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Why a city should not build a stadium for an NFL team

reuters.com

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Re: Why a city should not build a stadium for an NFL team

#101

Post by wesd »

giarc wrote: post #36

I live in Calgary and our NHL arena is nearing the end of it's life. Our mayor, Naheed Nenshi, has been very vocal about public funding for arena's and is holding the owners group and the NHLs 'feet to the fire' so to speak. >I have said for a long time — and continue to strongly believe — that public money must be for public benefit and not private profit. [0] I don't think he's necessarily against using public mone…

It's a terrible time to try to get public funding for a billion dollar project in Alberta while thousands of people are losing their jobs due to oil price.

They will try again. Here is a Grantland picce that covert it: http://grantland.com/the-triangle/how-to-sell-a-stadium-in-s...

Re: Why a city should not build a stadium for an NFL team

#102

Post by michaelbuddy »

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #86
scoofy wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems extremely anti-competitive. I wonder if that rule could be challenged.

Private company, go start yer own football league if you don't like it, etc.

non profit with tax breaks you mean

Re: Why a city should not build a stadium for an NFL team

#103

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

bdcravens wrote: post #82

> Houston’s iconic Astrodome, once dubbed the Eighth Wonder of the World, sits empty a decade after the facility housed 25,000 evacuees of Hurricane Katrina and nearly 20 years after the Oilers left. It's worth noting that the Astrodome sits in the NRG complex, next door to the NRG Stadium where the Texans play, and in the same parking lot as the NRG Center, where events like the Houston Livestock and Rodeo take plac…

> but [the Astrodome] will likely become a park to bridge NRG Center and Stadium

Only because so many people are too sentimental for the damn thing to knock it down. It's likely to become a greater boondoggle than anything else that exists on the property.

Re: Why a city should not build a stadium for an NFL team

#104

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

michaelbuddy wrote: post #102
fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Private company, go start yer own football league if you don't like it, etc.

non profit with tax breaks you mean

When it's convenient, yup, doing a public service, keeping kids off drugs, stuff like that.

Re: Why a city should not build a stadium for an NFL team

#105

Post by tamana »

samstave wrote: post #70

Douchebags. Got it. HAHA - yet again, criticizing GS on HN results in downvotes. So now we have to worry about GS VC shills on HN as opposed to just eglin shills on reddit?

Hard call to make. It is reasonable to ban teams whose owners are technically incapable of ever changing their (legal) mind about any future question.

Re: Why a city should not build a stadium for an NFL team

#106

Post by maxxxxx »

What I find fascinating that the most anti-government people (usually right wing) are usually for these deals and the more pro-government people (usually left wing) are against these deals. At least this is my observation.

Scott Walker for example signed a stadium deal in Wisconsin and campaigns on small government.

Re: Why a city should not build a stadium for an NFL team

#107

Post by ars »

slg wrote: post #64
elchief wrote: post #34

https://www.kansascityfed.org/~/media/files/publicat/econrev... "So does it makes sense for metro areas to use public funds to attract and retain major league sports franchises? The answer is definitely not if benefits are limited to increases in economic activity and tax revenue collection. A strong case can be made, however, that the quality-of-life benefits from hosting a major league team can sometimes justify th…

These type of non-financial factors are always ignored in this debate. People seem to forget the government doesn't have to be profit focused and there are plenty of other examples of public expenditures that benefit private industries that are still widely popular. We don't expect public parks, libraries, or bridges to turn a profit, so I'm not sure why we expect stadiums financing deals to do it. If the citizenry o…

> so I'm not sure why we expect stadiums financing deals to do it.

Because tickets to enter the stadium are not free.

If they were free, like how parks are free, that would be different.

Re: Why a city should not build a stadium for an NFL team

#108

Post by jimbokun »

joelrunyon wrote: post #19
randycupertino wrote: post #13

Between the scam of municipalities losing so much $$ on stadiums, how the stadiums cause urban blight sitting empty most of the time then causing major traffic headaches the other times, and the CTE injury rate, I can't fathom how football still exists today as a popular sport. Seems like the whole thing is a house of cards that needs to collapse.

> I can't fathom how football still exists today as a popular sport Your first three points make sense, but don't lead to this conclusion at all. People are not going to rationally say "football leads to traffic so I'm not going to watch it anymore." Football is entertaining, which is why it has an audience. Whether or not the negatives you outlined above are funded by the gov't is an entirely different matter.

Football is very boring.

I used to enjoy it, at least when the Steelers are playing. Then I got into soccer, eventually getting a more expensive cable package to watch the Premier League.

Now when I watch football again, I am painfully aware of the time between plays, the incessant commercials, and now the ever increasing number of "official reviews". Seems like every 3rd or 4th play, an official has to leave the field, watch the play over and over and over and over again for 5 minutes, before announcing that, yes, they got the call right in the first place.

Soccer, the action flows pretty constantly, and it's all done in under 2 hours. Watching football is a grueling, four hour commitment. There goes your Sunday afternoon (and evening, if you are enough of a glutton to stick around for Sunday Night Football).

It's starting to all seem like Farmville. Something terribly boring, that somehow the general public has convinced itself is a lot of fun.

(But please don't tell anyone I said this, I live in Pittsburgh!)

Re: Why a city should not build a stadium for an NFL team

#109

Post by rconti »

sampo wrote: post #60
Touche wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why it exists as a popular sport anyways, it's 5 seconds of action followed by 30 seconds of two guys talking about it. The average football game has 11 minutes of action[1]. Everything but the last ~8 minutes of the 4th quarter is boring. Yet Americans love it. I don't get it. [1] http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527487042812045750028...

As someone who recently moved to the US, should I first try to learn about American football, or about baseball?

Where do you live? First of all, we need to get around the inaccurately named regions of the US.

If you live in the midwest (the middle of the country; from top to bottom) or the south (southwest of the country), football without a doubt.

If you live anywhere else, you can pick and choose. To me, baseball is a lot more intellectually stimulating and has a lot more interesting strategy, but the more I learn about football, the more I see how much goes into it as well. I was a rabid baseball fan as a youth, but these days can't be bothered to spend the time required to watch a game (let alone 160 games a season). As such, I'm more of a football fan now-- frankly, there is more action, and there are fewer games per year so it's easier to follow a team.

Re: Why a city should not build a stadium for an NFL team

#110

Post by maxxxxx »

nhebb wrote: post #55
onetwotree wrote: post #42

The Green Bay packers have an interesting approach to this problem, although it requires a fanatical fan base and special ownership provisions, and the fact that the team can't leave Green Bay (without a vote by the shareholders, who are all fans, which will never, ever, happen). When they want to improve their stadium, they issue stock and sell more season tickets. This works because Packers stock cannot be sold or…

The NFL changed the ownership rules, and the Green Bay model cannot be repeated elsewhere. "The NFL does not allow corporate membership. Instead, it requires clubs to be wholly owned either by a single owner, or small group of owners, and requires that at least one owner owns a 1/3 stake in the team. The Packers are granted an exemption to this rule, as they have been a publicly owned corporation since before the rul…

The first thing I'd do is to take away the tax exempt status of the NFL.
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