Key words: "I'm no economist..."

I like Nick for many things, but his entire testimony on this issue is circumstantial, anecdotal and conjectural.

Doug, it doesn't take an economist to figure out that spending BILLIONS of tax dollars on sports palaces to line the pockets of out of town sports team owners and their multi-million dollar players is not a good use of tax money.

I'm going to a Mariners game in a couple weeks. I would have enjoyed the game just as much in the old Kingdome, and would rather the money be spent on schools, mass transit, public art, more police officers, parks that people can use, hell, just about anything else even vaguely useful, really.

If the public owns the team, then the public should pay for a stadium. If a private individual or corporation owns the team, they can pay for their own fucking stadium.

You know I have commented on Slog about the economics of the stadiums before but to no avail. The Economist wrote a great article a couple years back how these stadiums provide no net economic benefit to the cities or regions where they are built. It is the cost of building the stadiums, the interest on the bonds over a period of decades offset with the actual profit that game goers bring into a city to watch a game. It is always a loss for the tax payer and businesses and a gain for the team owners. This is why the owners now go to state legislatures to fund them instead of building them by the owners own means like the used to do.

I much prefer going to see games and Safeco than the Kingdome, but I still think The M's should have had to pay for the stadium.

Good--at least he is not here to offer up pearls of wisdom on the elevated viaduct.

The purpose of government is making luxury box owners happy, isn't it?

Andrew, your conclusion is correct but your analysis is a little off. There is a benefit, it's just a small one, and it's certainly much less than the astronomical cost of these stadiums. If you want to see some real analysis, look up Murray Sperber. I think he's the guy who did the Mariners benefit analysis that worked out that the impact of the M's on the local economy was approximately equivalent to the downtown Jay Jacobs store. Jay Jacobs, unlike the Mariners, didn't get a $500 million tax-and-interest-free gift from the citizenry, though, and are bankrupt and long gone. No one would ever have dreamed of asking the state or the city for a new store for Jay Jacobs, free of charge, worth $500, let alone $500 million!

The Sonics's impact is less, too, as they play only half as many games in front of half as many fans. They also don't have quite the lucrative TV contract; amazingly, a few years ago the M's had the biggest TV/radio viewership in the country, though it's been reduced a bit along with their fortunes.

So the question isn't "does this provide any benefit?" That just plays into their hands, because it's easy for them to prove they have SOME benefit. The dry cleaner across the street provides some economic benefit. The question is how much, and why should we pay for it in the first place?

The state is not in the business of paying for the facilities of private businesses no matter how much benefit they provide to the area. And if they do, they should at least ensure that they don't provide ten or a hundred times as much subsidy as the area gets in return.

Note this: if building a new stadium was such a great deal, as they claim, there would be private investors lining up to do it themselves.

Another, shorter reply that would be appropriate is this: WE ALREADY BUILT YOU A NEW FUCKING ARENA TEN FUCKING YEARS AGO.

Did you see the feature in the P-I a week or so ago about all the NBA arenas around the country that are semi-abandoned as little as EIGHT YEARS after they were built? Go ask Miami or Charlotte what a great deal they got from the NBA. Then tell these OKCITY prongs to go fluff themselves.

Fnarf, I may disagree with you about the viaduct, but I'm with you 100% on this. Good analysis.

@ Fnarf

Where can you find his data at. I would like to look at what he is looking at. And since the Ecnonmist artile was written by a Phd in Economics (and they looked at the Mariners, a loss BTW) I would like to see specifically what was written by him.

Thanks

I think that while these stadiums provide marginal economic impact on a city, we are failing to take into account that the money paying for these projects comes from tourism dollars i.e. restaurants and hotels and such. Have any of you stayed at home to eat instead of eat out because the restaurant taxes are so much higher since we started building these stadiums?

Additionally, while many of you capitol hill hipsters may disagree, there is a significant portion of the population here that finds these teams culturally valuable, just like libraries and art museums!

Additionally, in regards to Nick Licata's insinuation that this would be a venue used only on Sonics game night, that is not this intent of this arena either. This is a venue that can house NBA basketball, WNBA basketball, NHL hockey (potentially) as well as concerts and conventions. I know many of you never go to a concert at Key Arena because you'd rather go see Cat Power at Neumo's and weep, but the sound there is awful and keeps many events in Tacoma as opposed to King County! Building a place, not just for a pro basketball team but for a myriad of different cultural events, would be an upgrade for Seattle not a downgrade!

Debate public financing for the Sonics all you want.

I wanna know, how this is a national issue that needs the U.S. Congress looking at it. Isn't this a local issue? Another way to look at is, if OK City wants to build it, why should anyone else stop them?

@ Colin,

I have to say this since you claim this would be an "upgrade" for Seattle. First the economic benefit is non-existant (well some say minor but I am waiting to see the hard statistics on that). Secondly, I question the upgrade since the team's owners enjoy supporting groups that are politically active. Thirdly, the public funding of stadiums was voted down by Seattle citizens. In other words Seattle spoke and my only regret is that it was not a state wide referendum to determine the voters thoughts on publicly funding sports stadiums.

And can you call more traffic, an upgrade? Can you call the antics of many professional athletes (steroids, wife beatings, homophobia and the rest of it) an upgrade for Seattle? I am not sure what your definition of an upgraded city is Colin but I doubt many of us would think of it as such.

My feelings are mixed. I can see Andrew's side of it @11, but at the same time elswinger @4: You going to opening day, too?

I'm actually dropping my dollars into the bucket -- I buy tickets to games, rather than just watching games on tv or listening on the radio. I'm doing my best to enrich whoever's sponge I'm spitting into in order to see some ball.

As far as cost benefit to Seattle and the region goes, all I can say is that the Mariner's better resign Ichiro.

Andrew,

To make an assumption that all athletes are wife beating homophobes is about as ignorant as saying all african americans listen to rap and all republicans are ass holes. What Seattle athletes are you speaking of anyway?

I think it is deplorable that two people in the current Sonics ownership donated to an anti-gay marriage group. But that doesn't take away the fact that I love watching basketball in this city and building a stadium in no way supports their views.

As far as traffic is concerned, if you think this adds to traffic, what do you think happens to I-5 and Queen Anne right now when there is a Sonics game? We aren't adding traffic, we are just displacing it. Traffic problems are and will continue to be a huge problem in this town regardless of this issue. In fact, if we put the arena in Renton where people can get at it from three different freeways I think it will relieve traffic in comparison. Right now when I-5 is the only way into Seattle for 90% of the people attending the games, traffic already sucks!

Might I also add that this is a King County issue, not a just a Seattle issue. Of course a state wide vote would reject this, but so would a state wide vote for increased spending on public transportation, which many folks around here agree is a necessity.

go here and search stadium....

http://www.brookings.edu/

Colin @9 writes:

I think that while these stadiums provide marginal economic impact on a city, we are failing to take into account that the money paying for these projects comes from tourism dollars i.e. restaurants and hotels and such. Have any of you stayed at home to eat instead of eat out because the restaurant taxes are so much higher since we started building these stadiums?

Crapthink statement #1. This is how these stadiums are sold. We're told "Hey, you locals won't be paying for them, the tourists will, and we can sock those bastards for as much as we like." Of course this is crap, how much money raised from restaurant taxes is from locals? Probably most of it if the bars and restaurants I go to are any indication. The fact that the tax is a small one is irrelevant, ask yourself how you'd feel if we added a small tax to every restaurant bill to build the George W. Bush presidential library. It might piss you off a bit, regardless of the size of the tax, it certainly pisses me off to have to pay for a stadium for a bunch of drug-addled millionaire wife-beaters. Pro sports is a big money private business, why can't they build their own facilities?

Additionally, while many of you capitol hill hipsters may disagree, there is a significant portion of the population here that finds these teams culturally valuable, just like libraries and art museums!

That last is such a shit comparison that it boggles my mind, really, it's crapthink. Here's the deal, the NFL, NBA and major league baseball need massive subsidies because their players are overpaid wife-beating criminals and drug addicts. If you capped the salaries for pro sports stars at say a million bucks a year the teams would be able to build their own facilities and wouldn't need to sponge off of the taxpayers. I fail to see why my tax dollars should go to subsidize a fundamentally broken business model.
Professional sports are a private, for profit activity, comparing them to not for profit activities such as the arts or libraries is shit. I can go to the library for free, I can attend many arts functions for free or for a small amount. I don't get free tickets to Mariners, Seahawk or Sonics games. That significant portion of the population that finds these activities valuable should be willing to pay higher ticket prices to cover the costs of the stadiums. Taxpayer supported stadiums are one of the most regressive government activities around. You take millions of dollars from lower and middle class taxpayers to build new stadiums. The primary beneficiaries of this are the owners, who get facilities built for free and often get all revenues from the facility, even those that don't derive from their team, the players, who are all overpaid and worthless, and the corporations who purchase expensive box seats. Are there some benefits to the non-wealthy from these deals, well, I suppose there are, but the majority of benefits accrue to the wealthy and even if they didn't the fact remains that this is a private, for-profit activity, and as far as I'm concerned if you're a private, for-profit activity then you have no business asking for government handouts to build you new facilities. Really, we don't have government subsidized movie theatres, why should we have government subsidized sports stadia? They're morally and economically unjustifiable.

@ Colin

Read wile_e_quixote for a response to you that I agree with.

cars sports for exotic http://exoticsportscars.iphorum.com >cars for sports exotic

cars sports for exotic http://exoticsportscars.iphorum.com >cars for sports exotic