HBO’s John Oliver hits all the right notes on stadium funding rant
Giving professional sports owners many, many millions in taxpayer money to build new stadiums has never made sense, but it keeps happening.
Most of us understand this is a scam. Studies have argued repeatedly that there’s no real economic impact from a new stadium. There’s no real economic impact on a city, county or state, that is. The economic impact for a pro sports owner is very real.
That’s why this will be the 21st straight season the NFL doesn’t have a team in Los Angeles. The NFL is an incredibly smart business that makes a ton of money; if it thought having a team in Los Angeles would be a boon financially it would have happened long ago. They league figured out that not having a team in Los Angeles, and blackmailing taxpayers through threats of relocating their team to L.A., can pay off tremendously. And most logical people know and understand this concept, yet taxes are still allocated to new palaces for sports teams (or tax breaks or other favors are given to them).
So when John Oliver, a British comedian who hosts “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” on HBO, went on a 19-minute rant about the topic on last week’s show, it’s not like we didn’t know about the issue already. But it was still eye-opening and funny to see them all laid out in one place (WARNING: most of the clip is edited but there is some adult language in it):
I mean, $12 billion spent on 51 facilities from 2000-2010? That money could have gone elsewhere. It’s especially hard to swallow that the money went to sports owners who obviously make major profits, though they won’t open their books even as they ask for and receive public funding for stadiums. Some of Oliver’s points can be argued —he says teams keep all the profits, but a team like the San Francisco 49ers pays the city of Santa Clara $24.5 million in rent annually, according to The Atlantic, and other teams pay rent too — it’s clearly a one-sided financial arrangement.
The NFL is a repeat offender. According to a CNN story this year, $4.7 billion in taxpayer money has been used from 1997 to now to build 20 NFL stadiums (the Rams and Raiders left Los Angeles in 1994, by the way). Now the Chargers, Raiders and Rams are running the same scam, with the same tired media stories on the NFL’s bluffing mechanisms to convince everyone that hey this is real, we’re really moving to Los Angeles this time! …. Unless those cities get publicly funded stadiums, of course.
It’s tough, though. The cost of taking a stand is losing a team. If Milwaukee doesn’t build a new arena for the Bucks, I’m quite sure the NBA wouldn’t mind leaving that small market for Seattle or Las Vegas, as has been threatened. And that would serve as a warning to all other cities: Look what happened in Milwaukee, it could happen to you too if you don’t give us tax money for an arena. Eventually, some city will not give in and the NFL will have to follow through on the Los Angeles threat. And it will be a tough day for that city when it loses its NFL team.
So it’s a tough question to answer. I’m sure people in Minnesota, Atlanta, New Orleans and other cities that have gotten stuck up by their NFL team get how awful and unfair it is that a billionaire owner is digging in their pockets so he can get a new stadium. It would probably have hurt more to lose the Vikings, Falcons or Saints, though, at least for those who root for those teams (pity on the taxpayers who pay for those stadiums and couldn’t care less about football).
Hopefully there’s some way around this madness going forward. Oliver’s piece pointed out how dumb it is. Common sense also tells us how awful this scam has been.
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Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @YahooSchwab
