not shared by everyone; nevertheless, it exists. As a result, sports fans are likely to accept higher taxes or reduced public services to attract or keep a team, even if they do not attend games themselves. These fans, supplemented and mobilized by teams, local media, and local interests that benefit directly from a stadium, constitute the base of political support for subsidized sports facilities.

The Role of Monopoly Leagues

While sports subsidies might ow from externalities, their primary cause is the monopolistic structure of sports. Leagues maximize their members' profits by keeping the number of franchises below the number of cities that could support a team. To attract teams, cities must compete through a bidding war, whereby each bids its willingness to pay to have a team, not the amount necessary to make a team viable.

Monopoly leagues convert fans' (hence cities') willingness to pay for a team into an opportunity for teams to extract revenues. Teams are not required to take advantage of this opportunity, and in two cases—the Charlotte Panthers and, to a lesser extent, the San Francisco Giants—the financial exposure of the city has been the relatively modest costs of site acquisition and infrastructural investments. But in most cases, local and state governments have paid over $100 million in stadium subsidy, and in some cases have financed the entire enterprise.

The tendency of sports teams to seek new homes has been intensified by new stadium technology. The rather ordinary cookie-cutter, multipurpose facility of the 1960s and 1970s has given way to the elaborate, single-sport facility that features numerous new revenue opportunities: luxury suites, club boxes, elaborate concessions, catering, signage, advertising, theme activities, and even bars, restaurants, and apartments with a view of the field. A new facility now can add $30 million annually to a team's revenues for a few years after the stadium opens.

Because new stadiums produce substantially more revenues, more cities are now economically viable franchise sites—which explains why Charlotte, Jacksonville, and Nashville have become NFL cities. As more localities bid for teams, cities are forced to offer ever larger subsidies.

Do not stimulate growthSiegfried, Professor of Economics at Vanderbilt University, 2000(John, "The Economics of Sports Facilities and Their Communities," 07-07-14, http://www.uwlax.edu/faculty/anderson/micro-principles/stadiums.pdf, bdg)

More than $21.7 billion will be spent on these 95 stadiums and arenas built or planned since 1990.Few fields of empirical economic research offer virtual unanimity of findings. Yet, independent work on the economic impact of stadiums and arenas has uniformly found that there is no statistically significant positive correlation between sports facility construction and economic development. The conclusion that sports teams and facilities do not stimulate economic growth is surprising to many people. With live telecasting of games, daily coverage on television news and in the sports sections of newspapers, professional sports play a huge role in U.S. culture. Yet sports teams are small businesses. Yearly average team revenues in 1999 are around $55 million in the NHL, $75 million in the NBA, $85 million in MLB and $100 million in the NFL. For a medium-size city like St. Louis, the baseball team accounts for less than 0.3 percent of local economic activity; for a large city like New York, a baseball team contributes less than 0.03 percent of economic output.

Johnson, University of Denver, 11

George Mason Debate2014-2015 [File Name](Garrett, “The Economic Impact of New Stadiums and Arenas on Cities,” University of Denver Sports and Entertainment Law Journal, 7-9-14, http://www.law.du.edu/documents/sports-and-entertainment-law-journal/issues/10/Johnson-Article-Spring-2011.pdf, AM)

Areas are already in bad shape – Public subsidies only encourage bad behaviorMataconis, associate's degree, 2013 (Doug, Despite Bankruptcy, Detroit Subsidizing New Red Wings Stadium, 7-8-2014, http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/despite-bankruptcy-detroit-subsidizing-new-red-wings-stadium/,YAC)

Despite the fact that Detroit’s financial situation is so bad that the city was forced to file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection, plans are still moving forward for a new stadium for the Detroit Red Wings that includes the expenditure of more than $400 million in taxpayer dollars\Detroit’s financial crisis hasn’t derailed the city’s plans to spend more than $400 million in Michigan taxpayer funds on a new hockey arena for the Red Wings.Advocates of the arena say it’s the kind of economic development needed to attract both people and private investment dollars into downtown Detroit. It’s an argument that has convinced Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder and Kevyn Orr, the emergency manager he appointed to oversee the city’s finances, to stick with the plan. Orr said Detroit’s bankruptcy filing won’t halt the arena plans.Detroit city services are already stretched extremely thin. On average, police take about an hour to respond to calls for help, and 40% of street lights are shut off to save money.“If you want people to live in the city, and not just visit to go to games, you have to invest in schools, in having the police to respond to calls,” said Gretchen Whitmer, the Democratic leader in the state senate. “There are so many investments that should trump a sports stadium.”

The Public Decides what they want Melaniphy, PhD, 2013 (John C.,The Impact of Stadiums and Arenas, 7-8-2014, http://www.questia.com/magazine/1P3-32513493/the-impact-of-stadiums-and-arenas, YAC)

The reality of either positive or negative impacts of stadiums has been the subject lately of a great deal of controversy with experts lining up on both sides of the issue. The issue can only be properly addressed by considering the stadium, its location, the major team or teams that will play there and overall utilization. The stadiums and arenas reflect marked differences between baseball, football and basketball attendance and their respective economic impacts. It goes without saying that the team or teams must be at least marginally successful in playing their respective sports and in winning the hearts and minds of the local public. The issue is far more complicated than how it is often viewed. It is not simply dollars and cents, as many would like us to believe. There really is an issue of city image and personal pride. We are a sports crazy country, and it's our tax dollars. In Denver, the community voted new sales taxes to finance the $215,000,000 Coors Field, while they voted down a $32,000,000 bond issue for schools. It does not make sense; however, the people had the opportunity to speak. It was their choice, regardless of what the critics think. In other communities, while the critics complain, the public votes with its wallet. According to a study, The Stadium Binge, published in a special sports section of USA Today (Friday, September 9, 1996), "45 new stadiums will be built in this decade at a cost of over $9 billion." The residents of roughly 45 cities have and or will have their say on this issue, while the critics will continue to grumble. On a personal note, while a city's image can be difficult to define, I live in Chicago and no matter whether I am in Europe, South America, the Middle East or the Far East, everyone wants to know about Michael Jordan. Al Capone may have put Chicago on the map, but Michael Jordan has remade the city's image.Over the years, I have had numerous occasions to address the stadium issue while evaluating the impacts of stadiums throughout the United States and Canada. The focus has been on the impacts of stadiums in or near downtown areas; the value and impacts of Wrigley Field and the Chicago Cubs on their Wrigleyville neighborhood, the City of Chicago, Cook County and State of Illinois; forecasting attendance for numerous public facilities; continuing to evaluate the impact of the proposed new Milwaukee stadium on the surrounding and adjacent properties; and studying the opportunities for restaurants, stores and concessionaires in numerous arenas, amusement parks, airports, schools, universities, etc. I have evaluated the impacts of night versus day baseball and the benefits of singleuser versus multi-user stadiums. I have seen both sides of the issues, the debates, the emotion and the hype. Neither side is ever truly correct; however, both the pros and the cons make salient points regarding the benefits (or lack of) and the costs.

Public subsidies decrease incomes of people in nearby metropolitan areasCoates & Humphreys, PhD, 1997, (Brad & Dennis, The Growth Effects of Sport Franchises, Stadia and Arenas, 7-8-2014, http://papers.ssrn.com/Sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=33240 YAC)

In contrast to other existing studies, we find evidence that some professional sports franchises reduce the level of per capita personal income in metropolitan areas and have no effect on the growth in per capita income, casting doubt on the ability of a new sports franchise or facility to spur economic growth. We also find evidence that results obtained from estimating reduced form relationships, a common practice in the literature, are not robust to alternative statistical model specifications.

http://www.law.du.edu/documents/sports-and-entertainment-law-journal/issues/10/Johnson-Article-Spring-2011.pdf


Job Losses in Arizona City Garofaldo and Waldron, economic policy editor for ThinkProgress.org and economics and sports reporter for Thinkprogress.org, 2012(Pat and Travis, If You Build It, They Might Not Come: The Risky Economics of Sports Stadiums, accessed 07-07-14, http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/09/if-you-build-it-they-might-not-come-the-risky-economics-of-sports-stadiums/260900/, dsk)

By all indications, the Coyotes are more Atlanta than they are Nashville, particularly in the sense that they have yet to be embraced by the local population even during periods of success. "This is hockey in a non-hockey city where the average resident hasn't seen ice outside of a margarita," Matheson said.With the city shedding jobs and cutting services, the logical decision would seem to be to take back the funding it has promised to Coyotes in order to preserve those jobs and programs, a stance taken by city council member Phil Lieberman, who voted against the funding package. "I can use that $15 million [annual payment] for good things for Glendale," Lieberman said. "Open our libraries up again...Replace the 55 cops that we're short right now."But if the city and its residents are desperate to keep the Coyotes in town, they have to understand that doing so comes at a cost that likely won't be replaced -- not by sales tax revenue, not by economic growth, and not by outside spending. When the city subsidizes hockey, it reduces its ability to pay for public safety officials, public transportation, and services upon which its citizens rely.

Doesn’t Create Jobs in Hamilton County, Ohio → leads to other hardshipsGordon, freelance writer and contributor to Sports on Earth, The New Yorker, Deadspin, and Slate, 2013Aaron, “America Has a Stadium Problem,” 07-07-14, http://www.psmag.com/navigation/business-economics/america-has-a-stadium-problem-62665/, dsk)

“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.”

Doesn’t Stimulate Econ Growth OverallSiegfried and Zimbalist, professors in Economics at Vanderbilt University and Smith College respectively, 2000(John and Andrew, “The Economics of Sport Facilities and Their Communities, 7-7-14, http://www.uwlax.edu/faculty/anderson/micro-principles/stadiums.pdf Journal of Economic Perspectives, dsk)

The conclusion that sports teams and facilities do not stimulate economic growth is surprising to many people. With live telecasting of games, daily coverage on television news and in the sports sections of newspapers, professional sports play a huge role in U.S. culture. Yet sports teams are small businesses. Yearly average team revenues in 1999 are around $55 million in the NHL, $75 million in the NBA, $85 million in MLB and $100 million in the NFL. For a medium-size city like St. Louis, the baseball team accounts for less than 0.3 percent of local economic activity; for a large city like New York, a baseball team contributes less than 0.03 percent of economic output.Sports teams typically employ between 70 and 130 people in their front offices.Beyond this, they hire approximately 1000–1500 day-of-game personnel who work in unskilled, low wage, temporary, part-time jobs. An NFL team is assured of playing 10 home games a year (including preseason games). At four hours of work per game, an NFL team provides day-of-game employment for the equivalent of 20 to 30 full-time, year-round jobs. As we shall see, however, it is problematic to attribute even these jobs to the sports team. Of course, the controversy about the economic impact of professional sports teams on their local economy is not just about the teams themselves, but also about how specific local restaurants, hotels, and other businesses might be affected. However, even if one assumes, optimistically, that on average people spend as much outside the sports facility as they do inside, the economic impact of sports teams in proportion to a typical metropolitan economy is diminutive.

George Mason Debate2014-2015 [File Name]Decreases Wages/Not Beneficial WorkersCoates and Humphrey, UMBC Economics Professors, 2003Dennis and Brad, “The Effect of Professional Sports on the Earnings of Individuals: Evidence from Microeconomic Data”, 7-7-14, http://www.umbc.edu/economics/wpapers/wp_03_104.pdf UMBC Economics Department, dsk)

“In this paper we have examined the impact of professional sports on average weekly earnings of a sample of workers in narrow occupational groups drawn from the Current Population Survey March Supplement. These occupational groups are among those that proponents of public funding of professional sports claim will benefit economically from subsidies. The approach here contrasts with that in previous research which focused on aggregate measures of income. However, the results of this study confirm conclusions of earlier research that the overall sports environment is frequently statistically significant as a determinant of earnings and that the predicted mean impact of sports on wages is negative. In this study, the effect of sports is an annual average decrease in inflation adjusted earnings of $47.95 for workers in the sample. However, the results also show that the effects of the sports environment differ across job-types. For example, for workers employed in retail occupations, annual earnings rise on average due to the presence of professional sports. Our results cast further doubt on the idea that professional sports can be an effective economic development tool in metropolitan areas. Although some specific occupational groups clearly benefit from the presence of professional sports franchises and facilities in our sample of 37 cities, it does not appear that workers in other related occupational groups benefit. Instead, workers in these other occupational groups have lower wages as a result of the wider impact of professional sports on the local economy.”


Subsidies BAD --- Economy --- Framing

Sports subsidies get out of control --- causes additional expenditure that are expensiveEitzen, Journalist for Dollar&Sense, 00(Stanley, "Public Teams, Private Profits," 07-08-14, http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2000/0300eitzen.html, bdg)

Sweetheart Deals: And the subsidies don’t end with the cost of the stadium. Fans need to be able to drive to the new facility — so the federal government pays the cost of new roads, overpasses, highway access, and the like. In addition, team owners typically get all or much of the revenue from parking, concessions, and nonsport events that take place in the new arena. Sometimes cities even provide owners with moving expenses, practice facilities, office space, land, and special investment opportunities to entice them to stay or to move their team to the city. Owners are usually allowed to sell the right to name the stadium or arena. For example, Baltimore Ravens owner (and former Cleveland Browns owner) Art Modell will receive $105 million over 20 years, for giving the name "PSINet Stadium" to the facility provided him by the city of Baltimore.

Reverse Welfare: When stadiums are built and paid for by taxpayers, there is a clear transfer of wealth from those taxpayers to owners and players. Urban scholar Mark Rosentraub says that "sales taxes paid by lower-income people produce excess profits that are divided between players and owners, all of whom enjoy salaries about which the taxpayers can only dream."A stadium subsidy, in addition to defraying the owners’ construction or renovation costs, also increases the value of a team, so that when it is sold the owner reaps higher capital gains. In 1993, for example, baseball’s Cleveland Indians had a market value of $81 million. The next year, with the opening of their new Jacobs Field facility, the team’s value immediately jumped to $100 million, then to $125 million by 1996; last year, the team sold for $320 million — a return of 295% in the three years following the new stadium’s debut.Clearly the mayors, governors and legislators who work against welfare to the poor are more than generous with their handouts to the rich. And the wealthy team owners, who favor private enterprise and marketplace solutions in other business activities, insist on subsidies to maintain their lucrative professional franchises. Faced with what they consider inadequate subsidies, they’ll move their teams to new localities, where the public is more generous. The residents of America’s cities continue to put up with this hypocrisy — though by pouring money into a team, they actually make it less likely that many of them will be able to afford to see the games in person. The price of tickets — which is going up in any case — rises even faster when a new stadium is built. Thus the people who helped pay for the shiny new stadium may end up being priced out of entering it.


Subsidies BAD --- Economy --- A2: Teams Will Relocate

Cities will never lose the teamsEasterbrook, a contributing editor at The Atlantic, 13(Gregg, “How the NFL Fleeces Taxpayers: Taxpayers fund the stadiums, antitrust law doesn't apply to broadcast deals, the league enjoys nonprofit status, and Commissioner Roger Goodell makes $30 million a year. It's time to stop the public giveaways to America's richest sports league—and to the feudal lords who own its teams,” 9-18-13, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/10/how-the-nfl-fleeces-taxpayers/309448/ Y2K)

Yet the amount of public money being spent on sports facilities continues to rise. According to Harvard urban planner Judith Grant Long, cities, states and counties spent a record $6.5 billion on stadiums and arenas in the 1990s, then shattered that mark the following decade with an additional $10.1 billion — a 31 percent increase after accounting for inflation. And that's not counting hidden subsidies like lease breaks, property tax exemptions and the use of tax-exempt government bonds, which Long estimates have added at least another 10 percent to the public's tab.Why do new sports facilities have such a hold on local elected officials? The simplest explanation is fear: because team owners can choose new cities but cities can't choose new teams — thanks to the leagues' government-sanctioned monopolies over franchise placement — mayors feel they must offer owners anything they want . "Politicians continue to believe that it would be political disaster to lose a team on their watch," Baade says.Actually losing a team, though, is extremely rare . Most team owners prefer to keep plugging for new stadiums in their hometowns even after their bluff has been called. Florida Marlins president David Samson first declared in 2004 that a new stadium bill "has to happen in the next week. And if not, we'll move on." He repeated similar threats for four years, until the city of Miami and Miami-Dade County finally agreed to kick in more than $478 million for a new stadium with a retractable roof.

Teams will not relocateDeMause, Journalist for The Nation, 11(Neil, "Why do Mayors Love Sports Stadiums," 07-07-14, http://www.thenation.com/article/162400/why-do-mayors-love-sports-stadiums#, bdg)

Why do new sports facilities have such a hold on local elected officials? The simplest explanation is fear: because team owners can choose new cities but cities can’t choose new teams—thanks to the leagues’ government-sanctioned monopolies over franchise placement—mayors feel they must offer owners anything they want. “Politicians continue to believe that it would be political disaster to lose a team on their watch,” Baade says.Actually losing a team, though, is extremely rare. Most team owners prefer to keep plugging for new stadiums in their hometowns even after their bluff has been called. Florida Marlins president David Samson first declared in 2004 that a new stadium bill “has to happen in the next week. And if not, we’ll move on.” He repeated similar threats for four years, until the city of Miami and Miami-Dade County finally agreed to kick in more than $478 million for a new stadium with a retractable roof.




Subsidies BAD --- Budget --- Expensive

The significant percentage of expenses provided by public sourcesF PhD 2012 (J, Them’s that Got will Get, 7-8-2014, http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2012/05/economics-sport,YAC)

On Monday, Minnesota's governor, Mark Dayton, signed into law a remarkable deal authorizing a new stadium for the hapless Vikings. The stadium is projected to cost $975m, of which the Vikings will pay less than half. The rest ($498m) will come from the state, through an expansion of gambling revenue, and from a Minneapolis hospitality tax. The Falcons want a new stadium to replace the admittedly dreary Georgia Dome; it is projected to cost nearly $1 billion, $300m of which will come from taxpayers. The Rams want a $700m upgrade to their 17-year-old, publicly-funded field; St Louis wants to cap public contributions at $60m.

Subsidy Amounts for Rutgers Athletics increaseSargeant and Berkowitz, 2014 (Keith-A Home News Tribune staff writer, and Steve-USA Today projects/database reporter/editor, “Subsidy of Rutgers athletics jumps 67.9% to $47 million,” 7-8-14, http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/2014/02/23/rutgers-university-athletics-subsidy-jumps/5761371/, MB)

Rutgers receives approximately 21 percent its revenue from state appropriations, which means taxpayers fund part of the school's overall operating budget. According to the 2013 FY financial report, Rutgers' $78,989,475 budget made up approximately 4 percent of the university's nearly $2 billion allocations fund.The report, obtained in response to an open-records request from USA TODAY Sports and Indiana University's National Sports Journalism Center, shows that the Rutgers athletics department received nearly $47 million in subsidies from the university's allocations fund to make up for a shortfall in the approximately $79 million athletics budget during the 2012-13 season. It's an increase of 67.9% from the $27.9 million subsidy the athletics department received in 2012.

NFL can’t be classified as a non-profit organization with a commissioner who makes more than 30 million a yearNPR Staff, 2014 (“The NFL; Big Business With Big Tax Breaks,” 7-8-2014, http://www.npr.org/2014/01/18/263767372/the-nfl-big-business-with-big-tax-breaks, MB)

The NFL is registered as a not-for-profit, tax-exempt organization — even with a commissioner who makes nearly $30 million a year. From the tax code to big stadium deals, critics say the NFL is getting millions of public dollars that would be better spent elsewhere.He found an audience in Arlington, a city just outside of Dallas. The price tag for the public was $325 million. (Jones was responsible for the balance of the money for the $1.2 billion stadium. Dallas News says Jones' contribution "was paid with commercial loans, league funding and proceeds from a ticket and parking tax.")

With a useful life span of 30 years, and an investment of 21.7 billion, the return on the investment does not justify the investmentSiegfried and Zimbalist, 2014 (John-B.S. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY; Economics (1967) M.A. Pennsylvania State University, Univ. Park, PA; Economics (1969) Ph.D. University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI; Economics (1972), and Andrew-Robert A. Woods Professor of Economics at Smith College, “The Economics of Sports Facilities and their Communities,” 7-8-14, http://www.uwlax.edu/faculty/anderson/micro-principles/stadiums.pdf, MB)

More than $21.7 billion will be spent on these 95 stadiums and arenas built or planned since 1990. Public coffers will contribute close to two-thirds of this amount. Table 1 provides historical evidence on expenditures on new sports facilities and the level of public support, while Table 2 reports expenditures on refurbished sports facilities. The building boom initiated during the 1990s reflects a sports facility construction cycle. It follows the 1960–75 cycle of cookie-cutter stadiums. Since sports facilities seem to exhibit a useful economic life of around 30 years, we can anticipate the beginning of a new cycle around the year 2020.

George Mason Debate2014-2015 [File Name]Taxpayers pay for half of the stadium, and then continuously pay for services within the stadium, without a shred of gain from the facility itselfPerekhov, 2012 (Vitaliy-Masters Student, “Public Funding for Professional Students,” 7-8-14, http://www.billtrack50.com/blog/uncategorized/public-funding-for-professional-sports/, MB)

Minnesota just built a new baseball stadium for the hometown Twins. Target Field is luxurious and spacious and the perfect confines for a competitive baseball team. The Minnesota Vikings, however do not play baseball and thus need a stadium of their own, or so they say. The Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome housed both teams for upwards of 25 years, but the Twins moved and the Vikings lease on the stadium has run out. The team had lobbied the state legislature for public funding for the stadium, claiming that the Metrodome was no longer profitable enough for the team to compete. Thus, a $975 million stadium will be built in its place, with just over half the funds coming from taxpayers. The passing of HF 2810, was done in the belief that “the expenditure of public money for this purpose is necessary and serves a public purpose.”

The Economic gain from a sports facility, over a live span of 30 years, does not justify over 57% of the funding for the facility coming from taxpayersZaretsky, 2001 (Adam-Journalist for The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, “Should Cities Pay for Sports Facilities,” 7-8-14, https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/re/articles/?id=468, MB)

Between 1987 and 1999, 55 stadiums and arenas were refurbished or built in the United States at a cost of more than $8.7 billion.1 This figure, however, includes only the direct costs involved in the construction or refurbishment of the facilities, not the indirect costs—such as money cities might spend on improving or adding to the infrastructure needed to support the facilities. Of the $8.7 billion in direct costs, about 57 percent—around $5 billion—was financed with taxpayer money. Since 1999, other stadiums have been constructed or are in the pipeline (see table below for some examples), much of the cost of which will also be supported with tax dollars. Between $14 billion and $16 billion is expected to be spent on these post-'99 stadiums and arenas, with somewhere between $9 billion and $11 billion of this amount coming from public coffers. The use of public funds to lure or keep teams begs several questions, the foremost of which is, "Are these good investments for cities?"

Evidence: Taxpayer contribution to Texas Team (Con)Kurilof, Writer at Bloomberg, 12 (Aaron, “In stadium building spree US taxpayers lose 4 billion,” 07-07-14, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-05/in-stadium-building-spree-u-s-taxpayers-lose-4-billion.html, AW)

New York Giants fans will cheer on their team against the Dallas Cowboys at tonight’s National Football League opener in New Jersey. At tax time, they’ll help pay for the opponents’ $1.2 billion home field in Texas.

Evidence: Taxes and Public Funding for Miller Park and MetLife Stadium is Enormous (Con)Cohen, Writer at Athletic Business magazine, 12 (Andrew, “How stadium construction costs reached the billions”, 07-07-14 http://www.athleticbusiness.com/stadium-arena/how-stadium-construction-costs-reached-the-billions.html, AW)

1.6 billion On MetLife StadiumIn some circles, outrage accompanied the 2001 opening of Miller Park, the Milwaukee Brewers' new home. The state senator who cast the deciding vote in favor of a sales-tax increase to pay the public's $290 million portion of the construction cost had been recalled in a public referendum and three workers had died after a crane collapsed, delaying the stadium's scheduled opening by a year. The stadium's fan-shaped retractable roof proved problematic, necessitating a $13 million fix paid for by a settlement reached between the Miller Park Stadium District and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries of America, averting further litigation. That one signature element was a prime culprit in the stadium's ultimate $400 million construction cost, at the time the second-highest price tag for a new professional baseball stadium.

Evidence: Amount Taxpayers have Contributed Towards Different Sports Buildings (Con)Dart, Economist Writer, 14 (Andrew, “Omnibus Eastmarks,” 7-7-14, http://www.akdart.com/sports.html, AW)

• $750,000 for the Baseball Hall of Fame• $202,500 to the Suffolk Sports Hall of Fame, Sports Research Center in Patchogue, New York for facilities renovations• $405,000 to the Staten Island Soccer League of New York for facilities construction• $800,000 to the New York Olympic Regional Development Authority for facilities construction for the Mount Van Hoevenberg Olympic Sports Complex• $90,000 for the City of Waterbury, Connecticut for an economic feasibility study focused on construction of a multi-purpose sports facility

George Mason Debate2014-2015 [File Name]Evidence: Public Dollars Spent into 55 New Stadiums in the US (Con)Zaretsky, Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 01 (Adam, “Should cities pay for sport facilities?” 07-08-14, https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/re/articles/?id=468, AW)

Between 1987 and 1999, 55 stadiums and arenas were refurbished or built in the United States at a cost of more than $8.7 billion.1 This figure, however, includes only the direct costs involved in the construction or refurbishment of the facilities, not the indirect costs—such as money cities might spend on improving or adding to the infrastructure needed to support the facilities. Of the $8.7 billion in direct costs, about 57 percent—around $5 billion—was financed with taxpayer money. Since 1999, other stadiums have been constructed or are in the pipeline (see table below for some examples), much of the cost of which will also be supported with tax dollars. Between $14 billion and $16 billion is expected to be spent on these post-'99 stadiums and arenas, with somewhere between $9 billion and $11 billion of this amount coming from public coffers. The use of public funds to lure or keep teams begs several questions, the foremost of which is, "Are these good investments for cities?"The short answer to this question is "No." When studying this issue, almost all economists and development specialists (at least those who work independently and not for a chamber of commerce or similar organization) conclude that the rate of return a city or metropolitan area receives for its investment is generally below that of alternative projects. In addition, evidence suggests that cities and metro areas that have invested heavily in sports stadiums and arenas have, on average, experienced slower income growth than those that have not.Estimated Cost and Contribution (millions of dollars)Team or City Total Public Dollars Percent PublicCincinnati Reds 280 280 100Seattle Seahawks 430 300 70St. Louis Cardinals 370 250 68San Diego Padres 411 275 67Chicago Bears 587 387 66Houston (new NFL) 310 195 63Philadelphia Eagles 395 234 59Philadelphia Phillies 345 174 50Boston Red Sox 550 200 36New England Patriots 325 0 0

Evidence: Bills from the NFL to Taxpayers (Con)Easterbrook. Writer at the Atlantic, 13 (Gregg, “How the NFL fleeces taxpayers,” 07-07-14 http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/10/how-the-nfl-fleeces-taxpayers/309448/, AW)

Taxpayers in Hamilton County, Ohio, which includes Cincinnati, were hit with a bill for $26 million in debt service for the stadiums where the NFL’s Bengals and Major League Baseball’s Reds play, plus another $7 million to cover the direct operating costs for the Bengals’ field. Pro-sports subsidies exceeded the $23.6 million that the county cut from health-and-human-services spending in the current two-year budget (and represent a sizable chunk of the $119 million cut from Hamilton County schools). Press materials distributed by the Bengals declare that the team gives back about $1 million annually to Ohio community groups. Sound generous? That’s about 4 percent of the public subsidy the Bengals receive annually from Ohio taxpayers.

Evidence: Over 73 Cities Force Taxpayers to Pay for Stadiums (Con)Bast, President of the Heartland Institute, 90 (Joseph, “Subsidizing Sports Stadium: Is it worth?” 07-08-14, http://heartland.org/sites/all/modules/custom/heartland_migration/files/pdfs/8086.pdf, AW)

According to economist Robert Baade (Lake Forest College, Illinois), there are more stadiums in the U.S. than there are teams to fill them. In 1987, 20 of the country’s 60 largest cities were planning to build new stadiums. Another 13 smaller cities had similar plans. With all these new stadiums under construction, professional sports teams are in a buyer's market, and they've been taking advantage of it. It is common practice now for professional teams to insist on free rent, a significant percentage of each game’s ticket sales, and a share of parking and concession revenues. Most cities negotiate contracts that leave taxpayers holding the bag if attendance is below expectations. Taxpayers in cities with public stadiums are sopping up the red ink spilled by teams that can? Even cover their stadium’s operating costs; much less return to taxpayers the cost of building these domed and landscaped palaces. Professor Dean Bairn of Pepperdine University has carefully studied the profit and loss statements of sports stadiums around the country. He analyzed financial data for 14 stadiums for which complete information was available. Between the time of their construction and today, 13 of those 14 stadiums have cost taxpayers (in capital costs and operating expenses) more than they have earned. Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium has posted losses of $3.4 million; Jack Murphy Stadium has cost taxpayers in San Diego $8.7 million, while RFK Stadium has cost taxpayers in Washington, DC over $9 million. The New Orleans Superdome has cost taxpayers an amazing $70 million. The only profitable stadium Dr. Bairn could find was Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, which


has earned about $2 million above the cost of taxpayer-funded road and utility improvements. Dodger Stadium was privately built, and since then it has been privately owned and privately managed. Dr. Bairn estimates that taxpayers nationwide have lost $136 million on subsidies to sports stadiums. He concludes that “the massive costs of modern facilities make it very unlikely that municipally built stadiums will earn enough to cover debt service expenditures regularly enough to return a profit to the city for building the stadium. “” What an understatement!


Subsidies BAD --- Budget --- Trade-Off

Sports subsidies trade-off with other public servicesGarofalo, Economic Policy Editor for ThinkProgress.org, 12(Pat, “If You Build It, They Might Not Come: The Risky Economics of Sports Stadiums,” 7-7-14, http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/09/if-you-build-it-they-might-not-come-the-risky-economics-of-sports-stadiums/260900/ Y2K)

With the city shedding jobs and cutting services, the logical decision would seem to be to take back the funding it has promised to Coyotes in order to preserve those jobs and programs, a stance taken by city council member Phil Lieberman, who voted against the funding package. "I can use that $15 million [annual payment] for good things for Glendale," Lieberman said. "Open our libraries up again...Replace the 55 cops that we're short right now."But if the city and its residents are desperate to keep the Coyotes in town, they have to understand that doing so comes at a cost that likely won't be replaced -- not by sales tax revenue, not by economic growth, and not by outside spending. When the city subsidizes hockey, it reduces its ability to pay for public safety officials , public transportation , and services upon which its citizens rely.That's a choice the city is free to make, of course, but it shouldn't pretend that the mere presence of the Coyotes is an economic investment. Doing so simply enables a further transfer of public dollars to a private enterprise, without much hope for a return.




Subsidies BAD --- Sports Diplomacy

Sports Diplomacy Wastes TaxesCoburn, U.S. Senator, 2012(Tom, “Athletes’ Overseas Vacations - (Department of State) 5.5 Million: http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?a=Files.Serve&File_id=b7b23f66-2d60-4d5a-8bc5-8522c7e1a40e Wastebook 2012, 7-9-14, dsk)

“SportsUnited is touted by the Department of State as being the premier sports exchange program for what the department calls “sports diplomacy.” Through this initiative, the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs sends American professional athletes and coaches all around the world to “conduct drills, lead team building sessions, and engage youth in a dialogue on the importance of education, health, and respect for diversity.” Taxpayers will spend [spent] $5.5 million on SportsUnited this year [in 2012]. Since 2005, the United States has sent over 220 athletes to more than 50 countries. Taxpayers have sent Major League Soccer player Tony Sanneh to Ethiopia, NBA players like Dikembe Mutumbo and George Gervin to Sudan and India, and a former WNBA star to China. SportsUnited also brings athletes from other countries to the United States as part of their Sport Visitors program. The program has brought nearly 1,000 international visitors since 2003. For example, the government paid for Tunisian swimmers’ trip to the U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials this summer. Taxpayer dollars also paid for track and field athletes to travel from the Caribbean to Oregon and beach volleyball players from Russia to southern California. In our current fiscal climate, investing scarce resources in overseas trips for high-paid, jet- setting professional athletes should not be a high priority for the federal government”


Subsidies BAD --- Urban Sprawl BAD

Public subsidies create urban sprawlRasmussen, 2014(Spencer, The Holdout Problem, Urban Sprawl, and Eminent Domain, http://sites.duke.edu/urbaneconomics/?p=1088, 03-1-14, AM)Purpose: To acknowledge the holdout problem, which is a type of land market failure, that contributes to urban sprawl by creating a bias towards the fringes of cities for large land developments

The Holdout Problem: “is a form of monopoly power that potentially arises in the course of land assembly. Once assembly begins, individual owners, knowing their land is essential to the completion of the project, can hold out for prices in excess of their opportunity costs” or “individual owners, realizing that they can impose substantial costs on the developer, seek prices well in excess of their true reservation prices.”A holdout problem must require assembly, which is the need for at least two distinct properties for a development.Result: Large-scale projects that require assembly, like housing developments, parks and open spaces, stadiums or shopping malls, will have high bargaining costs. This will create incentives for developers to look for land where ownership is less dispersed, which will minimize assembly. This will lead to these large building projects taking place on the fringes of cities leading to unnecessary urban sprawl In order to combat urban sprawl…

i. Developers can maintain their secrecy about projects by utilizing dummy buyers to help acquire assemblies. This would be useful because sellers would not know that a single buyer is attempting all of the land in a certain area. This is more difficult for government-backed projects because they often require openness.ii. Governments can create incentives or subsidies for building in city centers or disincentives for building in the suburbs. The justification for this can come from redevelopment of central areas.iii. The use of eminent domain, but this often raises issues about whether or not a private organization should be able to benefit from the use of eminent domain.The holdout problem “represents a situation where landowners whose property is essential to the completion of some large development project to seek to block completion of the project in an effort to extract monopoly rents” This biases development away from areas where ownership is the most dispersed, city centers, and towards areas where ownership is more concentrated, the fringes or suburbs of cities


Subsidies BAD --- Urban Sprawl BAD

Urban sprawl is bad --- most Americans oppose and causes negative economic impactPope, Executive Director of the Sierra Club. Based in San Francisco, No Date(Carl, Urban Sprawling the pros and cons, http://perc.org/articles/urban-sprawl-pro-and-con, AM)

On Election Day 1998, Americans from California to New Jersey voted to slow growth, save forests and farmlands, and rein in development. In an unmistakable signal of rising saliency and political power, growth and land-use measures appeared on more than 200 state and county ballots nationwide.

In New Jersey, voters approved a 10-year plan to raise $1 billion to preserve 1 million acres of open space.In Ventura County, California, voters overwhelmingly supported an initiative to prevent local planners from rezoning farmland and open space without voter approval.In Florida, voters decided to extend the Florida bond authority to protect public land from sprawl.

What do millions of Americans know that Randall Holcombe's defense of sprawl ignores? To begin with, Americans are reacting to the actual impact of sprawl on their lives, not to Holcombe's abstract economic argument that it could be good.

In fact, it turns out not to be good. Sprawl is a ubiquitous problem, and Americans-whether they live in urban Atlanta or rural Washtenaw County, Michigan -are deciding that current planning and development practices come with more costs than benefits. Development plans that may have worked fifty years ago are no longer the answer for today's growth.

There are the obvious environmental costs of sprawl-lost open space and natural habitats, increased air pollution from more traffic, depleted water quality caused by urban runoff. Holcombe's argument that "low densities" help the environment shows an abysmal shallowness. He seems to assume that if yards were not filled with trees and grass, there would be less vegetation in the metropolitan area. In reality, of course, sprawl neighborhoods typically replace farmland or open space that was 100 percent vegetation and permeable soils and replace them with neighborhoods that are 30 percent or more concrete, asphalt, or structure with unvegetated, impermeable surfaces.

The worst environmental impact of sprawl is the least avoidable. Sprawl, by definition, fragments landscapes-and fragmented landscapes are the biggest threat to America's wildlife heritage. Sprawl is very good for the most adaptable and common creatures-raccoons, deer, sparrows, starlings, sea gulls-all do well-and devastating for wildlife that is more dependent upon privacy, seclusion, and protection from such predators as dogs and cats.

There are obvious qualityof- life problems caused by sprawl-more time caught in traffic caused by auto-dependent lives, abandoned urban communities, remote and isolated suburban neighborhoods.

But sprawl has an economic cost, too. Tax policies contribute to the public's growing dissatisfaction with sprawl. American taxpayers are actually subsidizing the extent and pace of sprawl through local, state, and federal spending, which increases to fund new development. That means a choice between more taxes or less spending in other deserving areas.

Some advocates of sprawl argue, "Well, then just get rid of the subsidies." Holcombe blithely opines that "it is the responsibility of local governments to see that the costs of water, sewer, roads, and so forth are charged to development."

I wonder what planet he lives on. When localities try to charge developers even a fraction of the true costs, those developers and other sprawl advocates fight back fiercely. In California efforts to charge new developments the full costs of new water supplies, which are far greater than those of the more efficient reservoirs built first, have run into tremendous resistance. In Alabama and New York developers are trying to hold on to federally subsidized flood insurance on the ground that it is a "right." The reality is that if we really got rid of the subsidies to sprawl, we would also get rid of sprawl.

The sums involved in the subsidies are huge. In Fairfax County, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C., the 1997 budget of $1.8 billion ran a deficit of $146 million. In nearby Prince William County, taxpayers spend $3,838 to provide services to a single household, but only receive $2,150. A report released last month by Rutgers University looked at the costs of sprawl to South Florida. Adding up the price tags on new land development, new roads, and new infrastructure, the report found that sprawl in South Florida alone is costing an astounding $6.15 billion.


Holcombe does not cite a single case in which the kind of low-density sprawl he defends occurred in the absence of massive public subsidies. He doesn't because he can't. There are no such examples.

It is not accidental that in the last era of metropolitan growth prior to the massive federal and state subsidies for highways, sewers, etc., the development pattern that emerged was of compact suburban developments with mixed use, light and heavy rail transit, and an almost total absence of leapfrog and strip development-America's streetcar suburbs from the 1900Ð 1925 era.

Taken together, these factors are fueling local action and a national debate. Americans are demanding common-sense solutions and smarter growth.

Fortunately, there are at least three options that provide guidance for urban growth planners charged with preparing plans for future growth:

The first option is purchasing open space and farmland for preservation. Citizens in Peninsula Township in Northwest Michigan recently voted to pay farmers to keep farming rather than sell their land to developers for subdivision. Voters in Austin, Texas, supported an increase in water rates to raise money to protect thousands of acres of environmentally sensitive land around the city. Such purchase programs, ideally, could be financed from the windfall profits made by landowners who benefit from new publicly financed infrastructure -those around a newThe second option growth planners should utilize is marking and promoting urban growth boundaries (UGBs). Oregon and Washington states have blazed trails in this area by requiring all communities to design long-term UGBs. Portland, Oregon, has had an urban growth boundary in place since the 1970s. While Portland is one of the most popular cities in America and has witnessed significant population growth, its urban growth boundary has preserved open space around Portland and helped make Portland one of the world's most livable cities.The third option planners should pursue is reinvestment in urban areas and revitalization of existing towns and cities. In 1997 Maryland enhanced its existing planning requirements with Smart Growth legislation, which promotes state funding to priority growth areas such as existing municipalities and enterprise zones.

Taken together, these three options for controlling growth will help alleviate the costs and consequences of new development.

Holcombe argues that "left to its own devices, development will occur in a decentralized manner, which will usually lead different types of activity to be conveniently located in relation to one another." This fascinating argument overlooks hundreds of years of urban history in which development, left to its own devices, prior to the era of either zoning or governmental subsidies, followed anything but a decentralized pattern.

Indeed, the classic original argument for both regulation and subsidy in urban landscapes was that, left to its own devices, development was too centralized and intense for human welfare. Freeways, zoning laws, and urban renewal were all developed to overcome the "natural" tendency of development to concentrate and cluster.

If there is any one constant in our history, it is our nation's ability to learn from our mistakes, to change with the times, to try something "new and improved." We have come to a new day in national growth policy. The economic and social benefits of urban renewal far outweigh the national drain accompanying sprawl. Americans everywhere are promoting a new approach to community planning, and the time has come for the planners to catch up with the public.

Urban sprawl has a negative impact on rural community developmentTheobald, Ph.D. Woods-Beals Professor of Urban and. Rural Education at Buffalo State College, 14(Paul, Districts On The Edge: The Impact of Urban Sprawl on A Rural Community, n/a http://jrre.vmhost.psu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/5-2_8.pdf, AM)


*** Pro


Subsidies GOOD --- Economy

CSU stadium brings surrounding areas fundingLyell, BA Degree, 2014 (Kelly, Fort Collins Chamber Announces Support of CSU stadium, 7-8-2014, http://www.coloradoan.com/story/news/local/csu/2014/06/03/fort-collins-chamber-announces-support-csu-stadium/9927401/ , YAC)

May cited a recent economic impact study prepared by Icon Venue Group, which was selected by CSU as the project manager for the proposed $254 million stadium, that estimated construction of the stadium would have a $72 million impact on the local economy. The report said continued use of the facility would generate "at least $40 million to the local economy above and beyond what is generated by events at Hughes Stadium.Prospect, College Avenue, the Campus West area along West Elizabeth. Those areas will all benefit.

Subsidies increases housing valuesRascoff, Real estate marketing examiner, 2009(Spencer, Do sports stadiums increase value of nearby homes?, 07-13-09, http://www.examiner.com/article/do-sports-stadiums-increase-value-of-nearby-homes, AM)

The Midsummer Classic is finally upon us. This year, St. Louis will host the 2009 Major League Baseball All-Star game on Tuesday, July 14, showcasing the new Busch Stadium (above) that opened in 2006 (watch this interesting time-lapse photography of the new Busch Stadium being built adjacent to the old one). The $346 million stadium was, remarkably, built without any government-funding assistance (today, virtually all parks are subsidized by local governments). The last stadium that was not government-assisted was Turner Field in Atlanta, which opened in 1999. Before that, we have to go all the way back to 1962 when Dodger Stadium was completed. Fenway Park and Wrigley Field round out the list of parks that were not government-assisted.

A common argument made for government funding is that ball parks increase the vitality of the neighborhood. I did a bit of research and found that there have been six ballparks built since 1996 that were built in a neighborhood that did not previously have a stadium. St. Louis is not included in the list since the new ballpark was built in the same place as Busch Memorial Stadium. For the purposes of the study I used the ZIP code of the ballpark rather than neighborhood to get a more meaningful sample size.

They are:

The San Francisco Giants’ AT&T ParkThe Arizona Diamondbacks’ Chase FieldThe Detroit Tigers’ Comerica ParkThe Washington Nationals’ Nationals ParkThe Houston Astros’ Minute Maid ParkThe San Diego Padres’ PETCO ParkI wanted to see the effect of a new ballpark on the values of surrounding homes. So I compared the relative rate of growth home values using the Zillow Home Value Index (ZHVI) of the city, and then of the ZIP code that’s home to the shiny new ballpark. This let me see if home values performed better in the specific ZIP code than in the city as a whole.

I started from the year before the stadium was built. So if it was opened in 2000, my first comparison was the change from 1999 to 2000. This “first” year, as may be expected, showed almost zero difference between the two rates of growth — 0.04% to be exact.

However, when looking at the three years since the park’s completion, the area surrounding the new ballpark outpaced the ZHVI in the city as a whole by an average of 1.1% per year. This may not sound like a lot, but it has the effect of increasing the average ZHVI by almost $6,700 more than it would have presumably increased without the addition of a new stadium. Or, as I prefer to think of it, thanks to that new stadium, your house increased in value just a bit less than the cost of a single premium Yankees’ ticket per year! The average ZIP code in this study had about 8,000 households in it, so that increases the total worth of the local region by about $54 million over three years.

The growth seems to slow down after this point, though still outpacing the “neutral” city slightly. It projects out that after about eight years, the average ZHVI has outpaced the rest of the city by $7,900, or $63 million total dollars in the value of the local real estate market. Looks like in years 4-8 you’ll be in the bleacher seats!


This seems to make intuitive sense. In the first few years after completion there is likely a significant amount of investment in the local area from both businesses and in new real estate which raises the desirability and thus pricing of the neighborhood. Over time, this business remains, but the area reaches a saturation point beyond which significant future growth is limited. However, the area remains an improved and more desirable place to live than previously was the case, and thus holds this increased value as well as or better than the surrounding area.

Over the last decade the average stadium has cost $470M with local governments funding an average of $230 million (49%) for the project. Based on property tax revenue increases alone, I wouldn’t say the investment by governments is a home run, but it does seem that the theory of “If you build it, the slightly richer will come” is a hit.

Minneapolis Vikings stadium funding is rising, and so is the economyRoper & Kaszuba, MD, 2014 (Eric & Mike, Minneapolis’ slice of stadium funding could jump, 7-8-2014, http://www.startribune.com/politics/statelocal/149761315.html,YAC)

Minneapolis' contribution to a new Vikings stadium could become millions more than city officials have publicly revealed if local sales tax revenue increases faster than expected.Mayor R.T. Rybak's administration has said the city's contribution of local sales taxes to a new stadium on the Metrodome site will amount to approximately $338 million for capital and operations over 30 years, or $675 million when including interest costs. But a provision in the stadium bill raises that figure if the local economy booms.The city's contribution could reach $890 million if tax revenue grows by 5 percent each year for 30 years, based on a Star Tribune analysis of figures provided by the city's chief financial officer, Kevin Carpenter. In that scenario, the city would also be left with more money to spend on the convention center and economic development.

Public subsidies bring positive emotions and positive tourist influxAHLFELDT, BA, 2010 (Gabriel, Stadium Architecture and Urban Development from the Perspective of Urban Economics, 7-8-2014, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2010.00908.x/full, YAC)

Sports administrators and politicians frequently claim that stadia and the sports events associated with them have beneficial effects on the economy. Surveys compiled before the construction or installation regularly demonstrate this. A case in point is the 2006 Soccer World Cup in Germany, for which various banks, organizations and universities tendered their expertise. Positive effects such as a long-term increase in the number of visitors, the establishment of new industries and so on are claimed for the period following the event, but in most cases the claims do not have the back-up of appropriate data. The event itself took place in the favorable context of a good party atmosphere throughout the country engendered by the unexpected success of the German national team — but there has been disillusionment over its economic effects. Econometric studies investigating the effects of the construction of sports facilities or events on the basis of statistical time series, paint a typical picture of the ‘paradoxical’ effect of sport on revenue and employment for the 2006 World Cup.1 In only a few cases has it been possible to demonstrate positive surges in statistical terms.2

Public Subsidies have a positive effect on architecture and Urban Design AHLFELDT, BA, 2010 (Gabriel, Stadium Architecture and Urban Development from the Perspective of Urban Economics, 7-8-2014, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2010.00908.x/full, YAC)

The long-term effects, often only slightly positive ones, may be related to an aspect that has frequently been ignored: architectural quality and urban design. While the German World Cup venues are full of technical innovations and meet stringent requirements for comfort and safety, their design generally remains conventional and ‘functional’. In contrast, international examples show how unconventional, sometimes iconic, stadium architecture can be used to create new landmarks and boost successful municipal development policies. The first empirical evidence in this regard shows that architecture contributes to more than the business economy. When a structure generates positive spillovers for the local community or neighborhood, the use of public funds to cover the additional costs that arise through adopting an unconventional stadium architecture may be justifiable in economic terms. This dimension is of high actuality, particularly with regard to the ambitious plans for the forthcoming sporting events in South Africa (World Cup 2010) and London (Olympics 2012).The recent urban design literature suggests that architecture and urban design are experiencing a rise in significance in a globalizing economy as cities increasingly compete for tourists, firms and qualified workforce (Gospodini, 2002; Sklair, 2005). We approach this phenomenon from the perspective of urban economics in that we are searching for empirical evidence that allows the impact of the built environment to be quantified by means of economic indicators. We focus on the current transition in international stadium architecture, demonstrating important trends such as the use of iconic elements, since the typically large public subsidies for stadium construction call for a maximization of public benefits.

George Mason Debate2014-2015 [File Name]Public Investments Create JobsStephens, writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 2012(Ron, Public Funding For New Sports Stadium?, accessed 07-07-14, http://blogs.ajc.com/atlanta-forward/2012/11/21/public-funding-for-new-sports-stadium/, dsk)

“People have asked me why the public should invest approximately $300 million in a stadium for the [Georgia] Falcons. I tell them that they are looking at it backward: The Falcons are going to invest about $700 million in a stadium for Georgia. That stadium will be an asset of the state and will generate economic benefits long after the public investment is recouped.A $300 million public investment, even though it will only be levied on visitors to Atlanta, seems like a lot of money, but consider the return. This stadium will add more than 4,500 jobs to our state’s economy and generate more than $400 million in economic impact to the state during construction. NCAA President Mark Emmert recently noted that a new stadium in Atlanta “clearly … would be advantageous” in luring future marquee events. He also said that we are facing increased competition for these types of events.”

Logical Reasoning/ Logos: Indirect Employment due to New Stadiums (Pro)Geraint, Michigan University Researcher, 00 (John, “Stadium Subsidies,” 07-07-14, http://www.umich.edu/~econdev/stadium_subsidy/ AW)

New sports stadiums usually create jobs. Though many stadiums simply replace older facilities in another part of town, employment is usually increased at new facilities since new elaborate stadiums tend to require more staff, and prove to be more successful at increasing net expenditures originating from outside the immediate geographic area. These new expenditures minimally increase direct employment, such as stadium and franchise staff, but can significantly boost indirect employment serving neighboring shops, hotels, restaurants, and transportation. The specific local and regional job multipliers related to new stadium are highly contested, though it is clear that new stadiums tend to successfully attract spending from those outside of the region and create some new local employment. Proponents argue that as long as no better job-creation strategy is in place, these new jobs are well worth subsidizing.

M&T Stadium Effects on Local Economy was positiveAsti, Towson University affiliate and Maryland Stadium Authority employee, 06 (Alison, “The Impact of M&T Bank Stadium on Maryland Economy, 2006,” 7-8-14, http://www.mdstad.com/images/stories/ravens407.pdf, AW)

Highlights of the M&T Bank Stadium study show the facility generated in excess of $216 million in gross state product (business sales) in 2006 and supported a total of 3,088 jobs in 2006 and roughly $100 million in Maryland personal income. In addition, there were an additional 6,000 temporary jobs for events at the stadium that brought in. This far outweighs the initial 177 million and the 1,394 jobs it had aimed to create, showing that sport stadiums truly do bring in jobs. Not only directly, however areas should experience higher growth of jobs in surrounding businesses such as restaurants and hotels as visitors come in.

Logical Reasoning: Downton Areas Experience Job Growth (Pro)Coates and Humphreys, Econ Journal Watch writers, 08 (Dennis and Brad “Do Economists Reach a Conclusion on Subsidies for Sports Franchises, Stadiums, and Mega-Events?” 7-8-14, PDF saved on computer, AW)

Some subsidies advocated have implicitly justified them as enhancing redistribution. This justification exists both in the promotional “economic impact” literature and in the academic literature, with most examples of the latter appearing recently. The justification is that building stadiums or arenas downton, in the central city of metropolitan areas, will bring economic activity to those neighborhoods and aid in their revitalization. Downtown areas, especially in older cities, have become stagnant and decayed over time as people and businesses moved to the suburbs. Those older areas are, so the argument goes, deserving of assistance, even at the expense of the outlying areas. This justification rests on the downtown stadium or arena bringing new jobs and businesses into downtown areas.

The Construction of Vikings New Stadium Effects on Local Economy (Pro)N/A, Conventions Sports Leisure, 09 (N/A, “Economic and Jobs Impact of Metrodome Next Multipurpose Facility, 7-8-14, http://prod.static.vikings.clubs.nfl.com/assets/docs/csl-full-021511.pdf, AW)

The construction of a new stadium will support approximately 13,000 jobs, including 7,500 construction and trades workers who will be employed during the three-year building process. Nearly 4.3 million work hours with almost $300 million in wages for construction workers will be required for this project. In addition, the fabrication of project materials will create a separate substantial number of jobs and wages. Upon completion of the stadium, 3,400 full and part-time jobs will be supported by the economic activity generated by a new stadium. Over 90% of the total materials and labor subcontract value will go to


Minnesotans. The Building & Construction Trades Council is experiencing nearly 20% unemployment this project will have a significant impact on putting these construction workers back to work. According to CSL, the economic activity from a new stadium will generate over $26 million per year in tax revenue and over $145 million in direct spending by Vikings fans inside the State of Minnesota.

New Atlanta Stadium Supports Many JobsSeaman, Ph.D. at Georgia State University, 12 (Bruce, “New Stadium Project: Construction Economic Impact,” 7-8-14, http://www.atlantaga.gov/modules/showdocument.aspx?documentid=6836, AW)

The new stadium project in Atlanta is projected to increase local gross domestic project by $155,062,063 and generate $71,737,504 in personal income as it will support 1,468 full-time equivalent jobs in Atlanta as a result of the project. The count does not include half-time or one-day jobs that occur from events that will come as well. In addition, the Atlanta Stadium will generate from 99.7-133 million dollars annuals just from small events that occur annually.


Subsidies GOOD --- Public Engagement

Public is increasingly supportive of sports subsidies Gorman, head of TV by the Numbers, 2011(Bill, “No Surprise: 64% Of Americans Watch NFL Football; 73% of Men, 55% of Women”, 7-07-14,http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2011/10/14/no-surprise-64-americans-watch-nfl-football-73-of-men-55-of-women/107308/, NV

“ However, according to the results of a recent Adweek/ Harris Poll the name is accurate as almost two thirds of U.S. adults say they currently watch NFL football (64%)”


Subsidies GOOD --- Sports Diplomacy

Subsidies is key to bolster US sports diplomacyMacAdam, Director, Sport Excellence, Sport Canada, and Department of Canadian Heritage, 2011J. Lane, “Legacy Planning for Major Multi-Sport Events”, 7-08-14, file:///C:/Users/aniverma/Downloads/final1.pdf (its a pdf idk if i should use this), NV)

1) the rapid advances in mass communications technology which allows for the creation of massive global audiences. The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games generated worldwide audiences from TV of 4.7 billion viewers, the largest global TV audience ever (Nielsen Wire). In contrast, the Montreal Olympic Games in 1976 are estimated to have generated viewing audiences of 500 million viewers. 2) Secondly, there has been exponential growth in television broadcast revenues as a result of these mass audiences. In 1960, CBS, the American television company, paid US $440 000 for covering the Rome Games. The television rights for the 1996 Atlanta Games were sold for US $900 million and the American NBC network has purchased the rights until 2008 for US $3.6 billion (Chalkley and Essex, 1999, p. 390). 3) thirdly, and integrally related to the large audiences are significant increases in corporate sponsor revenues. For exclusive international marketing rights at the 2006 Olympic Winter Games in Turin, a dozen companies each paid the IOC an average of $74 million, nearly four times the rate of such sponsorship in the 1980’s (Humphreys, 2008).


Subsidies GOOD --- Urban Sprawl GOOD

Urban sprawl is key to economic developmentHolcombe, Professor of Economics at Florida State University, No Date(Randall, Chairman of the Research Advisory Council of the James Madison Institute, Urban Sprawling the pros and cons, http://perc.org/articles/urban-sprawl-pro-and-con, AM)

The term "urban sprawl" has a bad ring to it. The name reinforces the view that metropolitan growth is ugly, inefficient, and the cause of traffic congestion and environmental harm. Before we decide we are against urban sprawl, however, we should be clear about what it is and why we do not like it. Once we look at its specific characteristics, we can recognize their causes and what, if anything, to do about them.

My study of metropolitan growth indicates that three kinds of development are typical of what we call "urban sprawl." They include: leapfrog development, strip or ribbon development, and low-density, single-dimensional development. Let us look at each type in turn.

Leapfrog development occurs when developers build new residences some distance from an existing urban area, bypassing vacant parcels located closer to the city. In other words, developers choose to build on less expensive land farther away from an urban area rather than on more costly land closer to the city.

Because land prices are lower, housing in these developments is more affordable. Some people decide to accept longer commutes in exchange for more comfortable, lower-priced housing.

What few people realize is that leapfrog development nurtures compact commercial development-retail stores, offices, and businesses. The empty parcels that have been "leapfrogged" create an ideal location for commercial activity. It is a fact of economic life that developers are reluctant to place new commercial buildings on the outskirts of an urban area because these areas lack a large market to draw shoppers from. When new development bypasses vacant land, however, the land in between is suddenly accessible to more people and thus attractive to commercial developers. Thus, leapfrogging is a vital part of development in growing areas.

Leapfrog development does create some extra costs. Infrastructure must be extended farther and the longer distance creates more traffic and longer commutes into the city. For a leapfrog development to be cost-effective, the outlying development must pay the full costs of the infrastructure it requires. It is the responsibility of local governments to see that the costs of water, sewer, roads, and so forth are charged to the development.(1) As long as the new residents pay their share of the costs, leapfrog development benefits those who choose to live there and encourages commercial development at the edge of the urban area.

Strip or ribbon development, the second category, takes place when extensive commercial development occurs in a linear pattern along both sides of major arterial roadways. Like other aspects of urban sprawl, it is viewed as ugly and as a cause of traffic congestion, since shoppers and workers are often entering into and exiting from the street.

Yet strip development has its benefits. It brings together businesses that depend on high auto traffic. In fact, strips reduce overall traffic, since fewer cars must travel long distances from store to store or office to office. Strip development also creates natural locations for residential development. Between the commercial arteries, residential streets can have relatively little traffic yet be conveniently located near commerce.

In many situations, strip or ribbon development does cause problems, but the reason is poor planning. Every business fifty feet from another business does not have to have a driveway opening onto a major thoroughfare, creating congestion as people enter and leave. Access lanes can be built to permit the smooth merging of traffic entering and leaving.

Nor does strip development have to be unsightly. If the rightof- way is wide enough, landscaped buffers can separate the road from the businesses. To achieve this separation, though, governments must plan ahead to secure sufficient rights-of-way for major streets before they are built.

The third characteristic of "urban sprawl" is low-density, single-dimensional development. This is typified by large residential subdivisions. Houses are situated on relatively large lots, with only other houses nearby. Residents must drive nearly everywhere they go.


Critics say that low-density developments take up too much space, especially space that ought to be preserved in a pristine state. They say that they lengthen commuting distances, and, in general, that they harm the environment.

Low-density developments do take up space and may increase driving time. However, they have an important argument in their favor: People like them. Low density means more room and a higher standard of living. While every city has apartments available for those who prefer them, many people choose (and more people aspire to have) their own detached homes.

Low density is likely to help the environment. Yards filled with trees and shrubs absorb dust and chemicals, so smaller amounts of pollutants escape into the air and water. In contrast, in dense urban areas buildings, roads, and parking lots take up a higher percentage of the land, leaving little of the natural environment to absorb pollutants.

As for single-dimensional development (that is, residences only), this is often the result of zoning laws. Some zoning laws flatly prohibit mixed uses of property. Prohibitions against leapfrogging mean that development on the perimeter of a city is mostly residential, since no business wants to put its commercial establishment on the edge of an urban area. Prohibitions against strip or ribbon development also keep commercial establishments distant from residential areas.

Thus, when the components of urban sprawl are examined, they can be seen as components of a healthy and efficient development process that is sometimes thwarted or distorted by regulations. I do not mean to imply that all instances of these development processes are efficient but that they can be.

Underlying all the complaints is what troubles people most about urban sprawl-transportation problems. Many of these problems arise because the government has not effectively controlled access to its roads. Traffic is clogged because there are too many access points to highways and because insufficient rights-of-way were planned to handle the traffic load. To avoid these problems, local governments should obtain adequate rightsof- way for roads, limit the number of allowable curb cuts, and require access lanes or separate access roads rather than direct access to thoroughfares.

Specific policies to stop or slow down urban sprawl reflect a more general vision of how metropolitan development takes place. Planners assume that suburban areas spread out from a central urban core. They assume that people work in the central cities, commuting from the suburbs. Growth management policies are designed to keep people living and working in central districts.

But this picture of metropolitan areas is not an accurate portrayal of today's actual commuting patterns. In Los Angeles, for example, only 3 percent of the total workforce works downtown. There are 19 major activity centers in the Los Angeles area, but even these areas account for only 17.5 percent of the area's total employment. Most people both live and work in the suburbs, and the average commute for individuals in the Los Angeles area is 20 minutes.(2) While the statistics for each metropolitan area will differ, patterns in many cities are likely to be similar; today's jobs are primarily in the suburbs.(3)

If left to its own devices, development will occur in a decentralized manner, which will usually lead different types of activities to be conveniently located in relation to one another. Decentralized growth will provide nodes of development. People can live close to the node where they work, allowing a more efficient pattern of two-way traffic as people travel between nodes. Decentralized development keeps commuting distances short but allows the amenities of suburban living for those who want them.

In sum, the invisible hand of the market guides property owners to develop their property in ways that result, over time, in efficient land-use patterns. When government land-use planning is examined, we find that land-use decisions made under the name of growth management will more likely hinder than help the development process.

Sports Topic Patriot Brief 2014

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