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Working Paper Series, Paper No. 11-02
Financing Professional Sports Facilities
Robert A. Baade
and
Victor A. Matheson
January 2011
Abstract
This paper examines public financing of professional sports facilities with a focus
on both early and recent developments in taxpayer subsidization of spectator sports. The paper
explores both the magnitude and the sources of public funding for professional sports facilities.
.
JEL Classification Codes: L83, O18, R53, J21
Keywords: Stadiums, arenas, sports, subsidies
This paper was prepared for publication in Financing for Local Economic Development, 2
nd
ed.,
Zenia Kotval and Sammis White, eds., (NewYork: M.E. Sharpe Publishers). The authors wish to
thank the editors for their kind invitation and helpful comments.
Department of Economics and Business, Lake Forest College, Lake Forest, IL 60045,
847-735-5136 (phone), 847-735-6193 (fax), [emailprotected]
Department of Economics, Box 157A, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA
01610-2395 USA, 508-793-2649 (phone), 508-793-3708 (fax), [emailprotected]
3
Introduction
The past 20 years have witnessed a massive transformation of professional sports
infrastructure in the North America and the rest of the world. In the United States and
Canada alone, by 2012, 125 of the 140 teams in the five largest professional sports
leagues, the National Football League (NFL), Major League Baseball (MLB), National
Basketball Association (NBA), Major League Soccer (MLS), and National Hockey
League (NHL), will play in stadiums constructed or significantly refurbished since 1990.
This new construction has come at a significant cost, the majority of which has been
borne by taxpayers. Construction costs alone for major league professional sports
facilities have totaled in excess of $30 billion in nominal terms over the past two decades
with over half of the cost being paid by the public. See Tables 1 through 5 for lists of
newly constructed or refurbished stadiums in various American sports leagues. It should
be noted that these figures understate the total level of public subsidies directed towards
spectator sports, as they exclude subsidies not directly related to infrastructure and also
ignore minor league and collegiate sports as well as other popular professional sports
such as golf, tennis, or auto racing.
North America is not alone in its largesse directed to sports facilities. South
Africa spent $1.3 billion on building and upgrading 10 soccer stadiums for the 2010
World Cup following on the heels of Germanys 2.4 billion euro investment in stadiums
and general infrastructure for the 2006 edition of the event. The Summer Olympic Games
require the greatest financial commitment of all the mega-sports events with the typical
outlay in the neighborhood of $10 billion, but in some instances the sums have far
surpassed that amount (Preuss, 2004). China reportedly incurred costs in excess of $58
4
billion to host the event in 2008 (Upegui, 2008). Such sums of direct public investment
to build infrastructure for private businesses or events are generally rare in other sectors
of the economy. For this level of public investment, it is reasonable to ask the extent to
which professional sports serve to promote local economic development.
Professional Sports as a Mirror of Economic Development
Organized sports are as old as history itself. Typically, however, the construction
of sports stadiums and the creation of professional sports franchises have served as a
reflection of economic development rather than a means to it. The grandeur of the
Roman Colosseum is a clear testament to the wealth and engineering skills of the Roman
Empire, but it was certainly not designed to enhance local incomes. Roman poet Juvenal
coined the phrase bread and circuses in circa 100 A.D. to describe the use of food
subsidies and lavish entertainment to distract and pacify the masses. This term has come
to symbolize the decline of civic duty in the Roman Empire in favor of frivolity and
shallow desires. According to Juvenal, Roman politicians decided that the most effective
way to ascend to power was to buy the votes of the poor by giving out cheap food and
entertainment, i.e. bread and circuses (Sperber, 2001). Under the Roman emperors, the
Colosseum was simply another way, albeit a costly one, to limit public dissent. There is
no evidence that it was expected to promote local economic growth.
Rome was not alone in its pursuit of spectator sports. Ball games were played in
ancient Egypt, the Greeks created the now famous Olympic Games in 776 B.C., and
Native Americans played handball in the Mayan empire and the forerunner of lacrosse in
what is now the northeastern portion of the United States. Although many ancient sports
5
such as archery, chariot racing, horseback riding, and wrestling can be seen as offshoots
of professional military training, typically participants would have been considered
amateur athletes. While contestants in these games may have been rewarded by
government, religious leaders, or the spectators themselves for superior athletic
performance, the rise of the truly professional athlete did not come about until the late
1800s (Matheson, 2006).
The first sport in the U.S. to give rise to fully professional athletes was baseball.
Following the codification of the rules by Alexander Cartwright in 1845, baseball grew in
popularity both as a spectator and participatory sport. While some players on particular
teams received compensation for their play, it was not until 1869 that the Cincinnati Red
Stockings formed the first team comprised entirely of professional players. Their success
on the field led other teams to adopt their strategy. By 1871, the National Association
was formed with 9 teams, including the Boston Braves, the forerunner of todays modern
Atlanta Braves.
Not surprisingly, the rise of the professional athlete occurred during the time of
the industrial revolution, which provided substantial increases in income for the average
worker. As the country grew wealthier, spectator sports rose in popularity, as people
both had both higher incomes to pay for these activities and an increased availability of
leisure time. In addition, improvements in transportation allowed for the formation of
intercity sports leagues.
Early stadium construction in the U.S. reflected the economic landscape. Playing
facilities were located in the major population centers in the east. They offered few amenities
compared to modern stadiums, reflecting the lower income of the fan base and the concentration
of population and economic power in the Midwest and Northeast. For fifty years between 1903
6
and 1953, all 16 teams in Major League Baseball were located east of St. Louis and north of St.
Louis and Washington, D.C. Similarly, except for a single season by a Los Angeles club, all 56
teams that played at least one season in the National Football League between its founding in
1920 and 1945 were located in the industrial Midwest or the Northeast corridor.
Large stadiums, or course, were constructed during the early 20
th
century to
accommodate the growing number of fans of baseball, football, and other sports. While the
franchises that these old stadiums served still exist to this day, most succumbed to physical and
economic obsolescence. Fans of the Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs, however, can watch
their home games in the last two remaining professional baseball facilities from that era, Fenway
Park and Wrigley Field, built in 1912 and 1914, respectively. In addition, several college football
stadiums from that time period are also still in current use, including Harvard Stadium (1903),
Yale Bowl (1914), Rose Bowl (1922), and Los Angeles Coliseum (1923).
The relocation and expansion of sports leagues into the southern and western United
States reflects the growing importance of these regions in the overall American economy. After
half a century of stability, in the 1950s MLB franchises relocated from major cities on the east
coast to destinations far distant from the old centers of economic influence the Philadelphia As
moved to Kansas City and then Oakland, the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants headed
west to Los Angeles and San Francisco, respectively, the Boston Braves went to Milwaukee and
then south to Atlanta. Similarly, league expansion in the 1960s and 1970s created franchises in
areas that had experienced rapid economic growth over the past half century, such as Southern
California, Seattle, and Texas. The most recent wave of expansion in the 1990s brought new
teams into the fast-growing Sunbelt regions of Florida and Arizona. Just as efficient railroad
service allowed for travel between cities in the East, the advent of widespread passenger air
service allowed for the development of truly nationwide sport leagues. Although this discussion
has concentrated on the history of professional baseball, similar patterns of relocation and
expansion can be observed in all of the other major sports. Again, stadium construction and
7
franchise relocation reflected economic development in the country rather than the other
way around.
Baade (2010) noted that geographic considerations were not the only factor in the
construction of new sports facilities. Economy-wide fluctuations during the last century clearly
influenced sports facility construction. Except for Yankee Stadium in New York and Soldier
Field in Chicago, virtually no new stadiums were constructed between World War I and 1946, a
time dominated by the Great Depression and World War II. The pace of stadium construction
accelerated from the 1950s through the mid-1970s, as growing prosperity and technological
development enabled the construction of steel-and-concrete playing facilities during the ten years
from 1965 through 1975, replacing many existing facilities.
Sports remain a very clear indicator of economic development to this day. Studies
investigating national success at international sporting events such as the Olympics and World
Cup suggest that economic factors play clear roles. For example, Bernard and Busse (2004) find
that all other things equal, a 1% increase in GDP per capita compared to the world average will
increase the number of Olympic medals won by roughly the same amount. Similar results are
found in other sports, for example, mens and womens international football (Hoffmann, Lee and
Ramasamy, 2002; Hoffmann, et al., 2006). In all cases, higher income is presumed to affect
sporting success by providing athletes with better sports infrastructure, better access to
specialized training, and more leisure time to pursue their athletic endeavors.
For individual professional teams local market income is also an important factor in
predicting both franchise location and team success. For professional leagues without significant
limitations on team payrolls, such as Major League Baseball and most European soccer leagues,
successful teams tend to be located in large metropolitan areas with high incomes. It comes as no
surprise that MLBs New York Yankees, who reside in the countrys largest and richest
metropolitan area, have an unprecedented record of success over the past century. Similarly,
8
English Premier League teams Arsenal and Chelsea, both of which call London home, are
perennial contenders for their leagues title. Wealthy, populous hometowns provide teams with a
large potential revenue stream necessary for purchasing talented players.
While local economic development is clearly a factor in both the emergence of
professional sports as well as sports success, from a public policy standpoint it is
important to ask whether the reverse is also true. Does a healthy spectator sports
environment lead to local economic development, or is it simply a byproduct of normal
economic development? The answer to such a question provides guidance on whether
public subsidies for professional sports facilities are a wise investment. This question will
be examined in the next section.
Economic Development Effects of Sports Leagues, Teams, and Events
If one believes the boosters, sports teams and so-called mega-events bring a
substantial economic windfall to host cities. Promoters envision hoards of wealthy sports
fans descending on a citys hotels, restaurants, and businesses, and injecting large sums
of money into the cities lucky enough to host these teams and events. In terms of one-off
events, for example, the NFL typically claims an economic impact from the Super Bowl
of around $400 to $500 million (NFL, 1999; W.P Carey Business School, 2008), and
Major League Baseball (MLB) attaches a $75 million benefit to the All-Star Game (Selig,
et al., 1999) and up $250 million for the World Series (Ackman, 2000). Multi-day events
such as the Summer or Winter Olympics or soccers World Cup produce even larger
numbers. For example, consultants placed a $12 billion figure on the 2010 World Cup in
South Africa (Voigt, 2010) and estimated an economic impact of over $10 billion
Canadian for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver (InterVISTAS Consulting, 2002).
9
See Table 6 for a list of published ex ante economic impact estimates for a variety of
large sporting events.
Regular season games and year-round franchises also prompt eye-popping
estimates of potential benefits. The St. Louis Regional Chamber and Growth Association
estimated that the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team brought $301 million in annual
economic benefits to the region on top of another potential $40 to $48 million in gains
from a post-season appearance (St. Louis Regional Chamber and Growth Association,
2000). The New Orleans Saints of the NFL generated an estimated $402 million impact
on the state of Louisiana in 2002 (Ryan, 2003) while the NBAs Seattle Supersonics
claimed that they pumped $234 million into the areas economy annually prior to their
move to Oklahoma City (Feit, 2006).
Of course, as noted by Baade, Baumann, and Matheson (2008), leagues, team
owners, and event organizers have a strong incentive to provide economic impact
numbers that are as large as possible in order to justify heavy public subsidies. Sports
leagues frequently utilize rosy economic impact statements and dangle mega-events such
as the Super Bowl and baseballs All-Star Game in front of cities in order to encourage
otherwise reluctant city officials and taxpayers to provide significant public funding for
new stadiums to the benefit of existing owners.
Unfortunately, the methodology used to formulate estimates of economic impact
is fatally flawed, resulting in a consistent bias toward large, but unrealized, impacts.
Economic impact predictions are done in a reasonably straight-forward fashion. In the
case of either an event or a franchise, the total number of visitors to the event or the team
is estimated along with an average level of spending for each sports fan. The number of
10
fans multiplied by the average spending results in an estimate of direct economic impact.
Once the direct economic impact is determined, a multiplier is applied, which accounts
for money re-circulating in the local economy. For most sports-related spending a
multiplier around two is used, roughly doubling the direct economic impact.
Although this methodology is easy to understand, typically researchers point to
three primary flaws in most economic impact studies. The first common error is the
failure to account for the substitution effect. While it is undeniable that sports fans around
the country and around the world spend significant sums on spectator sports, in the
absence of such entertainment opportunities, their spending would be directed elsewhere
in the economy. A night at the ballpark means more money in the players and team
owners pockets, but it also means less money in the pockets of local theater or restaurant
owners. Most economists not associated with teams or event organizers advocate that any
spending by local residents on local sporting events be eliminated from economic impact
analyses.
The next common criticism is crowding out. The crowds and congestion
associated with major sporting events tend to reduce other economic activity in the local
area, as sports fans displace other individuals. As with the substitution effect, sports tend
to affect the allocation of economic activity across businesses and different sectors of the
economy but not the total amount of activity that occurs. As a case in point, while
Olympic visitors flocked to Beijing for the 2008 Summer Games, other visitors stayed
away in droves. The number of tourist arrivals to the city in August 2008, the month of
the Games, was the same as the number of visitors the previous year and total visitor
arrivals for the entire year was significantly lower than the previous year. Crowding out
11
effects are clearly visible for major sporting events held in Hawaii as well. An analysis of
flight arrival data by Baumann, Matheson, and Muroi (2009) shows that sporting events
like the Honolulu Marathon and NFL Pro-Bowl, both of which attract tens of thousands
participants and spectators, lead to only small increases in the total number of tourists to
the islands as the athletes and fans displace other vacationers.
Finally, money spent in local economies during either regular season games or
special events may not stay in the local economy. The nature of professional sports is that
the athletes generally command as wages a large share of revenues generated by sporting
events. However, the athletes themselves are typically unlikely to live in the metropolitan
area in which they play. (Siegfried and Zimbalist, 2002). Therefore, the income earned by
athletes is not likely to re-circulate in the local economy, leading to a lower multiplier
effect. In the extreme, spending at a sporting event could actually reduce local incomes,
as money is diverted from an activity with a high multiplier, for example a dinner at a
locally owned and operated restaurant, towards sports, an activity with high leakages.
Researchers who have gone back and looked at economic data for localities that
have hosted mega-events, attracted new franchises, or built new sports facilities have
almost invariably found little or no economic benefits from spectator sports. Typically, ex
post studies of the economic impact of sports have focused on employment (Baade and
Matheson, 2002; Feddersen and Maennig, 2009), personal income (Baade and Matheson,
2006a), personal income per capita (Coates and Humphreys, 1999; 2002), taxable sales
(Porter, 1999; Coates and Depken, 2009; Baumann, Baade, and Matheson, 2008), or
tourist arrivals (Lavoie and Rodriguez, 2005; Baumann, Matheson, and Muroi, 2009).
These studies and a multitude of others generally find that the actual economic impact of
12
sports teams or events is a fraction of that claimed by the boosters, and in some cases
actually show a reduction in economic activity due to sports. See Table 7 for a list of
published ex post economic impact estimates for a variety of large sporting events.
Even if the immediate direct economic impact of spectator sports is negligible,
proponents of sports-based economic development suggest that the long-term effects may
be large. Mega-events put cities on the map, and new stadiums can serve as anchors in
dilapidated areas to promote local growth. Here too, however, the data are not
convincing. While tourists may flock to host cities during major sporting events, the
surge in visitors tends to be short-lived. As noted by Matheson (2009), in Sydney, the
host of the 2000 Summer Olympics, foreign tourism actually grew at a slower rate than in
the rest of the Australia in the three years following the Games. Lillehammer, Norway,
the site of the 1994 Winter Olympics experienced a wave of bankruptcies in the years
following their moment in the spotlight, as 40% of the full-service hotels in the town
went bankrupt.
At least in part, a portion of the blame for the poor, long-term benefits of
spectator sports is the fact that the capital used in staging sporting contests is not easily
convertible to other uses. While the construction of general infrastructure, such as
modern airports, highways, and mass transit systems, provides economy-wide benefits,
such architectural and technological marvels as Beijings Water Cube, the 17,000 seat
state-of-the-art swimming facility built for the 2008 Summer Olympics, has little use
following the Games. The facility is now open to the general public for free swimming,
making it the worlds most expensive lap pool. Similarly, in South Korea most of the new
stadiums built for the 2002 World Cup sit unused today.
13
Giesecke and Madden (2007) have quantified the effects of infrastructure
spending in Sydney for the 2000 Summer Olympics and have concluded that the
redirection of public money into relatively unproductive infrastructure, such as
equestrian centers and man-made rapids, has since cut A$2.1 billion from public
consumption.
While the long-run benefits of sporting events and stadium construction may
never arrive, the debts that localities incur in hosting professional sports must still be
paid. Montreal was still paying off its debts from the 1976 Olympics three decades later,
and the Astrodome in Houston still carried millions of dollars of debt despite being
vacant for a nearly a decade.
Perhaps the most tragic tale is that of Greece, which suffered massive financial
setbacks in 2010. Greece’s federal government had historically been a profligate spender,
but in order to join the euro currency zone, the government was forced to adopt austerity
measures that reduced deficits from just over 9% of GDP in 1994 to just 3.1% of GDP in
1999, the year before Greece joined the euro. But the Olympics hosted by Athens broke
the bank. Government deficits rose every year after 1999, peaking at 7.5% of GDP in
2004, the year of the Olympics, thanks in large part to the 9 billion euro price tag for the
Games. For a relatively small country like Greece, the cost of hosting the Games equaled
roughly 5% of the annual GDP of the country.
Unfortunately, as has been seen in other cases, the Olympics didn’t usher in an
economic boom. Indeed, in 2005 Greece suffered an Olympic-sized hangover with GDP
growth falling to its lowest level in a decade. While its hard to place all of the blame for
14
the 2010 Greek meltdown on the Olympics, the lingering debts from the Games
undoubtedly exacerbated an already difficult situation.
Even if commercial sport does induce an increase in economic activity, the
efficacy of sport as a developmental tool needs to be considered. The litmus test
arguably should not be whether sport induces an increase in economic activity, but rather
is it the most efficient method for improving the economy. Focusing on employment,
Baade and Sanderson (1997) observed that the cost of creating a full-time equivalent job
through sports subsidies far exceeds the cost of job creation through other subsidies.
More specifically, it was noted that the cost of job creation through sports is far greater
than jobs created through the Public Works Capital Development and Investment Acts of
the 1970s or Alabamas much maligned subsidies to convince Mercedes-Benz AG to
locate some of their manufacturing in that State. It is also important to note that as many
as 98 percent of the jobs created through sports subsidies are in the relatively low-paying,
non-manufacturing sector.
Numerous funding mechanisms have been used by local authorities for funding
stadium construction. Table 8 shows the funding mechanisms for NFL stadiums built
between 1992 and 2006. While a variety of revenue sources are used for football stadium
construction, three types are most common: personal seat licenses (PSLs), excise taxes
on hotels or rental cars, and general funds including sales taxes.
Personal seat licenses (PSLs) involve a payment by a prospective season ticket
buyer to the stadium builder in exchange for the purchaser gaining the right to buy a seat
ticket in the new stadium. Personal seat licenses are a source of public works revenue
unique to the sporting world, and they serve several purposes. First, they turn consumers
15
future willingness to pay for tickets into an immediate source of capital that can be used
to defray current construction costs. Second, they allow teams to avoid revenue sharing
agreements with the rest of the league. In the NFL, teams are required to share 40% of
gate revenues with visiting teams while other revenue sources, such as PSLs, are not
subject to the revenue sharing arrangement. All things equal, PSLs should raise non-
shared revenue and lower ticket prices reducing overall revenue sharing payments to the
rest of the league. The other major sports leagues in the U.S. have lower revenue sharing
percentages, and therefore PSLs are much less common in other sports. Finally, PSLs
satisfy the user pays principle of public finance. A stadium financed by PSLs is a
stadium that is financed by the very people who will be using the stadium and benefitting
from the new team the stadium is designed to attract or from the enhanced amenities that
new stadiums provide.
Other funding mechanisms used to finance events and stadium construction,
however, more often violate commonly held principals of public finance. Taxes on rental
cars, hotels, and central-city restaurants, the second common tool used to repay stadium
bond issues, while seemingly shifting the expense of the stadium to out-of-town visitors,
in fact, simply make those revenue sources unavailable for use elsewhere in the city.
Furthermore, only a tiny fraction of the hotel rooms or rental cars used in a city over the
course of a year are purchased by visitors engaging in sports tourism. Thus, restaurant
goers, for example, may serve to simply subsidize better seating for football fans.
The use of general sales taxes or lottery proceeds, the third common source of
funding for sports infrastructure, violates most peoples notions of vertical equity by
placing an undue burden on poorer residents. Both revenue sources are strongly
16
regressive while the benefits provided by subsidized stadium construction accrue
primarily to the wealthy. Live attendance at major sporting events is dominated by
wealthy individuals, and the revenue generated by sporting events for the most part ends
up in the pockets of millionaire players and billionaire owners.
Even tax increment financing or ticket taxes or surcharges are not without their
critics, as few other businesses are allowed to use taxes collected on their customers to
pay for their own capital expenditures (Baade and Matheson, 2006b).
The Final Justification: Quality of Life
If sports teams and events bring little in the way of direct economic benefits, do
potential indirect benefits exist? Here the evidence is much more favorable to athletic
supporters. Clearly sports are an entertainment option favored by many. Although the
professional sports industry in the United States is only roughly the same size as the
cardboard box industry, cardboard boxes dont warrant multiple channels on cable
television, have a dedicated section in most newspapers, and are not the focus of frequent
discussions around the office water cooler. Sports serve as a municipal amenity that can
create social capital and improve the quality of life.
Obviously, estimating a more esoteric measure such as societal well-being is more
difficult than analyzing more concrete data such as employment or government revenues.
Still, the data hint at clear quality of life benefits from sports. For example, the 2008
Olympics instilled a sense of pride in the Chinese people. Some 93% of the Chinese
citizens surveyed by the Pew Research Center thought that the Games would improve the
countrys image (Matheson, 2009). Similarly, Maennigs (2007) ex-post analysis of the
17
2006 World Cup in Germany concludes that claims of increased turnover in the retail
trade, overnight accommodation, receipts from tourism and effects on employment [are]
mostly of little value and may even be incorrect. Of more significance, however, are
other (measurable) effects such as the novelty effect of the stadiums, the improved image
for Germany and the feelgood effect for the population (Maennig, 2007, p. 1).
Numerous scholars, starting with Carlino and Coulsen (2004), have used hedonic-
pricing techniques to attempt to quantify the quality of life aspects of sports. If the
presence of an NFL franchise, for example, is a vital cultural amenity for residents in the
area then the value of the franchise to local citizens should be reflected in a higher
willingness to pay for living in a city with a team. Carlino and Coulsen (2006), for
example, find that rental housing in cities with NFL franchises command 8% higher rents
than units in other metropolitan areas after correcting for housing characteristics. Others
such as Feng and Humphreys (2008) and Tu (1995) find localized effects of stadiums and
arenas on housing prices but also that these effects fade quite quickly as the distance from
the stadium grows. Conversely, Coates, Humphreys, and Zimbalist (2006) find that
Carlino and Coulsens results are highly dependent on model specification. Kiel,
Matheson and Sullivan (2010) find that the increase in housing costs does not extend to
owner-occupied housing and also find that the presence of stadium subsidies lowers
housing values, a finding also uncovered by Dehring, Depken, and Ward (2007).
Other researchers have employed contingent-valuation methods to attempt to
determine the feel-good effect that residents derive from spectator sports. While the
existence of positive benefits from sports teams and events are more commonly identified
in the contingent valuation literature than in the ex post examination of direct economic
18
impact, here too the assessed value of sports tends to be smaller than the public subsidies
that are handed out to professional sports (Johnson, Groothuis, and Whitehead, 2001).
Improving citizens quality of life is clearly an important goal for public policy
makers, and there is evidence that sports are a valued amenity for local communities.
Evidence of significant direct economic benefits from sporting events, franchises, and
stadiums is lacking, however. While public-private partnerships can be justified on
quality of life grounds, voters and public officials should not be deluded by over-
optimistic predictions of a financial windfall. Sports may make a city happy, but they are
unlikely to make a city rich.
19
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