Are sports stadiums Worth the money?

On March 28th, 2013, in my American Sport in the 21st Century class, we discussed the topic of whether or not sport stadiums are really worth all the money put into them. We came up with lists of cons and pros for this argument, and they are listed below.

Cons


New Soldier Field: Home of the Chicago Bears was remodled in 2002
with private fundsand $432 million of public money (Coakley, 2010; pg 377).

• The stadium jobs that are provided are seasonal and offer low pay wages, except to the athletes and executives.
• Construction materials are often bought outside of the local area.
• New businesses are often franchises located in other cities.
• Discretionary money is limited.
• Feeling good does not benfit everyone.

Pros

• The stadium and the team create jobs.
• Stadium construction infuses money into the local economy.
• The team will attract other businesses.
• The team will attract media and attention that boosts tourism, product sales, and economic development.
• The team will create positive psychic and social benefits.  

My opinion: If they are going to use a lot of money to build a stadium, then they need to make it beneficial to everyone instead of just the athletes. One way is that they could come up with ways to make the stadium be open all year round so that people could work all year instead of having just a seasonal job. That would really help benefit those who need the income. When going through construction of the stadium, they should first check with the local area for any materials that they could use instead of using so much money on having materials shipped to the area. In Coakley's text on page 376 it states that independent researchers explain that positive effects are bound to occur when a city spends $500 million to a billion dollars of public money on a project. However, they also point out that the public good might be better served if tax money were spent on things other than a stadium. I think that using millions of dollars to build a stadium is a ridiculous amount of money, but if that is going to be the case, then the founders should have to prove that it is going to benefit the city economically in the future.




http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/09/if-you-build-it-they-might-not-come-the-risky-economics-of-sports-stadiums/260900/