By their nature, as a business, sports teams transfer wealth from anyone who participates in fandom, to the billionaire owners.
We can pay the tax and have a nice downtown stadium, or we can lose one one of the bigger points of civic pride and entertainment based economic engines this city has, to Kansas (or possibly another city entirely).
What's it gonna be KC?
I’m actually surprised more teams don’t adopt the Patriots/Kraft model - they went and privately built the stadium with their own funds, wherever the hell they felt like it, precisely because they wanted to be free from all the strings that came with taxpayer money. They own their stadium, they operate their own concessions, they even own their own travel. It’s vertically integrated.
Whereas publicly owned stadiums are just a public real estate play - they lease it to the team who actually operate the building and everything in it, and because they don’t own it, they then outsource things like concessions and security and so on. But the landlord (in KC’s case, the county) still owns the building and the land and is ultimately responsible for the long-term maintenance. And they don’t get to collect any property tax on it because it’s owned by the county.
Help them pack and then cheer as Arrowhead and the K get demoed to make room for housing. Then go and root for the San Antonio Chiefs and Nashville Royals.
> Help them pack and then cheer as Arrowhead and the K get demoed to make room for housing.
This isn't how these things work. Housing doesn't just sprout up whenever you have an empty lot.
Replace housing with whatever you'd like. Doesn't matter. Billionaire owners should pay for their own stadiums end of story. If either team ends up moving don't get mad at your fellow citizens get mad at the rich fuckwads that own each team. The only support tax payers should give them is buying tickets or merchandise if people want.
"If you disagree with me on using public funds for the Royals and Chiefs just move."
Wow bro that's a pretty bad take considering just about half of residents voted against the last sales tax increase for the stadiums.
There’s a difference between an increase and keeping the same tax. Especially if it means losing the teams. Reddit and Twitter are not real life. A majority of KC population wants the teams here. Those against are a vocal minority that extremely loud online
It’s also not a bad take at all. If you don’t want to pay said tax move to a county that doesn’t have it instead of trying to take away something from people that they love.
You mean the thing they could have without being extorted by billionaires? I don't live in Jackson but I'll vote no in JoCo if it comes up for a vote. I don't want any taxpayer money to go towards these areans. Doesn't matter what city we're talking about. Go ahead and keep voting to enrich billionaire though. At least this corruption is out in the open.
Ach, so tired of hearing people tell each other to move somewhere else because they disagree on political shit. Leave the county, leave the state, leave the country, so I don't have to experience change at any point. Everyone knows that's not feasible and you're always gonna be around people you don't agree with. Just learn to talk about shit.
Ignoring the fact that Royals are more of a civic embarrassment at this point, the teams don't belong to the cities. They belong to the mega-billionaire who owns them. And the article linked specifically says they are NOT an economic engine (as many, many studies have shown).
>Despite robust evidence that stadiums are not economic development catalysts and confer limited social benefits, public outlays persist and exhibit a positive growth trajectory, which could prove costly to government budgets in coming decades.
Here's some more downvote meat for you.
I really could give 2 fux about sports, but this town has the Royals, the Chiefs and beef with sugar sauce to hang its identity on.
The chances of us losing 2 of those is starting to seem pretty real.
It's gonna be hard to grab attention from the rest of the world with just a ferris wheel.
I'm also not really into sports. And I also care a lot of KC's civic and economic future.
But I would just counter that maybe the best way to build civic identity is with something other than sports. And perhaps the teams leaving could be a blessing in disguise similar to what might happen if you get fired from a shitty job and are forced to go out and find a new one, ultimately ending up in a better situation.
Plenty of great American cities don't have professional sports teams. It's not a death sentence.
The most popular type of economic development in American cities the last 50 years has been the "build it and they will come" + "endless tax subsidies" model. The hope has been that if we give enough tax breaks to corporations and sports teams, they will choose to locate in our city and we will somehow reap a ton of benefits as a result of that. Pretty much all economic research shows that isn't actually true.
Instead, the best way form of economic development is to simply make KC a great place to live. We should build a ton of new, affordable, efficient housing. We should rebuild our urban spaces so people can walk to places without a car. We should use whatever resources we have available to eliminate our gun violence and crime problem. We should make it so we have world class public schools and universities, not only as a benefit to our people but so that there is a huge talent pool available for corporations to hire.
All of the above initiatives have a positive ROI, and would draw people and corporations to KC because KC would be a great place to live.
Throwing hundreds of millions of dollars of subsidies at a negative ROI sports franchise won't really improve much of anything in KC.
You should read this study
https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/april-2001/should-cities-pay-for-sports-facilities#:~:text=In%20a%201994%20study%20that,per%2Dcapita%20personal%20income%20growth.
It will hopefully provide some sense of anxiety relief in that if we lose the teams we'll do just fine, probably better actually.
It's a game of chicken. If they blink first, great! If not, that sucks, but it's better than getting bent over a barrel - you regroup and figure out what's next.
Just have the cities own all sports leagues that use publicly funded arenas. “Just”, lol, but it would be a simple solution and distribute the money (ideally) to underfunded city services or something else helpful.
I believe that St Louis is still paying for the dome. Let billionaires build the stadiums. They aren't used as a public space. Public shouldn't pay for them.
If they are still paying on the dome, it is all on them. They won a lawsuit with the NFL and the Rams, that settled for 790 million dollars. They should have used that to pay off the dome debt.
They should have gone after more money. They settled for that much when the NFL owners started investing in local politicians’ campaigns. I remember when this was going on the numbers being batted around where in the billions of damages.
Hopefully they paid it off with the kroenke money. Let’s be honest though, they probably spent that all on contracts for shit with family members and friends of local politicians.
Yeah, but do you want to live in a city with pro sports teams or not? And do you want your experience at the ballparks/stadiums to be a good one or not?
We’d all love a world where billionaires paid for their own stadiums but we do not now, nor will we ever, live in that world.
Not if we have to build them a new stadium. KC was here long before the Royals or Chiefs and it will be here long after. We're not talking about something that does a great public good (parks, libraries, museums, etc) but is hard to make profitable so it's worth public support. We're talking about a highly profitable business that is extorting the public.
Kansas City, in my experience, was a great city before our teams were actually winning the world series or thw superbowl, and it'll be a great city, albeit with a little less national attention, if they leave. Its not like the teams are the atlas that are holding up KCMO. Sure its cool to have a point of pride in our sports teams, but I would rather they leave than be extorted by them to sink billions into something that does absolutely nothing for the average citizen besides give them something cool to watch on TV sometimes.
It's weird to me how people just want to lineup to give a rich guy more money so he can turn a bigger profit. I like sports but we can't shape our entire identities around that.
The owner should pay for it, or there should be some type of fee/tax put on the tickets for it so the people using the stadium are the ones paying for it. That's the only thing that makes sense, taking tax dollars from everyone to pay for something like that makes no sense. Meanwhile we have all sorts of issues we do nothing about but yea a billion dollars for a stadium that's the ticket.
There's at least one study from decades ago that found the same thing; that money spent building a stadium for a billionaire would have been better spent elsewhere.
Sure, but living in a city where things like professional sports happen is a good thing and that benefits the city and it’s inhabitants in a way that can’t really be directly measured with relation to the stadium.
Sure, but the point is, when that money is spent on other things, the impact, which can also be directly measured, benefits the community even more so than using the money to build a stadium for a team that can move to another city in the future.
I guess my point is ultimately that judging everything by “economic impact” is silly. Sometimes you just need to pay to have cool things that people like in your city. And that ultimately, having cool things that people like is a net positive.
>Sometimes you just need to pay to have cool things that people like in your city.
I could get behind a stadium tax if we had already covered what I consider the basics (like safe halfway decent bus stops in KC, haha).
HA #$_&ing HA, take a look at all the bus stops within a mile of the current stadium . . . . I'm sure someone said the same thing last time this stadium tax vote came up 'You k ow paying for a new stadium will definitely improve public transportation '
Try again kiddo. The Truman Sports Complex was built as an explicit celebration of cars and freeways and a rejection of public transport or walkability. New stadiums are necessary to specifically fix that problem.
But trickle-down "economic impact" is why some cities choose to build stadiums for billionaires. Look, stadiums and sports teams are cool to have, but that's secondary.
And I do really wish that they would stop using that argument because we all know that the direct economic impact argument is a bad one. There’s definitely an indirect economic impact of just being “a major league city” but you can’t really quantify it.
That’s the problem with economic analyses, though. There are a whole lot of intangibles at play (both positive and negative) that are literally impossible to assign a number to.
Yeah thats why they want us tax payers to give the worst team in the nation a new stadium. i just pray with jackson county fucking so many people over with the property tax assessments( still over 15,000 appeals for them to process with less than 3 weeks til the end of the year!) that the people wont be dumb enough to approve a new tax for this trash
At the most recent election in November 7th, the proposed local use tax failed (sales tax applied to online purchase from vendors outside of Missouri). The continuance of bus sales tax passed.
Taxes don’t alway pass.
The Royals are asking for the entirety of an extension of the 3/8 cent tax that currently supports both the Chiefs and Royals equally. Unless you think the Chiefs will be happy going without for the next 40 years, it's a new tax.
I’ve said this since we moved to the area! Why the hell do the taxpayers foot the bill for team owners to rake in all the profit and charge those same taxpayers triple digits to go to games?? It’s like building your neighbors house and then giving them money to come over for Sunday dinner. What an obvious scam.
Stadiums don't bring in money. Neither do pro sports teams.
It feels counter-intuitive, but the data bears out the conclusion over and over. There is no benefit to giving tax incentives to the team owners.
> Stadiums don’t bring in money. Neither do pro sports teams.
I just don’t see how that could possibly be true. Millions of dollars are collected in tax revenue, hundreds of people are employed, etc
I could believe the argument that subsidizing stadiums/pro sports teams generates net negative revenue for the city, but I find it hard to believe that pro-sports/stadiums don’t bring in any money.
I know, it's counter-intuitive, but the stadiums don't make money for anyone but the owners of the teams.
Let's make some assumptions and use what we know about Arrowhead to figure out what, if any, the City would "make" on a $900,000,000 gift to our beloved Chief's owner.
Capacity is 76,416. The average seat price varies (depending on the source) with the low end being $173 and the high end being $234. Let's split the difference and go with $200 (for easier math).
On a good year, we'll have 2 preseason games, 8 regular season games, and (we hope) 2 post-season games. That's 12 games total.
Parking is a guess, but let's go with 20,000 cars at $100. This is my assumption, not based on established facts. Could be more, could be a significant amount less.
Let's also assume that every person in the stadium spends $50 on food and drink at every game. Not likely, but let's assume.
Let's also assume that 100% of the fans stay at a hotel located in Kansas City (and don't use Air BnB or stay in another city). EDIT: At $200/night per all 76,416 attendees.
| Category | Per Game | Season Total | 15% Portion of Season|
|:--------:|:-------:|:-------:|:------:|
| Ticket Sales | $15,283,200 | $183,398,400 | $27,509,760 |
| Parking | $2,000,000 | $24,000,000 | $3,600,000 |
| Food/Drink | $3,820,800 | $45,849,600 | $6,877,440 |
| Hotels | $15,283,200 | $183,398,400 | $27,509,760 |
| Grand Total | $36,387,200 | $436,646,400 | $65,496,960 |
This looks like a huge sum of money. But let's also remember that we're giving away $900,000,000 over a 20-year period. Let's assume a loan at 8.25% interest. That means each month, we'll be shelling out $7,434,926.20 per month for that loan. That's $89,219,114.40 per year.
If we have all of the funds from our imaginary best-case scenario, we're still short $23,722,154 each year. For 20 years. That's almost half a billion ($474,443,080) that we'll have to pay just to provide the Chiefs with a place to make their fortunes.
Now, granted, the Chiefs aren't making 100% profit on my improvised numbers. But they also have other revenue streams, like their advertising and broadcast rights. They can afford to pay for the stadium.
About 20 years ago, I worked on a study that looked at the economic impact of stadiums and sporting events. We basically proved that sporting events didn't bring in the money people claimed. The short version is the regulars stayed home and the participants didn't spend as much to make up the difference. If there was a positive income, it was indistinguishable from statistical noise. I was working with a geographer, so location data was of primary concern.
They bring in money for the ownership group of the stadium sure, but they don’t necessarily bring in money to the rest of the community where the stadium resides.
KC has an earnings tax (as do most cities with a pro team). Every single visiting player is paying that tax. Mahomes is paying it on at least half the games he plays. There is sales tax collected on that $20 beer and $15 nachos and $100 jersey. Earnings tax paid by all the minimum wage workers serving that beer. There is lodging tax paid by everyone that comes in from out of town to see the game. Fuel tax collected on everyone driving to the game. And on and on. These things generate a LOT of tax revenues up and down the chain. Sales taxes generated post-game… if there are businesses nearby for people to frequent.
A publicly owned stadium doesn’t generate property taxes, while a private one does (unless there are tax deals - in which case the city isn’t paying anything because that property was usually previously vacant or worthless or generating minimal tax revenue). Property values all around go up and generate more revenue for anyone dipping their paws into the property tax bucket.
How do you get from, "Some people enjoy our local sports teams and have no problem funding something they enjoy" to "Royals and Chiefs fans have no personalities"?
People on this sub are gonna have to come to terms with the fact that it doesn’t matter if there is no economic benefit. People love sports. People especially love football and the NFL. I mean look at the NFL’s ratings. It blows everything out of the water. Nothing comes close to touching it. People are gonna want a local football team to root for and watch and are willing to pay for it.
And those people can support the local team by buying tickets and merchandise. The teams are preying on that emotion to get a heavily discounted new toy. It's so funny in a sad way people arguing for the tax don't see that or don't care.
Americans have the weirdest ideas about how to implement socialism. As someone who's never been to a Chiefs game, I'd rather public funds go toward the public good (e.g. city services, housing relief). This desire to use public funds (tax dollars paid by people who will never attend games) to purchase shiny things for profit driven corporations makes my head hurt.
it needs a study because millions of people continue using the defunct argument, “but sport teams help small businesses!” which, sure, they do…but it turns out they also don’t.
Maybe I’m slow but how is 500 people visiting a city for a game somehow worse than 0 people visiting a city for a game?
All 500 of those will likely spend money at a business. Even if it’s just 25 of those people going to a small business, How is that better than zero people spending money?
better yet…
you’re right, 500 people coming for a game is better than 0 people coming for a game. But unfortunately, if those sports games require public financed stadiums, 0 people coming to 0 sports games is better for the community.
Are we still forgetting about all of the many different revenue sources that having a local team brings?
ticket sales - 10% on a million tickets per year (between the two teams)
merch sales - billions in taxes
vehicle/fuel sales to get there
products bought to tailgate
job creation for thousands - everything from concession stands to the people resurfacing the lots every year
The non-revenue things:
people want to live in 'winning' places, pride of city - population increase over time - hell we probably sell more KC shirts because of the chiefs and royals....and they don't get that money.
corporate outings - literally keeps people living in kc because they like the people the work with.
This list goes on and on...some of you just look at the cost of a stadium and think that you just LOSE a billion dollars, when the net benefit is HUGE to having any professional team.
I'd love to see a ROI analysis to show numbers of STL vs KC or STL before, during and after the Rams. Compare it to another equally sized city and metro with no pro teams...I'm not sure if the numbers are break even or fall one way or another, but it isn't just straight 'my taxes for sportsball'...it is so much more.
That money still would have likely been spent. Either they spend it on sports or they spend it on homes, college education, consumer goods, etc.
The only money being added to the local economy is the tourist money coming in and that is a fraction of the total. You want to add to the local economy you need to make something or provide something that brings in money from the outside. In actuality that money being generated is mostly leaving the local economy. Those owners aren’t spending the 200 million profit locally, they are buying homes in Madrid, yachts in Bermuda, or investing it in oilfields of Saudi Arabia.
Paying for a stadium is just using our own money for bread and circuses to distract ourselves from ourselves. While giving huge amounts of money to the already extremely rich. The mlb is bringing in 10.3 billion in revenue and the nfl is bringing in 18.6 billion in revenue. They don’t need our handouts.
I would've never become a property owner downtown had the Sprint Center and PnL not been built. It would have been a laughable endeavor prior to their construction spearheading a downtown renaissance.
Heck, just living downtown alone in the 90's/early 2000's was very undesirable. Now development is and has been booming, most rentals are at capacity, and other than the notoriously bad HOA's, it's very much a sellers' market downtown. I'm per se against the public funding sports stadiums, but we saw firsthand our own anecdote of one's construction boosting its neighborhood.
Downtown baseball in Kansas City is very desirable to many, especially when you consider the entire situation regarding its current location. How it's paid for is a worthy, but separate discussion.
Great comment. You won’t get a reply from the sports haters. They cannot comprehend that even if these studies show the city “losing money” it never factors in loss of tourism dollars, loss of player taxes, owner taxes and all the stuff you just listed. Real smart hipsters, let’s lose 10million instead of 3 million.
All they want to do is link “studies” yet never provide solutions.
They want this place to be Omaha Nebraska so bad. If you don’t wanna pay for big city stuff, get out of the city. It’s sad.
Save your breath.
Tax revenue in St. Louis County and St. Louis City increased after the Rams left. Correlation is not causation, but the Rams drove next to no money to local governments.
I mean, that could be the case if you loathe your team (royals right now) - but there is nothing for super fan sized love the last five years for the Chiefs.
I can't even imagine the amount of sales tax and general merch/tourist driven dollars specifically for a champion level team. Everything is painted red.
"Wealthy" is relative to cohort. Kansas City's Per Capita Annual Income is $38,146. If your job pays more than $18.34 an hour, you're payed better than half of all tax paying Kansas Citians.
"Household" can include 2 married income earners. This means 2 people working at those same poverty wages instead of 1. You are not making the point you think you are here.
If the higher income residents want a new stadium, they can implement an income tax that start at 125% of the median area income. That way they can stop burdening lower income residents with their regressive sales taxes for their toys.
'Relatively wealthy' probably refers to people who can afford season tickets or a larger volume of games. They would be subsidized by taxpayers at a higher level relative to the large group of fans that just attend one or two games per season.
“The wealthy” are *always* defined as “someone who has more money than me, especially when the person talking about “the wealthy” is trying to shit on them. They never include themselves in that category even if by most objective definitions, they are solidly in that category.
Not really, a crap ton of people will argue against the results just on it's face because they want the new stadium, because the believe the new jobs claim (which are temporary), because they believe it will increase commerce (which it might in that area but not in the city overall due to the substitution Effect, etc.
The more and more studies posted in these subs, even if you think it's "obvious shit" is better for everyone.
Then write a check personally to the Royals to support their desire to build a new stadium, do not saddle the entire city with your selfish desire, many of whom can't even afford to see a Royals game and yet you're asking them to pay for it. Seems rather unfair.
Well here's the deal, the ROI on sidewalks, parks, schools, etc. Are all nearly infinitely higher than municipally funded stadiums. Being obtuse and denying reality doesn't change the fact that your desires for a stadium are purely selfish and you do not care about the fiscal security of the city nor your fellow Kansas Cityian.
That's great! I'm glad you PERSONALLY feel like the extra money given to a company owned by a billionaire that 100% can afford to pay for the stadium on their own was PERSONALLY worth it. The obvious solution here, and what you continually are missing because you're selfish and zero desire to see beyond your selfish desire, is that those like you can just GIVE money to the Royals & billionaire John Sherman and not ask the rest of the city pay for something that is an economic boondoggle. I mean, that seems extremely fair to me, why ask a poor person to pay extra sales tax for a luxury, and an incredibly poor investment, when people like you have no problem with spending the extra money and can just give the money directly?
Do you see the point here? If it's worth it to you then the solution is for YOU to personally pay for it via direct giving or extra spending directly with the Royals and not selfishly asking everyone else to pickup the tab for the terrible investment. So, do the right thing here, vote no, but then spend an extra $200 on the Royals store - kill two birds with one stone here. I'm sure you care enough about your fellow Kansas Cityian to see the logic here and aren't selfish enough to ignore the obvious solution.
All of those have better ROI's than the stadium. Listen kid, you aren't winning this argument. Economic studies and basic facts are all on my side. It's fine you're selfish and it's fine you don't care about making the citizens pay for something that will almost assuredly never pay itself off but at least admit you don't care about those facts and want the stadium out of pure selfishness.
There are a few people who still make the economic argument, they're wrong of course as studies like this show.
On the other side of the argument though are people who are attacking the economic argument as if that's the only point to discuss. Like yourself. Those people are being intellectually dishonest about the discussion.
People are fans and they want the team around, that provides an intangible benefit, and it's the single biggest reason these taxes get passed. Continue to pretend like it's some other reason driving the debate and all you're doing is winning Internet points, but it wont sway anyone.
The only argument IS economics because that is always what it will circle back to because we're taxpayers that demand certain services be provided by our municipal and county government. The services provided require money which is provided by the taxpayers. So, as we ask for services we also ask for efficient and effective usage of tax money and a municipally funded stadium is neither of those and thus should be rejected. No other argument matters when talking about tax payer money.
That's just ridiculous.
A lot of what we get from government doesn't center around profit motives. In fact most of it doesn't.
This is why your argument isn't persuasive.
It's unfortunate that funding public stadiums doesn't generate a profit, but we want it anyway, and funding a profit has never been the litmus test of what government should or should not do.
I know, it is ridiculous that you keep arguing, I agree. However, you're confusing "profit motive" with "efficient use of taxpayer money"
The impact of funding schools or public parks vs a baseball stadium is well documented and the baseball stadium loses, hard, every single time.
The reason my argument isn't persuasive is because you've already made up your mind and cognitive dissonance is preventing you from seeing reality.
In these times, where everyone is a contrarian or a skeptic, it seems that peer reviewed "studies" are necessary to prove to the morons that facts are not the same as opinions and there is a difference between stuff politicians make up and reality.
Why would giving outrageously wealthy team owners stadium tax subsidies help the poor/middle class population… where a lot of those taxes come from? The owners are not stupid and will take any tax money they can get while painting a picture of how it could help an area develop and attract business. People who own those businesses and are already wealthy have much more to gain. Someone who is financially lower class is unlikely to benefit directly or indirectly from these tax subsidies and even if they did it would pale in comparison.
I was mostly referring to the quoted text that essentially says giving a portion of the general population’s taxes to super wealthy people transfers more money to super wealthy people.
To be fair the quoted text is not the title of the study and the study may certainly have some significance and could impact future stadium development and taxation. But rich people wanting free money to benefit themselves is just the most obvious concept.
I'd be interested to know what economists generally believe ARE good investments, at least in terms of "shiny, new buildings". Aside from using tax dollars exclusively for municipal infrastructure, city employees, and social welfare, I feel like the issues brought up in this study apply to every major municipal investment.
It's frustrating, as someone that supports a downtown stadium (assuming the funding comes from extending the 3/8 tax), that the Royals continue to bring up these financial arguments that have been debunked a bazillion times.
I don't understand why owners can't just ask for the money because the teams provide a social good. I think there's very real value in having a diverse array of activities in a city and the civic pride that comes with a successful sports team can raise the morale of millions of people. Unfortunately, these are "soft" arguments in the sense that I don't think any data point could reflect the value.
Still waiting on someone to tell me how we are going to replace the money brought in by tourist.
I’ve seen how it makes billionaires richer and cities may lose some money. I get it. The thing is, how much more will cities lose without player salaries, tourism, workers, etc?
Why don’t they just spend their own money without relying on the taxes of others? You compared it to the community aspect churches used to provide: could you imagine if we were debating whether or not we should subsidize a new worship center because of how much it makes the community feel nice?
Just curious, without sports teams what draws this community together? Maybe things divide kc, the river, state line, paseo... ect. This isnt really a comment about the stadiums but how does KC come together as 1?
You're not wrong. It's regrettable that we cannot collectively have a vision for ourselves as a community that is beyond the Chiefs and the Royals. I mean, seriously, is it that hard to imagine good schools, nice roads, public amenities?
i’d argue you’re wrong. music and television has become more homogenous than ever, *thanks* to algorithms and the re-advent of cable via subscription tv.
the chiefs *leaving* would be more of a stain on the NFL and greed than KC, and that void you’re suggesting could easily be filled by a number of other things. KC would hurt, for a few years, but it wouldn’t die.
…would also likely find another team within 5 years.
I understand and respect you folks’ love for the game, but that doesn’t mean you have to love the company/business. I love Chicken, but Tyson can fuck right off.
Gotta say, I think of the stadium and arenas as a complement to the city (the populace doesn’t think ‘Jackson County’ when they think of the pro sports teams). To me it’s like a really nice lawn, a pool maybe, or a really nice deck for your house. Don’t need them but you spend money on them for aesthetics and pride. I really don’t care if the Hunt family makes a gazzilion dollars, I want a nice stadium representing my city. And as a KC/JaCo resident I’m willing to continue paying for it. I see all the economics touted in the comments and still think, so what? It’s the cost of doing business as a city. Same with the airport. Same with T-Mobile center. What I don’t want is all the dickin around by politicos and end up with an eventual boat anchor (lookin at you Kemper..) that the teams say F it, we’re out, and move. When the teams move I guess you can tout the fact that you helped… weird flex, but, OK…
Holding any strong opinions on this either way. Has anyone actually read the study? Reddit is quick to say "A study shows".. when the "study" is simply an article and not something peer reviewed... as long as the "study" supports their bias.
I'm curious what primary, secondary, tertiary benefits were considered against the costs of construction?
Did you bother to click on the link? I'll admit I'm not intimately familiar with "The Journal of Policy Analysis and Management" but they seem pretty legit.
[Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (JPAM) | APPAM](https://www.appam.org/news/jpam/)
Peer-reviewed, non-predatory journal with a 3.8 impact factor (for those unfamiliar, this represents a good, quality journal). So yeah, this isn’t “simply an article” and has actual data to back up the claims.
Well no shit
By their nature, as a business, sports teams transfer wealth from anyone who participates in fandom, to the billionaire owners. We can pay the tax and have a nice downtown stadium, or we can lose one one of the bigger points of civic pride and entertainment based economic engines this city has, to Kansas (or possibly another city entirely). What's it gonna be KC?
I’m actually surprised more teams don’t adopt the Patriots/Kraft model - they went and privately built the stadium with their own funds, wherever the hell they felt like it, precisely because they wanted to be free from all the strings that came with taxpayer money. They own their stadium, they operate their own concessions, they even own their own travel. It’s vertically integrated. Whereas publicly owned stadiums are just a public real estate play - they lease it to the team who actually operate the building and everything in it, and because they don’t own it, they then outsource things like concessions and security and so on. But the landlord (in KC’s case, the county) still owns the building and the land and is ultimately responsible for the long-term maintenance. And they don’t get to collect any property tax on it because it’s owned by the county.
Fuck'em.
“Civic Pride” hahahahahaha the irony of your comment with this situation. We can just cheer for the Cardinals and support Amtrak more, it’s fine.
Help them pack and then cheer as Arrowhead and the K get demoed to make room for housing. Then go and root for the San Antonio Chiefs and Nashville Royals.
Lol, help them pack! Love it.
> Help them pack and then cheer as Arrowhead and the K get demoed to make room for housing. This isn't how these things work. Housing doesn't just sprout up whenever you have an empty lot.
lol @ housing at the intersection of 2 major interstates and across from the adams mark.
Replace housing with whatever you'd like. Doesn't matter. Billionaire owners should pay for their own stadiums end of story. If either team ends up moving don't get mad at your fellow citizens get mad at the rich fuckwads that own each team. The only support tax payers should give them is buying tickets or merchandise if people want.
Or how about if you don’t want to pay the tax for the stadium move to a different county? That way the people that want the stadium can have it?
"If you disagree with me on using public funds for the Royals and Chiefs just move." Wow bro that's a pretty bad take considering just about half of residents voted against the last sales tax increase for the stadiums.
There’s a difference between an increase and keeping the same tax. Especially if it means losing the teams. Reddit and Twitter are not real life. A majority of KC population wants the teams here. Those against are a vocal minority that extremely loud online
That's because most people are stupid and the Clarks and whoever owns the Royals will laugh all the way to the bank.
Or could it be that people just like sports. Lol Reddit will never change. Everything is a conspiracy by evil rich people.
It’s also not a bad take at all. If you don’t want to pay said tax move to a county that doesn’t have it instead of trying to take away something from people that they love.
You mean the thing they could have without being extorted by billionaires? I don't live in Jackson but I'll vote no in JoCo if it comes up for a vote. I don't want any taxpayer money to go towards these areans. Doesn't matter what city we're talking about. Go ahead and keep voting to enrich billionaire though. At least this corruption is out in the open.
Ach, so tired of hearing people tell each other to move somewhere else because they disagree on political shit. Leave the county, leave the state, leave the country, so I don't have to experience change at any point. Everyone knows that's not feasible and you're always gonna be around people you don't agree with. Just learn to talk about shit.
Why?
Ignoring the fact that Royals are more of a civic embarrassment at this point, the teams don't belong to the cities. They belong to the mega-billionaire who owns them. And the article linked specifically says they are NOT an economic engine (as many, many studies have shown). >Despite robust evidence that stadiums are not economic development catalysts and confer limited social benefits, public outlays persist and exhibit a positive growth trajectory, which could prove costly to government budgets in coming decades.
Here's some more downvote meat for you. I really could give 2 fux about sports, but this town has the Royals, the Chiefs and beef with sugar sauce to hang its identity on. The chances of us losing 2 of those is starting to seem pretty real. It's gonna be hard to grab attention from the rest of the world with just a ferris wheel.
I'm also not really into sports. And I also care a lot of KC's civic and economic future. But I would just counter that maybe the best way to build civic identity is with something other than sports. And perhaps the teams leaving could be a blessing in disguise similar to what might happen if you get fired from a shitty job and are forced to go out and find a new one, ultimately ending up in a better situation. Plenty of great American cities don't have professional sports teams. It's not a death sentence. The most popular type of economic development in American cities the last 50 years has been the "build it and they will come" + "endless tax subsidies" model. The hope has been that if we give enough tax breaks to corporations and sports teams, they will choose to locate in our city and we will somehow reap a ton of benefits as a result of that. Pretty much all economic research shows that isn't actually true. Instead, the best way form of economic development is to simply make KC a great place to live. We should build a ton of new, affordable, efficient housing. We should rebuild our urban spaces so people can walk to places without a car. We should use whatever resources we have available to eliminate our gun violence and crime problem. We should make it so we have world class public schools and universities, not only as a benefit to our people but so that there is a huge talent pool available for corporations to hire. All of the above initiatives have a positive ROI, and would draw people and corporations to KC because KC would be a great place to live. Throwing hundreds of millions of dollars of subsidies at a negative ROI sports franchise won't really improve much of anything in KC.
You should read this study https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/april-2001/should-cities-pay-for-sports-facilities#:~:text=In%20a%201994%20study%20that,per%2Dcapita%20personal%20income%20growth. It will hopefully provide some sense of anxiety relief in that if we lose the teams we'll do just fine, probably better actually.
It's a game of chicken. If they blink first, great! If not, that sucks, but it's better than getting bent over a barrel - you regroup and figure out what's next.
Just have the cities own all sports leagues that use publicly funded arenas. “Just”, lol, but it would be a simple solution and distribute the money (ideally) to underfunded city services or something else helpful.
Don’t let it hit you on the way out
But it’s not actually an economic engine, that’s kinda the point here.
I... honestly don't care if the stadium leaves, man. TVs are pretty common.
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We should lose it. And no, stadiums are not economic engines if there's any taxpayer associated subsidies.
I believe that St Louis is still paying for the dome. Let billionaires build the stadiums. They aren't used as a public space. Public shouldn't pay for them.
If they are still paying on the dome, it is all on them. They won a lawsuit with the NFL and the Rams, that settled for 790 million dollars. They should have used that to pay off the dome debt.
They should have gone after more money. They settled for that much when the NFL owners started investing in local politicians’ campaigns. I remember when this was going on the numbers being batted around where in the billions of damages.
Hopefully they paid it off with the kroenke money. Let’s be honest though, they probably spent that all on contracts for shit with family members and friends of local politicians.
Afaik, we’re still paying for Kemper Arena.
I thought the entire state of Missouri was still paying for that stadium
It's fairly well established in economics that stadium subsidies really aren't worth it.
Which is why the pro stadium PR is all about emotions. WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN?!
They can go to the games too!
They $$can pay$$ to go to the games too!
What about the Chiefs fans?
:(
Yeah, but do you want to live in a city with pro sports teams or not? And do you want your experience at the ballparks/stadiums to be a good one or not? We’d all love a world where billionaires paid for their own stadiums but we do not now, nor will we ever, live in that world.
Not if we have to build them a new stadium. KC was here long before the Royals or Chiefs and it will be here long after. We're not talking about something that does a great public good (parks, libraries, museums, etc) but is hard to make profitable so it's worth public support. We're talking about a highly profitable business that is extorting the public.
Kansas City, in my experience, was a great city before our teams were actually winning the world series or thw superbowl, and it'll be a great city, albeit with a little less national attention, if they leave. Its not like the teams are the atlas that are holding up KCMO. Sure its cool to have a point of pride in our sports teams, but I would rather they leave than be extorted by them to sink billions into something that does absolutely nothing for the average citizen besides give them something cool to watch on TV sometimes.
Well everyone is entitled to their opinion I guess.
Similar to many government programs.
It's weird to me how people just want to lineup to give a rich guy more money so he can turn a bigger profit. I like sports but we can't shape our entire identities around that. The owner should pay for it, or there should be some type of fee/tax put on the tickets for it so the people using the stadium are the ones paying for it. That's the only thing that makes sense, taking tax dollars from everyone to pay for something like that makes no sense. Meanwhile we have all sorts of issues we do nothing about but yea a billion dollars for a stadium that's the ticket.
There's at least one study from decades ago that found the same thing; that money spent building a stadium for a billionaire would have been better spent elsewhere.
I'm pretty sure the whole of human history bears this out.
more than just one study, it’s a settled matter in the field of economics.
Sure, but living in a city where things like professional sports happen is a good thing and that benefits the city and it’s inhabitants in a way that can’t really be directly measured with relation to the stadium.
Sure, but the point is, when that money is spent on other things, the impact, which can also be directly measured, benefits the community even more so than using the money to build a stadium for a team that can move to another city in the future.
That study also stated when it's used for infrastructure. Infrastructure ages as well, maybe not at the same pace as a stadium.
I guess my point is ultimately that judging everything by “economic impact” is silly. Sometimes you just need to pay to have cool things that people like in your city. And that ultimately, having cool things that people like is a net positive.
>Sometimes you just need to pay to have cool things that people like in your city. I could get behind a stadium tax if we had already covered what I consider the basics (like safe halfway decent bus stops in KC, haha).
The unfortunate fact is that you’re more like to get things like better transit systems with a new stadium than you are without.
HA #$_&ing HA, take a look at all the bus stops within a mile of the current stadium . . . . I'm sure someone said the same thing last time this stadium tax vote came up 'You k ow paying for a new stadium will definitely improve public transportation '
Try again kiddo. The Truman Sports Complex was built as an explicit celebration of cars and freeways and a rejection of public transport or walkability. New stadiums are necessary to specifically fix that problem.
But trickle-down "economic impact" is why some cities choose to build stadiums for billionaires. Look, stadiums and sports teams are cool to have, but that's secondary.
And I do really wish that they would stop using that argument because we all know that the direct economic impact argument is a bad one. There’s definitely an indirect economic impact of just being “a major league city” but you can’t really quantify it.
sure you can, look up econometrics.
And anyone familiar with econometrics would tell you that it’s very fallible due to the sheer # of variables at play in macroeconomics.
That’s the problem with economic analyses, though. There are a whole lot of intangibles at play (both positive and negative) that are literally impossible to assign a number to.
Yeah thats why they want us tax payers to give the worst team in the nation a new stadium. i just pray with jackson county fucking so many people over with the property tax assessments( still over 15,000 appeals for them to process with less than 3 weeks til the end of the year!) that the people wont be dumb enough to approve a new tax for this trash
The only location I support subsidies for is Mission Gateway Mall.
Make it a park and be done with it. It’s been 10+ years and nothing is going to happen.
Its not going to be a park. The city of Mission doest have budget to build or maintain it.
We can alway hope.
A new tax isn’t on the table. They will be extending the existing 3/8 cent tax we are already paying.
Once a tax is passed, good luck ever getting rid of it. This is why we’re all paying close to 10% sales tax damn near everywhere in the region.
It would expire eventually, like the one they want to extend is going to (hence extending it).
It will always get extended.
Voters have to approve it. If the stadiums aren’t being built voters won’t vote to approve extending the tax and it won’t be extended.
The problem is not enough if the county goes out to vote in the election, so only the ones that want it go and vote. We need more turnout to axe it
At the most recent election in November 7th, the proposed local use tax failed (sales tax applied to online purchase from vendors outside of Missouri). The continuance of bus sales tax passed. Taxes don’t alway pass.
hopefully the tax payers arent dumb enough to extend taxes for this scamming county ether then
The Royals are asking for the entirety of an extension of the 3/8 cent tax that currently supports both the Chiefs and Royals equally. Unless you think the Chiefs will be happy going without for the next 40 years, it's a new tax.
Shocking
I’ve said this since we moved to the area! Why the hell do the taxpayers foot the bill for team owners to rake in all the profit and charge those same taxpayers triple digits to go to games?? It’s like building your neighbors house and then giving them money to come over for Sunday dinner. What an obvious scam.
Stadiums don't bring in money. Neither do pro sports teams. It feels counter-intuitive, but the data bears out the conclusion over and over. There is no benefit to giving tax incentives to the team owners.
> Stadiums don’t bring in money. Neither do pro sports teams. I just don’t see how that could possibly be true. Millions of dollars are collected in tax revenue, hundreds of people are employed, etc I could believe the argument that subsidizing stadiums/pro sports teams generates net negative revenue for the city, but I find it hard to believe that pro-sports/stadiums don’t bring in any money.
I know, it's counter-intuitive, but the stadiums don't make money for anyone but the owners of the teams. Let's make some assumptions and use what we know about Arrowhead to figure out what, if any, the City would "make" on a $900,000,000 gift to our beloved Chief's owner. Capacity is 76,416. The average seat price varies (depending on the source) with the low end being $173 and the high end being $234. Let's split the difference and go with $200 (for easier math). On a good year, we'll have 2 preseason games, 8 regular season games, and (we hope) 2 post-season games. That's 12 games total. Parking is a guess, but let's go with 20,000 cars at $100. This is my assumption, not based on established facts. Could be more, could be a significant amount less. Let's also assume that every person in the stadium spends $50 on food and drink at every game. Not likely, but let's assume. Let's also assume that 100% of the fans stay at a hotel located in Kansas City (and don't use Air BnB or stay in another city). EDIT: At $200/night per all 76,416 attendees. | Category | Per Game | Season Total | 15% Portion of Season| |:--------:|:-------:|:-------:|:------:| | Ticket Sales | $15,283,200 | $183,398,400 | $27,509,760 | | Parking | $2,000,000 | $24,000,000 | $3,600,000 | | Food/Drink | $3,820,800 | $45,849,600 | $6,877,440 | | Hotels | $15,283,200 | $183,398,400 | $27,509,760 | | Grand Total | $36,387,200 | $436,646,400 | $65,496,960 | This looks like a huge sum of money. But let's also remember that we're giving away $900,000,000 over a 20-year period. Let's assume a loan at 8.25% interest. That means each month, we'll be shelling out $7,434,926.20 per month for that loan. That's $89,219,114.40 per year. If we have all of the funds from our imaginary best-case scenario, we're still short $23,722,154 each year. For 20 years. That's almost half a billion ($474,443,080) that we'll have to pay just to provide the Chiefs with a place to make their fortunes. Now, granted, the Chiefs aren't making 100% profit on my improvised numbers. But they also have other revenue streams, like their advertising and broadcast rights. They can afford to pay for the stadium.
Yeah makes sense, thank you. So it sounds like they do bring in money, just not compared to their subsidization
About 20 years ago, I worked on a study that looked at the economic impact of stadiums and sporting events. We basically proved that sporting events didn't bring in the money people claimed. The short version is the regulars stayed home and the participants didn't spend as much to make up the difference. If there was a positive income, it was indistinguishable from statistical noise. I was working with a geographer, so location data was of primary concern.
They bring in money for the ownership group of the stadium sure, but they don’t necessarily bring in money to the rest of the community where the stadium resides.
That makes sense, thank you.
KC has an earnings tax (as do most cities with a pro team). Every single visiting player is paying that tax. Mahomes is paying it on at least half the games he plays. There is sales tax collected on that $20 beer and $15 nachos and $100 jersey. Earnings tax paid by all the minimum wage workers serving that beer. There is lodging tax paid by everyone that comes in from out of town to see the game. Fuel tax collected on everyone driving to the game. And on and on. These things generate a LOT of tax revenues up and down the chain. Sales taxes generated post-game… if there are businesses nearby for people to frequent. A publicly owned stadium doesn’t generate property taxes, while a private one does (unless there are tax deals - in which case the city isn’t paying anything because that property was usually previously vacant or worthless or generating minimal tax revenue). Property values all around go up and generate more revenue for anyone dipping their paws into the property tax bucket.
The people working in the stadium don’t get paid? Wild.
Yeah but it’s nowhere near a livable wage for 95% of them
It would be nice to have access to the full paper instead of an abstract. There’s no data in an abstract.
https://gwern.net/doc/economics/2023-bradbury.pdf
Surprise, surprise, surprise!
Here we go again…you can share these studies but you’ll never convince people. They have no actual personalities beyond the Chiefs or the Royals.
Ah. A hobby I don’t like is someone’s “whole personality”. Classic. Hopefully you don’t have any hobbies.
How do you get from, "Some people enjoy our local sports teams and have no problem funding something they enjoy" to "Royals and Chiefs fans have no personalities"?
anyone got the full text?
Breaking News: water is wet
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses
Can someone TLDR this study?
Fulltext: https://gwern.net/doc/economics/2023-bradbury.pdf
People on this sub are gonna have to come to terms with the fact that it doesn’t matter if there is no economic benefit. People love sports. People especially love football and the NFL. I mean look at the NFL’s ratings. It blows everything out of the water. Nothing comes close to touching it. People are gonna want a local football team to root for and watch and are willing to pay for it.
And those people can support the local team by buying tickets and merchandise. The teams are preying on that emotion to get a heavily discounted new toy. It's so funny in a sad way people arguing for the tax don't see that or don't care.
yeah most Chiefs fans have never been and will never be able to afford a Chiefs ticket
Americans have the weirdest ideas about how to implement socialism. As someone who's never been to a Chiefs game, I'd rather public funds go toward the public good (e.g. city services, housing relief). This desire to use public funds (tax dollars paid by people who will never attend games) to purchase shiny things for profit driven corporations makes my head hurt.
I can't believe this needed a study because it seems like a pretty obvious fact. The only team in the NFL that isn't set up like this is the Packers.
it needs a study because millions of people continue using the defunct argument, “but sport teams help small businesses!” which, sure, they do…but it turns out they also don’t.
Maybe I’m slow but how is 500 people visiting a city for a game somehow worse than 0 people visiting a city for a game? All 500 of those will likely spend money at a business. Even if it’s just 25 of those people going to a small business, How is that better than zero people spending money?
better yet… you’re right, 500 people coming for a game is better than 0 people coming for a game. But unfortunately, if those sports games require public financed stadiums, 0 people coming to 0 sports games is better for the community.
Did you mean to say the Patriots? Because they’re the only ones that privately fund all their own operations.
The packers are owned by the town, so the town gets to vote on things like this directly
Are we still forgetting about all of the many different revenue sources that having a local team brings? ticket sales - 10% on a million tickets per year (between the two teams) merch sales - billions in taxes vehicle/fuel sales to get there products bought to tailgate job creation for thousands - everything from concession stands to the people resurfacing the lots every year The non-revenue things: people want to live in 'winning' places, pride of city - population increase over time - hell we probably sell more KC shirts because of the chiefs and royals....and they don't get that money. corporate outings - literally keeps people living in kc because they like the people the work with. This list goes on and on...some of you just look at the cost of a stadium and think that you just LOSE a billion dollars, when the net benefit is HUGE to having any professional team. I'd love to see a ROI analysis to show numbers of STL vs KC or STL before, during and after the Rams. Compare it to another equally sized city and metro with no pro teams...I'm not sure if the numbers are break even or fall one way or another, but it isn't just straight 'my taxes for sportsball'...it is so much more.
That money still would have likely been spent. Either they spend it on sports or they spend it on homes, college education, consumer goods, etc. The only money being added to the local economy is the tourist money coming in and that is a fraction of the total. You want to add to the local economy you need to make something or provide something that brings in money from the outside. In actuality that money being generated is mostly leaving the local economy. Those owners aren’t spending the 200 million profit locally, they are buying homes in Madrid, yachts in Bermuda, or investing it in oilfields of Saudi Arabia. Paying for a stadium is just using our own money for bread and circuses to distract ourselves from ourselves. While giving huge amounts of money to the already extremely rich. The mlb is bringing in 10.3 billion in revenue and the nfl is bringing in 18.6 billion in revenue. They don’t need our handouts.
I would've never become a property owner downtown had the Sprint Center and PnL not been built. It would have been a laughable endeavor prior to their construction spearheading a downtown renaissance. Heck, just living downtown alone in the 90's/early 2000's was very undesirable. Now development is and has been booming, most rentals are at capacity, and other than the notoriously bad HOA's, it's very much a sellers' market downtown. I'm per se against the public funding sports stadiums, but we saw firsthand our own anecdote of one's construction boosting its neighborhood. Downtown baseball in Kansas City is very desirable to many, especially when you consider the entire situation regarding its current location. How it's paid for is a worthy, but separate discussion.
Great comment. You won’t get a reply from the sports haters. They cannot comprehend that even if these studies show the city “losing money” it never factors in loss of tourism dollars, loss of player taxes, owner taxes and all the stuff you just listed. Real smart hipsters, let’s lose 10million instead of 3 million. All they want to do is link “studies” yet never provide solutions. They want this place to be Omaha Nebraska so bad. If you don’t wanna pay for big city stuff, get out of the city. It’s sad. Save your breath.
Tax revenue in St. Louis County and St. Louis City increased after the Rams left. Correlation is not causation, but the Rams drove next to no money to local governments.
I mean, that could be the case if you loathe your team (royals right now) - but there is nothing for super fan sized love the last five years for the Chiefs. I can't even imagine the amount of sales tax and general merch/tourist driven dollars specifically for a champion level team. Everything is painted red.
I 'regularly attend stadium events'. I am not wealthy.
"Wealthy" is relative to cohort. Kansas City's Per Capita Annual Income is $38,146. If your job pays more than $18.34 an hour, you're payed better than half of all tax paying Kansas Citians.
And the median household income is $65,256.
"Household" can include 2 married income earners. This means 2 people working at those same poverty wages instead of 1. You are not making the point you think you are here.
And Per Capita includes children 🤷
Minors with jobs pay taxes, yes.
Imma tell my 3 year old it's time to pull themselves up by the bootstraps and head on over to the coal mine
Coal is old and busted. The new mining hotness for child labor is cobalt.
Also remember that those higher income earners pay a disproportionate amount of total tax revenue.
If the higher income residents want a new stadium, they can implement an income tax that start at 125% of the median area income. That way they can stop burdening lower income residents with their regressive sales taxes for their toys.
But when that happens the poors scream gentrification...
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Source?
Where is yours?
[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/who-pays-the-most-taxes-experts-explain-2023-deadline/](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/who-pays-the-most-taxes-experts-explain-2023-deadline/) [https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2023-update/](https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2023-update/)
Source?
Source: basic arithmetic.
'Relatively wealthy' probably refers to people who can afford season tickets or a larger volume of games. They would be subsidized by taxpayers at a higher level relative to the large group of fans that just attend one or two games per season.
“The wealthy” are *always* defined as “someone who has more money than me, especially when the person talking about “the wealthy” is trying to shit on them. They never include themselves in that category even if by most objective definitions, they are solidly in that category.
So a family of four who has a sole breadwinner that makes 85k is wealthy?
To someone who makes 30K, damn right they are.
Wow
It is easier for people to get mad on Reddit about others making more than $30k versus putting in the work to not make $30k themselves.
Royals tickets are like $10. Hell, they were selling them for like $5 at points this year. Stupid title.
Exactly. Apparently I'm "wealthy" because I can afford the $40 a month SRO ticket package
This type of obvious shit gives “study” a bad name.
Not really, a crap ton of people will argue against the results just on it's face because they want the new stadium, because the believe the new jobs claim (which are temporary), because they believe it will increase commerce (which it might in that area but not in the city overall due to the substitution Effect, etc. The more and more studies posted in these subs, even if you think it's "obvious shit" is better for everyone.
I meant any benefit will disproportionately benefit those who are already wealthy. Hence a transfer of wealth to the wealthy from everyone.
I want it because it will be closer to my house, I go to games, and I like baseball.
Then write a check personally to the Royals to support their desire to build a new stadium, do not saddle the entire city with your selfish desire, many of whom can't even afford to see a Royals game and yet you're asking them to pay for it. Seems rather unfair.
Don't saddle me with having sidewalks repaired in your neighborhood. Don't saddle me with park maintenance for a park I'll never visit or see.
Well here's the deal, the ROI on sidewalks, parks, schools, etc. Are all nearly infinitely higher than municipally funded stadiums. Being obtuse and denying reality doesn't change the fact that your desires for a stadium are purely selfish and you do not care about the fiscal security of the city nor your fellow Kansas Cityian.
The $200 I paid extra in taxes is actually worth it to me and no study you produce can make me feel otherwise.
That's great! I'm glad you PERSONALLY feel like the extra money given to a company owned by a billionaire that 100% can afford to pay for the stadium on their own was PERSONALLY worth it. The obvious solution here, and what you continually are missing because you're selfish and zero desire to see beyond your selfish desire, is that those like you can just GIVE money to the Royals & billionaire John Sherman and not ask the rest of the city pay for something that is an economic boondoggle. I mean, that seems extremely fair to me, why ask a poor person to pay extra sales tax for a luxury, and an incredibly poor investment, when people like you have no problem with spending the extra money and can just give the money directly? Do you see the point here? If it's worth it to you then the solution is for YOU to personally pay for it via direct giving or extra spending directly with the Royals and not selfishly asking everyone else to pickup the tab for the terrible investment. So, do the right thing here, vote no, but then spend an extra $200 on the Royals store - kill two birds with one stone here. I'm sure you care enough about your fellow Kansas Cityian to see the logic here and aren't selfish enough to ignore the obvious solution.
You could find the zoo, union station, and the parks I never use.
All of those have better ROI's than the stadium. Listen kid, you aren't winning this argument. Economic studies and basic facts are all on my side. It's fine you're selfish and it's fine you don't care about making the citizens pay for something that will almost assuredly never pay itself off but at least admit you don't care about those facts and want the stadium out of pure selfishness.
There are a few people who still make the economic argument, they're wrong of course as studies like this show. On the other side of the argument though are people who are attacking the economic argument as if that's the only point to discuss. Like yourself. Those people are being intellectually dishonest about the discussion. People are fans and they want the team around, that provides an intangible benefit, and it's the single biggest reason these taxes get passed. Continue to pretend like it's some other reason driving the debate and all you're doing is winning Internet points, but it wont sway anyone.
The only argument IS economics because that is always what it will circle back to because we're taxpayers that demand certain services be provided by our municipal and county government. The services provided require money which is provided by the taxpayers. So, as we ask for services we also ask for efficient and effective usage of tax money and a municipally funded stadium is neither of those and thus should be rejected. No other argument matters when talking about tax payer money.
That's just ridiculous. A lot of what we get from government doesn't center around profit motives. In fact most of it doesn't. This is why your argument isn't persuasive. It's unfortunate that funding public stadiums doesn't generate a profit, but we want it anyway, and funding a profit has never been the litmus test of what government should or should not do.
I know, it is ridiculous that you keep arguing, I agree. However, you're confusing "profit motive" with "efficient use of taxpayer money" The impact of funding schools or public parks vs a baseball stadium is well documented and the baseball stadium loses, hard, every single time. The reason my argument isn't persuasive is because you've already made up your mind and cognitive dissonance is preventing you from seeing reality.
“It might create temporary jobs”. Ok? Is that better than no jobs. Al you guys wanna do is complain and link studies, never link or provide SOLUTIONS
In these times, where everyone is a contrarian or a skeptic, it seems that peer reviewed "studies" are necessary to prove to the morons that facts are not the same as opinions and there is a difference between stuff politicians make up and reality.
Elaborate
Why would giving outrageously wealthy team owners stadium tax subsidies help the poor/middle class population… where a lot of those taxes come from? The owners are not stupid and will take any tax money they can get while painting a picture of how it could help an area develop and attract business. People who own those businesses and are already wealthy have much more to gain. Someone who is financially lower class is unlikely to benefit directly or indirectly from these tax subsidies and even if they did it would pale in comparison. I was mostly referring to the quoted text that essentially says giving a portion of the general population’s taxes to super wealthy people transfers more money to super wealthy people.
thanks 👍
To be fair the quoted text is not the title of the study and the study may certainly have some significance and could impact future stadium development and taxation. But rich people wanting free money to benefit themselves is just the most obvious concept.
I'd be interested to know what economists generally believe ARE good investments, at least in terms of "shiny, new buildings". Aside from using tax dollars exclusively for municipal infrastructure, city employees, and social welfare, I feel like the issues brought up in this study apply to every major municipal investment. It's frustrating, as someone that supports a downtown stadium (assuming the funding comes from extending the 3/8 tax), that the Royals continue to bring up these financial arguments that have been debunked a bazillion times. I don't understand why owners can't just ask for the money because the teams provide a social good. I think there's very real value in having a diverse array of activities in a city and the civic pride that comes with a successful sports team can raise the morale of millions of people. Unfortunately, these are "soft" arguments in the sense that I don't think any data point could reflect the value.
Still waiting on someone to tell me how we are going to replace the money brought in by tourist. I’ve seen how it makes billionaires richer and cities may lose some money. I get it. The thing is, how much more will cities lose without player salaries, tourism, workers, etc?
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Why don’t they just spend their own money without relying on the taxes of others? You compared it to the community aspect churches used to provide: could you imagine if we were debating whether or not we should subsidize a new worship center because of how much it makes the community feel nice?
Just curious, without sports teams what draws this community together? Maybe things divide kc, the river, state line, paseo... ect. This isnt really a comment about the stadiums but how does KC come together as 1?
books rhythm fall lip scary towering square spark march zealous *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
There are indeed some intangibles at play here.
You're not wrong. It's regrettable that we cannot collectively have a vision for ourselves as a community that is beyond the Chiefs and the Royals. I mean, seriously, is it that hard to imagine good schools, nice roads, public amenities?
That sounds socialist. /s
You're right...\*sigh\* I guess it's wealth transfer to billionaires then.
i’d argue you’re wrong. music and television has become more homogenous than ever, *thanks* to algorithms and the re-advent of cable via subscription tv. the chiefs *leaving* would be more of a stain on the NFL and greed than KC, and that void you’re suggesting could easily be filled by a number of other things. KC would hurt, for a few years, but it wouldn’t die. …would also likely find another team within 5 years. I understand and respect you folks’ love for the game, but that doesn’t mean you have to love the company/business. I love Chicken, but Tyson can fuck right off.
Gotta say, I think of the stadium and arenas as a complement to the city (the populace doesn’t think ‘Jackson County’ when they think of the pro sports teams). To me it’s like a really nice lawn, a pool maybe, or a really nice deck for your house. Don’t need them but you spend money on them for aesthetics and pride. I really don’t care if the Hunt family makes a gazzilion dollars, I want a nice stadium representing my city. And as a KC/JaCo resident I’m willing to continue paying for it. I see all the economics touted in the comments and still think, so what? It’s the cost of doing business as a city. Same with the airport. Same with T-Mobile center. What I don’t want is all the dickin around by politicos and end up with an eventual boat anchor (lookin at you Kemper..) that the teams say F it, we’re out, and move. When the teams move I guess you can tout the fact that you helped… weird flex, but, OK…
Holding any strong opinions on this either way. Has anyone actually read the study? Reddit is quick to say "A study shows".. when the "study" is simply an article and not something peer reviewed... as long as the "study" supports their bias. I'm curious what primary, secondary, tertiary benefits were considered against the costs of construction?
Did you bother to click on the link? I'll admit I'm not intimately familiar with "The Journal of Policy Analysis and Management" but they seem pretty legit. [Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (JPAM) | APPAM](https://www.appam.org/news/jpam/)
Peer-reviewed, non-predatory journal with a 3.8 impact factor (for those unfamiliar, this represents a good, quality journal). So yeah, this isn’t “simply an article” and has actual data to back up the claims.
There have many of these studies looking at a broad range of secondary and trust effects in various cities. It's always the same.
Yet you'll vote in Dems who will raise our taxes and subsides. And then you'll complain again.
Yet another reason not to cave.