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[Seattle Times] 15 years after moving Sonics, now it’s the Thunder asking for publicly funded arena
(www.seattletimes.com)
this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
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This is one of the biggest taxpayer rip-offs in the country. Under the guise of the limited jobs it creates. Study after study proves what a rip-off it is. New York taxpayers are about to foot 1 billion so the Bills can keep coming up short of expectations.
It’s not just sports teams. Big companies do this too. They get tax breaks and cash incentives. It should just be outlawed.
And on top of this they're doing international and neutral games, lowering then number of games at the stadium. Not a thing yet in the NBA (outside of preseason) but it will be. Why does the city never get a percent ownership in the team at least?
this is always my point, sure tax payers will pay for 51% of the new stadium, just sign over 51% ownership done deal
The data for it's economic impact is murky, but part of that is because it's hard to quantify. They're an economic multiplier. Depending on the city it will have differing levels of impact across a multitude of businesses. But part of the intangibles are creating a brand identity for the city. In your example it also makes Buffalo a bigger travel destination. I'm a lot more likely to travel to Buffalo to visit Niagara Falls and catch a Bills game than I am to travel there to only do one of those things.
That's nonsense. When there are only 8 or 9 home games a year, and the overwhelming majority of tickets go to season ticket holders who live locally and tailgate in the parking lot, the overall economic multiplier impact is negligible. Study after study debunks that claim. Meanwhile you have a giant concrete ring surrounded by an enormous asphalt circle of parking lots, all empty for at least 340 days of the year. A football stadfium is not not only a bad thing to subsidize, it is just a bad use of land, especially high value land in the center of a city or along a river. Subsidizing a football stadium with public money is madness - most cities are better off without football stadiums even if they are built entirely by the teams themselves.
This is not so true for basketball arenas. Many more games, the arena is useful for concerts, conventions, circuses, etc., and if you minimize the parking lots, people will spend money in the local restaurants before the game. Billionaires should still build their own basketball arenas, but throwing some money there is not as ridiculous as a football stadium.
That's a really good point, there are numerous concerts and other events held at most NBA stadiums. Just off the top of my head this year at Gainbridge Fieldhouse they had WWE Fast Lane, a number of concerts, Indiana Fever games, and girls and boys high school finals.
Sacramento's new arena kind of saves downtown Sac. It's now wonderful and I'm not sure it would have been without that stadium being the lifeblood of the city
Capital One Arena in DC (then the MCI Center...and then Verizon Center aka The Phone Booth) revitalized that portion of DC as well.
the "brings in local jobs" argument only makes sense when you consider that most political terms are 2 or 4 years. The opportunity to immediately "add" 1000+ construction jobs for 18 months is relatively easy compared to building up sustainable long-term industries.
And just in time for the team to want a newer stadium.
And the minimum wage jobs for working concessions and security/ushering it brings during the season is not really something to celebrate as a great return on investment. Besides, those jobs also already exist at the current stadium/arena.
Thats fucking bullshit
Democrats love giving billionaires money for their stadiums for some reason.
They’re doing the same thing here in Jacksonville for the Jaguars. Instead of putting money towards education, infrastructure, or our decaying downtown taxpayers will instead pay a billion dollars for a “stadium of the future” for a mediocre ass football team that hasn’t won shit in the almost 30 years that they’ve existed. They’re arguably the most irrelevant franchise in all of North American pro sports and they’ve become a bottom tier organization under Khan’s ownership yet they have the audacity to ask us to split the bill lmao.
no one realistically expects anything from the bills
The fact that it's coming from the state and not the municipality is the truly wild part of the Buffalo stadium deal. It's one thing if the money's coming from the area because, even if they're still atrocious "investments" when it comes to public funding, at least it's still the people that will gain whatever benefits there are to be had from having a stadium and NFL team. The vast majority of NY state taxes come from NYC, though, and I feel damn confident saying that at least 99% of NYC residents are literally never going to see any benefit in the slightest. That's next level fucked, IMO.
Kathy Hochul, the NY governor, is a Democrat who is up for re election soon. She is from Buffalo and doesn’t give a shit about downstate
the base essential idea of taxes is that they are collected in one place and spent in another, money collected from one person provides a service for another
im not saying stadiums are a good investment just that its not "truly wild", or "next level" that taxes collected from NYC go to a project in Buffalo, very much the same level that we've always been on
There's very little musicians left who can draw crowds big enough to fill these places up. Especially in poor smaller markets. Then the NFL stadiums which are custom built for 8 home games a year.
I don’t know Chase Center in San Francisco doesn’t seem to have this issue. I know the income level there is higher than other places, but the tours don’t start and stop in SF so they must be filling arenas in other areas… no?
When I lived in NY the cable company would advertise that they had all NY sports teams, which included the NJ Nets and not the Bills
people were pissed at aoc for refusing to fund a new amazon lol
Hello I pay NYC taxes and the Bills can go fuck themselves
The Bills should not be very high on your list of reasons to be angry at NYC or the taxes you pay there lol
I would be thrilled if 0 tax dollars went to a new Bills stadium.
Remember Amazon HQ2? Most waste of government resources in a probably a generation
I remember they threatened to leave NYC and then just hired even more people since.
It's not a ripoff every study is done after the fact of a franchise being in the community for years. Its effects can't be measured on an economic basis because its business is limited to itself. Its value is based of a social and cultural aspect. When OKC was trying to get companies like Boeing, Amazon and other Tech companies in the medical field they were worried about coming there because they had nothing to attract youth and young people to move or come here. They were worried about Brain Drain( when Young college graduates leave an area). Since the Thunder have came in 2008 the amount of companies and population has increased to where OKC used to be in the top 40 in population to now where in the 20s. This study has been done by OKC Chamber of commerce and Oklahoma City their effect is a collateral effect and not a direct effect. There hasn't been a study of a city that hasn't had a franchise to getting one. One thing that is certain is that every place that has complained about paying for a new arena and lost a franchise always pays for a new one to get back another franchise facts.