If we didn’t spend our money on sports venues we’d waste it all on functioning water systems, resilient electrics grids, public transportation, education and free healthcare- and that’s not fun. Then where would we be?
42%
The average portion of the stadium bill the public pays for is 42%. I read that somewhere.
Teams should be owned by the communities, like Greenbay.
We foot the bills for everything. That’s what the bribes in Washington pay for.
We pay and get nothing in return.
Yup. No matter how much you dislike it, they don’t give a shit. Look at how the A’s are being forced on Vegas. Citizens tried to get it on the ballot and the courts said “fuck that, you’re buying a new stadium, and you’ll like it!”
**America’s multi-billion dollar sports stadium boom**
Big waste of money
They build the stadiums and people can’t even afford tickets anymore.
T20 Cricket team of New York should not be called Bombay Indian NY it should be just New York Cricket Club.
My tax money goes to all kinds of things I don’t want anyway. I want my team to stay in my city so Im good with raising taxes on something I probably will not notice in my day to day life.
Even if you think there’s a local economic benefit, remember the problem here is the fact there likely is already a stadium with a local economy built around it. The owners want an entirely new stadium that will leave the old one to rot.
Billionaires are the true welfare queens in the U.S.
Yes they do. Even if they don’t live in the tax footprint, they still get reamed by cable and internet companies bidding on broadcast rights that revenue doesn’t cover. These teams and players are worth a fraction of what they pull in, ownership even less. With every strike, or kneeling controversy , or rape case, I hope for the end of pro sports, but it only gets worse. Let their rapidly reducing fan base pay their own entertainment tab.
What no way, its not what happens every time some sports team wants a new stadium or they will leave. Same shit every few years.
Could be a politician involved with this. Would tell the go fuck them selves you want a new stadium pay for it with your millions.
I’ll be first in line for a $12 hot dog and a $9 beer….
Yes but how much money does the City or County make back ?
60,000 fans per NFL game, 10% ticket tax, 8% sales tax on all the food, beverages and merchandise, 20% parking fee tax…. Increased food and beverage sales at bars and restaurants on gameday bring in sales taxes. Hundreds of stadium workers having taxes taken from paychecks and payroll taxes from the and teams….
Plus stadium event rentals for concerts, monster trucks, RV shows….
Wretched
Fuck sports and hero worship. If the money spent on super bowl ads went to something useful the world would be a better place
Why?
And on top of that we can’t afford tickets to go see the sports teams in those stadiums we’re funding.
Fuck education or infrastructure or public services, let’s get a touchdown in a sweet stadium!
Who wants to go to a stadium when you can watch a game on your teevee box in the comfort of your Lazy Boy or local bar? Follow up question. If your favorite team wins do you get a cut of the prize?
This has been going on for a long time. Typically, the owner will wait for a good season and then threaten to sell the team unless they get a new stadium. Most local politicians and electorates will go along with it. Only recently have places such as California drew the line. Stan Kroenke built that palace in Inglewood with private money. San Diego dodged a bullet with the Chargers. Oakland as well with the A’s. Both teams have wretched ownership that doesn’t care about winning. San Diego got hosed by the Padres in 1998, when the vote for a new baseball season happened within weeks of the World Series which the Padres actually played in.
Another example of that was in Denver in 1999, when the Broncos owner claimed he couldn’t compete without a new stadium. The vote was months after the Broncos won their second Super Bowl in a row and barely passed. It will be interesting to see what happens now that the Broncos have new ownership, the Walton family. There are rumblings about a new stadium again. I think Colorado taxpayers won’t fall for it this time.
Why don’t the taxpayers build the stadiums and rent them to the teams to use?
Why do owners get to keep the value of the stadium when they sell a team? Whatever the stadium value is should be given to the taxpayers.
‘Zooka Sharks
I’m not in favor of tax payer funded stadiums but I am a sports fan. So I will admit it’s nice to have government waste money on something I like rather than something I don’t.
New York State is building a new sports stadium for the Buffalo Bills… right across the street from the existing stadium using taxpayer dollars. The owner of the Bills, Terry Pegula has a net worth of 6.8 billion dollars, yet it falls to us to fund the new stadium? Literally putting “bills” in the Buffalo Bills.
I would be perfectly happy paying for the stadiums if the public got the ROI from the profits, but somehow even non-sports profits end up going to the teams. That should be illegal since public officials are too afraid to negotiate.
Except NY because they strong armed Seneca Nation out of hundreds of millions after an agreement about the money expired. That’s how the Bills stadium is being funded. So the curse is back on. No super bowl for them.
Taxpayers don’t care about healthcare they care about nothing really here in the US
Bad enough when the city or county it’s in is taxed. I was living in Eastern Washington, 250 miles and a high mountain range away from Seattle, when Paul Allen pushed a bill through that taxed us for his new stadium in Seattle.
These stadia provided in large part by municipalities and/or states for the benefit of private team owners is driven by extortion threats by the teams threatening to move to another jurisdiction unless they are built a stadium to their liking which the other competing town/state will do. Clear legal blackmail leveraging competing taxpayers.
There is a way to thwart this attack on taxpayers though. A national law should be passed designed to make it illegal for any government to offer or give any remuneration for a sports team to move its location to the offering government entity. The teams are still free to move but on their own dime. Why should taxpayers be allowed to compete for teams from other locals with massive tax expenditures all to the benefit of private interests?
me, someone who has never enjoyed sports in any respect: boy I’m sure glad my tax money is going toward sports bullshit instead of healthcare or something useless like that. so glad sports is so successful that it can’t even support itself and needs government handouts from my money.
The City and County of St Louis have a “mutually assured destruction” deal with regard to public funds for professional sports.
The City of St Louis is an “independent city,” not part of the surrounding St Louis County, much like Baltimore. If a professional sports team wants public funding for a facility, it must go on the ballot in both entities. If either one votes “no,” no public funds are made available regardless of which jurisdiction would contain the facility.
And after the treatment from the NFL, if any team came calling, I highly doubt either one would vote “yes.”
San Diego told the Chargers to fuck right off.
Professional teams. The modern “Sport of Kings” for billionaires.
We peasants labor in order to serve the Rich.
Yeah I don’t understand this. Billionaire owners want us to to pay for something that we have to pay to go to while they get to go and sit in their luxury boxes for free and make money from our tickets and add revenue and everything else that comes with it. Build your own damn stadium and pay for your own damn luxury box and team.
The rich get richer while the poor are forced to pay for it. Those oppressed rich folks never get a break, do they?
We are such a strange country. Hey you wanna pay a bunch of money for over paid people to run around in, hell ya. Do you want to help people on the streets make a better life for themselves or cheap Healthcare for yourself, F no.
I love football and I love the community that’s surrounds American cities and loving your team. I’d be 100% for this if the city then keeps all money associated with the investment. That’s where this is broken. Don’t take tax payer money for a stadium the billionaire owner then uses to make profit.
42 comments
Always have
If we didn’t spend our money on sports venues we’d waste it all on functioning water systems, resilient electrics grids, public transportation, education and free healthcare- and that’s not fun. Then where would we be?
42%
The average portion of the stadium bill the public pays for is 42%. I read that somewhere.
Teams should be owned by the communities, like Greenbay.
We foot the bills for everything. That’s what the bribes in Washington pay for.
We pay and get nothing in return.
Yup. No matter how much you dislike it, they don’t give a shit. Look at how the A’s are being forced on Vegas. Citizens tried to get it on the ballot and the courts said “fuck that, you’re buying a new stadium, and you’ll like it!”
**America’s multi-billion dollar sports stadium boom**
Big waste of money
They build the stadiums and people can’t even afford tickets anymore.
T20 Cricket team of New York should not be called Bombay Indian NY it should be just New York Cricket Club.
My tax money goes to all kinds of things I don’t want anyway. I want my team to stay in my city so Im good with raising taxes on something I probably will not notice in my day to day life.
Even if you think there’s a local economic benefit, remember the problem here is the fact there likely is already a stadium with a local economy built around it. The owners want an entirely new stadium that will leave the old one to rot.
Billionaires are the true welfare queens in the U.S.
Yes they do. Even if they don’t live in the tax footprint, they still get reamed by cable and internet companies bidding on broadcast rights that revenue doesn’t cover. These teams and players are worth a fraction of what they pull in, ownership even less. With every strike, or kneeling controversy , or rape case, I hope for the end of pro sports, but it only gets worse. Let their rapidly reducing fan base pay their own entertainment tab.
What no way, its not what happens every time some sports team wants a new stadium or they will leave. Same shit every few years.
Could be a politician involved with this. Would tell the go fuck them selves you want a new stadium pay for it with your millions.
I’ll be first in line for a $12 hot dog and a $9 beer….
Yes but how much money does the City or County make back ?
60,000 fans per NFL game, 10% ticket tax, 8% sales tax on all the food, beverages and merchandise, 20% parking fee tax…. Increased food and beverage sales at bars and restaurants on gameday bring in sales taxes. Hundreds of stadium workers having taxes taken from paychecks and payroll taxes from the and teams….
Plus stadium event rentals for concerts, monster trucks, RV shows….
Wretched
Fuck sports and hero worship. If the money spent on super bowl ads went to something useful the world would be a better place
Why?
And on top of that we can’t afford tickets to go see the sports teams in those stadiums we’re funding.
Fuck education or infrastructure or public services, let’s get a touchdown in a sweet stadium!
Who wants to go to a stadium when you can watch a game on your teevee box in the comfort of your Lazy Boy or local bar? Follow up question. If your favorite team wins do you get a cut of the prize?
This has been going on for a long time. Typically, the owner will wait for a good season and then threaten to sell the team unless they get a new stadium. Most local politicians and electorates will go along with it. Only recently have places such as California drew the line. Stan Kroenke built that palace in Inglewood with private money. San Diego dodged a bullet with the Chargers. Oakland as well with the A’s. Both teams have wretched ownership that doesn’t care about winning. San Diego got hosed by the Padres in 1998, when the vote for a new baseball season happened within weeks of the World Series which the Padres actually played in.
Another example of that was in Denver in 1999, when the Broncos owner claimed he couldn’t compete without a new stadium. The vote was months after the Broncos won their second Super Bowl in a row and barely passed. It will be interesting to see what happens now that the Broncos have new ownership, the Walton family. There are rumblings about a new stadium again. I think Colorado taxpayers won’t fall for it this time.
Why don’t the taxpayers build the stadiums and rent them to the teams to use?
Why do owners get to keep the value of the stadium when they sell a team? Whatever the stadium value is should be given to the taxpayers.
‘Zooka Sharks
I’m not in favor of tax payer funded stadiums but I am a sports fan. So I will admit it’s nice to have government waste money on something I like rather than something I don’t.
New York State is building a new sports stadium for the Buffalo Bills… right across the street from the existing stadium using taxpayer dollars. The owner of the Bills, Terry Pegula has a net worth of 6.8 billion dollars, yet it falls to us to fund the new stadium? Literally putting “bills” in the Buffalo Bills.
I would be perfectly happy paying for the stadiums if the public got the ROI from the profits, but somehow even non-sports profits end up going to the teams. That should be illegal since public officials are too afraid to negotiate.
Except NY because they strong armed Seneca Nation out of hundreds of millions after an agreement about the money expired. That’s how the Bills stadium is being funded. So the curse is back on. No super bowl for them.
Taxpayers don’t care about healthcare they care about nothing really here in the US
Bad enough when the city or county it’s in is taxed. I was living in Eastern Washington, 250 miles and a high mountain range away from Seattle, when Paul Allen pushed a bill through that taxed us for his new stadium in Seattle.
These stadia provided in large part by municipalities and/or states for the benefit of private team owners is driven by extortion threats by the teams threatening to move to another jurisdiction unless they are built a stadium to their liking which the other competing town/state will do. Clear legal blackmail leveraging competing taxpayers.
There is a way to thwart this attack on taxpayers though. A national law should be passed designed to make it illegal for any government to offer or give any remuneration for a sports team to move its location to the offering government entity. The teams are still free to move but on their own dime. Why should taxpayers be allowed to compete for teams from other locals with massive tax expenditures all to the benefit of private interests?
me, someone who has never enjoyed sports in any respect: boy I’m sure glad my tax money is going toward sports bullshit instead of healthcare or something useless like that. so glad sports is so successful that it can’t even support itself and needs government handouts from my money.
The City and County of St Louis have a “mutually assured destruction” deal with regard to public funds for professional sports.
The City of St Louis is an “independent city,” not part of the surrounding St Louis County, much like Baltimore. If a professional sports team wants public funding for a facility, it must go on the ballot in both entities. If either one votes “no,” no public funds are made available regardless of which jurisdiction would contain the facility.
And after the treatment from the NFL, if any team came calling, I highly doubt either one would vote “yes.”
San Diego told the Chargers to fuck right off.
Professional teams. The modern “Sport of Kings” for billionaires.
We peasants labor in order to serve the Rich.
Yeah I don’t understand this. Billionaire owners want us to to pay for something that we have to pay to go to while they get to go and sit in their luxury boxes for free and make money from our tickets and add revenue and everything else that comes with it. Build your own damn stadium and pay for your own damn luxury box and team.
The rich get richer while the poor are forced to pay for it. Those oppressed rich folks never get a break, do they?
We are such a strange country. Hey you wanna pay a bunch of money for over paid people to run around in, hell ya. Do you want to help people on the streets make a better life for themselves or cheap Healthcare for yourself, F no.
I love football and I love the community that’s surrounds American cities and loving your team. I’d be 100% for this if the city then keeps all money associated with the investment. That’s where this is broken. Don’t take tax payer money for a stadium the billionaire owner then uses to make profit.