Are Sports Stadiums Worth It? From football and baseball to the Olympic games; most major cities have stadiums or sports arenas that hold those events along with their own professional teams. Some stadiums are almost brand new and usually don’t get very old before they are torn down and built brand new again. While they may be nice, they do come at a cost. Taxpayers are often the ones that pay for them. But do the benefits really outweigh the costs?
To build sports arenas and stadiums cities need support financially. They end up raising taxes for the local taxpayers. Cities typically raise the locals property taxes. Sometimes they can raise the income tax, sales tax and even tax on gas. The teams tell the locals that they should vote for
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Which makes sense but you can't rob them of all their money either. Plus they won't completely benefit from it. But taxpayers shouldn't be on the hook for it. “There's a lot of other people that couldn't care less about a sports stadium. You're telling me you can't charge your fans but you can go to these people and reach in their wallet and make them pay so you get a new stadium?”(McCombs). The team can persuade everyone that it’s a good idea and pretty much force you to pay for it. The teams should find a better way of paying for them like everyone pitches in; the players, fans, locals etc. The locals could also petition to build something else. “Other billion dollar facilities like a major shopping center or large manufacturing plant will employ many more people and generate substantially more revenue and taxes”(Noll). The locals need to do their homework and actually, see if they really want the stadium and know that it's not going to make as much money as the team says it will. From football and baseball to the Olympic games, taxpayers are paying for new stadiums to be built all the time. Unless you are a huge sports fan and don't care about the money, the benefits really don't balance or outweigh the
Siegfried, J., & Zimbalist, A. (2000). The economics of sports facilities and their communities. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, , 95-114.
What if a tax increase came to a city because of a sports team, would it be alright? Of course not, right? Well, consider being told as a tax payer and being told it will help the economy of city to build a stadium. However, a tax increase is never highly looked upon, and large companies sell extraordinary economic growth, and cannot produce the promise.
As long as fans willingly pay $120 dollars for a replica jersey, six dollars a beer, and two thousand for courtside tickets to the Los Angeles Lakers, the owners will continue to pass on that money to their stars. People act like they're getting stiffed. Let me ask you, When was the last time, someone stuck a gun to your head and said 'Watch this football game or else'?
There is a nationwide trend in which taxpayers are asked to pay for new stadiums these stadiums benefit a single corporation. A sport construction boom has started, these new stadiums cost a minimum of $200 million to build, but usually cost much more. New stadiums have been built, or are underway, in New York, Pittsburgh, Dallas, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Seattle, Tampa, Washington DC, St. Louis, Jacksonville, and Oakland. This competitive trend replaces old stadiums with high tech flashy stadiums used exclusively for one sport. These stadiums are unnecessary, and not cost efficient. Most of the time new stadiums are not used for multi-purposes, they bring in money exclusively for the professional league and not ...
The players need to make a contract work by agreeing to some form of salary cap, allowing owners to control costs. Players and owners will win, revenues will improve for businesses dependent on games for income, and the fans will win!
These small, mostly private schools are spending millions on Football fields, Gyms, indoor and outdoor tracks and student recreation centers. This battle seems almost unnecessary considering almost zero of these athletes will become professionals and in most cases athletics takes away around 20-25 hours of school work time to there student athletes. Looking at the research there seems to be three reasons why schools sell the idea of how a new facility can bring more then a large bill to the school. These points are first recruiting success that leads to athletic success and the enrollment bump in not only the student athletes but also the student population as a whole. Finally how the sch...
He says that these facilities never pay for themselves, that there is an increase in overall community income, but not enough to offset cost. He states that though highly paid, a team employs very few workers. A new stadium offers more amenities that are more expensive, such as luxury skyboxes, thus bringing in more revenues than the old stadiums. The teams do see some of these profits but so do the cities. Noll writes that new stadiums force other entertainment out of town, this can be true, but it also brings in new business in the form of restaurants and pre and post-game entertainment. The profits from transportation can be much larger in the post stadium city.
The sports industry is a very big business that contributes great amounts to the economy in terms of turnover, taxes and jobs. The sports industry has an economic cycle. So it depends on different parts of the year to hold big events. The benefits to be gained are that local communities as suppliers of services and goods obtain increased business.
Yes they help the school bring in money from games and merchandise, but they key word in this sentence is school. If the school was to pay these athletes it would be from their own funds which are meant for the whole school entirely including’s such as: other students, faculty, bills, and more. Paying with school funds would actually lead to a decrease in some school enrollments/graduates. Lower end schools would struggle because they wouldn’t be financially stable to pay their athletes enough to keep them from transferring to a bigger school. Some schools depend on the money they get from sporting events to help pay for the facility, but if they weren’t able to pay their athletes and keep them attending that school they could lose their sports programs entirely.
The sports franchise gains by reducing the amount of capital that it has to spend in building the new stadium. They receive a new stadium with more seats and therefore they receive more profit. The local businesses gain financially as well with increased traffic of fans who come to the games. More fans means more meals, rooms, and souvenirs sold. In addition, as least at the beginning of the project more construction jobs are created in order to build the new stadium and possibly new jobs are created at the stadium itself. The elected officials is motivated by receiving a good track record of successful referendums, by trying to sell the stadium to the public as something they should really want in their communities. The people who are losing through the outcomes of the new stadiums are those who do not want one in their community. Perhaps people who do not like sports and will never attend a game or people who do not appreciate the added traffic on the roads on game days. These people are forced into paying for something they will never use as well as something they may despise and the added traffic they have to deal with is a nuisance to
Are sports facilities worth the money? All sports facilities cost a ton of money, but all this money could be used in a different way. It could be used for things to help the city. These facilities are only helping the sports teams for the most part, but the fans love when these stadiums are built because it makes it creates a fun place to watch the games and lets them interact with people. Just how much money are these cities spending and is the money going to waste or not?
One may disagree that hosting Olympics is not worthwhile as it requires a city or a country to bring out an enormous sum of money for the preparation and planning of hosting the Olympics. Zimbalist (2012, pp. 116) says that the summer Games roughly generates a total of $5-$6 billion and almost half of it belongs to the International Olympic Committee. On the other hand, the cost of the games has increased roughly
In every major sports event, like the FIFA World Cup or the Olympics, there’s always a huge celebration and a positive vibes surrounding such events. Hosting these events are usually a great honor to the selected countries and bring a lot of favorable consequences with it. However, no one realized that whenever these big sporting events occur and are hosted, brings as much negative consequences which counterbalances all the good things that comes with it. So, the question remains, is the Olympics a Cash Cow or a Money Pit to the hosting countries? In my opinion, the Olympics could actually bring more benefit that loss to the selected countries to host it, which are to bring positive economic and cultural benefits, either a Legacy or a Money pit for the hosting countries, hosting this event could promote development for the educational legacy and finally eradicating poverty throughout the citizens.
Sports are one of the most profitable industries in the world. Everyone wants to get their hands on a piece of the action. Those individuals and industries that spend hundreds of millions of dollars on these sports teams are hoping to make a profit, but it may be an indirect profit. It could be a profit for the sports club, or it could be a promotion for another organization (i.e. Rupert Murdoch, FOX). The economics involved with sports have drastically changed over the last ten years.
This past weekend marks the largest contract signing in Major League Baseball history. On the 12th of February 2000, Ken Griffey Jr. (formerly of the Seattle Mariners), signed a nine-year $116.5 million contract with his hometown Cincinnati Reds. The city’s fans were ecstatic to bring Griffey back, and considering he turned down an eight-year $148 million deal to re-sign with Seattle, they feel that the acquisition was a real bargain. It really is amazing when a man can make $12.94 million a year, simply for playing the game of baseball and millions upon millions of people are calling it a bargain. Salaries in sports are incredibly sensitive and controversial issues. There are many die-hard fans that believe high-profile athletes are worth each and every cent their contract gives them, however most people believe otherwise; I am one of them. What exactly is it that athletes do that makes them deserving of such high salaries? The real issue at hand here, is that the more money athletes are making, the more fans are going to have to pay to see them in person. Is there really a win-win situation here?