The San Diego Union-Tribune (officially re-rebranded as of last week, though its domain name hasn’t caught up yet) has been running lots of lots of news articles about the Chargers stadium plan, too many to take in all at once. Let’s find a promising one: How about Saturday’s “Why the Chargers need cash to stay,” which promises to explain the reasons that San Diego citizens should be putting up between $650 million and $ 1.15 billion when the team is willing to build a stadium in Carson for far less in subsidies? Let’s begin:
When it comes to financing new NFL stadiums, think of the Great Recession as halftime in a one-sided football game poised for a big shift in momentum.
I’m sorry, my brain just broke. Enough with the forced sports metaphors, people!
The upshot of the article appears to be that until 2006, the public spent a lot of money on NFL stadiums, but “since 2010, when the New York Jets and Giants built their own new stadium, the trend has clearly moved toward more hefty private contributions.”
Really? The chart that the U-T includes with its article indeed shows several stadiums with larger private costs in recent years (Dallas, New York, Atlanta, Miami, Santa Clara):
But that’s a bit misleading: Atlanta’s public cost is listed at $200 million rather than the $554 million that is more accurate, and Dolphins owner Stephen Ross is getting around $100 million in public subsidies toward his own stadium work, which isn’t even a new stadium at all, just a renovation. Take that away and the main trend is that NFL stadiums have gotten way more expensive, and team owners have largely covered that additional cost, while public expenses have remained pretty consistent.
And why have costs soared? The U-T notes that “owners now want the biggest and best so they can command even higher premiums from well-heeled fans and corporations,” while economist Victor Matheson credits this to “stadium envy.” It’s unclear whether this means owners are earning their money back on more expensive stadiums (in bigger markets, at least) or just trying to keep up with the Joneses, but that’s okay, because it genuinely is unclear which is the case, especially for stadiums that haven’t opened yet.
The U-T’s conclusion, meanwhile, is that cities aren’t throwing money at NFL teams anymore, but that’s because only big cities are building NFL stadiums, so San Diego still needs to throw money at its team. That’s pretty much wrong on all counts (Atlanta and Minneapolis are big cities?), but it’s right enough in a couple of cases (New York, Santa Clara) that it’s good enough for newspaper work, and ducks asking questions about whether the proposed public expense for a Chargers stadium is either worth it or necessary to keep the team in town, or just a number that a bunch of local CEOs picked out of a hat in hopes it would make the team owners happy. But there are lots more U-T articles out there to be written — why look, here’s one on how a public vote is needed to prevent the “threat” of a referendum drive that could “stall” the stadium campaign — so I’m sure they’ll get around to the actual finances of the financial plan eventually.
Dolphins are also seeking – but have not yet secured – additional state funding for the nearly-complete project, for what it’s worth.
Population of Metro areas are a better measure than population of cities. So Twin Cities metro comes in right at San Diego’s size (bigger by 230,000 but probably offset easily by Charger’s fans coming from Southern Riverside County and Orange County) but Atlanta Metro is 9th biggest in the country at 5.6 million and probably draws from a big bigger footprint than that. Not surprisingly, Vikings asking for more public dough than Falcons…and each asking for more than SF or New York. Probably the most surprising for those unfamiliar with Texas is Dallas – the 4th largest MSA in the country, trailing only NYC, LA, and Chicago.
I think market size is a much better measure in this respect than time (the flux of the argument in the article). Take NBA – once we got back to bargaining with a small city (Sacramento) it was a fire sale of public assets.
SD will never provide any substantial subsidies for the very simple reason that the owner has no other options but to stay. The whole LA thing is pure deception for the unsophisticated and the naive.
LOL – so looking at these graphs, and with the exception of Inglewood / Carson / NY, cities have almost continually kicked in 200-500 million in 2015 dollars. The public is on the hook either way – you think the 240 million from the county and city of San Diego magically appears in the bank? It just so happens that the taxpayer props that up, but it’s a nice trick to say “no new taxes”. Was David Copperfield on CSAG?
Owners want the biggest and best so it assures them of lining their pockets with benjamins while making the team value go up significantly. It never has or will be about the taxpayers or fans in a city.
One way or the other the stadium builds end up with the taxpayer bent over, the question ultimately is how bad does that end.
Here’s something to think about as it relates to San Diego and spending tax payer money.
The city shelled out 200 million dollar to fund a new public library in 2013. That library is three times the size of the previous building, offering more than 500K sqft of usable space.Can someone please tell me why this was built and what the inside looks like? Who goes to the library these days? Should have save 195 Million and just built a 10,000 SqFt Starbucks with free WiFi and iPads tethered to the tables.
Based on a recent study, the library averages approx 3,000 visitors per day (on a good day), of which 1/3 are homeless (non tax-payers). That works out to be about 730K tax paying citizens visiting that property per year which is obviously on the high side . Your average NFL stadium seats around 65K people. At (10) games (2 pre / 8 regular season) a new charger stadium would roughly see about 650,000 visitors a year (best case scenario). Throw in a few concerts, truck rallies, soccer games, SDSU, bowl games, etc…Your looking at close to a million visitors per year. Those visitors are spending money. Many of which are staying in our hotels, riding public transportation, eating out at restaurants and enjoying our city.
How many people come to San Diego to visit the library?
500K square foot libraries are not needed yet public fund to build this massive eye-sore was approved to promote reading, education and crime?!?
Over the course of a 60-day period in 2014, the Central Library had 60 calls to service by the San Diego Police Department. The types of disturbances included 11 calls involving some kind of violent behavior, four robberies and nine welfare checks.
Is a new stadium good for San Diego? Yes.
Should the city contribute to a new stadium? Based on the fact its used year-round and has proven to brings tourists and their money to our town – Yes.
ABfour, I respectfully disagree with (basically) all of your assertions.
1. As for the $200,000,000 library, I can’t speak as to why whomever funded it felt it was necessary. Perhaps the old library had a supply that was being exceeded by demand. Perhaps the old library was antiquated and did not offer the type of learning tools that are a necessary component of modern libraries. Perhaps it needed to be upgraded to earthquake code. Maybe it was on fire. There are a lot of reasons why a library may be needed, and may be that expensive. But a library is not an analogous comparison to a stadium. A Library is a government service – something that is expected to be funded for the benefit of the community. It is never intended to make a profit. A library is analogous to a road, a subway, a school. A Stadium is an entity designed specifically for use by a for-profit entity. An analogous comparison would be a new mall, a skyscraper, or an apartment building.
2. Your assumption that non-taxpaying citizens have less value than taxpaying citizens is questionable. My kids don’t pay taxes, but they use roads, sidewalks, schools, libraries, etc. Are they not entitled to the same benefits that I am? Perhaps the homeless person/people you are talking about are seeking to better themselves, to fill the time, to find a job, the library provides that service to them.
3. Your assumption that the new stadium will draw close to a million visitors. But how many are new visitors? Assume they replace the old Jack Murphy Stadium (65,000 seats) with a new stadium, and lets assume they add 5,000 more seats. Even assuming a 10% increase in patrons, the net increase is not 1,100,000 visitors, but 100,000 people. Further, this presupposes that these people are coming from elsewhere, not San Diego City, not San Diego County, but somewhere more distant. IF they come from the San Diego metro area, they are not truly benefiting the metro area as a whole – they are just taking their dollars from one part of the metro area to another. And even assuming that they get a few more Super Bowls out of it (what’s best case scenario…3? 4?) that may not be all the benefit that it is thought to be. See: Glendale, City of.
Overall the crux of your argument seems to be that if the city of San Diego can waste money in one place, why not let them waste it in another place? Two wrongs don’t make a right (assuming, of course, that the library is wrong, which I don’t necessarily agree with). Even still, the benefits of a new stadium are nebulous at best, awful at worst.
Ultimately, it comes down to what the taxpayers of San Diego would like to fund, and what they would not like to fund. Poll after poll seems to indicate that they do not want to fund a stadium, and thats is where it is at.
Erik, why should metro Atlanta’s population be used when it is the City of Atlanta not the metro sinking its cash into Arthur Blank’s new rich boy’s toy?
The idea for the $184 million San Diego New Central library was to build it and then sell the land under the old library to a developer to cover the costs. The old library sits downtown on one of the few sites that doesn’t currently have a highrise. The thought at the time was that the land sale would cover the costs and the new library would be and upgrade in services and cheaper to maintain in the long run.
That all fell through of course when the economy collapsed after the process for the new library was far enough along that it couldn’t be stopped. So they still own the old library, closed for a few years, and land at the moment.
I believe the graph wrongly depicts the private/public funds for Jacksonville. Per https://law.marquette.edu/assets/sports-law/pdf/nfl-2013.pdf , what is now known as EverBank Field was 90% publicly financed. The graph indicates otherwise.
I think Metros make sense because from the OWNERS perspective that is what matters. If I have a franchise in a metro market of 20 million I can pretty much bank that there will be SOMEONE who will pay to get their corporate name in front of that many eyeballs. Ditto the capacity of the metro to buy lux boxes at full freight or to buy a PSL for a gazzilllion dollars.
Now if I operate in a medium market these things are not as true.
Then the really interesting question is from a bargaining standpoint does the decision making calculus of locals also vary on market size. I am guessing it does. If you think about the literature from urban politics on governing regimes(ironically see C. Stone’s work on Atlanta) it could be the case that leaders in bigger metros are more likely to be able to put together alternative governing coalitions than leaders in smaller burbs). But admittedly I have spent less time on this – really focusing just on the fact that there is a robust correlation between market size and the % of stadium costs that are borne by fans/owners vs. % from taxpayers.
I’m not insinuating the public library development and a new chargers stadium are like for like. in fact, they couldn’t be more dissimilar. The underlying message / food-for-thought was that our public library invoked support from the city, used tax payers money and rallied support – yet a very select few people are using it.
Tax payers are responsible for funding these multi-million dollar developments. So to your point about your kids not paying taxes, yet using tax payer infrastructure – Your’re paying their taxes until you stop claiming them as dependents. The homeless trying to better themselves at the library? I’m all for working toward a better future, but the public library is not the unemployment center or health services. Tax payers are already funding those outlets.
When the Packers, Patriots, Steelers and other visiting teams play the Chargers, you may actually be surprised how many of their fans travel to watch. Season ticket holders do account for a great portion of attendance, but plenty of out of town money is brought in every home game from afar.
Two wrongs don’t make a right, but a stadium is needed one way or the other. If the chargers leave, what’s the plan? You can’t just let Qualcomm sit there and die. They’ll have to put money into the stadium to keep it from falling it disrepair. At least this scenario helps split the costs and keeps a long term tenant in the picture.
Actually, if the Chargers leave SD, and there’s no further need for the stadium, you tear it down and redevelop the land. Jack Murphy sits on prime land with freeway access, and IIRC the light rail goes there as well. Certainly something could be built there.