To the throngs of economists who say that sports stadiums don’t do anything for local economies, add an unlikely ally: Minnesota Twins president Jerry Bell, who says the economic-benefit argument his team has been using for years is bunk. Of stadium-naysaying economists, Bell told the Minneapolis Star Tribune, “At some global level, they’re obviously correct,” adding: “I don’t think the economic argument turns it one way or another, so why go there? If there are side benefits, great. If not, so what? You get into an economic argument, and the bottom line is, ‘Do you want to build it or not?'” Did somebody put truth serum in the Minnesota water supply this month, or what?
2 comments on “Twins exec: Stadiums don’t help economy”
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Very interesting. Do you think we will see more executives admitting that stadiums don’t help economic development? Once more people start realizing that stadiums don’t help the local economy, teams are going to have a hard time using that argument to have stadiums built.
I think we’ve already seen some of this, along the lines of execs saying: “It’s not about the economic impact, but the ‘intangibles’ like civic pride.” It’s also why we’re seeing so many teams build “ballpark village” type stuff, so that they can claim that the real bang for your buck comes from the village, not the ballpark. Clearly abandoning the economic-impact rationale makes things trickier for the stadium-grubbers, but they still have plenty of tricks up their sleeves.