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October 17, 2000
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The Home Field Advantage
| A Different Kind of Game |
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They're celebrating in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and not because the famous home team is winning football games. In fact, the Green Bay Packers have a losing record this season. What has the football fans excited is last month's vote to rebuild the Packers' venerable Lambeau Field, at a cost of over $200 million. More than half that amount will come from a new 5% local sales tax in effect for up to 30 years. The Packers are only the latest in a long line of professional sports franchises to seek public aid for more modern facilities. The Boston Red Sox missed baseball's playoffs this year, but their owners scored a victory on a different playing field. The city of Boston and the state of Massachusetts agreed to contribute more than $300 million towards the $665 million price tag of building a new Fenway Park. Professional sports has become a big business in this country. Star players command multimillion dollar salaries. The National Football League, the National Basketball Association, and Major League Baseball all benefit from billion dollar broadcast deals. New stadiums costing hundreds of millions of dollars fit squarely into that landscape. Teams insist that more modern and attractive home fields will generate the money they need to stay competitive. Owners even have moved—or threatened to move—their teams to different cities just because a new stadium beckons. How much would you pay to keep your favorite team at home?
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Last month, the people of Green Bay, Wisconsin, voted to renovate the football stadium for the hometown Packers—and to pay for the project over 30 years through a new sales tax.
What does it cost to build new sports complexes for America's teams, and who should foot the bills?
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| Crunching the Numbers |
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That crunching noise you hear coming from your local stadium may not be the result of a goal-line stand. More likely, it's the sound of accountants crunching the numbers to make a new stadium deal work. Their job has become more difficult in recent years, as cities and states have become reluctant to finance stadium projects. Both the Green Bay Packers and the Boston Red Sox are using a combination of their own private funding and public money.
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| Two Sides of the Story |
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A new stadium can also attract tourists and help turn a city into a convention center. The Cleveland Indians' Jacobs Field, built largely with public money during the 1990s, is credited for revitalizing Cleveland's depressed downtown area. Not everyone agrees with the promises of new stadiums. Consumer advocate and Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader opposes public support. In a recent Boston.com article entitled, "Stadium subsidies scalp the public," Nader opposed public funding for a new Red Sox ballpark. "No government has ever recovered the investment in a baseball stadium, let alone seen any returns on that investment," Nader warned. "These boondoggles are promoted as making things better for fans. Real fans will end up being second-class citizens as ticket prices increase and affordable seats are placed farther away from the field as luxury boxes become a priority." In Green Bay, meanwhile, voters turned down a companion proposal to use any excess funds from the new sales tax to pay for other programs such as libraries, museums, and human services. |
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Teams with new stadiums say that the cities that help build them benefit greatly. The large construction project creates thousands of jobs. The millions of fans flocking to the new fields spend money at local restaurants, stores, and parking garages.
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