Courtesy of The Verge:
This week, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver tapped into the angst of the many American cities on the verge of losing their professional sports teams over stadium negotiations. Owners of football teams currently in St. Louis, San Diego, and Oakland are angling to make a move to Los Angeles, and they're leveraging the potential departure locally for taxpayer support of new or improved stadiums in their current municipalities. As Oliver makes clear, this strategy often leads to the comically vile scenario in which billionaires demand that cities provide hundreds of millions of dollars to appease privately owned teams that charge many of those same taxpayers hundreds of dollars for tickets.
Okay I have to admit that I did not know any of this.
Of course I live in Alaska and we really don't have any sports stadiums, or local teams worth buying a ticket to see. (And please don't bother mentioning the Alaska Aces or the Anchorage Glacier Pilots, because that would just be embarrassing yourself.)
And now that I have seen this report from John Oliver, I think not having a sports team worthy of building a stadium to see is probably a good thing for Alaska.
So how many professional teams can Los Angeles support? I have little or no interest in professional sports but, after living for over 30 years in its shadow, I admit to feeling good if a Detroit team does well but that's more because Detroit is such a beleaguered city. Fancy stadiums are the 20th and 21st centuries' version of the Roman "bread and circuses" technique of keeping the masses at bay. How about better housing, better schools, better jobs, cleaner water instead?
ReplyDeleteBeaglemom
I took us decades to finally get a new public main library. Because public funds were siphoned off to support the Chargers.
DeleteGood riddance I say.
Maybe without them we might be able to keep our symphony or opera going. No one asks me what I want my tax money spent on. I don't go to games or even watch sports. But I do care that as a major city we have a symphony, and opera and a ballet. Cities half our size can support them.
As far as I'm concerned if the Chargers want a new stadium they can build one. But they can do it without any tax dollars or subsidizing by the city. They are not a non-profit corporation and they do not do anything to improve the revenue or employment in the city. Despite the lies of the owners.
Anyone that just has to see them play in person can make the drive or they can watch it on TV. That's a good deal since so many of the games were blacked out locally due to a really lousy deal the city made with the Chargers.
This information needs to get out there. Ask the folks in Pontiac Mi, stuck with the elephant called the Silver Dome. The city goes bankruptcy and the Lions move to Detroit, where the taxpayers foot the bill for another stadium.
ReplyDeleteAll the while the NFL, a non-profit no less, is making billions of dollars in profits. All in the name of sports.
We were proud to have voted against the "Silver Dome" when it was on the ballot in Pontiac.
DeleteBeaglemom
The NFL is no longer a "non-profit.." That just changed...
Delete@ 7:13 link please
DeleteAs someone who lives in San Diego and very close to the current stadium unfit for the Chargers to play in, all I can say is Goodbye Assholes, enjoy LA! Now granted, Qualcomm Stadium is a worn out relic from the 60's, but tax payers who don't watch the games shouldn't have to be on the hook for 1/2 a billion dollars for the idiots who cannot control their beer consumption and take their rage after another loss out onto the streets when the clock runs out. I am one who will not miss football here.
ReplyDeleteDitto.
DeleteThat's prime real estate.
Will be happy to see Qualcomm stadium go. And please, take the Sports arena with you next. And PetCo park in another decade or two.
I see no downside to not having a stadium or a sports team locally. Plenty of other major cities don't have any.
We have no basketball, soccer or hockey and no one cares.
Let them go the way of the beauty pageants.
Omigod. You can't imagine how bad this is. St. Louis already has two stadiums paid for by taxpayers who struggle to maintain their homes and businesses in the city! You should see St. Louis; it has the most gorgeous brick architecture, but it's all in disrepair, looks like a bombed out WWII movie set. How in the name of all that is holy can the city be seriously considering a third god@#nm*&%#$fuc&*)g stadium is beyond me.
ReplyDeleteBut you see the kinds of kickbacks Mayor Sarah Palin got from negotiating a freakin sports complex in Wasilla right?
ReplyDeleteA new house, free labor, left the city in debt and can barely afford to cover costs operating it every month. That's like, a microcosm of America.
Everything in Alaska is a microcosm. Sarah Palin a nightmare never ending..
DeleteThat woman in the jersey, righteously berating the board for not upping the ante to satisfy her favorite team's owner, was an iconic representation of what is wrong with America. You have little rock throwers carrying the 1%'s water, getting ugly, defending their rights to tax breaks and public bail-outs.
ReplyDeleteIf ever there was a worthy heir to either Colbert or Stewart, this guy could surely be it. Him and his staff of writers are excellent!
ReplyDeleteGo John Oliver, Go!!!!
Sports is big business, much too big. It's all about making the rich franchise owners richer and leaving taxpayers with the bill -- even if some of them will never step foot into the gargantuan gaudy monuments to owners' ego and excess called stadiums.
ReplyDeleteSEX, Bullying, & $$$$$$$$$$$$$, repeat play......
DeleteA week after criticism from John Oliver, Milwaukee basketball arena gets $250 million Senate approval
ReplyDeletehttp://fusion.net/story/167975/john-oliver-stadiums-milwaukee-bucks-approved/
The Wisconsin State Senate voted yesterday to approve $250 million in public financing for a new Milwaukee Bucks arena. The final cost of the stadium is likely to be even greater, with the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel pegging it at $400 million after interest.
"If that number of $250 million is sticking in your head, it might be because that’s the same amount of money the Senate cut from the University of Wisconsin in its two-year budget passed last week."
DeletePRIORITIES!!!
And if I recall, the money for the new stadium is coming out of the education budget.
DeleteWell Wisconsin, you get what you voted (or didn't vote at all) for.......
They have been pulling this con for years. We no longer attend pro sports. Period.
ReplyDeleteAnd it isn't just the majors. We have a minor league baseball team, which has the best stadium in the minors, reportedly. Now the "Midland Baseball Foundation," which has torn down affordable housing the the area, wants to move our perfectly lovely. riverside Farmer's Market three blocks away (and closer to their stadium,) with less parking than we have already, and make it inside a building and year round. It's MICHIGAN, in the winter we can buy veggies shipped in from the south at the store, and not have to trudge three blocks through the snow. But is's progress, says the President of the baseball team. Yeah, and how much will this progress cost us? No one is saying.
A lot of these "moves" are most likely shake downs. The Patriots did it to Connecticut about 15-16 years ago. They wanted a new stadium, Mass said no. Next thing you know our gov is on the front page of the Courant with Mr Kraft signing a deal to move the team to Hartford CT (I was thrilled, was banking money for season tickets!). Turns out it was one big, elaborate blackmail scheme and, as we all know now, the Pats stayed in Massachusetts. Haven't been a fan since - laugh every time Brady gets sacked - but I'm not bitter ;)
ReplyDeletehttp://www.boston.com/sports/blogs/obnoxiousbostonfan/2015/01/when_the_hartford_patriots_almost_happened.html
Pats Stadium was not taxpayer funded.
DeleteMassachusetts shelled out 70 million for infrastructure improvements both in and around the stadium. CT taxpayers helped foot the bill for the stadium in Hartford after the NFL backed out. They had already broke ground (ceremonial only as they still had some work to do) and followed through with the stadium for UConn Football. Not as big as originally intended for the Pats, but for college football not too bad.
DeleteI didn't mind paying taxes for either team (wasn't really what I meant in the above post) was just mad about the blackmail attempt. Even during the back and forth negotiations, we had a bad feeling that we were just being used. Turned out - we were right. Been strictly a Giants fan since.
O/T John McCain Frets That Donald Trump Has Been Firing Up ‘The Crazies’
ReplyDeleteSen. John McCain (R-AZ) said real estate mogul and presidential candidate Donald Trump has galvanizing "the crazies” in the Republican party, in an interview published Thursday by The New Yorker....
“This performance with our friend out in Phoenix is very hurtful to me,” McCain told the magazine. “Because what he did was he fired up the crazies."...
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Poor John boy, what's the matter?, it was ok when Sarah fired up the crazies, now your worried.
Johnny Fuck up McStupid..you started this shit...fuck you, FUCK Sarah ... Fuck All those Pricks, "dicks-Cheney", and stupid Tits!
DeleteOh, for crying out loud, you senile old fuck! The Secret Service had to meet with you in 2008 and tell you to stop Sarah a Palin for trying to get then candidate Obama mudered.
DeleteRemember at one of your campaign rallies where Palin kept slandering Barack Obama until a man in the crowd roared out "Kill him!" and Sarah winked at that man?
DeleteI will never forget that. Shame, shame, shame on you. No one has ever been as responsible for "firing up the crazies" as you have, John McCain. And that will be your legacy. Forever and ever.
So, "you may never be able to watch sports the same way again," huh? Well, I never watch sports. So there!
ReplyDeleteThe county commissioner who "negotiated" the contract with the owners of the Bengals then went on to work for them when he was term limited. Imagine the surprise the taxpayers of Hamilton County and Cincinnati who will be paying the price for another three decades that such an honorable man would go a do that. No need to say what party he belongs to.
ReplyDeleteBob Bedinghaus, republican, director of team development for the Bengals was one of the three commissioners who got us this great deal.
DeleteI weep when my property taxes come, I'm not paying for hospitals, schools, infrastructure repair, etc. I'm paying so some steroid enhanced freaks can entertain other mouth breathing morons.
Gryph,
ReplyDeleteit's OK for you to not like team sports but why disparage the Alaska Aces ? They're in the ECHL, a steppingstone league to the NHL, and if you haven't noticed have done quite well the past several years, not to mention winning a couple of championships along the way ..
Agree, 9:02. Thanks. I am not fond of the owners of the team, but I sure support the players themselves.
Deleteas far as owners go the team's much better off that the alcoholic coke head mike cusak's no longer the owner, minimally now the players don't have to supply their own post game soap/towels etc ..
Delete;)
I had no clue this was going on. I'm not "into" sports, but where are our priorities as a society? Yeah, they'll argue that they bring revenue into the city, which is good for the economy, and will eventually trickle down to small business and infrastructure. Trickle down just doesn't happen.
ReplyDeleteWe just got two new mega stadiums built in our city, and as John Oliver so cleverly pointed out, no one stays in the city and spends money, they want to get home asap on the infrastructure WE taxpayers pay to maintain. And the sad thing is our teams suck, yet Philly Sports fans cling to the hope, go tailgating, and pay with their taxes AND the price of tickets. We attended a Fleetwood Mac concert, got fleeced for parking, concessions, etc.
Why do the rich always get these "double dip" loopholes while education, hospitals, the elderly, the poor and businesses always get squat?
I wonder if one of us "peons" could get away with not paying taxes and using the "opening the books just isn't done" excuse to the IRS?
I live in San Diego and my opinion of the whole thing is good riddance and don't let the door.....
ReplyDeleteI don't go to games and I don't watch them on TV. I'm not the only one that doesn't follow sports. I am sick and tired of subsidizing a for profit corporation.
If they want a new stadium, they can build one and then sell advertising, broadcast rights, pay parking and raise ticket prices. Oh, that's right. They do all that. And on the taxpayer dime.
Well, no more.
They had prime real estate and that wasn't good enough for them because it isn't big enough for a bowl game.
Too bad.
Sorry, but I sure won't miss getting stuck in their traffic because I didn't realize there was a game.
Having them here is no benefit to the city. They do not raise revenue or jobs locally. The owners that claim having a major league team is a benefit are liars, just trying to grift some bigger profits without having to pay. BTW what makes any of those players worth 1000 times more than a teacher, fireman or police man?
Let the Chargers go to L.A.
PetCo Park took up prime real estate in downtown and for what? The Padres didn't do what they promised either. Well, maybe in 20 years they'll leave and we can tear that down too. We have no major league basketball, soccer or hockey and I see no downside.
I'm fine with being in a city with no major sports stadium. I'm OK with the Sports Arena being gone too since that is mostly used for Swap Meets on Sunday that are totally commercial since us little guys can't afford the fees to sell our garage sale junk like we used to do.
It's all a scam.
Let them go the way of the beauty pageants.
I'm pretty sure this ploy was how George W. Bush finally made his money (he basically stole it from the taxpayers). Before that, he had failed in every business venture that he had tried.
ReplyDeleteIn the small town I live in, the developers of a sports venue are trying to get all levels of government to fund their enterprise. "Not directly," so they say. Just major infrastructure, roads and millions in tax waivers are on their agenda. They have also threatened to pull out and built it somewhere else. Years have gone by and nothing has been built because they're waiting for the taxpayers to cave in. I posted the John Oliver on my blog to warn the locals of what is in store for them.
ReplyDelete