Happy Friday everyone. Here in Super Bowl land in sunny MN, we woke to a glorious -7 degrees. This is why you don’t visit MN in the winter. Yesterday we woke to a bit of snow and the temperature has been steadily dropping. Now I’m not a sports fan, I also thought it was the height of foolishness to make the tax payers pay for the new stadium, yet here we are.
Here we are its Super Bowl weekend. The city has spent insane amounts of money preparing for the event with revamping the city. Now I’m all for making the city look better but the reasoning behind it is flawed. Many people keep saying that the city will see a huge increase in income from this week’s activities but it has been shown over and over that this event just like the Olympics is a huge looser. A quick search online will show you many articles telling about the horror stories of previous games, here is one by Market Watch, and here is an article by USA Today.
One can only assume the only people making money on this franchise is the wealthy NFL owners, the major networks that show it on TV, and some of the business in the city. Most of the money from this even never stays in the city nor makes it into the pocket of that cities workers. Why does the tax payer get put on the hook for these expenses when the people who own the event make out like bandits?
This doesn’t even come close to the losing proposition of building the new stadium. Study after study shows that building a stadium in your city is a losing prospect. The cost of construction, revamping each year to appease the team and owner and all other associated costs are never recovered. Here is a study from The Washington Examiner and another one from The Brooking Institute.
Then why do city’s always fall for this and why do people believe the opposite? One can only assume most media outlets don’t talk about it and the market when a Sports team owner wants a new building has tricked most the tax payers. In any other business venture if a company can’t be profitable with paying for their own overhead then that company goes out of business yet very profitable sports teams always get the gravy and the local tax payer gets the bill. Just a thing to remember if your city ever starts talking about a new stadium. Let the owners pay for it. Just say no.