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Freindly Fire

No Taxpayer Money for Soccer Stadium

by Chris Freind

I love soccer. I coach it. I watch it. I played it.

I just don't want to pay for it.

But that's exactly what we're doing. Pennsylvania is ponying up $50 million to build a soccer stadium for the millionaire investors of a Major League Soccer (MLS) expansion team.

Here's the catch. The people actually paying the bill---taxpayers--- aren't getting free tickets. In fact, they're not getting anything at all. So let's recap. We're paying for something for someone else, and getting nothing in return. If it sounds, looks and feels like welfare, it is. In this case, it's corporate welfare.

Time and again, the same travesty plays out across the nation. Taxpayers foot the bill for new stadiums so professional sports teams can have cool new digs and gazillionaire owners can have more luxury boxes---from which they make huge amounts of money.

The Philadelphia Eagles got their stadium on a platinum platter—and they should have, based on the $512 million price tag. Same with every stadium built over the last forty years. In that time span, only one was built with private funds.

Enough is enough. It is time for the people to wake up.

A University of Dayton study of several years ago concluded that public financing of stadiums was not necessary, since the sports teams would easily recoup all of the construction costs; for a $268 million stadium, half the costs would be recovered in five years, and the rest within twelve years. After that, it's all gravy, with revenues exceeding construction costs by hundreds of millions.

Here's my question: are we, the financiers, getting a profit-sharing check?

The real issue is much more far-reaching. How's this for coincidence? On the same exact day the interstate bridge collapsed in Minneapolis last year, there was a planned dedication of a new stadium for the Minnesota Twins Major League Baseball franchise---a stadium that is being erected with nearly $400 million of taxpayer money. Not to oversimplify, but could lives have been spared if the government in Minnesota had spent that money inspecting its bridges?

But in all fairness, the Twins' owner is only a billionaire. And let's face it: a billion dollars doesn't get you nearly as far as it used to. So who are we to criticize the man for wringing almost a half a billion out of the taxpayers?

You know that whenever New York Senator Chuck Schumer makes sense, something is seriously wrong: "The bottom line is that routine but important things like maintenance always get shortchanged because it's nice for somebody to cut a ribbon on a new structure." For once, Chuck, you get it.

Where does it end? How many businesses get taxpayer funding when they need a new building? Are those people less worthy because they don't own a popular sports team?

And then we have the argument that "economic development" from publicly financed stadiums is beneficial because it will "spur the economy". Two points. First, government should not, and cannot, be the answer to our problems. Most of the pressing issues we face today, from educational woes to unsafe infrastructure, are due to governmental incompetence and lawmakers sticking their noses where they don't belong. And second, there are a number of studies showing the anticipated "economic boon" is usually a bust, with benefits to the local community never materializing.

The answer, of course, is that A) no business is entitled to taxpayer subsidies,and B) we need to be much more diligent with the keys to the Treasury. Just because something like a new sports stadium sounds good, and might even provide a benefit, it is not the role of the government to undertake such an initiative. If sports teams owners had to foot the bill themselves, their stadiums would, most assuredly, be more economically constructed. But since it's not their money, the sky's the limit.

When government doesn't live within the same constraints as the family, the people are always the ones left paying the bill.

Except for the billionaires.

Chris Freind can be reached at CF@TheBulletin.us