Taxpayers cover the cost of most stadiums

A lot of people think that you can generate revenue through stadiums. You will find stadiums of all shapes and dimensions with the extremes being humongous. The conjecture that stadiums are profitable is not borne out by research. Policy makers, analysts and economists are trying to access and calculate the benefits of stadiums. On one hand you have public benefits and on the other private consumption benefits. One has to assess if these are enough to justify the cost of upkeep of stadiums.

The government’s share of the review generated from the operating rights control by teams is negligible as it only gets the lease rental on the stadium. Team owners are however quite upbeat about the business and profit making potential of newer stadiums. In the case of Major League Baseball, agreements with districts mandate that retail (such as stadium accessories), entertainment and other cash generating avenues be located inside the stadium and not outside, because if it were outside, the team would have no lien on these large revenues.

Given the kind of revenues being generated by stadiums to private parties, it is better if teams have their own stadiums and pay for its construction and upkeep. After all, why should one use public money drawn from taxpayers’ income to fund private profits? Besides, these private businesses promote the sales of profitable but unhealthy food and drinks, which should not be financed by using public funds.

But not all is bad with stadiums as there are some environmental benefits that accrue as well. For instance, Nationals Park and Citi Field incorporate the latest energy saving lighting on the field as well as plumbing fixtures that are low-flow type. These also have vegetative roofs and are need to be green and energy efficient too.

The new stadiums have very advanced security systems. Special zoned alarms are able to denote where exactly the problem may have occurred. This is in contrast to a single general alarm in older stadiums. Stadiums need a lot of water which they get from water harvesting from the roofs of the stadium. They also take water from nearby factories.

In some cases like conversion of baseballs stadiums into football ones, the environment friendly measures become a bit of a cropper. For instance the obtuse angle between the stands takes football viewing farther and perhaps obscured like in Candlestick Park.

In baseball stadiums there is a combination of exhilaration and toil, tough work and enjoyment where one would win and the other would lose. If you were to look at salary determination in baseball, you would see that players can use various terms to get the same salary gains. In some case of free agents, the salary is a function of the years of experience more than anything else, which may not be the best way to go about things.

Basketball and hockey need smaller arenas as compared to football which is played in large stadiums. It may be mentioned that in the twentieth century at least $20 billion at 1997 prices have been spent from taxpayers’ money on stadiums and arenas and these include $14.7 billion in subsidies.