CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – The very thought that taxpayers pay for stadiums that professional sports teams use as a place of business should have been stopped years ago. Baseball and football teams are owned by multi-millionaires. If the argument that stadiums attract visitors and dollars to a community is true, then team owners should be eager to build their own. (Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones built and owns his own stadium. When their team isn’t playing, he gets to keep all the money from the Taylor Swift concert or from the motocross races.)
Most stadiums are owned by a semi-government run stadium district, yet the team gets to keep the money from the naming rights. Basic stadium upkeep including things like video scoreboards and concession amenities are paid for by the stadium district. The team keeps the money from the advertising within the arena. Most teams even get to control the parking revenue at their ballparks.
Governor Tony Evers suggests spending $290-million, a small part of the state’s surplus, for renovations at the Brewer’s ballpark. Republicans are right to object. The surplus belongs to everyone in Wisconsin; someone who lives in Hudson or LaCrosse probably doesn’t get any benefit from what happens to the Brewers in Milwaukee. The GOP alternative is a sales tax in the stadium district, to be charged in the counties surrounding the stadium. That’s closer to the correct idea, since those are the areas whose restaurants, bars, and businesses benefit from what happens there.
Even then if stadiums are such economic dynamos, ownership will want to own all of it. That you and I are expected to pay for the ballpark means the economic arguments probably aren’t true. Multi-millionaires: pay for your own place of business.
Chris Conley
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