Charity for the Rich

Research Paper # 16364

Economics > Macro
Sport > History
Tourism

An analysis of the use of public subsidies to fund the construction of sports arenas.

5,085 words () | 22 sources | APA | 2002 United States

Paper Summary:

This paper explores how franchise owners and politicians justify building stadiums at the public's expense and analyzes the merits of these justifications. The focus then turns to the peculiar economic structure of sports, and how it relates to public stadium subsidies. Lastly, this paper examines other means, both public and private, by which stadium construction can be funded and discusses the relative merits of each of these methods. For the purpose of placing this discussing within a concrete framework, the first section comprises a case study of the Gateway Project in Cleveland, Ohio, which built new homes for Major League Baseball?s "Indians" and the National Basketball Association?s "Cavaliers".

From the Paper:

"Every major city in the United States is home to at least one, if not several, major sports franchises. These franchises are no doubt a great boon to their respective local economies in that they create jobs and increase tourism revenue. However, these benefits come at a cost, and the largest of these costs to cities is the construction of a new stadium. Some cities save on this cost by housing multiple teams (usually playing different sports) in the same facility, but in recent years team owners have become increasingly insistent on having an having a stadium exclusively for their team. Municipalities are then faced with the choice of shelling out hundreds of millions of dollars or having their local franchise move elsewhere."