They Play, You Pay [electronic resource] : Why Taxpayers Build Ballparks, Stadiums, and Arenas for Billionaire Owners and Millionaire Players

2012·1.9 MB·English

by  Bennett, James T

They Play, You Pay

James T. Bennett
They Play, You Pay
Why Taxpayers Build Ballparks,
Stadiums, and Arenas for Billionaire
Owners and Millionaire Players
James T. Bennett
Department of Economics
George Mason University
Fairfax , VA , USA
[email protected]
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any
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Published in the United States by Copernicus Books,
an imprint of Springer Science+Business Media.
Copernicus Books
Springer Science+Business Media
233 Spring Street
New York, NY 10013
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2012934954
Manufactured in the United States of America.
Printed on acid-free paper
ISBN 978-1-4614-3331-6 e-ISBN 978-1-4614-3332-3
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-3332-3
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to many for their assistance with and support of the research and
editing of this book. The research would not have been possible without the
generous financial support of the Sunmark Foundation. Research assistance
was provided by Homa Saleh. I also owe profuse thanks to my editor, Bill
Kauffman, for I am indebted to him for significant contributions to this
study.
Fairfax, VA, USA James T. Bennett
v

Contents
1 Introduction ................................................................................................. 1
2 Politics Takes the Field ............................................................................. 3
3 Parks and Stadiums Until 1960 ............................................................ 33
4 Parks and Stadiums Since 1960 ............................................................ 75
5 If You Build It, Prosperity Will Not Come:
What the Studies Say ............................................................................... 161
About the Author .............................................................................................. 215
Index ...................................................................................................................... 217
vii

Chapter 1
Introduction
If there is one economic truth upon which almost every practitioner of the
art or science of economics agrees, it is that publicly financed ballparks,
stadiums, and arenas built by taxpayers for professional baseball, football,
basketball, and hockey teams are not good investments. We will explore the
reasons why in the pages that follow, but one curious fact intrudes itself on
any discussion of this matter: Joe Q. Public, instead of being outraged by
these rip-offs, is of two minds when it comes to state subvention of profes-
sional sports.
On the one hand, he yells and screams about “corporate welfare.” Why
should he or she, the hard-working taxpaying citizen, have money taken from
his or her paycheck and used to build palaces of play for pampered million-
aire athletes and arrogant billionaire owners who feel somehow entitled to
subsidies reaching into the several hundreds of millions of dollars? Where is
the fairness in t hat ?
Yet on his other hand — or both hands, since we all know the sound of
one hand clapping — he claps and hoots and makes a ruckus cheering on the
home team — which really isn’t much of a home team, since all or almost all
of its members are from elsewhere, live elsewhere in the off-season, and spend
most of their fat paychecks elsewhere. But Joe Q. Public, when he isn’t grousing
as Joe Q. Taxpayer, is Joe Q. Fan. He wears the apparel and logo of his team,
whether the Bears or Yankees or Colts or Bills. He watches the team faithfully
on television, shouting his approval at the rectangular set or cursing the errors
and fumbles of the butterfingered local nine or eleven or six or five.
J.T. Bennett, They Play, You Pay: Why Taxpayers Build Ballparks, Stadiums, and Arenas 1
for Billionaire Owners and Millionaire Players, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-3332-3_1,
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012