For the second time in just over a year, an NFL team is ditching its hometown for the glitz and, more importantly, dollars of Los Angeles. Last year, it was St. Louis; this year, it's San Diego. Some of the circumstances are a little different. St. Louis and Missouri did everything it could to try to get the Rams a new stadium, but their owner had no interest in staying in the Gateway City. The Chargers, on the other hand, wanted to stay in San Diego but that city had no interest in ponying up the money to pay for a new stadium. (To which, I say "Kudos" to San Diego for standing up to the billionaire bully and not caving. We need more cities and states to follow their lead!) Regardless of the different circumstances, the end result is the same. A billionaire owner turns it back on its fans in an effort to get even richer than he already is.
This continues a disturbing trend in professional sports: a billionaire goes up to the Average Joe on the street with his hand out asking for money to build a new stadium whose only benefit is to enrich the already wealthy owner. It's a nice gig: get the working stiff making $15 an hour to pay for and assume all of the risk for a building that will produce minimal (if any) benefit for him while giving you untold wealth. As an example, Dean Spanos (owner of the Chargers) claimed that he needed San Diego tax payers to pick up the tab for a new stadium because he couldn't afford to do so. However, the other NFL owners had already agreed to give him $300 million dollars toward a new stadium. Also, in order to move the team, Spanos will have to pay a $550 million relocation fee and another $12 million to buy out the remaining lease at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego. Now, I'm lousy at math, but according to my calculations, $300 million + $550 million + $12 million = $862 million. You can't build a football stadium for $862 million? You need the tax payers to help you? It's absurd.
And it's not just the teams relocating. For years now, team owners have being crying poor and bilking states and municipalities into paying for new stadiums. Often, the stadium the owners want to replace isn't even old enough to drink if it were a person. Atlanta is the perfect example. The Georgia Dome (home of the Falcons) opened in September 1992, so it's not even 25 years old. Turner Field (home of the Braves) was built for the 1996 Olympics, so it's not even 21 years old yet. However, Atlanta tax payers are paying millions of dollars to build new stadiums for both teams. When the Rams left St. Louis, the Dome at America's Center was only 20 years old.
Whatever happened to teams that played in the same building for decades and decades? Think about all of the historic old arenas: Boston Garden, Chicago Stadium, St. Louis Arena, Montreal Forum, Maple Leaf Gardens. Part of the appeal and fame of those buildings was that the hometown teams had played in those buildings for generations, something that none of these new buildings will ever achieve. Now, buildings are supposedly antiquated and outdated after 15 or 20 years. But it's not because they are really outdated. It's because these wealthy owners are always looking for a shiny new thing that will help make them even more ridiculously wealthy than they already are. It's not enough for them to have more money than they and their kids could ever spend. Their insatiable greed causes them to ask for even more. Also, it's not enough to have a new stadium. It has to be bigger and fancier than the other guy's stadium. It has to have more luxury suites, a bigger scoreboard, more box seats. At the end of the day, none of those things are really for the fans; they only exist as an excuse to make that obscenely wealthy owner even wealthier.
Missouri's new governor recently referred to public financing of sports stadiums as "corporate welfare" and, whatever your political leanings, that is a very apt description. Traditional welfare is public money that goes to people who cannot or choose not to work. It's public dollars given out to someone for, in essence, doing nothing. Is that really any different than public dollars given out to the owner of a sports team for not doing much of anything either?
However, it's not only wealthy sports owners who are recipients of this corporate welfare. It happens all the time in the regular business world, too. Far too often, we see businesses angling for state or local tax breaks to build a new building or a new factory in one state or city rather than another. Companies play cities and states against one another looking for the best deal. In these instances, "best deal" generally means whatever is going to cost the company the least. While that may, on its face, that may seem like good business, what happens to that tax money that those companies don't pay? It means less money for schools, roads, police and other infrastructure. It also creates unfair competition, where one company is being subsidized by the government while the other is not. I bear business owners and the wealthy no ill will (don't most of us dream of being a wealthy, successful business owner at some point?), but businesses and business owners should be successful on their own merits, not because government has its thumb on the scales on their behalf.
Once upon a time, successful business owners were successful because of risk-taking and ingenuity. The general public admired them and was not particularly bothered by their wealth because they understood that they had substantial skin in the game and they had stuck their necks out to be successful. Oftentimes now, "successful" business owners are "successful" because they have managed to get the taxpayers to assume the risk on their behalf. They reap the rewards without having to assume hardly any of the risk. Again, it is corporate welfare but they can get away with it because there is always some other schmuck (in the form of a state, city or county) who will be willing to bend over for the rich guy and give him what you may not be willing to give him.
The irony of the whole situation is that many of these millionaires and billionaires rail about traditional welfare (They're lazy! They're druggies! They need to get a job!) but they have no issues holding their hand out and asking for free money from the public to help them reap untold riches while having to assume none of the risk.
The only way to end this corporate welfare cycle is for states, counties and municipalities from coast to coast to all say "enough is enough" and force the wealthy sports owners and business owners to assume the risk and sink or swim on their own merits. As long as one state or city is willing to cave to the demands of billionaire sports owners (or, to a lesser extent, businesses), this cycle of corporate welfare will continue on in perpetuity.
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