More Condescension Surrounds Los Angeles Stadium Plan

Mark Lacter — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 17:33:47 -0500

The head of the group pushing the Los Angeles plan for an NFL stadium, Anschutz Entertainment Group, doesn't understand why anyone would be suspicious of the finances behind his plans for a downtown football stadium. From the LAT:

"Almost every other community in the world would be throwing parades," Leiweke said.

Really? A power-hungry developer backed by a reclusive Denver billionaire comes along with a plan to tear down part of the city-owned-and-operated convention center and jam in a stadium without providing any specifics on how the deal would be structured - other than his promise that it won't cost taxpayers a dime - and he's wondering why so many people are skeptical?

"When the proposal gets there, everyone's going to take a deep breath and realize: There is zero risk to the taxpayer," Leiweke said. "This is people trying to scare people. And it's a shame."

More disinterested voices continue to point out that pro sports teams do little, if anything, to boost local economies - and that the job creation figures being bandied about for the downtown stadium are crazy high. From the LAT:

Villaraigosa said the stadium complex would create more than 22,000 jobs, an assertion that drew a laugh from Brad Humphreys, an economics professor at the University of Alberta, Canada, who has studied such facilities for years. "That's way outside the usual garbage that I read," he said. "The best estimate ... would be zero jobs created." Construction jobs, he explained, would be the most visible, but they would be short-term.

Humphreys and colleagues studied every city in North America that had built sports facilities in the last 40 years, "and we were unable to find any evidence that the local economy ever did any better," he said. What such developments tend to do is move existing money, and presumably jobs, around -- as, say, entertainment dollars that would have been spent in Westwood are spent instead downtown.

This piece originally appeared at Mark's LA Biz Observed blog.

Forget the Crackerjacks: $2,500 to See Yankees at New Stadium

Andy Sywak — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:31:54 -0400

Baseball and football, America's great everyman sport, won't be that way much longer for fans in the Big Apple. Glittering new stadiums for the Yankees, Mets and one which the Jets and Giants will share aren't exactly meant for the "dollar dogs" crowd.

The Giants have said they will charge from $1,000 to $20,000 a seat for their personal seat licenses; once fans buy the seat licenses, they will still have to pay from $85 to $700 a ticket... Tickets for the best seats at the 85-year-old Yankee Stadium, which sold for $1,000 a seat this season, will jump at the new ballpark to $2,500; in other areas of the stadium, they will range from $135 to $500 for season tickets.

Never mind the fact that the $3.7 billion being spent on the three new stadiums means that New York's pressing infrastructure needs - particularly in wastewater -will be parried away for a while (Center for an Urban Future has a piece on all of New York's infrastructure needs).

There's also a wonderful segment about increasing ticket sales on "HBO Real Sports" this week. Bryant Gumbel interviews long-time New York sports fans refusing to go along with the ticket increases out of "self-respect."