Upwards of a billion dollars for 8 games a year for around 25-30 years of useful life? If you assume $1 billion for 240 games and 60,000 people per game that comes to $70 per ticket. Yikes.
It would be nice if our current fiscal problems force local governments across the country to jointly say "NO!" to these playgrounds. Some teams may move trying to find the last cities willing to screw their taxpayers to pay for the stadiums, but hopefully the game of musical chairs will end when fewer than 32 cities are willing to pay for them. Let the owners, advertisers and ticket buyers pay for them and leave our tax bills out of it.
If building and operating an NFL stadium (or Major League baseball stadium, NBA/NHL arena) was profitable, the teams would all be building their own venues instead of holding cities for ransom, and sticking the tax payers with the bill.
This economic argunent has been debunked over and over again. If you ignore the fact that a $billion dollars invested some other way might actually have a larger gain then investing it in a stadum, If you pretend that one $billion appears out of thin air, if you pretend that money citizens spend on Vikings games won’t be spent on other leisure time business, then it looks pretty good.
In other words if you are dishonest you might fool some people.
Indeed. When I moved to the DFWarea, I expected to attend the Ramgers game. Did not like the hassle or the expense. Pay for parking, pay for seating distant from the field. because companies have bought up all the good seats. I can remember getting good seats at Fenway in 1995 for about $15. Paid many times more more for worse seats at Arlington, plus I don’t like the configuration of the stadium. I can see very good baseball played at the Ranger’s minor league club at Frisco, at a small park where you can spit on the players if you choose. But watch out for fouls!
yaaaa! we got some crumbs from the bread and circuses!
Not a single penny of ticket sales will go towards paying off the stadium -- that's revenue for the NFL. The politicians are using the time-honored [and flat-out false] economic justification that the stadium will spur economic activity. It won't; it will drain money from other entertainment venues.