Browns public stadium subsidy could cost Cleveland 93 playgrounds or 39 public pools

Journalists! Yes, you, those lucky few who’ve so far survived the journapocalypse and are still allowed to cover anything other than press releases and viral videos. (“Few” may be an overstatement, I realize.) Here’s an idea for a way to approach public spending demands for stadiums, courtesy of the Cleveland Plain Dealer: Take a look at what else local government could buy with the money.

In the case of the Browns‘ stadium demands, the PD went with an estimate of $300 million in taxpayer cash, which it says “falls within the ballpark of recent public spending on stadiums and arenas in our region” — it’s actually way low for public stadium spending in recent years, which has frequently topped $1 billion, and the Browns owners themselves last year pitched a plan that would use at least $500 million in tax money. But sure, $300 million, what else could Clevelanders get for that?

  • Fund its entire parks department for the next 16 years.
  • Build 93 new playgrounds.
  • Build eight new neighborhood recreation centers.
  • Build 39 swimming pools.
  • Add new basketball courts and ice rinks to every park in the city.

That’s only a small and very parks-oriented list, and leaves out lots of other options: How much teachers could Cleveland hire, or how much public transit could it build, or how much could it rebate taxes to local residents? Those would all be interesting to see as well, and I certainly would have asked for some examples like these if I’d been editing this piece.

But the bigger point is that examples matter. Big numbers break our brains, so “93 new playgrounds” is a lot easier for most people to conceptualize than “$300 million.” Without examples like this, readers are way too likely to fall back on cognitive biases like anchoring, which can make big spending asks seem more reasonable since they’re not as bad as they could be, or not as bad as the one down the road.

And giving spending comparisons is useful in another way: It reminds people that money is fungible. Not every city uses revenue streams that if not used for stadiums would otherwise go to playgrounds — but it could, because it’s within the power of city councils (or state legislatures) to funnel money wherever they want in almost all cases. So even setting aside the cases where sports subsidies are directly extracted from school budgets, every spending choice is a choice, and like all choices it precludes other choices, and that’s worth reminding people.

This might seem like a lot of praise to heap on a quick throwaway article — but the fact that this didn’t require the PD to spend a ton of time on investigative digging is precisely the point. As I seem to explain every time I do a media interview, Joanna Cagan and I got into this project because my home city of New York was looking at building a new Yankees stadium while closing libraries to save on budget, while her home city of Cleveland was looking to build, yep, what became the current Browns stadium at the same time as its school system was in receivership. While it’s fun to rail against the unfairness of handing public money to billionaires, the unstated corollary there is “when non-billionaires could use it better.” If counting stadium costs in units of playgrounds not built is a quick and easy way for our nation’s dwindling number of increasingly time-starved journalists to drive that point home, it’s an exercise worth doing.

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20 comments on “Browns public stadium subsidy could cost Cleveland 93 playgrounds or 39 public pools

  1. Neil,

    I had the same positive reaction to the Cleveland.com story. As I point out in my book, opportunity costs are the best reason to say “no” to outlandish stadium asks. And the public sector should say “no” to this request, as I also say in my book.

    1. Reviewing your book is next up on my list, now that I finally got around to Geoff Propheter’s!

    2. Ken –

      When the Browns requested the renovation in 2013, there were rumors they were looking at putting a dome on the stadium. Is that true? If so what were the costs and why didn’t the city do it?

  2. I find myself amazed at how people can’t understand large numbers. A million is nearly incomprehensible. A billion might as well be something like infinity.

    I once found myself trying to help someone understand the scale of the numbers, and we wound up having to break it down into used cars at a presumed $10,000 cost.

    It’s good to see someone at least trying to put the numbers in terms that are relatable.

    1. Adding a little on to this.

      – $10k is one car

      – A million is 100 cars, or a fleet if you will (they’d fit into a floor or two of a parking garage)

      – A billion is 100,000 cars. Which is enough to fill the parking lots at four stadiums.

  3. This is helpful.

    However, we don’t have to break down the opportunity cost of building or renovating a massive stadium (IE: subsidy to a billionaire) in terms of esoteric things like “schools”, “Fire stations”, “libraries” or any of the other things that can benefit such a large portion of the population across a community.

    We could calculate this cost in terms of something we are more familiar with than institutions of public safety or education…

    Why not express this cost in terms of armaments that we use to obliterate humans?

    I mean, this is something that everyone is familiar with thanks to the keen coverage of the nightly news. The Pentagon’s annual appropriation is now about, what, $800Bn?

    It might be difficult to decide whether you want a new sports stadium for your team if you have to weigh it against, say, 20 libraries and 5 rec centers.

    But if you know you have to ‘give up’ 125 long range missiles or 3 stealth fighters to fund a new football stadium, well that just brings the actual cost so much closer to (someone’s) home doesn’t it?

    Chicago (or the state of Illinois) should consider the impact it’s (currently earmarked – sort of) stadium subsidy funding could have if it used the money for military hardware instead.

    Why do the Reinsdorfs and McCaskeys hate our soldiers so much?

      1. The state’s taxpayers pay for them regardless who builds or owns them.

        And we cannot allow a sports stadium or mineshaft gap.

    1. I favor anything over the current level of defense spending. So if we cut a bunch of long range missiles and stealth fighters I don’t care if it goes for stadiums, libraries, gardens, etc.

      1. Exactly, Aqib. We could build almost 800 professional sports facilities every year for the amount of money we spend at the Pentagon.

        1. HEADLINE:

          MANFRED BLASTS DEFENSE BUDGET
          Money “better spent on new stadiums
          for struggling billionaire ownerships”

          1. That’s really shortsighted — hasn’t he considered all the potential economic impact of rebuilding after a war?

  4. I think the subsidies thing is getting out of hand, but I think they could find a fair way to give teams public money but to help other important needs first!

    The military and pro sports world is asking for tons of money. NFL cities and America’s leaders should have plans for military and public money. Fans and our leaders should tell NFL owners some money- not all the money! if the military really is in a situation where it needs another huge pile of cash o.k. but not all the time, we need our schools, libraries, parks, police and down town areas paid too and U.S. leaders need to give them money. Then!…the NFL cities would get public money to help them build a decent stadium and if they want fancy designs they can spend their own money or add some to public money to build them. But they are 2nd or 3rd behind citizens’, public services, safety, construction, education and public recreation spending.

    1. It will be a great day when our schools have all the money they need, and our air force has to have a bake sale to buy a bomber.

  5. cmon son….if team owners want welfare they should be forced to repay 5 times the smount with 50% interest

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