Sports Stadium Persuasive Essay
Humans have been building stadiums for thousands of years. In fact, many stadiums today are modeled similarly to the Colosseum, which dates back all the way to ancient Rome. Back in ancient Rome, stadiums were not as controversial as today, because many now are funded with the help of taxpayers. The debate over the public financing of sports stadiums has been going on for decades between team owners, fans, local authorities, and taxpayers. While sports teams and their owners argue that new stadiums help spur economic growth, many taxpayers oppose their tax dollars going towards stadiums.
Stadiums are expensive, often costing hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions. The average cost of an NFL stadium from 1997-2011 was over $525 million. …show more content…
While sports teams are wealthy and powerful businesses with loyal customers in their area, “cities have very little bargaining power with an NFL team. As long as there are cities without NFL teams that are willing to subsidize a stadium, cities will have to pay part of the cost of a new stadium” (Parker). If laws are passed that limit, or prohibit teams from using public money to fund their stadiums, it would need to be nationwide to be effective. If only some states decided to prohibit it, their teams would move to other cities for stadium deals. Since North American sports franchises are million and billion dollar companies, however, it should be easy for them to help repay their city or state governments later on with revenues generated by the stadium; however, the tax laws for public projects are complex. In the mid 1980’s, Congress looked to simplify the tax code, passing the 1986 Tax Reform Act, which, “said that no more than 10 percent of the revenue generated by a project built with public money could be repaid with revenues from that project. So a team couldn’t use more than 10 percent of revenues from concessions or tickets to pay for stadiums” (Semuels). That means that if a team receives any money from a city to finance its stadium, the team cannot use more than ten percent of its stadium revenues to pay towards their stadium. Moreover, both teams and cities have little option for funding their
Stadiums are expensive, often costing hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions. The average cost of an NFL stadium from 1997-2011 was over $525 million. …show more content…
While sports teams are wealthy and powerful businesses with loyal customers in their area, “cities have very little bargaining power with an NFL team. As long as there are cities without NFL teams that are willing to subsidize a stadium, cities will have to pay part of the cost of a new stadium” (Parker). If laws are passed that limit, or prohibit teams from using public money to fund their stadiums, it would need to be nationwide to be effective. If only some states decided to prohibit it, their teams would move to other cities for stadium deals. Since North American sports franchises are million and billion dollar companies, however, it should be easy for them to help repay their city or state governments later on with revenues generated by the stadium; however, the tax laws for public projects are complex. In the mid 1980’s, Congress looked to simplify the tax code, passing the 1986 Tax Reform Act, which, “said that no more than 10 percent of the revenue generated by a project built with public money could be repaid with revenues from that project. So a team couldn’t use more than 10 percent of revenues from concessions or tickets to pay for stadiums” (Semuels). That means that if a team receives any money from a city to finance its stadium, the team cannot use more than ten percent of its stadium revenues to pay towards their stadium. Moreover, both teams and cities have little option for funding their