Chattanooga reporter asks pro-stadium officials about $79.4m stadium subsidy, declares “studies are mixed”

As noted on Friday, the proposed Chattanooga Lookouts stadium set to receive $79.4 million in public money has gotten more side-eye than the proposed Tennessee Smokies stadium set to receive $65 million in public money, possibly because the Lookouts aren’t owned by this guy. Anyhoo, this weekend the Chattanooga Times Free Press took the opportunity to see what economists thought of the Lookouts plan, and came back with this headline:

Would a new Lookouts stadium pay off for taxpayers? Studies are mixed.

Are they now? One constant in the (good god, really?) 27 years I’ve been following this stadium crap has been that economists are remarkably of one voice on the payoff of sports subsidies, and that voice says you’d be better off throwing your money out of a helicopter. What studies and/or economic experts did the Times Free Press consult, and what did they say?

• “Just about every researcher and economist that has looked at this issue, both for major and minor league sports, agree that stadiums for a particular sport rarely create enough new economic development and activity to offset the public subsidies that they receive.” —Mandy Pellegrin, policy director for The Sycamore Institute (actually a public policy professor, but at least cites economic studies)
• “Take whatever number the sports promoter says, take it and move the decimal one place to the left. Divide it by 10, and that’s a pretty good estimate of the actual economic impact.” —Victor Matheson, College of the Holy Cross economist

…and that’s it. No actual studies are cited, and it doesn’t look like reporter Dave Flessner even bothered to read the ones that Pellegrin described. (There are a few good ones here, for starters.) But at least they called, well, hmm, Matheson’s quote is actually from a “report,” which turns out to be an Atlantic article, so maybe Flessner didn’t call any actual economists or read any studies, that’s not great.

But wherefrom that “Studies are mixed” thing in the headline, then? There are some pro-stadium-subsidy voices in the article, and they consist of:

• Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger, who says “this is about so much more than a stadium” but also “it’s the taxes we get.”
• Gary Chazen, president of the company that owns the land where the stadium would be build, declares, “You need an iconic gateway catalyst like the stadium to make something like this happen.”
• A study commissioned by the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce determined that a new stadium would generate $305.1 million in new spending, as determined by, oh no, it’s Conventions, Sports and Leisure International, run!
• “These ballparks [in Fort Wayne, Indiana and Columbia, South Carolina] are in use constantly with a variety of events and that makes them a major attraction for visitors, residents and businesses,” says Jason Freier, president of Hardball Capital, which, let’s see, is the owner of the minor league baseball teams in Fort Wayne and Columbia — and, oh yes, of the Lookouts themselves.

So, to recap: A story claiming, “Would a new Lookouts stadium pay off for taxpayers? Studies are mixed” actually reports on no studies, and most of the people quoted on whether the stadium would pay off are actually set to benefit personally from the stadium subsidy. Sweet.

Am I being too hard on this poor reporter (in both senses of the term), who probably came into this story having to get up to speed on the issue with no background in … okay, he’s the paper’s business editor and has been a reporter for 35 years, scratch that. But even if this had been written by some underpaid intern who had another nine stories to crank out that day, stories like these are deserving of being called out, because they play a vital role in the sports-media  ecosystem: There’s a huge difference between reporting “studies disagree about whether stadium subsidies pay off” and “economists and politicians disagree about whether stadium subsidies pay off,” and only one of them is actually true.

Before we go, does J.C. Bradbury — not cited in the Times Free Press article, naturally, though he’s looked into the Lookouts stadium deal before — have anything to say about this piece?

No, studies are absolutely NOT mixed! The consensus conclusion of academic research shows stadiums never pay off. Commissioned studies by stadium advocates do not create a tie with 50 years of academic research findings. Enough with the false balance! @dflessner1 https://t.co/EtuYoxNnn6

— J.C. Bradbury (@jc_bradbury) July 10, 2022

And why not finish it off with unsubstantiated claims from…the team's owner. I'm not aware of any study that supports this, and I've reviewed every study that has ever been done. This nothing more than the assertion of an interested party. pic.twitter.com/APIVxm4EpM

— J.C. Bradbury (@jc_bradbury) July 10, 2022

Pretty much. That whole “democracy dies in darkness” thing is seeming less like a warning and more like a prophecy.