seb146 wrote:IIRC, it is everyone that would pay to fund the stadium. Funding for these billionaire's toys come from lodging and sales taxes. I have not once been to a Mariners game or a Seahawks game but, when we go to Seattle and spend the night or just pass through and eat someplace (like the food court at Uwajimaya) we are helping to fund those stadiums.
If one does a generic search on the topic:
https://www.google.com/search?q=economi ... d+stadiumsit's pretty clear it's a bad use of public funds to build a stadium.
One snip:
When surveyed, 86 percent of economists agreed that "local and state governments in the U.S. should eliminate subsidies to professional sports franchises." Perhaps economists just do not like sports? Actually, many economists love professional sports—including former Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke, an ardent Washington Nationals fan. Rather, it is the provision of taxpayer money in the form of subsidies that economists generally oppose. In a 2017 poll, 83 percent of the economists surveyed agreed that "Providing state and local subsidies to build stadiums for professional sports teams is likely to cost the relevant taxpayers more than any local economic benefits that are generated."
Ref:
https://research.stlouisfed.org/publica ... -stadiums/Another more down to earth source:
“All you are doing is moving time and money around. People are going to the game instead of the movies,” said Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First, a national subsidy watchdog group.
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“The typical baseball team has no more impact on the local economy than a mid-sized department store and a football team, which is there for only eight or nine games per year, has even less,” said Micheal Leeds, a sports economist with Temple University and co-author of the book “The Economics of Sports.”. “So, they’re really not that big a business but, because they are so much a part of the sort of cultural fabric of a city, we don’t realize just how small potatoes they are.”
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From a return-on-investment standpoint, economists and researchers almost universally agree that stadiums are unlikely to generate anywhere near the level of tax revenue needed to offset the public subsidies tied to their construction. Doing so would require a stadium to generate a lot of spending from people outside the community who attend games. But the vast majority of fans live in the region, and the money they spend on tickets, concessions and the like are dollars that would otherwise be spent on other activities, such as dining or attending a show.
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While stadium construction does create jobs, it is only a benefit to the local community if the stadium is built under agreements that guarantee the hiring of local companies and workers. Once a stadium is built, they tend to offer primarily low-wage jobs that are only available, in the NFL’s case, for less than a total of two weeks per year. “The big ripple effect issue is that you don’t have continuous employment except for security guards and groundskeepers,” LeRoy said.
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A study commissioned by the state and conducted by the private consulting firm AECOM found that the Bills generate more than $25 million a year in various taxes. The bulk of that money — $19.5 million — is state income tax paid by players, coaches and staff. “I think that this is actually a really useful tool for folks to argue against publicly funding the stadium because the document shows that the impact of the Bills on the local economy is actually pretty negligible,”. In most other cases, he said stadium impact studies, especially those commissioned by team owners and the league, include “wild claims” about teams and stadiums generating hundreds of millions of dollars of economic impact in the communities where they are located.
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Neil deMause, an editor with Field of Schemes, a website that has been tracking sports stadium subsidies since 1998, said Western New Yorkers should view even the $25 million tax figure with skepticism. DeMause said it’s important to note that the values in the study involve “marginal tax rates” — the amount of tax applied for each level of personal income — rather than “effective tax rates,” which represent the share of the total annual income player, coaches and other team personnel are required to pay in taxes.
Ref:
https://www.investigativepost.org/2021/ ... w-stadium/Building a stadium is all about politicians taking advantage of populism. The benefits are more in the realm of the intangible than the tangible. Yet as you point out, everyone pays the tax whether they are a sports fan or not.
Your case illustrates their main point, you were coming to Seattle even if there were no stadium to visit. You were happy to spend money at Uwajimaya instead of a stadium. The thing is, Uwajimaya doesn't get taxpayer funding, stadia do. The room tax money could be spent on things that will have lasting impact, such as education or infrastructure, or just reduce the cost of a room so more people can visit and/or have more money to spend when they do visit.
As above, the Bills are responsible for about $25M/year in tax revenue. For that, the taxpayers are providing $850M right up front, with interest payments meaning it'll cost them far, far more than that. It's a terrible deal.