Sports stadiums built in the 1990s are aging, and many professional sports teams are looking for new facilities and public funds to pay for them.
“We’re right at the cusp of the next wave of stadium construction,” said J.C. Bradbury, an economics professor at Kennesaw State University who studies the issue. “That’s part of the reason why we’re seeing more stadiums.”
Professional sports teams across the country are preparing to improve and build new stadiums and arenas. In Chicago, both the NFL’s Bears and MLB’s White Sox are exploring moves. Baseball’s Cleveland Guardians, Milwaukee Brewers, Oakland Athletics, and Kansas City Royals are all working toward building new or improved stadiums. The same goes for the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers, Oklahoma City Thunder, and Los Angeles Clippers.
Elected leaders continue to funnel tax dollars into stadium and arena projects to attract and retain teams and boost local economies. But public debate is growing as decades of research show that taxpayers do not expect a positive return on their investments.
“This is no exception,” Bradbury said. “It’s clear across the board that these are really poor public investments.”
However, trade continues to expand. Bradbury said stadium subsidies have increased from a median of $350 million in 2010 to a median of about $500 million, adjusted for inflation.
In 2022, New York City officials approved a record $850 million in grants to fund a new stadium for the NFL’s Buffalo Bills.
And last April, the Tennessee Titans secured more than $1.2 billion in state and local funding to build a new pro football stadium in Nashville.
Journalist Neil Demoze, who has written extensively about stadium subsidies, said the government was benefiting from pandemic aid and a strong economy, and the momentum is only increasing.
“Stadium deals tend to beget other stadium deals,” he says. “When the Bills got money from New York, it was easier for the Titans to get money from Tennessee.”
Las Vegas just hosted Nevada’s first Super Bowl at Allegiant Stadium, which was aided by $750 million in public funding to lure the Raiders from Oakland, California, in 2016. Currently, the Oakland baseball team, commonly referred to as the A’s, is looking for its own stadium on the Las Vegas Strip.
But Nevada teachers are challenging a 2023 law authorizing up to $380 million in public funds to move the A’s to Las Vegas.
A political action committee backed by the Nevada Education Association filed a lawsuit earlier this month challenging the law’s constitutionality. The group is also pushing a ballot initiative that would allow voters to veto portions of public funding.
“They’re billionaires, right? They can do it themselves if they want,” said Alexander Marks, the teachers’ union’s director of strategy.
“At the end of the day, there are a lot of people who want government money to be spent on responsible things like public education, roads, and hospitals,” he says. “And for us to take money from there and put it into a stadium is a misuse of that money.”
Nevada ranks 48th in education funding per student, according to the National Education Association’s 2022 rankings. The report ranks the state as having the highest student-teacher ratio in the nation.
Marks said state leaders frequently tell educators they don’t have enough funding to address issues such as classroom size. He noted that Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo last year vetoed a bill that would have continued funding for the Universal Free School Lunch Program.
“What are our state’s priorities?” Marks said. “The stadium is great, but does the school lunch bill have to be vetoed?” We don’t really understand that. ”
Jeremy Aguero, a Nevada consultant hired by the Raiders and Athletics to work on the football and baseball stadium projects, said an NFL stadium is already a mathematical winner. A 2023 audit of the Las Vegas Stadium Authority found that the hotel-specific tax was raising more money than needed to pay off Allegiant Stadium’s debt.
He also said that the state’s revenue has increased by attracting large-scale sporting events.
Aguero noted that the Nevada Legislature last year passed the largest ever budget for K-12 education in fiscal year 2025, increasing funding per student by more than 25%.
“From that perspective, our school gets more money because of Allegiant Stadium,” Aguero said. “Thanks to Allegiant Stadium, our police and firefighters will have more money in their hands. Our state and local governments will be able to support major events in everything from social services to higher education. We offer so much more thanks to the large-scale events held at the center.”
economics, identity issues
Judith Grant Long, an associate professor of sport management and urban planning at the University of Michigan who studies sport management and urban planning, said that while public subsidies are larger in dollar terms, they are actually He said stadiums and arenas are becoming a smaller part of the overall cost. problem.
Team owners and developers are increasingly proposing stadiums and arenas as part of broader developments that include entertainment, apartments, and hotels. And elected officials are increasingly directing public funds toward costs such as infrastructure and transportation, which in theory can provide greater community benefit than just a venue.
But this dynamic puts wealthy team owners in the powerful position of owning some of the most valuable real estate on the market.
Long said professional sports remain a small part of the overall economy. And a mountain of peer-reviewed academic research shows that investing in stadiums and arenas has more costs than economic benefits.
“General economic wisdom is that economic impact, as measured by jobs and taxes, does not cover the average public investment,” Long said.
But these decisions aren’t always about pure arithmetic.
For many leaders, especially in smaller markets, maintaining a major sports franchise becomes a point of civic pride.
Oklahoma City Republican Mayor David Holt said the city’s economy and identity have changed since the NBA’s Seattle SuperSonics moved to Oklahoma City in 2008 and changed the team’s name to the Thunder.
“Oklahoma City wasn’t on anyone’s radar until they acquired the Thunder,” Holt said. “Our identity as a big league city has become very intrinsic to how we see ourselves and has been a big part of our momentum in recent decades. ”
Oklahoma City is one of the few cities outside of the nation’s top 40 media markets with NBA, MLB and NFL teams, Holt said.
That’s why he strongly supported an effort last year to extend the 1-cent sales tax to fund construction of a new $900 million public arena for the Thunder. The mayor said the arena would cost taxpayers about $1 billion after interest costs are taken into account. The team has committed $50 million to the project, about 5% of public funding.
According to Forbes, NBA franchises are worth more than $3 billion. The seven-member ownership group is led by wealthy venture capitalist Clay Bennett.
In December, more than 70% of voters approved a tax extension, ensuring the team’s presence in Oklahoma City through 2050.
Holt said not building a new arena and potentially forcing the Thunder out of the city would have been a blow the area hasn’t seen since the oil crisis of the 1980s. .
Representative Rob Brooks (R) of Wisconsin acknowledged the difficulty of assessing the true value of professional sports teams.
Last year, as lawmakers considered a bill to fund renovations to the Milwaukee Brewers’ American Family Field, he wanted to see specifics, especially how much the team and visiting teams would contribute to state income taxes. The focus was on what was going on.
“I really just tied it to something tangible…because it’s hard to measure everything else,” he said.
The Brooks-sponsored bill would make about $500 million in state money available for stadium projects aimed at keeping the team in place through 2050, but would specifically say that the cost would be covered by the team’s income tax collection. Brooks said.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers signed the bill in December.
“As long as you have a facility that has more than half its useful life remaining, it makes sense to try to get the most out of the investment you’ve made,” Brooks said. “If we had made a completely new investment, we would have had a completely different discussion.”
Stadium sales are happening one after another.
Justin Wilson, the Democratic mayor of Alexandria, Virginia, is well aware of the studies criticizing stadium and arena contracts.
But he believes local taxpayers are sufficiently protected by the bill that would move the NBA’s Wizards and the NHL’s Capitals from downtown Washington, D.C., to his city.
The plan, backed by Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, calls for Monumental Sports & Entertainment, which owns both teams, to make an upfront investment of $400 million and make ongoing lease payments to the new stadium authority. There is. Wilson pointed out that the public portion of the funding will come from fees and taxes collected within the new arena development, not from taxpayers across the city or state.
“This has been one of our focuses from the beginning, and we’ve really learned from a series of bad sports arena and sports stadium deals that have been done across the country,” Wilson said. Ta.
But the plan faces political opposition from leaders in Washington, D.C., and some lawmakers in Richmond. A bill Youngkin sponsored passed the state House last week but faced difficulties in the state Senate, where key committee leaders said the bill was “not ready for prime time,” the Associated Press reported. reported.
The effort has also faced organized opposition in Northern Virginia, where residents are concerned about subsidies and local complexities such as transportation and public transportation.
Indiana Democratic Rep. Earl Harris Jr. wants to lure the NFL’s Chicago Bears, who are looking to leave their longtime home of Soldier Field, to northwest Indiana. Harris introduced a bill that would create a new taxpayer-funded sports development commission tasked with attracting professional sports teams to the region.
“Maybe we can draw them in,” Harris said. “And if we can’t attract them, maybe we can draw some attention to the area and attract another team.”
The Bears, a team valued at more than $6 billion, bought and demolished hundreds of acres in suburban Arlington Heights, Illinois, last year. But recently, the team has shifted its focus to Chicago’s lakefront real estate.
“The schedule has to be 2024,” Bears president and CEO Kevin Warren told WGN-TV last week. “In an ideal world, I would like to make a clear statement in the upcoming Congress.”
In Indiana, a bill proposed by Harris failed to pass out of committee. But he said there is still interest from state and local leaders in bringing professional teams to Northwest Indiana.
“In fact, people still contact me,” he says. “They support this effort and want to support it. So we’ll be bringing this back next year.”
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