Posted on 12/25/2023 11:02:15 PM PST by MinorityRepublican
A new round of stadium construction is underway for professional sports teams across the U.S., and taxpayers will be helping to pay the multibillion-dollar tab.
The wave of construction has seen teams chasing both repairs and luxurious additions. Some teams have sought new public funding for the projects — with mixed support — even while debt from the last round of renovations a couple decades ago is still being paid off.
This year alone, The Associated Press tallied about a dozen stadium projects that were unveiled or already underway for Major League Baseball and National Football League franchises. That doesn’t include additional projects for professional basketball, hockey and soccer teams.
Here’s a look at the emerging cycle of stadium projects and some of the motivations behind them.
A NEW PROJECT PER MONTH
As 2023 began, work already was underway on multi-year stadium renovations for the New Orleans Saints football team and Toronto Blue Jays baseball team. Then more teams joined the trend, at a pace of nearly one per month.
— In January, the Cleveland Guardians announced plans for a roughly $200 million renovation of their baseball stadium over the next three years, aided significantly by public funding.
— In February, the Chicago Bears bought a former suburban horse racing track as a potential site for a new football stadium and surrounding development. That comes even though the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority still owes $589 million through 2032 on public bonds issued for a renovation of the Bears’ current stadium two decades ago.
(Excerpt) Read more at fortune.com ...
Bread and circuses.
Welfare for the rich. It enables horrible people like Dan Snyder to sell the Redskins for six billion.
Seems like idiots are following Paul Krugman financial advice that it’s entirely possible to spend your way to prosperity.
Shyster developers, greedy sports franchise owners, and crooked politicians conspiring to fleece municipalities to finance their money-making scams was the topic of interest that brought me to this forum many years ago.
Anyone else getting 2008 housing bubble feelings from the current economy?
No subprime mortgages this time.
True.
But something smells awful familiar with the setup on this.
It seems that many of these stadium projects are due to teams moving from Blue areas in decline to more prosperous and better run venues.
Billions of $s in salaries and they can’t afford a roof over their heads.
Just when I start thinking of watching sports on TV, I read this.
My exact thoughts.
I will save you the trouble. It hasn’t gotten better since the last time you watched them. It was on at my house all weekend. We are paying for our own destruction. That and the continual foul language bleeps are just unwatchable. While we struggle to make ends meet millionaires and billionaires continue with their Marxist march of solidarity.
As for Atlanta, that metro area desperately needs an outer loop/beltway or bypass for the main Interstates passing through the city.
Public roads are a legitimate use of government money; huge arenas for sportsball are not. I despise Hollywood, but at least they do not demand government money to peddle their trash, and I do not have to patronize their movies.
Thank you.
I was about to type exactly that.
Oh well. Back to the British police shows.
It brings to mind one of my old economics professors favorite sayings about “moving the public cow into the paddock for milking”. The apathy of tax payers seems to be a terminal condition.
It reminds me of the mega-projects began right before the Great Depression.
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