Posted on 05/03/2024 6:41:49 AM PDT by MinorityRepublican
For more than a decade, it’s been obvious that voters won’t support any proposal to give NFL owners taxpayer money for stadium construction or renovation. It’s becoming more clear that the elected officials are becoming less inclined to burn political capital by giving public funds to privately-owned football teams.
That could be where the puck is moving. No more free cash for multi-billionaires. Currently, the Bears, Chiefs, Bengals, and Browns are facing resistance in their local markets. The Jaguars supposedly will have a public-private deal for a massive renovation to EverBank Stadium soon; until it’s done, however, it’s not.
There’s a very basic reality at play here. The NFL is a victim of its own success. As franchise values continue to explode (Dolphins owner Stephen Ross reportedly turned down a $10 billion offer), why should any community pay for a stadium to be built or refurbished?
Sell a piece of the team, if need be, to pay for a stadium. Take out a loan. Sell the team to someone who can and will pay for a stadium. If it’s good business for the public to own and operate it, it should be good business for the team to own and operate it, too.
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcsports.com ...
About time. The taxpayers have had to pay to build sports facilities and then get charged an arm and a leg and a testicle to enter.
In short, should our “heroes” get a subsidy to maintain their multi-million $$ salaries and lavish lifestyles?
I hear that in Buffalo , a lot of people are angry at the Bills new stadium situation, because the Bills are requiring people to pay a personal seat license fee, in order to be able to buy season tickets.
That seems really odd to me. You can’t just buy season tickets. You have to pay this license fee of thousands of dollars to have the privilege of buying the actual tickets.
I don’t understand why modern stadiums cost billions of dollars. Some stadiums built about 20 years ago costed hundreds of millions , but now it seems like every new stadium is over a billion.
Maybe NPR/PBS/Abortionists could take over the operation?
NFL made billions so they can build their own
If you are Los Angeles, you can let the team(s) walk until someone finally decides to pony up the building money.
If you are Jacksonville, and have no other sports teams, the team can threaten to move credibly, and the city doesn’t want to lose an NFL franchise.
If you have a dedicated fan base with more than half-a-century of team history where the city is part of the team’s identity, the bluff can be called. The Raiders can move, the Cowboys have to stay near Dallas.
Just because the owners make money, doesn’t mean they don’t want to make more. Just because a municipality/state spends money, doesn’t mean that agents don’t want to spend more if the alternative is losing an NFL team.
“The Jaguars supposedly will have a public-private deal for a massive renovation to EverBank Stadium soon; until it’s done, however, it’s not.”
The little liberal SJW that just got elected here is pushing for this, and I pray “until it’s done, however, it’s not.”
Eventually carrys the day.
To ask a city of around 1 million people to be taxed for something less than 80 thousand people will use 10 times a year is total bull$h!t
So sorry NFL owners, but the money that would have gone to building you a bigger and better stadium with larger owner suites is now needed to pay for the housing and feeding of illegal migrants.
Building material and inflation might account for some of the extra cost
But most of the extra cost is the kick backs. Greedy greasy dim politicians are demanding unreasonable amounts.
Not like the old days when most were okay skimming a little off the top.
Isn’t that amazing how long it takes for the sheeple to come along?
Think Bob Lurie. He tried to move the SF Giants after the voters voted down his new stadium. He felt the taxpayers owed him. The Giants shared Candlestick Park with the 49ers. How did Eddie Debartolo react? He called Candlestick a pigsty-struck while the iron was hot-49ers were hot too. Mayor Diane Feinstein reacted with millions of $’s in improvements.
Eventually the people come around. What’s hard to acknowledge is the leftists in SF were right. What would Trump think? Good question.
They're adding even more luxury boxes in them.
And $20 beers.
Then we could get into why cities want to subsidize these sports teams.
Is there really that much Prestige or civic pride involved in having a team in major league baseball , NFL football, NBA basketball , or NHL hockey?
I know the boosters always say that a new stadium will generate Economic Development, and so these projects are a net benefit to the city. Has this ever happened anywhere?
They had no choice because Buffalo is a $#itty town so the owner was going to move the team to Austin, Salt Lake City or San Antonio.
Indeed. The ship should have sailed decades ago.
As I stated when 700 million dollars was spent to buy the Houston Texans franchise and they asked the Taxpayers to finance their stadium, what kind of business plan is that if you can’t afford to pay for the location you’re going to operate out of? Taxpayers paying for stadiums was a bad plan in the old days and a terrible plan today.
That’s right, living here in Jacksonville, there is some grumbling over the stadium renovation, especially with a 2-billion-dollar price tag.
Shad Khan is supposedly putting up 1 billion of his own money as part of the deal, we have a crazy female liberal mayor, but we also have only one professional team and if they were ever to leave, we would have no chance of getting another one.
Added to that, there has been millions of dollars pledged to restore and develop the area around the stadium by Shad Khan, if the stadium deal were to fall thru, all that development would likely fall thru as well.
Regardless of the grumbling I don’t think any mayor of Jacksonville would want to be known as the mayor who ran off the NFL team.
I know that college football is different. If you look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._stadiums_by_capacity and ignore #11 (used just once or twice per year), the top 14 stadiums will fill to capacity (85K to 107K) every home game and they're all college football stadiums.
You don't get into NFL teams until you get to the 15th largest stadium. And I wonder how many of them are filled on most home games.
So tax money for NFL stadium aren't just ethically wrong. If I'm right about their lack of use, they're also a big waste of money.
The NFL team uses the stadium 10 times a year, the Fla/Ga game is every year, Monster Trucks happens once a year, other events like concerts happen regularly at the stadium, plus all the development around the stadium that would dry up if the team left.
There is a huge amount of prime riverfront property that is sitting idle at the present time that would likely see major development if the stadium is renovated.
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