STADIUMS

Doug Bandow, Cato Institute Senior Fellow, October 20, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: Why don’t all the cities band together and call the owners’ bluffs? Why are wealthy team owners expecting public funds under the threat of moving a team to another city? If cities would join together and stop caving into this blackmail, the threats would stop. Plus, where are the owners going to move? There are only a limited number of cities that can support a team. Someone should call a coalition of the Mayors of the nation’s largest 30 cities together and create some type of agreement. Or, is this too much to expect, for some greedy city will always break such an agreement?
BANDOW: An obvious answer would be for cities to say no more. But the temptation to cheat would be enormous. Still, if enough Mayors and Governors tired of the game, they could try to develop inter-government compacts, perhaps through the national Mayoral and Gubernatorial associations, to at least limit subsidies.

DAVE ZIRIN, author, August 23, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: What are your thoughts on public financing of sports stadiums that are privately owned? What are your thoughts on a public agency purchasing a sports team, as in Green Bay?
ZIRIN: Terrific question. I want Green Bay to be the used as a rallying cry for every team where the owner threatens to move to another city. Right now the owners of the SF 49ers are threatening to turn them into the Santa Clara 49ers. The Seattle Supersonics are a year away most likely to become the OKC Supersonics. All because local politicians and community groups have quite correctly resisted the quest for public stadium funds. But I want us to lose the defensive posture and start to call to municipalize teams. The Sonics belong to the people of Seattle far more than they belong to Clay Bennet and company who just bought the team last year. They should petition the local government to purchase the teams and make them city property. Then the revenue could flow back to public works.
CZIKOWSKY: What is a terrordome, and speaking of which, do you think it is a sin to tear down an icon such as Yankee Stadium, indeed replacing it with a stadium that seats fewer fans but has more space for the rich box people?
ZIRIN: A “terrordome” is a stadium built on the public dime that sucks tax money away from necessities to build these monuments to corporate greed. Terrordomes dot the nation, billion dollar welfare hotels housing those least in need of a handout. I am a tremendous sports fan. But building stadiums with public monies isn’t sports. It’s social-urban policy that affects ordinary people in the negative whether we ourselves as sports fans or not. The bridge collapses TWO DAYS before the multi-billion owner of the team was due to break ground on a 500 million dollar dome, passed by state government even though the people had refused it time and again. And here in DC: I can’t believe we have this billion dollar stadium coming up while library hours in Mt. Pleasant have been cut. I think our slogan has to be: we love sports but that doesn’t mean we have to pay a billionaire 500 million dollars for the privilege to watch. And as for Yankee Stadium…I was raised a Mets fan, so no comment.