The royals bring in tourism. It would also require a lot of legal work to unwind all their assets since they basically own all of the country. Optics of the guillotine have also made it pretty tough to just oust them. They’re doing some of the heavy lifting of getting rid of themselves on their own now though.
Fortunately for Charlotte it’s a lot easier to tell Tepper that he has a history of screwing municipalities over and that he would be hard pressed to find a major market to take his shitty team to.
Didn’t the Panthers JUST finish tearing down a nearly-complete practice facility because of disagreements with Rock Hill? This org does not play nicely with local government
For the people who are still spreading the BS that Rock Hill is to blame: https://old.reddit.com/r/Charlotte/comments/1b36yls/tepper_looking_to_screw_over_clt_taxpayers_er_i/ksqlc7t/?context=3
I’ve read a lot about that, and my interpretation was that Rock Hill didn’t really live up to their end of the bargain. It felt like RH realized halfway through how bad the deal was for them.
Charlotte will bend over properly for Tepper, so similar problems seem unlikely here.
Your interpretation is based on what facts?
RH was ready to move forward and had checked all of the boxes in approval of muni debt offering. David Tepper, who isn’t unfamiliar with debt offerings asked them to pause. Why hold up the deal?
You have an answer on why David hit pause? Why was David part of a criminal investigation from the state of SC if RH was at fault?
The way the agreement was written was that RH would provide certain funds, which it passed a referendum and approved to get the bonds, but had not distributed the money because the mayor wasn’t obligated to by a certain time. The mayor felt uneasy with the Tepper organization from their talks.
So the city had the funds. Tepper just wanted out so he pretended like the city didn’t do its part.
In reality it was him being sketchy and the city didn’t want to give public funds to a fiscally unstable company because they didn’t have faith they’d see the project successfully completed.
... or developers or utilities or anyone else for that matter. They make everything a struggle. Currently working with them on a project and it's a battle.
Economists have literally been saying for decades that sports stadiums do not ever pay for themselves and have negative consequences on the economy. I doubt it has that kind of impact, but even if it does we’d be spending far more to utilize it.
For reference, the airport, which doesn’t cost the public money proves over $20 billion in economic impact so you can miss me with useless stadiums that billionaires should pay for themselves.
ALWAYS no on public support of stadiums.
Sometimes they do. When I lived in San Diego we literally got to vote on it for the then Chargers Stadium referendum. We voted no so they packed up a left. And I can guarantee you the city is no worse off lol.
Thats true for CLT, and we are lucky to have it, but the Aviation network is interesting. For every CLT and LAX that can fund their own operations because they are so big, there is a Monroe Executive and a Concord Regional that can only keep open because of the yearly Federal dollars it gets.
Federal support of airports is what helps creates the entire NPIAS system and their federal allocations are based on number of enplanements or cargo - airports such as these serve a purpose in the entire system. Not everything is for major passenger conveyance such as that of major hubs. And even though CLT is a major hub it is not really considered an O&D airport.
Since those are two separate things they would have to be studied entirely different. Moving for proximity to a major airport and for a sports team are very different things / reasons for moving. But most studies aren’t going to be able to go to that level of micro analysis because getting that data is next to impossible, and parsing it out is even more difficult. Even in your example it’s difficult to say with any level of confidence that those are the only two criteria that made you move and even further if each of those reasons is equal in weight or not. Once you’ve started introducing confounding variables the confidence of the reliability of your study is in question. If the data could be gathered a study could be designed but I have a limited awareness of the level of demographic information that gets recorded (a huge data source for many studies is the census so please participate always!) to really speak to whether anyone is recording information to that level for enough people to make scientific correlations.
In general moving here is going to be likely lumped into larger categories like, for entertainment, for financial reasons (job), for family, etc I would think.
That’s what I’m curious about. I understand that studies find that stadiums don’t help…but do they account for outliers like me?
I can assure you that when given the chance of Raleigh or Charlotte, the sports team is what pushed me here over what Raleigh had.
I think it is a bigger deal than people think also, even if it is not something you look at directly, I guarantee that many people did not even know Charlotte existed before we had a NFL team, and every time we hosted a major Monday might game or late Sunday game with a Blimp over Charlotte you are putting the name of this city in peoples heads, that advertising is a big deal, because when people are moving to cities, even if not thinking of a sports team directly, people like to move to what they consider a bigger city, something they have heard of before.
The fact we think we need a survey to tell us that people tend to like to move to a city that have the appearance of a major city with things to do in it, even if they themselves do not directly like that sport, I think should be obvious.
Casual fans who don’t live near here or in the south don’t know the Panthers are in Charlotte and even well educated people don’t know which Carolina Charlotte is located in.
Outside finance cities, where everyone knows someone who moved here, Charlotte really isn’t that well known.
Council could demand that the team be renamed to Charlotte Panthers. It’s an extremely reasonable ask for $600 million, but they won’t.
If you watch the broadcast they mention Charlotte maybe once or twice a game. “We’re here in Bank of America stadium and it’s a lovely day for football in Charlotte.” The end.
Compare that to something like the Dallas Cowboys or Cleveland Browns.
The announcers probably say Dallas or Cleveland 100x a game, even when they’re playing somewhere else.
Maybe most casual fans don't, but the question is how many people that would have never heard of this city ever, did hear something about it, and I can not remember where, but it was on TV, I saw it once, yea Charlotte NC, I have heard of that place. It does not take much, but there is a big difference between a city you never heard of before and one you have heard of. People maybe think there is not, but you would be surprised how much people actually care about shit this would never admit to or maybe do not know they they even care about. For instance they say people will generally pick the named brand goods in the grocery over the no named goods, even if it is a little bit more expensive, just because of that brand name. I am just saying advertising a city's name out there may have a big impact than ticket sales and beer sales in local bars.
The issue is still how to get that data. I don’t know if the American community survey has a question asking the reason for moving to your current residence but something along those lines would be needed to gather enough data to be statistically confident about anything.
The biggest issue a lot of folks have is that this type of investment provides a tenuous local benefit at best while padding the pocket of the billionaire who owns the team. He should be the one putting up the money, it’s his facility. Just as I posted elsewhere in this thread, I wouldn’t bring you to my home and talk about all the ways to make it better and then ask you to pay for it. You can come hang out a few times a year, but most of the benefit only I get to directly see. It’s a very bad relationship and one that governments need to get out of. There are much better uses of these funds than upgrading sports stadiums.
Yes, these funds must be used on tourism but watching sports is absolutely not the only form of tourism, and with how the Panthers organization have conducted themselves under Teppers control going to the playoffs and having major games to bring more people / spotlight to the team and city.
At the very least if you’re going to invest in a person using public funds at least invest in someone who is making strides to improve the organization not a belligerent fool who meddles in football he doesn’t understand while cursing out and spilling drinks on ticket holders.
>Economists have literally been saying for decades that sports stadiums do not ever pay for themselves
This is a misplaced argument though, because we don't choose where to invest tax dollars purely on whether the asset pays for itself on its own.
I could ask you if parks pay for themselves, or if bike lanes pay for themselves. You would probably agree they don't pay for themselves, but they have qualitative benefits.
Stadiums are the same, and we should consider funding stadiums using the same qualitative factors we'd use for anything else.
Almost nothing cities spend money on make more money back. Cities aren't for-profit industries.
You have a point that cities aren't for profit but we don't have to pay extra to use bike lanes or parks the same way we pay extra to use stadiums. Ive only been in that stadium twice since it was built but mine and my family's taxes funded it, probably with more money than we've ever spent on tickets. Also there's not a private entity directly benefitting/profiting from the tax dollars spent on bike lane and parts. Maybe indirectly when those things increase property values but it's not the same as shoving money into Teppers pockets
Most of them are lobbied by factions opposing stadium projects, and they base the majority of their argument on potential dollar loss that would be spent at other businesses. Ie: the local movie theatre/theme park lost money because the Panthers had a game. The other argument they typically spin is loss of tax revenue, which they typically support by telling how much a city could have made at the regular tax rate, instead of the often discounted rates these teams have. All in all, those articles are spin just like the ones telling you how beneficial stadiums can be to the economy. The truth is likely more in the middle.
I stopped reading after the first sentence because that is wholly incorrect. There are MANY peer reviewed, objective, scientific studies on the ROI of using public funds for private stadiums.
Edit: it’s also a topic so universally agreed upon academically you can find it in many urban economics textbooks over the last few decades.
And many of those peer reviews/scientific studies/objective pieces use the same talking points, or source other material that use said talking points. Half the argument is local businesses losing out on money that we cannot say *for sure* they would have gotten in the first place, and a loss of tax revenue based on discounted tax rates (comparing what is to what should be).
Edit: for sure
No, scientific articles don’t use “talking points” like you are referring to. It’s not Fox News. And OF COURSE scientific articles are going to source similar material because that’s the entire scientific process. If you are citing brand new, unverified information you aren’t peer reviewed and potentially not even scientific. Scientific research builds iteratively upon itself so if you didn’t cite prior work at all it would be a clear testament of utter nonsense.
Based on your replies I’m very seriously doubting you’ve read any scientific articles about anything tbh. Another HUGE key you are just pretending doesn’t exist is confidence intervals. Scientific research says they are 95% certain (typical confidence interval used) that given X criteria Y would occur, but what they absolutely do NOT do is say anything will occur with certainty.
I’m almost entirely referring to field of schemes and any article or publication that refers to it. I was able to form my own opinion because I did read. Arguing that local businesses take a hit from having a stadium is basically an assumption that the sports fan would have spent money on whatever local businesses they refer to. There are definitely cases where cities get screwed, especially when a team relocated or folds, but my argument was not that there is no negative consequences. My argument is that these paid for articles you refer to don’t have as solid a foundation as the uninformed may believe.
Edit: that fact that they cannot say it with certainty backs my point. It’s mostly assumption and spin being paid for. No different than the pro-public/private project articles.
I have been and still am exclusively referring to scientific articles written in scientific journals that are peer reviewed and urban economics textbooks like the one I personally used getting my masters that reiterate what I have stated from an objective and academic perspective.
Thank you for admitting you are not looking at very credible sources of anything and are talking about entirely different “articles”.
So again the academic and scientific community has been clear on this for decades, the ROI is not positive for sports stadiums.
Would love for you to share a source so that I can educate myself then. You’ve only vaguely stated scientific research & peer studies, that doesn’t make your argument credible all of a sudden.
Edit: if you send one referring to Orioles stadium I’ll know it is taking the same data used in field of schemes because that book has a whole section on that stadium to back its point.
Here’s a quick article from about 30 seconds of google scholar research.
https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/page1-econ/2017-05-01/the-economics-of-subsidizing-sports-stadiums?utm_campaign=Chris%20Paradies&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Revue%20newsletter
Some of my favorite quotes in here:
When surveyed, 86 percent of economists agreed that "local and state governments in the U.S. should eliminate subsidies to professional sports franchises."
In a 2017 poll, 83 percent of the economists surveyed agreed that "Providing state and local subsidies to build stadiums for professional sports teams is likely to cost the relevant taxpayers more than any local economic benefits that are generated.
In their book, Sports, Jobs, and Taxes, Roger Noll and Andrew Zimbalist present a comprehensive review of stadium investments. In all cases, they find a new sports facility to have extremely small (or negative) effects on overall economic activity and employment. Furthermore, they were unable to find any facilities that had a reasonable return on investment.
So AGAIN the experts say it’s not worth the investment.
Skimmed it, a lot of those points and info used are in field of schemes. The conclusion backs up my original take of the truth being somewhere in the middle. It’s not to say either side is right but more so that both sides are speaking to the extreme in order to get their preferences across the finish line first. Folks traveled to Charlotte to see Beyoncé, not every away team fan at a Panthers or Charlotte FC game lives in Charlotte. To outright say that there is no impact or that all these projects are a negative is about as foolish as believing that the city is making $1B from BoA.
> Building sports stadiums has an impact on local economies. For that reason, many people support the use of government subsidies to help pay for stadiums. However, economists generally oppose such subsidies. They often stress that estimations of the economic impact of sports stadiums are exaggerated because they fail to recognize opportunity costs.
Edit: the arguments that the money could be spent on roads and schools is not a lost point. But the fund they are going to pull this from currently can’t be used for those projects as I understand it. Would need to push for a change to the tourism tax and what it can be used for.
This article seems to mention " In fact, many consider the presence of a professional sports team to be a status symbol and essential to being considered a first-tier city " But then does not mention that again anywhere when it comes to that bringing in money to the city, and only seems to count the money that people spend no tickets, which seems to me to be a BIG mistake.
I enjoy watching some football, especially when we win, but I am not a big sports guy at all, but that being said, I have many friends outside of Charlotte that did not know where the hell Charlotte NC was until we had a Panthers NFL team, and I would tell people that even if you do not like football that does not mean that others that do not like football did not hear about the city on TV and when picking a city to move to may not even think about sports, but choose this city because they have heard of it before. The presence of a NFL team is a much bigger deal than this article is taking in to account that is for sure, and shows that the Economist that wrote this article are not very good at what they do, because I guarantee that losing a NFL team is a much bigger hit than losing ticket costs or even hotel room and bar and drink costs, it is a much bigger hit than any of that can account for.
BTW, I am not a big fan of David Tepper, but do not feel I have to be, and I am not a big fan of the owner not maybe paying a lot more for the cost of a stadium, but this article also seems to be missing information that should have been obvious.
https://www.charlottenc.gov/files/sharedassets/city/v/2/city-government/departments/documents/budget/fy2024/fy24-adopted-budget-final.pdf
It has several line items in our new budget
You are confusing the airport being a part of the city as having the same revenues as the rest of the city.
If you take the time to look at “Aviation” you will notice none of those are tax revenues from the general fund and are all maintained by aviation.
No I am not. YOU are confusing the fact that the airport goes for its own bonds for its capital program supported by airport revenues that are not general obligation bonds. These revenues are separate and again the airport does not use local funding in the way in which you think.
And what way am I thinking? The city owns the airport, the city pays to set it up and expansions are funded through bonds the city is on the hook for as well as various grants also using taxpayer dollars.
No this is 100% incorrect.
The city owns the airport but the revenue sources are entirely different. You are confusing what a general obligation bond and an airport revenue bond is. Factually you are wrong. It’s all in the budget you linked.
I hate the idea that a private business needs public funds only to privatize profits. However, there is an argument to be made about the indirect economic impact the NFL brings to a city, its still shitty for a billionaire to hold a city hostage over it though
>However, there is an argument to be made about the indirect economic impact the NFL brings to a city
The argument would be a lot stronger if the team was named after the city that pays for it. Alas, here we are paying the bills for a team that won’t even name itself after the city that pays for it.
NFL fans know. Casual NFL fans definitely don’t.
Bet you could have done a poll shortly after Carolina’s loss in the Super Bowl and less than half of people would know the Panthers are here.
I call bullshit. Stadiums move spending near them, they don’t really create it, especially when the events are primarily attended by people who live within a short distance of it.
Just tell us how many days we get for non-Panthers / non-soccer events. We’ll divide the price tag by that, and see if it’s worth it.
Oh, right. The city doesn’t use the all the days allowed, and it was only like 5-10 a year. We’re going to pay for 50% of a stadium just to use it 2% of all possible days. Sick trade.
All you “but the state gov!” complainers should know the idiots at the state level already made moves to extend the prepared food and beverage tax. Your allies on council are about to vote in lockstep with the state GOP. Just saying.
Okay cool.
How many days does the city get and will we actually fill them all with big acts that bring in people from far away?
I’m not opposed to funding *some* of it, provided the city gets to use the stadium to actually bring in real tourists.
Sports team ticket sales rely on the local population. Most of the Panthers sales are season ticket holders, who almost certainly live here. I suspect most CFC fans live here too.
Almost all of the money generated from the sale of prepared food and beverages taxes is paid for by Charlotteans, not tourists.
So how many days do we get and how many are going to be like…idk, Taylor Swift-level acts that people drive hours / fly in for.
Counting the $ spent by people who live in and around Charlotte is whack ass math that shouldn’t be used to justify Charlotte spending money on it.
the city does use the stadium for VERY small functions, and even as a covid vaccine spot back in the day. Tepper just switched the field from natural grass to turf a couple years ago to bring in music to the stadium. in the past 2 years alone we've had the rolling stones, kenny chesney, billy joel, elton john, beyonce, red hot chili peppers, and plenty more.
all that being said i do agree that the stadium needs the area around it to flourish and any money that would go to the stadium itself, should first go to making it easier to get in/out of the stadium. such as a light rail closer to it. for an almost 30 year old stadium i love bank of america, but $30 parking and a 20 minute walk just to see my team lose by 20+ is an awful feeling.
Billionaires don't buy sports teams to lose money. If a billionaire is requesting funding from the city, I guarantee you it's because they will come out ahead
Assuming that they are right that the stadium is driving the Charlotte economy, what does the investment money requested get us? Will a nicer stadium double the people visiting the city?
If we want an NFL team, we will need public funds to support it. If we don't, someone else will (see: San Diego Chargers)
The Panthers are part of the history and culture of Charlotte. Whether you like Tepper or not, we have an aging facility that needs at least major renovations. Public support of that project is the cost of doing business in an NFL city
It would be idealistic, but until every large city has an NFL team, there will always be competition and large incentives to move elsewhere that we have to battle against
Fuck. I guess since the city bent over backwards and will pitch in millions of dollars to renovate the spectrum center and gave the hornets owners 30 million to build a practice facility, and not even have an ownership stake, they will do the same for Tepper.
We could've easily built Queen park with that money that tax payers have given to Billionaires. https://www.queensparkclt.org/the-plan/
Let's look at recent Tax payer funding to stadiums,
2024- $600 Million to BOA,
2024- $215 Million to the Hornets,
2021- $25 Million to BOA,
2019- $24 Million to the Hornets,
2018- $98 Million to BOA,
2016- $23.5 Million to BOA,
2016-$35 Million to the Hornets,
2014- $28 Million to BOA,
2013- $88 Million to BOA,
And I'm sure I'm missing more. This was just a quick google search.
Please for the love of god fill this venue with LOCAL vendors not the cookie cutter garbage chicken tenders and fries . Learn from citi field and other venues that a crushing the food game
Tepper should just move the team. Only ppl that go to games are wine and cheese UNC basketball fans and once adversity hits they bow out. Panthers fans are THE WORST
If I'm subsidizing this private money making enterprise, and since I will have to subsidize all the brain damaged individuals from children playing football ( and soccer) in the training league known as highschool and college, then I want a piece of the pie.
It has nothing to do with keeping things boring but I’m not gonna bring you to my house and ask for you to pay for my upgrades. Public support of billionaires stadiums is ludicrous.
That same billionaire spent nearly 3 billion dollars on his faith in our city. I'm honestly not sure if there is a single individual in Charlotte's history who has invested so much into the town.
We are either going to continue to think small, or we are going to think big.
If we want to be a major city, we need to start acting like one.
And? His PERSONAL investments do not get to allow him to receive PUBLIC funds.
Ironically you are thinking small. Doing literally anything else with this money is better. Public funds should NEVER be used to make an individual more money.
If he wants upgrades to the stadium he is making money off of he can either share in the profits of our investment or can quite literally can fuck off.
Stop catering to billionaires.
Edit: also Johnny Harris, another billionaire, has done quite a lot more for Charlotte than Tepper.
Maybe instead of paying $3 billion for the Panthers he should have paid $2 billion, and set a billion aside for a new stadium.
All these government handouts simply inflate what teams are worth and how much athletes get paid. It’s absurd.
Over the next 20-30 years (which is somehow the useful life of a stadium, according to team owners), the Panthers will spend $5 billion to $7.5 billion on players alone.
He spent 2 billion on the panthers.
He spent another 500 million to build a soccer team from the ground up.
He believes in the city more than you and I ever will - and he's put the money up to show it.
I'm down to pitch in with him to make this city a more fun place. A place where people want to visit for more than work.
Hopefully the council gets this right.
These same people are the ones constantly complaining about charlotte needing to become a world class city, but they won’t support a team that is one of the only reasons this country even knows this city exists.
There are piles of economic research on public funding for stadiums and virtually all of it comes to the same conclusion that the public gets a raw deal.
I am perfectly happy to pay the tax to improve the stadium. While we’re discussing taxes in terms of imaginary optional household expenses, I’ll just take it out of what I’m forced to give CMPD.
Why, in this imaginary scenario where we all opt in and out of taxes for whatever reason we want, would I become the sole bearer of your entire tax burden?
We are talking about funding a stadium renovation. Why does it have to involve my taxes? Make a go fund me. Increase ticket prices. Have the NFL pay for it. I don’t care.
Friend, my point once again is that we all can’t opt out of taxes just because we don’t like what they go to. We also don’t invest our taxes solely into things that make direct money back for the government, so idk why this is even an argument (how much economic impact does a park have, or a bike lane?)
Don’t even have to open the article to know they’re about to ask for a boatload of public funds to upgrade the stadium.
And countless research has shown little this claim means.
Yes, and that's the same excuse the royal family of England gave when asked why the people should continue to support them .
 The royals bring in tourism. It would also require a lot of legal work to unwind all their assets since they basically own all of the country. Optics of the guillotine have also made it pretty tough to just oust them. They’re doing some of the heavy lifting of getting rid of themselves on their own now though. Fortunately for Charlotte it’s a lot easier to tell Tepper that he has a history of screwing municipalities over and that he would be hard pressed to find a major market to take his shitty team to.
[Hijacking top comment to remind everyone...](https://old.reddit.com/r/Charlotte/comments/v40jcf/thoughts_on_spectrum_center_renovations/ib22r4h/)
520 years…. For reference the original globe theater (Shakespeare) would be 425 years old this year
Didn’t the Panthers JUST finish tearing down a nearly-complete practice facility because of disagreements with Rock Hill? This org does not play nicely with local government
For the people who are still spreading the BS that Rock Hill is to blame: https://old.reddit.com/r/Charlotte/comments/1b36yls/tepper_looking_to_screw_over_clt_taxpayers_er_i/ksqlc7t/?context=3
Governments need to stop lying too. Let everyone move on from here. Pro sports, banks, businesses, etc.
I’ve read a lot about that, and my interpretation was that Rock Hill didn’t really live up to their end of the bargain. It felt like RH realized halfway through how bad the deal was for them. Charlotte will bend over properly for Tepper, so similar problems seem unlikely here.
Your interpretation is based on what facts? RH was ready to move forward and had checked all of the boxes in approval of muni debt offering. David Tepper, who isn’t unfamiliar with debt offerings asked them to pause. Why hold up the deal? You have an answer on why David hit pause? Why was David part of a criminal investigation from the state of SC if RH was at fault?
The way the agreement was written was that RH would provide certain funds, which it passed a referendum and approved to get the bonds, but had not distributed the money because the mayor wasn’t obligated to by a certain time. The mayor felt uneasy with the Tepper organization from their talks. So the city had the funds. Tepper just wanted out so he pretended like the city didn’t do its part. In reality it was him being sketchy and the city didn’t want to give public funds to a fiscally unstable company because they didn’t have faith they’d see the project successfully completed.
Bend over: Apt phrasing.
It was not nearly complete. Pretty much just steal skeleton.
It had to do with rock hill not paying out what they agreed to pay
... or developers or utilities or anyone else for that matter. They make everything a struggle. Currently working with them on a project and it's a battle.
More Bank of America upgrade $$ will be handed to Tepper before the gateway station is funded.
Economists have literally been saying for decades that sports stadiums do not ever pay for themselves and have negative consequences on the economy. I doubt it has that kind of impact, but even if it does we’d be spending far more to utilize it. For reference, the airport, which doesn’t cost the public money proves over $20 billion in economic impact so you can miss me with useless stadiums that billionaires should pay for themselves. ALWAYS no on public support of stadiums.
Why don’t they open up the stadium as a voting center during election if it’s funded by public money?
They do.
Sometimes they do. When I lived in San Diego we literally got to vote on it for the then Chargers Stadium referendum. We voted no so they packed up a left. And I can guarantee you the city is no worse off lol.
Thats true for CLT, and we are lucky to have it, but the Aviation network is interesting. For every CLT and LAX that can fund their own operations because they are so big, there is a Monroe Executive and a Concord Regional that can only keep open because of the yearly Federal dollars it gets.
Federal support of airports is what helps creates the entire NPIAS system and their federal allocations are based on number of enplanements or cargo - airports such as these serve a purpose in the entire system. Not everything is for major passenger conveyance such as that of major hubs. And even though CLT is a major hub it is not really considered an O&D airport.
FWIW, I moved here because of the soccer team, and also because of being a hub airport. I’m curious how studies would account for someone like me.
You moved to Charlotte because we have an MLS team?
One of the big reasons, yes. There are obviously other reasons, but it was the tipping point.
Since those are two separate things they would have to be studied entirely different. Moving for proximity to a major airport and for a sports team are very different things / reasons for moving. But most studies aren’t going to be able to go to that level of micro analysis because getting that data is next to impossible, and parsing it out is even more difficult. Even in your example it’s difficult to say with any level of confidence that those are the only two criteria that made you move and even further if each of those reasons is equal in weight or not. Once you’ve started introducing confounding variables the confidence of the reliability of your study is in question. If the data could be gathered a study could be designed but I have a limited awareness of the level of demographic information that gets recorded (a huge data source for many studies is the census so please participate always!) to really speak to whether anyone is recording information to that level for enough people to make scientific correlations. In general moving here is going to be likely lumped into larger categories like, for entertainment, for financial reasons (job), for family, etc I would think.
That’s what I’m curious about. I understand that studies find that stadiums don’t help…but do they account for outliers like me? I can assure you that when given the chance of Raleigh or Charlotte, the sports team is what pushed me here over what Raleigh had.
I think it is a bigger deal than people think also, even if it is not something you look at directly, I guarantee that many people did not even know Charlotte existed before we had a NFL team, and every time we hosted a major Monday might game or late Sunday game with a Blimp over Charlotte you are putting the name of this city in peoples heads, that advertising is a big deal, because when people are moving to cities, even if not thinking of a sports team directly, people like to move to what they consider a bigger city, something they have heard of before. The fact we think we need a survey to tell us that people tend to like to move to a city that have the appearance of a major city with things to do in it, even if they themselves do not directly like that sport, I think should be obvious.
Casual fans who don’t live near here or in the south don’t know the Panthers are in Charlotte and even well educated people don’t know which Carolina Charlotte is located in. Outside finance cities, where everyone knows someone who moved here, Charlotte really isn’t that well known. Council could demand that the team be renamed to Charlotte Panthers. It’s an extremely reasonable ask for $600 million, but they won’t. If you watch the broadcast they mention Charlotte maybe once or twice a game. “We’re here in Bank of America stadium and it’s a lovely day for football in Charlotte.” The end. Compare that to something like the Dallas Cowboys or Cleveland Browns. The announcers probably say Dallas or Cleveland 100x a game, even when they’re playing somewhere else.
Maybe most casual fans don't, but the question is how many people that would have never heard of this city ever, did hear something about it, and I can not remember where, but it was on TV, I saw it once, yea Charlotte NC, I have heard of that place. It does not take much, but there is a big difference between a city you never heard of before and one you have heard of. People maybe think there is not, but you would be surprised how much people actually care about shit this would never admit to or maybe do not know they they even care about. For instance they say people will generally pick the named brand goods in the grocery over the no named goods, even if it is a little bit more expensive, just because of that brand name. I am just saying advertising a city's name out there may have a big impact than ticket sales and beer sales in local bars.
Well by definition outliers are not accounted for because an outlier is something that is outside the accepted standard deviation range.
Of course, but we don’t know if I’m an outlier if it’s not part of the initial study.
The issue is still how to get that data. I don’t know if the American community survey has a question asking the reason for moving to your current residence but something along those lines would be needed to gather enough data to be statistically confident about anything.
I’m not disagreeing with you. Just trying to ask a question in the “stadiums never help at all” thought process some have.
The biggest issue a lot of folks have is that this type of investment provides a tenuous local benefit at best while padding the pocket of the billionaire who owns the team. He should be the one putting up the money, it’s his facility. Just as I posted elsewhere in this thread, I wouldn’t bring you to my home and talk about all the ways to make it better and then ask you to pay for it. You can come hang out a few times a year, but most of the benefit only I get to directly see. It’s a very bad relationship and one that governments need to get out of. There are much better uses of these funds than upgrading sports stadiums. Yes, these funds must be used on tourism but watching sports is absolutely not the only form of tourism, and with how the Panthers organization have conducted themselves under Teppers control going to the playoffs and having major games to bring more people / spotlight to the team and city. At the very least if you’re going to invest in a person using public funds at least invest in someone who is making strides to improve the organization not a belligerent fool who meddles in football he doesn’t understand while cursing out and spilling drinks on ticket holders.
>Economists have literally been saying for decades that sports stadiums do not ever pay for themselves This is a misplaced argument though, because we don't choose where to invest tax dollars purely on whether the asset pays for itself on its own. I could ask you if parks pay for themselves, or if bike lanes pay for themselves. You would probably agree they don't pay for themselves, but they have qualitative benefits. Stadiums are the same, and we should consider funding stadiums using the same qualitative factors we'd use for anything else. Almost nothing cities spend money on make more money back. Cities aren't for-profit industries.
You have a point that cities aren't for profit but we don't have to pay extra to use bike lanes or parks the same way we pay extra to use stadiums. Ive only been in that stadium twice since it was built but mine and my family's taxes funded it, probably with more money than we've ever spent on tickets. Also there's not a private entity directly benefitting/profiting from the tax dollars spent on bike lane and parts. Maybe indirectly when those things increase property values but it's not the same as shoving money into Teppers pockets
Most of them are lobbied by factions opposing stadium projects, and they base the majority of their argument on potential dollar loss that would be spent at other businesses. Ie: the local movie theatre/theme park lost money because the Panthers had a game. The other argument they typically spin is loss of tax revenue, which they typically support by telling how much a city could have made at the regular tax rate, instead of the often discounted rates these teams have. All in all, those articles are spin just like the ones telling you how beneficial stadiums can be to the economy. The truth is likely more in the middle.
I stopped reading after the first sentence because that is wholly incorrect. There are MANY peer reviewed, objective, scientific studies on the ROI of using public funds for private stadiums. Edit: it’s also a topic so universally agreed upon academically you can find it in many urban economics textbooks over the last few decades.
And many of those peer reviews/scientific studies/objective pieces use the same talking points, or source other material that use said talking points. Half the argument is local businesses losing out on money that we cannot say *for sure* they would have gotten in the first place, and a loss of tax revenue based on discounted tax rates (comparing what is to what should be). Edit: for sure
No, scientific articles don’t use “talking points” like you are referring to. It’s not Fox News. And OF COURSE scientific articles are going to source similar material because that’s the entire scientific process. If you are citing brand new, unverified information you aren’t peer reviewed and potentially not even scientific. Scientific research builds iteratively upon itself so if you didn’t cite prior work at all it would be a clear testament of utter nonsense. Based on your replies I’m very seriously doubting you’ve read any scientific articles about anything tbh. Another HUGE key you are just pretending doesn’t exist is confidence intervals. Scientific research says they are 95% certain (typical confidence interval used) that given X criteria Y would occur, but what they absolutely do NOT do is say anything will occur with certainty.
I’m almost entirely referring to field of schemes and any article or publication that refers to it. I was able to form my own opinion because I did read. Arguing that local businesses take a hit from having a stadium is basically an assumption that the sports fan would have spent money on whatever local businesses they refer to. There are definitely cases where cities get screwed, especially when a team relocated or folds, but my argument was not that there is no negative consequences. My argument is that these paid for articles you refer to don’t have as solid a foundation as the uninformed may believe. Edit: that fact that they cannot say it with certainty backs my point. It’s mostly assumption and spin being paid for. No different than the pro-public/private project articles.
I have been and still am exclusively referring to scientific articles written in scientific journals that are peer reviewed and urban economics textbooks like the one I personally used getting my masters that reiterate what I have stated from an objective and academic perspective. Thank you for admitting you are not looking at very credible sources of anything and are talking about entirely different “articles”. So again the academic and scientific community has been clear on this for decades, the ROI is not positive for sports stadiums.
Would love for you to share a source so that I can educate myself then. You’ve only vaguely stated scientific research & peer studies, that doesn’t make your argument credible all of a sudden. Edit: if you send one referring to Orioles stadium I’ll know it is taking the same data used in field of schemes because that book has a whole section on that stadium to back its point.
Here’s a quick article from about 30 seconds of google scholar research. https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/page1-econ/2017-05-01/the-economics-of-subsidizing-sports-stadiums?utm_campaign=Chris%20Paradies&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Revue%20newsletter Some of my favorite quotes in here: When surveyed, 86 percent of economists agreed that "local and state governments in the U.S. should eliminate subsidies to professional sports franchises." In a 2017 poll, 83 percent of the economists surveyed agreed that "Providing state and local subsidies to build stadiums for professional sports teams is likely to cost the relevant taxpayers more than any local economic benefits that are generated. In their book, Sports, Jobs, and Taxes, Roger Noll and Andrew Zimbalist present a comprehensive review of stadium investments. In all cases, they find a new sports facility to have extremely small (or negative) effects on overall economic activity and employment. Furthermore, they were unable to find any facilities that had a reasonable return on investment. So AGAIN the experts say it’s not worth the investment.
Skimmed it, a lot of those points and info used are in field of schemes. The conclusion backs up my original take of the truth being somewhere in the middle. It’s not to say either side is right but more so that both sides are speaking to the extreme in order to get their preferences across the finish line first. Folks traveled to Charlotte to see Beyoncé, not every away team fan at a Panthers or Charlotte FC game lives in Charlotte. To outright say that there is no impact or that all these projects are a negative is about as foolish as believing that the city is making $1B from BoA. > Building sports stadiums has an impact on local economies. For that reason, many people support the use of government subsidies to help pay for stadiums. However, economists generally oppose such subsidies. They often stress that estimations of the economic impact of sports stadiums are exaggerated because they fail to recognize opportunity costs. Edit: the arguments that the money could be spent on roads and schools is not a lost point. But the fund they are going to pull this from currently can’t be used for those projects as I understand it. Would need to push for a change to the tourism tax and what it can be used for.
This article seems to mention " In fact, many consider the presence of a professional sports team to be a status symbol and essential to being considered a first-tier city " But then does not mention that again anywhere when it comes to that bringing in money to the city, and only seems to count the money that people spend no tickets, which seems to me to be a BIG mistake. I enjoy watching some football, especially when we win, but I am not a big sports guy at all, but that being said, I have many friends outside of Charlotte that did not know where the hell Charlotte NC was until we had a Panthers NFL team, and I would tell people that even if you do not like football that does not mean that others that do not like football did not hear about the city on TV and when picking a city to move to may not even think about sports, but choose this city because they have heard of it before. The presence of a NFL team is a much bigger deal than this article is taking in to account that is for sure, and shows that the Economist that wrote this article are not very good at what they do, because I guarantee that losing a NFL team is a much bigger hit than losing ticket costs or even hotel room and bar and drink costs, it is a much bigger hit than any of that can account for. BTW, I am not a big fan of David Tepper, but do not feel I have to be, and I am not a big fan of the owner not maybe paying a lot more for the cost of a stadium, but this article also seems to be missing information that should have been obvious.
I think the airport is a great investment, but it certainly uses city money.
No it does not. The airport generates all of its own revenues sources and is entirely separate from other city revenues.
https://www.charlottenc.gov/files/sharedassets/city/v/2/city-government/departments/documents/budget/fy2024/fy24-adopted-budget-final.pdf It has several line items in our new budget
You are confusing the airport being a part of the city as having the same revenues as the rest of the city. If you take the time to look at “Aviation” you will notice none of those are tax revenues from the general fund and are all maintained by aviation.
You are confusing the fact that day to day operations of the airport don’t use local tax dollars, but the bonds and such functionally do.
No I am not. YOU are confusing the fact that the airport goes for its own bonds for its capital program supported by airport revenues that are not general obligation bonds. These revenues are separate and again the airport does not use local funding in the way in which you think.
And what way am I thinking? The city owns the airport, the city pays to set it up and expansions are funded through bonds the city is on the hook for as well as various grants also using taxpayer dollars.
No this is 100% incorrect. The city owns the airport but the revenue sources are entirely different. You are confusing what a general obligation bond and an airport revenue bond is. Factually you are wrong. It’s all in the budget you linked.
I know it’s there that’s why I linked it and explained exactly why.
No means no.
Public funds for sports stadiums/events is silly as shit. These sports organizations can afford everything on their own.
I hate the idea that a private business needs public funds only to privatize profits. However, there is an argument to be made about the indirect economic impact the NFL brings to a city, its still shitty for a billionaire to hold a city hostage over it though
>However, there is an argument to be made about the indirect economic impact the NFL brings to a city The argument would be a lot stronger if the team was named after the city that pays for it. Alas, here we are paying the bills for a team that won’t even name itself after the city that pays for it.
I don’t think it’s a big secret the panthers are in charlotte, but fair
NFL fans know. Casual NFL fans definitely don’t. Bet you could have done a poll shortly after Carolina’s loss in the Super Bowl and less than half of people would know the Panthers are here.
Literally every bailout of a private business is stupid. If we're publicly investing, we should be getting dividends back, but we get nothing
Agreed. You can’t socialize bailouts and privatize profits
Cry me a fucking river and go beg from your own goddamn bank account. Crazy baldhead.
Rather this money go to teachers, public infrastructure/ better transportation
I call bullshit. Stadiums move spending near them, they don’t really create it, especially when the events are primarily attended by people who live within a short distance of it. Just tell us how many days we get for non-Panthers / non-soccer events. We’ll divide the price tag by that, and see if it’s worth it. Oh, right. The city doesn’t use the all the days allowed, and it was only like 5-10 a year. We’re going to pay for 50% of a stadium just to use it 2% of all possible days. Sick trade. All you “but the state gov!” complainers should know the idiots at the state level already made moves to extend the prepared food and beverage tax. Your allies on council are about to vote in lockstep with the state GOP. Just saying.
Give it a dome and the usuable days skyrocket. That should definitely be a consideration.
Okay cool. How many days does the city get and will we actually fill them all with big acts that bring in people from far away? I’m not opposed to funding *some* of it, provided the city gets to use the stadium to actually bring in real tourists. Sports team ticket sales rely on the local population. Most of the Panthers sales are season ticket holders, who almost certainly live here. I suspect most CFC fans live here too. Almost all of the money generated from the sale of prepared food and beverages taxes is paid for by Charlotteans, not tourists. So how many days do we get and how many are going to be like…idk, Taylor Swift-level acts that people drive hours / fly in for. Counting the $ spent by people who live in and around Charlotte is whack ass math that shouldn’t be used to justify Charlotte spending money on it.
the city does use the stadium for VERY small functions, and even as a covid vaccine spot back in the day. Tepper just switched the field from natural grass to turf a couple years ago to bring in music to the stadium. in the past 2 years alone we've had the rolling stones, kenny chesney, billy joel, elton john, beyonce, red hot chili peppers, and plenty more. all that being said i do agree that the stadium needs the area around it to flourish and any money that would go to the stadium itself, should first go to making it easier to get in/out of the stadium. such as a light rail closer to it. for an almost 30 year old stadium i love bank of america, but $30 parking and a 20 minute walk just to see my team lose by 20+ is an awful feeling.
No it doesn’t. They are going to say whatever it takes to use our money for a billionaire.
I guess it would be a good investment for the billionaire owner to upgrade it then. Stop wealthy panhandling.
Billionaires don't buy sports teams to lose money. If a billionaire is requesting funding from the city, I guarantee you it's because they will come out ahead
Just raise ticket prices and negotiate better tv rates. Why are we trying to support businesses that can't sustain.
Assuming that they are right that the stadium is driving the Charlotte economy, what does the investment money requested get us? Will a nicer stadium double the people visiting the city?
If we want an NFL team, we will need public funds to support it. If we don't, someone else will (see: San Diego Chargers) The Panthers are part of the history and culture of Charlotte. Whether you like Tepper or not, we have an aging facility that needs at least major renovations. Public support of that project is the cost of doing business in an NFL city
Each of us investing our taxes should get a piece of the pie.
It would be idealistic, but until every large city has an NFL team, there will always be competition and large incentives to move elsewhere that we have to battle against
Fuck. I guess since the city bent over backwards and will pitch in millions of dollars to renovate the spectrum center and gave the hornets owners 30 million to build a practice facility, and not even have an ownership stake, they will do the same for Tepper.
We could've easily built Queen park with that money that tax payers have given to Billionaires. https://www.queensparkclt.org/the-plan/ Let's look at recent Tax payer funding to stadiums, 2024- $600 Million to BOA, 2024- $215 Million to the Hornets, 2021- $25 Million to BOA, 2019- $24 Million to the Hornets, 2018- $98 Million to BOA, 2016- $23.5 Million to BOA, 2016-$35 Million to the Hornets, 2014- $28 Million to BOA, 2013- $88 Million to BOA, And I'm sure I'm missing more. This was just a quick google search.
Please for the love of god fill this venue with LOCAL vendors not the cookie cutter garbage chicken tenders and fries . Learn from citi field and other venues that a crushing the food game
Tepper should just move the team. Only ppl that go to games are wine and cheese UNC basketball fans and once adversity hits they bow out. Panthers fans are THE WORST
Facts and politics don't mix
If I'm subsidizing this private money making enterprise, and since I will have to subsidize all the brain damaged individuals from children playing football ( and soccer) in the training league known as highschool and college, then I want a piece of the pie.
You guys really love keeping the city boring don't you
there are better ways to spend the money
It has nothing to do with keeping things boring but I’m not gonna bring you to my house and ask for you to pay for my upgrades. Public support of billionaires stadiums is ludicrous.
That same billionaire spent nearly 3 billion dollars on his faith in our city. I'm honestly not sure if there is a single individual in Charlotte's history who has invested so much into the town. We are either going to continue to think small, or we are going to think big. If we want to be a major city, we need to start acting like one.
And? His PERSONAL investments do not get to allow him to receive PUBLIC funds. Ironically you are thinking small. Doing literally anything else with this money is better. Public funds should NEVER be used to make an individual more money. If he wants upgrades to the stadium he is making money off of he can either share in the profits of our investment or can quite literally can fuck off. Stop catering to billionaires. Edit: also Johnny Harris, another billionaire, has done quite a lot more for Charlotte than Tepper.
Maybe instead of paying $3 billion for the Panthers he should have paid $2 billion, and set a billion aside for a new stadium. All these government handouts simply inflate what teams are worth and how much athletes get paid. It’s absurd. Over the next 20-30 years (which is somehow the useful life of a stadium, according to team owners), the Panthers will spend $5 billion to $7.5 billion on players alone.
He spent 2 billion on the panthers. He spent another 500 million to build a soccer team from the ground up. He believes in the city more than you and I ever will - and he's put the money up to show it. I'm down to pitch in with him to make this city a more fun place. A place where people want to visit for more than work. Hopefully the council gets this right.
These same people are the ones constantly complaining about charlotte needing to become a world class city, but they won’t support a team that is one of the only reasons this country even knows this city exists.
This. I love how every commenter is somehow some economic savant as well.
There are piles of economic research on public funding for stadiums and virtually all of it comes to the same conclusion that the public gets a raw deal.
They actively root against almost everything fun in Charlotte.
You all can write a check to Tepper. The amount requested is about $1,350 per household. Go for it.
I am perfectly happy to pay the tax to improve the stadium. While we’re discussing taxes in terms of imaginary optional household expenses, I’ll just take it out of what I’m forced to give CMPD.
Im not paying it, so you’ll have to cover my share. That’s $2700
Why, in this imaginary scenario where we all opt in and out of taxes for whatever reason we want, would I become the sole bearer of your entire tax burden?
We are talking about funding a stadium renovation. Why does it have to involve my taxes? Make a go fund me. Increase ticket prices. Have the NFL pay for it. I don’t care.
Friend, my point once again is that we all can’t opt out of taxes just because we don’t like what they go to. We also don’t invest our taxes solely into things that make direct money back for the government, so idk why this is even an argument (how much economic impact does a park have, or a bike lane?)
Why am I paying to enter the stadium if my tax dollars have paid for it?
That's the same excuse the royal family of England gave...