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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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Throughout recorded arenas/stadiums are not made to be profitable but are used for the health and we'll being of its citizens. There more for a cultural and social wealth than to bring in money for the citizens
That's a fair angle to take and more honest than people twisting themselves into knots insisting that giving a billionaire hundreds of millions of dollars is going to pay for itself.
Peoples misconception money concerning building an arena is that it's going to have an direct effect. Its not because sport franchises are businesses unto themselves. The benefit of having a sports franchise is more akin to the McDonald's effect. This effect shows that when a McDonald's builds a store more restaurants build near them. Also the stores around a McDonald's is profitable. This is based off of the foot traffic effect more people go into one spot the more businesses become successful. Having a sport franchises brings other businesses into an area and state. Young people want to be entertained, businesses want to keep young talent, businesses put their company in places that young people will stay their. Since the Thunder have come to OKC (2008) the population went from 40 to the 20s. More large companies have moved here also during this time. Having a sports franchise has helped OKC grow economically and by population.
Now do the thing we’re you isolate whether that age trend was unique to OKC? Oh it wasn’t? It was common in most cities? Was it just because millions of millennials moved to the cities for jobs as they graduated?
The population of Oklahoma for 70+ years was always in the 40s, this is just based off of the overall trend of growth in the US. Since 2008, the year the Thunder moved here, the population of OKC has moved from the 40s to the 20s. Although OKC biggest employers in the energy sector have had layoffs and cut spending. The biggest rise in businesses have been in the Tech industry which have a younger demographic. The amount of Tech companies has risen and moved to OKlahoma since the Thunder have arrived.