23 thoughts on “SLIPPED MY MIND”

  • Brutus says:

    Stadia built using public money have been a peeve of mine for a long time. I get the arguments about the economic benefits of wanting to keep teams from relocating to other cities (highway robbery?), but it’s still a public subsidy for a private, for-profit industry that is positively overflowing with revenue. In other words, it’s corporate welfare. That it’s Wisconsin in this case diverting obscene millions to the already rich is neither here nor there, as it goes on nearly everywhere except Columbus, OH.

  • Skippper says:

    @Brutus

    There are no economic benefits — except to the billionaire team owners and the politicians on the take. Every city who subsidizes a private sports corporation loses. Read "Bad Sports" by David Zirin. It's a losing proposition.

  • J. Dryden says:

    Public Policy in Wisconsin really boils down to "To anyone who isn't involved in swapping monetary bodily fluids with Scott Walker: Fuck you."

  • Two Below says:

    Read Ed's piece from April, 2011 entitled Banana Republic. Walker and his legislature are tearing down all the clean government safeguards that Wisconsinders had been proud of, and offer the most transparently lame explanations why the changes are needed. Of course, the Walkerites don't care if they make sense, just as Ed pointed out four years ago.

  • Emerson Dameron says:

    The Bucks tried to rebrand recently, probably in response to spending the last few decades giving the LA Clippers the will to fight on.

    The upshot of having a consistently shitty team should be consistently good draft picks. Notice how the worst teams (e.g., this year's Knicks) try to tank their last stretch of games in hopes of being The Worst. (Somehow, the Knicks even fucked THAT up.) To suck it up for as long as the Bucks have takes some truly terrible management.

  • Brutus says:

    Skipper, i appreciate your comment and don't doubt it in the least. I did say only that I understood the arguments, not that I agreed with them. A larger question might be whether corporate welfare beyond sports is a losing proposition for the taxpayers. Harkens back to Ed's post a few days ago about military pork projects being defensive nonstarters that nonetheless provide lots of jobs while they're active.

  • c u n d gulag says:

    Conservatives POV:
    It's ok, as long as the state's stadium money comes from Welfare, Medicaid, SNAP, S-chip, and other social welfare safety-net programs designed for minorities!

    After all, it'll be a basketball arena – so it'll house a lot of wealthy minority players who'll entertain the still richer white Plutocrats and their businesses who can afford luxury boxes and season tickets.

    *SNARK* – Not MY opinion!

    Personally, if the billionaires who have teams can't shell out their own money for new sporting arena's, then they shouldn't get new playing arena's.
    Pay to upgrade the existing facilities out of your more than ample bank accounts – domestic, and overseas.
    As much as a can't stand him – and, at least from what I understand – I'll give Jimmy Dolan (an evil Plutocratic cable shrimp) some dap. He's spent over $1 billion of his own money to refurbish Madison Square Garden.

  • Khaled says:

    The game of stadiums happens to be something I have very strong opinions on and I could write even more than I usually do about this subject. I'll attempt to make this short so people actually read what I wrote.

    – Teams move largely on arena/ stadium deals. Full stop. Market size, fan interest, success, etc., are all secondary.
    – Proof of my statement would be:
    a) There hasn't been an NFL team in Los Angeles for, what, 20 years?
    b) The Sonics moved from Seattle (a large market, with a large fan base, and was successful) to Oklahoma City. Let that sink in.
    c) The NHL actually purchased the Coyotes to prevent them from moving to another market because the arena was about six years old and was supposed to make the 'Yotes competitive, profitable, etc.
    d) The Bengals have for years been unable to routinely avoid black-outs in the local TV market and struggle to sell out playoff games. The Jacksonville Jaguars had to rope off multiple seats so that they would come close to "selling out" their stadium on a regular basis. While the Jags have been rumored to move, there is never a rumor that the Bengals are going anywhere, nor will there be.

    Older arenas and stadiums are replaced by taxpayer dollars because politicians don't want to be the one to suffer at the ballot box as the ones who "lost the team". Pittsburgh would have gladly built the Penguins a new arena years before the new arena was built, but they were already broke, largely because they spent gobs of money building two brand new stadiums for the Steelers and Pirates.

    Professional sports arenas are corporate welfare at its finest. Read into the latest debacle with the Glendale city council and the Coyotes. The city voted to break the lease, because it literally called for a payment of millions of dollars to the team from the city to keep them in the arena, since it would (in theory) cost them more to service the debt on the empty arena than it would to pay the Coyotes to stay. I was stunned when the council actually agreed to that lease, since they basically had a financial gun to their head. Now that the council had some turnover, the new council wants to tell the Coyotes to pound sand. The irony of a commissioner of a professional sports league whining about a broken lease should not be lost on anyone.

    The problem with a city refusing to pony up the cash to build an arena that it will basically turn over to a private business is that there is always another city willing to build the arena. If the Coyotes must move, they will end up in Seattle, Las Vegas, Quebec City, or another city that builds or promises to build an arena.

  • democommie says:

    "Harkens back to Ed's post a few days ago about military pork projects being defensive nonstarters that nonetheless provide lots of jobs while they're active."

    So did the TVA, the CCC and the WPA–none of which were aggressively aggressive.

  • Anonymouse says:

    Back in my college days, the local baseball park (which had been built just after WWII) offered $4 tickets which were pretty good. Parking was limited (and free), but many of the neighbors offered $5 parking on their lawns and driveways–everyone "won". My roommates and I used to go on giveaway days (umbrellas, lunch totes, etc.) and saw lots of families there because it was completely affordable for a typical middle-class family to go to a game. We briefly had a Canadian Football League team using that stadium, too; tickets were (I believe) $10 to $15; still an affordable occasional treat.

    Now? We've got a super-duper multi-million dollar stadium where the fans are required to buy "personal seat licenses" for $1500 before they can shell out for their season tickets. Parking? Starts at $40 in the official lot.

    Oh, and all those wonderful jobs? There are a handful of "private contractors" who work the games at practically minimum wage and are responsible for their own taxes, SSI, and healthcare costs…and a new, ugly twist: the owner gets high-school kids and their families to come work for free for him. The family that logs the most hours has a chance to win tickets to Disney at the end of the year! When my neighbors asked my family to come work for free, I pointed out that the kids could earn guaranteed money at fast-food jobs and buy their own guaranteed tickets.

  • Major Kong says:

    @Brutus

    Columbus OH isn't completely immune either. The hockey arena was originally built with corporate money (Nationwide) but the city had to bail it out a few years back with taxpayer dollars.

    Presumably the reason we don't have an NFL team in a city that's bigger than Cleveland and Cincinnati is they don't want anything to compete with Ohio State.

  • Chicagojon says:

    @Khaled

    "b) The Sonics moved from Seattle (a large market, with a large fan base, and was successful) to Oklahoma City. Let that sink in."

    Holy crap is that false. Seattle attendance in their last 10 years was (rounding to nearest thousand) 13, 16, 16, 16, 15, 16, 15, 16, 15, 17. Prior to that the mid-to-late 80's were terrible. OKC was 19k, 18k, 18k, 18k, 18k, 18k. Argue all you want about 'but those were bad Sonics teams' or 'OKC is new – it's not sustainable' — the Sonics attendance was terrible. An extra 1k fans/game is 41,000 tickets. At $80/person in tickets and concession that's $3.2 million/year. Throw in luxury boxes and I'm sure OKC has been making $5 million+ more than the last years in Seattle. That's not a rounding error and in a league where there is profit sharing

    Fobes valued Seattle as the 29th most valuable team in 2007. OKC was 24th in 2008 and up 12% in percentage valuation. OKC was 13th in 2014.

    Of course the larger argument is if the billionaires that invest in these should get tax breaks from local municipalities but the Seattle Supersonics of the world should be shut down and moved to new places and the fans shouldn't be allowed to rewrite history about what great fans they were.

    P.S. – the Bucs were 29th in 2007, 30th (last) in 2008, & last in 2014. They should have moved that franchise a decade ago

  • Robert says:

    We here in Oakland are still paying for bribing the Traitors back from LA. Now the A's ownership is muttering about moving.

    Some local boosters are apparently convinced that professional sports teams enhance Oakland's image – or, as they put it, make us "a major league city". I did not grow up with pro sports as a cultural value; my dad took us to the library, not the ballpark.

    Publicly funded stadia remind me of a line from Forster's "The Hill of Devi" – "It is a thankless business, spending money on rich men". (That's from memory, but the sense is there)

  • Khaled says:

    @Chicagojon
    Seriously??? Nope, nope, nope, nope.
    KeyArena's capacity for basketball games is only 17k. The team had better attendance in terms of number of fans and % of capacity that many other teams during that time period, they were usually in the top half of the league. They had over 90% the entire time you listed except for the final year. By comparison, the Bulls had lower % of capacity numbers in 2002,03,04 and 05. By that logic, we should move the Bulls! Even in their last season, when the fans were angry at Bennett, who was secretly trying to sandbag the team so he could move it, the team still averaged a greater % of capacity than the 76ers, T-Wolves, Bobcats, Grizzlies, and Pacers. Yes, that was the expansion Bobcats and the relocated Grizzlies.

    There are thousands of Sonic fans that are still pissed that they left. Seattle is not a "bad sports market", look at the success of the MLS team since it came into 2009. It has lead the league in attendance every year of its existence.

    Let's compare markets, shall we?

    Population:
    Seattle CSA population: 4,526,991 (#13)
    Oklahoma City CSA: 1,408,578 (#45)

    Nielsen Media Market Rankings
    Seattle #13 1,847,780
    Oklahoma City #41 730,020

    Median Local Income
    Seattle: $67,479
    OKC: $49,343

    Local TV Share for OKC 7.2 local, previous year 8.7 (led the league).
    Actual average number of households watching Thunder game: 52,561.

    Seattle would need a 2.8 local rating to get the same number of households.

    Number of Fortune 500 Companies with Headquarters:
    Seattle has 8 in the city and metro area, Oklahoma City has 2.

    Seattle is a better market than OKC. Bennett bought the team to move it to his hometown and brand new arena, it was not moved because the team "failed" in Seattle. There was a lawsuit that brought all of this out, since Bennett operated in "bad faith" to break the lease that was supposed to run until 2010 at the KeyArena. The attendance was just fine. Please, before you accuse me of re-writing history, look at the history yourself.

  • Jeneria says:

    I live in Milwaukee. This stadium is the second stupidest idea they've had. The first is the street car that caters to wealthy neighborhoods already serviced by existing bus lines.

  • Chicagojon says:

    @Khaled

    Touche on the max capacity. I should have looked that up. Still, there were some years in the mid 80s under 10k. That's just not good. I also should have made it clear that I think OKC is a silly place for 1 of 32 of anything. They did however do well in the move and increased attendance.

    If I recall correctly TV revenue is shared…tickets and stadiums matter to owners. If the SEA arena only had 17k it should have been replaced.

  • democommie says:

    The Seattle taxpayers and the OKC taxpayers are both on the hook for infrastructure and maintenance costs for the NMGL*–it's a plutocrat twofer.

    * New MurKKKan Gladiatorial Leagues, which include MSL, NBA, MBL, NFL, NHL and other "sports".

  • Khaled says:

    @Chicagojon-

    OKC is a fine market for basketball. They had the Hornets (before they changed their name to the Pelicans) in 2005-06 and 06-07 while the arena in New Orleans was rebuilt following Hurricane Katrina. I think that the people of both New Orleans and OKC expected them to stay in OKC, since they were so much more successful in OKC. The NBA, I would imagine, didn't want the bad publicity from "abandoning" New Orleans, and ended up owning the team for awhile until they could find a new owner for them.

    KeyArena wasn't the best arena, but Seattle is a good sports market. They are in the process of building a new arena once an NBA team commits to moving to Seattle, and it is expected that an NHL team would also go to Seattle if a new arena is built. There is a certain logic in not having too many sports teams in any given city, since they do all kind of compete against each other, but Seattle seems large enough that it would be able to handle four Major League teams and MLS (which, while growing, is not on the level of the "Big Four", and honestly, it should be Big Three plus NHL and MLS way behind that). Bennett wanted a $500 million arena to be built to keep the team in Seattle, and honestly, it was pretty obvious that he had no intention of keeping the Sonics in Seattle. If he didn't move them, he would have bought another team with an aging arena, and moved them instead. Sacramento was almost moved to Seattle, and rumor had it the Bucks were on their way there as well. Look in the next five years for the Memphis Grizzles to be sold and moved to Seattle.

    As Robert has said, Oakland is desperately trying to keep its teams, but do the people of Oakland really need to subsidize wealthy sports team owners when they so many other better things to spend money on? The A's want to move to San Jose, and the Raiders are looking for a new sucker… I mean stadium.

    As for my favorite sport, hockey, both the Panthers and Coyotes are in untenable attendance and TV viewership situations. They both appear to be prime candidates to move, but so far the NHL hasn't wanted to allow a move by either one. I have a feeling that the Glendale city council will have forced the hand of the NHL a bit sooner than they would have liked, but I don't see a way that the Coyotes stay in Arizona. If the arena deal was in place in Seattle, the moving vans would already be loading up equipment in Glendale as we speak. Also, never underestimate the greediness of NHL owners. They are holding out for expansion fees (aka free money) for Vegas, Seattle or Quebec City.

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